Fotomusic explores ways of sonifying photographs and chemigrams through the interaction of sound/music and light/photography. This is an interdisciplinary artwork by Ariel Bader-Shamai and Aaron Hutchinson, supported by the City of Hamilton Enrichment Fund.
Chemigrams are an alternative photochemical process that produces camera-less, nonrepresentational images.
Our original ideas centered: truth within a post-truth context; however, our focus took to environmental and material concerns of sound and light-based image.
Chemigram Studies I
- light-sensitive paper, photo chemicals, honey, sparkling water, butter, tooth paste, canola oil
Chemigram studies II
- light-sensitive paper, photo chemicals
Chemigram interpretations - read as musical scores by Connor Bennett, Evelyn Charlotte Joe, and Vicky Mettler.
Connor Bennett
Evelyn Charlotte Joe
Phytogram Experiment
Our final experiment is with an alternative photo process called Phytogram - which uses washing soda, vitamin C and water (the Phytogram process also uses plant chemistry, however we replaced plants with magnetic tape, which did not have any chemical effect).
Magnetic tape was sourced from cassettes in the Popular Music section at Salvation Army.
We submerged the magnetic tape removed from 3 cassettes into this chemical solution. After one week, we unrolled an unexposed roll of black and white film and laid it out in the sun, covering it with the wet magnetic tape. The materials remained for 3 hours. Film was then developed. The tape was dried, untangled and wound back into individual cassettes.
The results of this experiment are an interesting attempt to merge the materiality of these two media undergoing chemical process.
Survey of Beamer Falls, water and sound collected for chemigram and photogram development.
Photographs by Ariel Bader-Shamai, sound by Aaron Hutchinson.
