5th year students from St. Joseph’s School in Castlebar participated in shoots during spring 2011, helping us create scenes from 1920s picnics to fashion shows using recycled materials. In July we worked with the Castlebar Youth Project to make a series of summer scenes.
On Sight is a video/sculptural installation for Lough Lannagh in County Mayo exploring binocular vision, designed in consultation with le Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception in Paris. Each of these four binocular viewing posts will be installed in situ on the lakeside, juxtaposing a HD film of the lake for the left and the right eye which, though filmed from an identical view-point, integrate some contradictory information, which the brain will nevertheless try to converge into a stereo picture. The two films may simply be recorded in different atmospheric conditions - a freezing January morning beside at summer storm in July - or they may integrate more complex narrative events. The project is a public commission for Mayo County Council, part of the Landmark public art programme.
We are very grateful to Pascal Mamassian of le LPP for helping us with the development of the whole project, in particular with the optics for the installations, based on the Wheatstone stereoscope, adapted to 7 inch HD LCD screens, to allow the eyes to ‘converge’ two images, identical in setup but different in certain details.
The final installations were built in marine-grade electropolished stainless steel by the excellent coach-builder Neil McKensie (Vintage Works)
Design study for the installation
Prototype for the installation installed at Farmleigh as part of the Hall of Mirrors show, 15 March - 23 July 2012
