Installation Room - Carousel Slide Projector

Over the Summer I found a £1 slide viewer in a charity shop, which introduced me for the first time to slides and this way of viewing photos. There is something really appealing about an analogue way of doing things that is almost entirely unfamiliar to my experiences of images, as everything is now viewed on a screen. Slides and film make the image an object, which is where my main interests lie. I think I am able to feel attached to objects in a way that I don't feel I can with images because they are not tangible, not material. 

Viewing a slide through the slide viewer, lit up by its tiny, temperamental bulb is an engaging experience - you have to move your head to look closer and bring the image into focus. Having only one image in view at a time also directs attention, makes the image special. I'd love to get hold of more of these and use them as a presentation technique. I am imagining a dark room full of shelves of these boxy, endearing, illuminated images - each drawing you into a separate little world. 

Once I had the macro images of the contact lenses I was looking for a means to display them and quickly thought of the carousel slide projector. In order to get my digital images into slide format I had to compromise and print them onto acetate (digital to film costs over £2 per slide I have discovered). The detail of the images was inevitably dramatically reduced but they work as initial experiments.

I really loved the effect of the projector. I was most taken by the darkness in between the slides, when the room is black and light-less for a brief moment. I think this is so fitting with my ideas of fragile vision and blindness creeping in. It is also like the blink of an eye, and the scene has changed when the lid is lifted and the light returns. Along with the darkness, there is the sound of the mechanism clacking and the carousel rotating; the sounds seems louder without light and without vision. 

I feel with this project, veering as it is towards vintage/retro/analogue ways of seeing and capturing and displaying images, that I may be in danger of 'alienating' people (I can't think of a word that would be right)..... As these devices and processes are new and mysterious to me, they are captivating. I am aware however that to people older than me they may be familiar technology, once a part of everyday life, unremarkable and uninteresting. Similarly with the analogue methods of photography, I will have to be wary - to me it is all new and exciting, but I need to be careful not to focus too much on the process because it is already very established. Although I am discovering these things, they are not my discovery - I need to remember to make my own investigation using these things, but not fixating on them. Having said this, my thoughts and approach are likely to be different anyway - perhaps I can bring a new perspective on these things.