Sustainable Cinema No. 2: Lenticular Bicycle

source: aecat

“Sustainable Cinema” is a series of kinetic sculptures that combine natural energy sources with optical illusions to produce moving pictures. Scott Hessels’ aim in creating these works is to call attention to environmentally friendly media and sustainable solutions for providing energy to new technologies.

“Lenticular Bicycle” is the first manpower-driven sculpture in this series. To accomplish this, Hessels adapted a bicycle like the ones widely used in Southeast Asia to transport cargo—and thus an allusion to the ingenuity and creativity of the family businesses there that work with bikes just like this one. The bike sets in motion a cylindrical apparatus on which images are painted. Once the cyclist starts to pedal—or the motor installed in this exhibition is switched on—the cylinder rotates and the individual images become a movie.
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source: scmcityueduhk

Scott Hessels is a media artist and independent filmmaker who has released art and commercial projects in several different media including film, video, web, music, broadcast, print, and performance. His films and videos have shown in hundreds of international film and new media festivals, on television, and in contemporary art galleries over the past 20 years. As a media artist, his installations have shown in exhibitions around the world including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, CiberArt, SIGGRAPH, ISEA, ICA, ACM, and Japan’s Media Art Festival as well as been included in several books on new media art and in magazines like Wired and Discover.
He has been experimenting with the cinematic form and his recent artworks have mixed film with sensors, robotics, and alternative forms of interactivity. His current series are types of experimental cinema generating systems–players. These pieces include movies generated through topology (“Mulholland Drive”), environmental data (“Brakelights”), data sets (“Celestial Mechanics”), and viewer location and movement (“GPSFilm”). He is currently designing cinema players that are powered with sustainable energy sources (“The Image Mill”).
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source: facebook
Scott Hessels is filmmaker, sculptor and media artist who explores new relationships between the moving image and the environment. His artworks span several different media including film, video, web, music, broadcast, print, kinetic sculpture, and performance. His films have shown in hundreds of international film festivals and his new media installations have been presented in exhibitions around the world as well as been included in several books on new media art and in popular magazines like Wired and Discover. His recent projects have mixed film with sensors, robotics, GPS systems, and alternative forms of interactivity and have included partnerships with NASA, The Federal Aviation Administration, Nokia among others. He is currently an associate professor at The School of Creative Media in City University of Hong Kong.
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source: dshessels
Using pedal power as the energy to generate the light and advance the film, this sculpture references the modified bicycles that are found throughout Southeast Asia, roughly converted into mobile businesses. A fictional hack, this artwork keeps the aesthetic of this regional folk art but imagines a traveling cinema show, an audience watching a mobile film in an alley. The custom design uses everyday materials and debris and reinvents them to become a portable movie theatre.