Paramount Camera Obscura
2020
interactive public sculpture (camera obscura), documentation
A key focus of Kamloops-based artist Donald Lawrence’s practice has been the merging of art, technology, and science. Through pinhole camera and camera obscura projects, Lawrence’s work draws upon early optical and image-making devices, and centres on conventions of illusion that emerged through the use of these technologies in 19th century European culture (though their origins lay in previous times and in other cultures).
Lawrence’s cameras obscura have emerged as site-specific projects that revisit early photographic technology through participatory experiences outside the gallery context. As part of his Kamloops Art Gallery exhibition Casting the Eye Adrift Lawrence has created a new camera obscura work that is installed on the canopy of the Paramount Theatre, called the Paramount Camera Obscura.
The phrase, camera obscura, is Latin for “darkened chamber” or “dark room.” The camera obscura is a device that admits light through a small opening (often fitted with a glass lens) into a box or darkened space to project an upside down image of the outside world onto a surface inside the box or space.
With this work, visitors were invited to enter the tent structure and sit on vintage theatre seats to experience a new view of the intersection at Victoria and 5th Street as an upside down projected image.
