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From May 2004, webcams were installed in various sites - rural and technological - in Silicon Fen (East Anglia), Silicon Valley (M4 Corridor) and Silicon Glen (Scotland) for a year each.

The webcams were programmed to record images a pixel a second, so that a whole image was built up of individual pixels collected over 21.33 hours. Each image was collected from top to bottom and left to right in horizontal bands continuously. The work explores the relationship between landscape, time and technology.. It encodes the landscape over time, with different tonal horizontal bands recording fluctuations in light and movement throughout the day and with broad bands of black depicting nighttime. Stray pixels appear in the image where a bird, person, car or other unidentifiable object may have passed in front of the webcam as the pixel was captured.

The first camera was installed at the Anchor Inn, Sutton Gault in the area of Cambridgeshire known as Silicon Fen. It ran for 12 months from May 2004 until 14th May 2005. This was followed in 2005 by cameras at Cambourne Business Park, Cambridgeshire (also Silicon Fen) and at Greenham Common and Bracknell, Berkshire (Silicon Valley).
For Silicon Glen (glenlandia) a camera was installed on the banks of Loch Faskally, Pitlochry, Perthshire from 2005 until 2007.

Images were archived at two hour intervals and can be viewed in the archive section of this website.
A solo show featuring digital prints from the Fenlandia archive and a live camera feed from Ely, Cambridgeshire was at Babylon Gallery, Ely from 23 September until 5th November 2006 [more...]

fenlandia was commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and Norwich School of Art and Design for www.silicon-fen.net
glenlandia, the companion work, was co-commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and Horsecross.

live image from Loch Faskally, Scotland

Fenlandia, Sutton Gault, 1st July 2004
© Susan Collins

This image was transmitted live at the rate of a pixel a second via the internet. It depicts the previous 21 hours and 20 mins (approx.) in horizontal bands.

 

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