Reflections #2 [A drone opera]2017
Artist statement: Reflections [A drone opera] is a series of prints made during the production of A drone opera, a multimedia performance work at Melbourne’s Meat Market presented in late 2015. These performances featured a number of drones flying through the theatre while streaming live video to a large screen, to establish for the audience that the space being mapped was the one that they were occupying and that this was happening in realtime.
Once the performances were over, I realised the footage contained occasional frames of static. These were at once: unique, seductive and abstract. They were also indexical as they were generated by the reflections of radio waves from the building’s bluestone walls. The combination of an abstract image that represented an analogue event was a compelling metaphor for a project whose themes dealt with our relationship to video surveillance and technology in general.
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Chromogenic prints are printed on paper that has at least three emulsion layers containing invisible dyes and silver salts. Each emulsion layer is sensitive to a different primary colour of light (red, green or blue). The development process converts the hidden dyes to visible colour depending on the amount of light it was exposed to. This type of paper is commonly used to print from colour negatives or digital files to produce a full-colour image. It can also be used to print black-and-white images, giving softer grain and less contrast than gelatin silver prints. Commonly known as c-type prints, chromogenic processing was developed in the 1940s and widely used for colour printing, including for domestic snapshots. While recent years have seen this process accompanied by ink-jet and digital printing technologies, chromogenic printing still remains in use to this day.
