House specific projection. Photography: Lauritz Eide

Porta-Projector projects
 
Barselgrad, Fykse, Norway, 2008
Alford Academy pupils, Scottish Sculpture Workshop residency, Aberdeenshire, 2006
Emerged project, Edinburgh, 2005
Glasgow, 2005

 
The Porta-Projector can screen video or project slides onto any surface at any site that is accessible by foot. The projector is powered from a caravan battery through an inverter and is designed to be quick to set up and compact enough to move easily from place to place. From 2005-2008, the Porta-Projector presented a curated series of short duration site-specific projections of varying scales while taking audiences on journeys throughout particular locations.

In 2004 for Coming Soon an open call was released for artists to submit ‘one-minute silent films’ to be shown at different locations along Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow’s main shopping precinct. Sauchiehall Street, known historically as the cinema strip of the city is now pedestrianised. After retail hours it becomes a mass of steel shutters offering a new potential terrain. Eleven films by local and international artists were selected and projected at designated sites along the street forming a path through the city which audiences joined along the way. Artists included: Chloe Julian, Paul Harfleet, Ann Shaw, Coral Short, Nisha Duggal, Harald Melrose Turek, Thomas seest, Hedley Sugar-Wells, Todd Legler, Cecile Azoulay, Kirsty Hull

Following mass demonstrations in Edinburgh prior to the G8 summit in 2005, EmergeD projects initiated a collaboration between Will Foster and the the Anti-Monument Coalition, a Melbourne-based collective. The collaboration led to projection interventions at several sites across Edinburgh’s old town including the Bongo club, the Holyrood tunnel, the Bank of Scotland and the New Scottish Parliament building.

As part of the Partners programme (Artists-in-school residency established by The Scottish Sculpture Workshop) the Porta-Projector was used as an outcome from series of workshops with students at Alford Academy in rural Aberdeenshire. Students explored the possibilities of filmmaking and site-specific projections within their school premises. The result of these workshops was a one night projection walk, entitled New Moon, displaying a curated series of the students’ work.

Folk frå Fykse, 2008, was a collaborative project with Sille Storihle which documented every person and family unit currently living in the village of Fykse. As part of BLUSS light festival, the audience followed the Porta-Projector as it travelled through the village stopping house to house, projecting large scale portraits of its inhabitants onto the vernacular architecture.

‘The public projection can become an urban night festival, an architectural “epic theatre”, inviting both reflection and relaxation, where the street public follows the narrative forms with an emotional engagement and a critical detachment…Warning. Projectors must be switched off before the image loses its impact and becomes vulnerable to appropriation by the building as a decoration.’
Krzysztof Wodiczko, Critical Vehicles, MIT Press, 1999, p48

Porta-projector (Design 2). Photography: Will Foster

Audience viewing Directions,2004 by Coral Short. Photography: Will Foster

Audience. Photography: EmergeD

Night route. Photography: EmergeD

Projection on Royal Bank of Scotland. Photography: EmergeD

‘Identity’ projection by Eliot Leonard. Photography: Janet McEwan.

Portrait. Photography: Will Foster

Taking portraits in Fykse. Photography: Will Foster

House specific projection. Photography: Lauritz Eide