Sascha Pohflepp
Sunday, 29 July 2012
Work from Camera Futura.
“In the abundance of energy that is the new order, we will no longer be bound by the force that is keeping us on the bottom of Earth’s gravity well. We may be be floating around freely, our bodies suspended by extremely powerful electromagnetic fields. Or we could be far away, living in the brilliant sunlight of a space colony after having left our planet in the exuberant spectacle of a rocket launch.
Many elaborate experiments were developed in order to investigate how man would move in microgravity before Armstrong and Aldrin finally walked on the Moon in July 1969. They were not just simulations but In a sense pre-enactments of a new set of rules that we were about to enter, providing a window into the future through which NASA researchers collected not only data but also visual impressions. Camera Futura aims to create a similar pre-enactment, taking inspiration from one such experiment conducted at Stanford University in the mid-1960s by applied mechanics professor Thomas R. Kane.
Like the original setup, the installation consists of a trampoline as a simple anti-gravity device and a camera rig. The energy stored in the trampoline’s springs amplifies the power of our muscles, so that we can briefly launch ourselves and experience an instant of relative weightlessness when falling back to Earth. Camera Futura captures images from that very instant. These photos allow for a glimpse of our brief moment in a post-gravity world. In a sense, they are impressions of ourselves from one of many futures.
Camera software: Konstantin Leonenko, thank you Jennifer Morone & Julijonas Urbonas.” – Sascha Pohflepp