Film-strip, Did you spot the Gorilla?

Film-strip, Did you spot the Gorilla? is a series of ten film-strips taken of the popular neuroscience video by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons which tests our ability to notice an unexpected event (the appearance of a gorilla) while focusing on an observational task. The project explores attention and perception and stillness and movement.

Hamann's process of ‘tracing’ in film-strips involves using a photographic camera like a movie camera. They exposed a whole roll of 35mm film in a continuous rewinding movement while they were moving (walking or turning). In this particular experiment they rewound the film in front of a screen. Although the images are static, they contain the indexical traces of movement – of the film, of the camera and the person holding it and everything moving within the optical field.

Viewers can re-enact the time sequences by moving along the images in installations of large-scale photographs or in the panning movement across the filmstrips in video.

Film-strip, Did you spot the Gorilla
photographic film-strips, size variable, proportion 1 x 50, 2018

Three original analogue slide films were exhibited on a lightbox with magnifying glass in the exhibition Did you spot the Gorilla, Barn Galleries, St John, Oxford.

• http://www.sigune.co.uk/film-strips/did-...