Artist Journal - Lloyd Godman -

While I had done much study of CO2 - the carbon cycle, global warming and the greenhouse effect, I had also become aware of a contradiction - global dimming where suspended black carbon particles in the atmosphere restrict the light falling on the surface of the earth.

Global dimming

In this work I looked to - black out the entire space of the greenhouse with sheets of carbon paper and make a landscape image via thousands of tiny pinholes that project onto vapor which is triggered by the audience as they enter the space. It is like making thousands of tiny pinhole cameras -

The use of carbon was also used a continuation of from "Equivalence" a recent series of works using a combination of pigment prints with charcoal drawings.

Early in 2007 I began constructing the work.

Construction of the work

Monday 13 May 2007

The work looks more interesting the more time I spend there!

I was down at the greenhouse work - Carbon Obscura - today for a press meeting and the sun was fully out - each pin hole projected a tiny image onto the table inside the greenhouse of the trees outside sharp enough to see what was happening. The wind was blowing and you could see the same trees in each pinhole moving - hundreds of focused projections - quite amazing, very Fox Talbot like. The circles of confusion were all static but the image inside each was moving.

As the sun traversed across the sky the combined projections shifted and played across the table in a sympathetic angle. It was similar to the shadow from the "Summer Solstice" work I had engaged in at "Chrystalls Beach" in 1999 where I tracked the shadow of a large rock for the duration of the day. This movement of of a projected image caused by the movement of the san was also evident in "Planet IV", 2006

At night the light could be turned on which required a different viewpoint, but also gave the work an altered aesthetic and meaning. I did a sequence of photographs with the transition from daylight to darkness.