Widescreen Void

Widescreen Void plays on digital and analogue image generation processes to visually unfold the mechanics of contemporary display systems. A single LCD screen emitting a simple ‘white’ image sits behind water-filled vases that are stacked vertically into off-centred towers. These glass vessels sit on top of a mirror, extending the impression of the vertical depth. The vases function as optical lenses, magnifying and distorting the white screen to refract it back into its colour recipe of red, green, and blue. Bands of colour wrap around the stacked vessels.

Drawing from histories of image generation, Widescreen Void employs techniques used in early photographic and optical experiments. The work’s visual manipulation echoes the use of water lenses in ancient Chinese, Roman, and Greek cultures for magnification and scientific investigation. The water-filled vessels in Widescreen Void parallel the principles of the Sutton Lens, or Sutton Panoramic Camera (c. 1860), which employed a curved wet-plate lens to achieve wide-angle image capture.

Through this sculptural configuration, Widescreen Void exists in a constant state of image generation and refraction. The colourful chromatic wavelengths expand and contract in response to changes in viewpoint, producing an image that continually reconfigures itself between physical matter and digital light. The grid-like structure of the stacked vases introduces a pixelated, glitch-like effect, drawing on familiar visual languages of digital images. Framed as a meditation on the blank screen, Widescreen Void allows the digital display to unfold as a physical, spatial experience.