POST #154: THE PASSIONATE PROJECTOR

My friends all know that I’ve had a long and fruitful relationship with the overhead projector. I began using it around 30 years ago to enlarge my sketches onto canvas, much easier than the old-fashioned grid method I never quite mastered. I got the idea from watching fellow instructors at the University of Connecticut type their notes onto sheets of clear acetate and project them onto the blackboard for the class to copy, saving them from having to tediously write everything on the board. I borrowed a projector from the school’s AV Room and never looked back!

Over the years, I’ve found dozens of innovative ways to turn my low-tech, now obsolete projector into high art. Not only can I enlarge my drawings to any size that suits me, I can incorporate real people onto and into my projections, taking photographs to preserve the experience. By overlapping photos or drawings, I can create totally new composite images. I can enlarge them to fill entire gallery walls. I can photocopy them onto sheets of acetate and by overlapping, create entirely new compositions which can then be transferred to canvas or video. I can move images around and make them dance to music, then videotape the results. I can cut small figures or buildings etc out of paper and make them fill a room. While images from the projector are by their very nature ephemeral, vanish the second you turn off the machine, you can make a permanent record with your camera. I‘ve even discovered how to turn my experiments into prints which, when matted and framed, can pass for etchings or drypoints. No press - no ink – no mess.

Here are just a few of the projects created with the projector:

·        The Seven Deadly Sins:  I projected the names of the Sins onto my body and photographed the results. (the names, not the sins)

·        Dance to the Music:  A “performance piece” with projected drawings of tacky ‘real-live’ couples dancing to even tackier music. In the Finale the audience gets up and dances along with the figures on the screen. 

·        The Lower East Side. Many years ago, I took black and white photos of the area with my low-tech Brownie camera. I recently enlarged them to larger than life size with the projector, animated them with the help of my video artist friend, Cici, and found the perfect musical score. I’ve got extra copies of the video we made if you want one. One night, a few years ago, I took over the Franklin Street Works building in Downtown Stamford, mounted overhead projectors near the ceiling and turned the entire gallery into the Lower East Side c. 1960. The crowd attending the opening became part of the street. I think it was the most interesting exhibit they ever had.

So what’s next for the projector and me?

Have you ever heard of Moire patterns? It’s the French word for “watered silk” and a visual phenomenon studied obsessively a couple of hundred years ago (Google was vague) by a Professor Moire (M/wah’/ray – with an accent a/gue’.)  It turns out that my images on acetate, when placed on top of one another, often produce fascinating moiré patterns. I have no idea why or how; the explanations are way over my head.

Meanwhile, I have accumulated a lifetime supply - around fifteen - overhead projectors that I currently store in my attic. They were given to me, free of charge, by schools tired of having them take up space in the A.V. Room. I took them all, just to make sure there is always one in working condition when I need it.