Robbie Land

Grant Park, 2015

16mm film, silent, 8:00

Film synopsis:

“Grant Park” experiments with the process of photosynthesis and chlorophyll, which uses sunlight to print 16mm image sequences onto leaves. The images/leaves are attached to celluloid creating an animation of the Grant Park location where the leaves were collected. The film illustrates the Grant Park landscape and the park’s history through the process of photosynthesis. The film sequence is of scenes I’ve filmed in the location where I gathered the leaves for printing as well sections of found footage from a photosynthesis educational film. The film negatives are contact-printed on to the leaves utilizing the process and then each leaf image is placed in sequence onto 16mm clear celluloid for projection.

Artist Statement:

My work involves an array of subjects that focus on place or time. Currently, I am developing photo-based work that provides a subjective documentation of natural elements in North America. I utilize a variety of methods and tools such as microscope objectives, photographic time exposure, hydrophones, and pinhole cinematography to provide a personal perspective, a poetic science to my subjects. This includes bioluminescent organisms found in the southeast, visual and aural effects of Earth’s rotation, pinhole time-lapse recording the ebb and flow of saltmarsh tidal creeks and a 16mm film created using the photosynthesis process.

My work combines a photographic and acoustic representation of the specific subject or place with traces of its physicality and it’s ambiance. Employing these techniques, the viewers see and hear the particular place and gain a sense of its textural existence as it is exhibited in 16mm screenings, multi-channel video or sound installations and performance.