Title – The Antecamera project
2007, Installed at the former Gwangju city provincial office, Gwangju, South Korea, this project was made with the help of the Ui Jae Art Studio.

Schema of installation

The project, Antcamera, is a conversation between reality and illusion. Through the transformation of a room into a camera by casting the space into complete obscurity and placing an object before a hole in the wall of the space, a modified image of the exterior landscape is presented to spectators in the interior of the camera. I effectively transform reality into illusion by transporting the image into a new space.
The pinhole camera (or camera obscura) is the most fundamental of cameras. To make a perfectly functioning camera, simply pierce a small hole in a wall of the camera, and an image will be projected onto the opposite wall. This phenomenon works for all manner of enclosed spaces; size does not matter as long as the room is light-tight. If the space is large enough, people can view the images captured by the camera from its actual interior.

The title of the work, Antecamera, is the Latin source of the English derivation, “antechamber” or “anteroom”. In Latin, ante, literally means “before” and camera, “room.” Antecamera is a fitting title for the piece because the room where I chose to install the camera obscura was originally used as a waiting room. Additionally, though camera means “room” in latin, camera today signifies a device used to take a photographic image. My Antecamera is both modern camera and waiting room.
Above is a diagram of the installation of a camera obscura located at the former provincial office in Gwangju city, South Korea. The images to the left are projections of the site of the 1980 democratic uprising and massacre of civilians by the military. The images to the right are projections of the present Police Headquarters of the Province. At the front of the building, hung from a tree, I installed a life size puppet of a man before the camera (see 1). The image of 1 passes through the pinhole to the left (see 2) and the now inverted image is projected onto 2 screens (see 3). At the rear of the building, I installed the head of a man atop the Police Headquarters (see 4). The image of 4 passes through the pinhole to the right (see 5) and the inverted image is projected onto 3 screens (see 6).

A note about the upside-down images: as is true for all cameras, the image is inverted because the light waves travel in a straight line through the pinhole. So, light waves from the ground are projected onto the ceiling and vice-versa. The puppet of a man, installed upside-down, becomes right-side-up inside the camera obscura.

A dark room. A small hole. Through the hole, light and darkness meet face to face. Through the hole, light twists and fills the darkness of the room with images. In the inverted images, a building falls towards the sky. A man in the window waves, his mouth opening wide. All this appears in the waiting room.