7” screen, Arduino, motor, Raspberry Pi, aluminium casing, (video loop 9:29)
/ video (09:30), motor, Arduino, iPhone
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This work emerged from a frustration with the inability to display video that seamlessly switches between portrait and landscape orientations. To address this, I developed a system where a signal, encoded within the video, triggers a motor behind the phone that rotates the screen from portrait to landscape in sync with the footage, enabling the display of mixed-orientation video. The video itself consists of footage I’ve shot on my iPhone over the past five years. 

I think it was the act of carrying a phone, rather than a movie camera or DSLR, around with me that let me to start shooting video in both portrait and landscape. Maybe it’s because you live with your phone that it becomes second nature to use it in such a uncareful way. I treat my phone badly, I’m always throwing it down on my desk or dropping it, forgetting that it is actually quite an expensive piece of equipment. I would never have treated a camera with such disregard, but in doing so you can actually get some great footage.

I was really annoyed at the inability to show footage like this. So, I spent quite a long time developing this multi-orientation system. It exists in two primary versions, the first of which I exhibited as part of Waiting For Death Like Turtles In The Sun, at Calcio, London (with Behzad Dehno, Isolde Berkqvist, Jost Maltha Müller, Lewis Henderson & Silja Beck). This version used a 7-inch screen and a Raspberry Pi as a media player, instead of the latter version that utilised an iPhone. It was more clunky, but I didn’t mind that aesthetic. After the exhibition I decided that it would be better, conceptually, to have the video shown on the device that actually shot the footage. I hoped it would feel more personal, that version fetured in No One Is Bored, Everything Is Boring, at Galleri Mejan, Stockholm, Sweden.

I also thought that it could offer an opportunity to talk about this thingwe have all become transfixed by. This little portal into cyberspace that dictates our love lives, our politics, even the way we navigate a city, and is something that governs our social interactions with others. If art is going to do anything for society, I think it should talk about the things — everyday technologies, tools, and commodities — that institutionalise us into ways of Being.

Version 1

Version 2

Images from No One Is Bored, Everything Is Boring:

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