'Protean Views: Eboulement de la Vallée de Goldau' (2023)
This video sculpture is composed of of a large video monitor and motorised venetian blinds. The work takes its name from the image printed on the blinds. The image is a reproduction of a lithograph by Rev. Spooner from the late 1800s and depicts a natural disaster in Goldau valley in Switzerland that took place in 1806. The image is often mis-attributed to Louis Daguerre who also depicted the landslide in a lithograph, decades prior to Spooner. They both used the lithographs with camera obscura rooms in dioramas, using light tricks to create primitive animations, which was a precursor to cinema.
Daguerre's lithograph was lost in a fire but is testament to the fact that this landslide disaster captured the imagination of artists across the continent for almost a century. The printed lithograph venetian blinds randomly reveal and conceal a video screen that presents an AI trying dream up landscape imagery depicting the location of open-pit mining/extraction operations. Specifically the types of extraction required to produce the materials needed to manufacture the TV and blinds. (think: oil, copper, aluminum, etc.)