Interventions with The Image Fulgurator
Julius von Bismarck's The Image Fulgurator is a reverse camera... instead of capturing images, it projects images. More specifically, it briefly projects an image when its light-detector senses the flash from another camera. The idea is that the artist can lurk around tourist sites and secretly overlay his own images onto the photographed subjects so that when the tourists look at their photos they'll find them manipulated.From von Bismarck's site:
People's great trust in their photographic reproductions of reality was what motivated me to develop the image Fulgurator. A camera can be used as a personal memory tool, since people do not doubt the veracity of their own photographs. Hence, photos can reproduce the reality of an individual environment or public space. At sacred or popular locations, or those having a political connotation, an intervention with the Fulgurator can be particularly effective. Especially objects with a special aura or great symbolic power are good targets for this kind of manipulation. In other words, with the Fulgurator it is possible to have a lasting effect on those kinds of individual moments and events that become accessible to the masses only because they are preserved photographically.This video below shows an intervention at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. The manipulation is intended to make connections between the former East Germany/West Germany border and the US/Mexico border today.
A compelling & interesting project, but I wonder about the gun-fetish aesthetic. Not only does the camera have a pistol grip, but von Bismarck's video has him assembling the camera ala sniper-gun movie cliche. The pistol grip seems particularly notable since it is counter to the (presumed) desire to have the fulgurator be as innocuous as possible.
His logo (above) references the Red Army Faction's (below). I honestly wonder if he's really thinking through and taking responsibility for using this kind of imagery (or if it is just easy dramatics).
The Image Fulgurator won this year's ARS Electronica Prix's "Golden Nica" for Interactive Art.
[via Make]
Labels: guerilla art, light art, photography, vandalism
posted by Ethan at
9:28 AM
3 Comments:
Hey Ethan,
I met Julius this spring, he is/was (?) a Hunter student. He was doing work with glow in the dark paint and flashing images onto it. I wonder if he went back to Berlin full time, or just for the summer. Oh well, just fyi.
Rachel
Ive seen the so-called Fulgurator when it won its prize at ARS Electronica. Its total crap. The most interesting thing it reveals is the how little people understand technology. Even as Julius Von Bismarck was attempting to demonstrate it live, he had to ask members in the audience not to use their cameras as the flashes would stop it working. His well-practiced girlfriend managed to eventually capture an image which had been modified. Another intersting point is that the 'fulgurated' image of Obama which is being touted to support his 'Guerilla' tactics never turned up anywhere in the press.. could it be that no-one elses images were manipulated?
The 'device' is dependant on so many variables: Timing, recharge of flash unit, direction of sensor, exposure time of 'target camera' and the assumption that the camera generating the trigger flash is pointing at the same thing... the chances of it working are miniscule!
Julius Von Bismarck also claims he is going to patent his technology - well, sorry Julius, Cameras, Flash Bulbs, Projectors and Light Sensors are all patented.
I fail to understand why this is groundbreaking since it is basically a projector...and one that doesnt work very well either.
I have an invention too... it draws temporary graffiti on buidlings by stealth... its called 'OHP-Inside-A-Wig'.
The video did leave me wondering about the device's reliability--something about it made the process see iffy... Perhaps it was the fact that only one person in the video actually seemed to have captured the fulgurator's image on their camera. There seemed to be a lot of documentation of the camera, but little of it's impacting results.
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