Get ready to experience a whole new Brooklyn. Artists Ashton Worthington and George del Barrio of The Vanderbilt Republic, a Brooklyn-based creative agency, have created a magnificent new way to view this bustling borough.
Using materials such as prisms, theater lights, iron boards, and reading glasses, the duo has turned a 3,000 sq. foot loft into a walk-in camera obscura: an image-capturing device that has been around since before Aristotle's time, but usually in much smaller proportions.
The camera obscura consists of a box—or in this case, a loft—with a hole in one side, which lets in light to produce an inverted image on an inside surface. "Obscura/Gowanus" contains fifteen giant camera obscuras, which use sunlight to project moving portraits of industrial Gowanus onto walls and other surfaces.
Put simply: inside the loft, you can view brilliant images of familiar Brooklyn sights, like F trains or the traffic on the BQE, upside down and in real time. Attendees must be prepared to spend 45 minutes in heavy darkness.
This 3,000 sq. ft. epistemic machine will evolve through a month of experimentation, capturing an ephemeral Brooklyn panorama and personal moment in time.
Steal a glimpse inside the obscura in the video above, and purchase closing weekend tickets for just $15 before they sell out.
Maggie Jeffers
Contributing Writer
Maggie is a recent graduate of Vassar College, where she majored in English and learned that she has no tolerance for the Poughkeepsie cold. She loves all things related to food, TV, movies, and music, and enjoys playing the violin and surfing the web in her spare time.
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