Halide

Porthcurno & London, UK, 2017 

Stocks floating, bubbles bursting, clouds storing. In the fourth industrial revolution we are told to look up to the sky. - Klaus Schwab

Halide is an installation that explores the materiality of the internet, specifically focusing on the web of undersea data cables that link the UK to Europe, Africa and the Americas that come to shore at the hidden cove of Porthcurno at the Western extremes of the rugged Cornish coastline.

16mm footage filmed around Porthcurno and the nearby satellite listening station at Goonhilly is projected into a floating installation. Twin projectors stand at opposing ends of the space projecting positive and negative images that are reflected and refracted within the installation. Light travels through the framework and is reflected via the central screen onto mirrored planes. Playing on themes of surveillance, the dominance in brightness of either projector shifts, making the central screen appear transparent or solid.

Grey itself is a colour of no colour. The literal definition of no saturation. But it’s also incredibly textural and tonal with the human eye able to detect over 500 accents of grey. In order to bring this depth to life, we chose to work with the medium of analogue film within the installation. A single frame of 16mm film contains around 1.5 billion minute pieces of silver that, once exposed to light, are capable of rendering grey in all its tones. Film is also an inherently sculptural medium from the physical strip of film itself to its subsequent projection within a space.

Made with Ben Evans James

Specification

Dimensions: 13.5m L x 2.2m W x 2.4m H Media: aluminium, transparent mirror foil, tensile cable, 2x 16mm projectors, back projection screen, 4.1 surround sound

Credits

Photography: Sebastian Kite 
Processes: Cinelab
Production: Jotta Studio
Project kindly supported by A.Lange & Söhne