Pneuhaus

Pneuhaus

Compound Camera
Inflatable Expanding Works of Art
Exploratorium, Pier 15 [link]
San Francisco, CA

A contemporary interpretation of ancient camera obscura technology, the design group’s work considers complexities of visibility and sight. Featuring 109 tiny lens embedded into an igloo-shaped structure, the environment offers a respite from the crowded pier, placing the viewer into a position of a voyeur. The field of vision is at once ruptured and expanded, providing many tiny screens of the same scene from a 360- degree upside-down vantage of the outside world. This expansion clouds rather than clears our vision, manfiesting John Berger’s dictum that what we see is never reconciled with what we know.

~ Colette Copeland
images courtesy of the author