ProjectSlowmography

David Smeulders has been experimenting with slowmography, photography using a document-scanner, for several years. For the Dutch Photography museum (Nederlands Fotografie Museum, NFM) in Rotterdam, he is building a new installation that brings this concept into an exposition targetting a younger audience.

The camera

The camera can be operated with switches on the outside of the glas cover, and enables visitors to adjust focus and such. For building the camera, out of an old technical camera and an Auping electrically raising bed, the workshop at !RevSpace was used.

The logic

The heart of the instalaltion is an old intel iMac that was already in possesion of the museum. With linux, this machine has a new life. A custom application was developed, using SDL and openGL, to address the flatbed scanner through sane. Advantages over the older windows installation include that the image is now displayed while it is being scanned, which increases the interactivity of the whole installation.

The electronics of a USB keyboard were cannibalized and used to create a 2-key keyboard with large arcade buttons that control the scanning action. Pictures are automatically uploaded to a flickr stream.

Pics

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