Photon Film/
Pale Blue Dot Collective

Commissioner Blue Dot Festival
Year 2017

John Hooper and I were commissioned to create a film for display at Blue Dot Festival within a curated set of films by Lumen.

Near the surface, a photon makes contact with the lens of an eye, where it is focused on a small spot on the retina. There, it is finally absorbed by a protein inside a cone cell, which sends an electrical signal to the brain and marks the end of the million year journey of a photon from the centre of the sun. The artists have produced a film of the result of physical light experiments, looking at light and interrupting the passage of photons, manipulating their pathways and combining a sound-scape to fully immerse the view in their world. This film offers a new perspective of space, our sun and one of the fundamental elements of life; light.

Lumen Studios presented a series of artist films in the planetarium at Blue Dot Festival. The films explored a broad range of themes including: space exploration, ocular perception, our comprehension of time and visual metaphors on micro and macro scales. The artists included: Hondartza Fraga, Claire Lymer and Rachel Dease, Lucent Matter: Kim Yip-Tong, Rose Leahy and Sylvana Lautier, Anna Dakin, Louise Beer and John Hooper, Rebecca Huxley and Tom Cowell, Sam Battle and Melanie King. Pictured Artwork: Claire Lymer.