Head in the Clouds 2016

Inspired by Etienne-Louis Boullée’s Proposed Cenotaph for Isaac Newton (1784), the panoramas of the 19th century (and I suspect, a little by the old salon hairdryers of the 1970s). Head in the Clouds was an installation comprised of a semi-transparent (enabling the projection to be seen equally well on both sides), half dome perspex form attached to the wall with a live-streaming video, webcam view of the sky projected on to it, where the viewer has to act out the title’s idiom by deliberately inserting their head into the ‘clouds’.

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There is a random element to any installation reliant upon a webcam. How one experiences this work depends largely upon the current weather at the camera’s location. On still, bright blue days, everything is static, the only visual change appearing when a bird flies through the camera’s view. On cloudy days, one may experience a slow swirl of wispy clouds or the more dramatic movement of large nebulous forms streaming by. Depending on the time of day, the sky may be dark, bright or stained with reds and pinks.