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Seascape

Seascape is a body of work combining digital technologies with the classical traditions of English landscape painting to present a visual exploration into the natural cycles of tide, time and light across the South East coast of England. A series of gradually unfolding digital seascapes were created using imagery captured in real time by five network cameras installed between Margate and Portsmouth over the course of a year. Each image was constructed a pixel at a time, from top to bottom and left to right in horizontal bands continuously over a six and a half hour period; approximately the time it takes for the tide to come in or out. Seascape revealed the endless fluctuations in light, movement, time and tide as well as the shifting weather conditions of the English coastline. Seascape manifested as book, website and an exhibition at the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea. The exhibition featured five live Seascape projections positioned within the gallery windows facing out to sea plus a series of large format digital prints from the Seascape archive. The website presented the vast archive of imagery amassed over the year, while live seascapes from each location could be viewed online during the project. Seascape was commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and the De La Warr Pavilion, supported by ACE and an AHRC Practice Led and Applied Grant “Materialising Time: Developing New Methods Of Visually Representing Time As Embedded In The Seascape” (£15,450). Seascape was previewed in The Guardian 04/04/09, reviewed in The Times 07/04/09 and included in a major survey publication, Printmaking: A Contemporary Perspective, Paul Coldwell, Black Dog Publishing, 2010. Seascape prints have been exhibited internationally including a further solo show in Hamburg 2012. Five Seascape prints were acquired by the Government Art Collection and hung in 10 Downing Street.

Seascape was the result of two years of intensive research. Over 500,000 unique images were archived by the five Seascape cameras, forming the basis of the website, book and print series. Numerous subsequent exhibitions have included a new live Seascape camera as part of Songs of the Sea, National Glass Centre, Sunderland, 2011; a solo show of prints at Osterwalders Art Office, Hamburg 2012, while my essay “Unfolding Time: Landscapes, Seascapes and the Aesthetics of Transmission” (Spatialities: The Geographies of Art and Architecture, eds. Judith Rugg, Craig Martin, Intellect 2012) explores issues of time and transmission emerging from the work.