The room is painted black. The only light comes from three narrow spotlights, one near the door and two others on the opposite side of the room. Under the first spotlight spins a potato on a fishing line. The others beam down upon the world’s first aquascope, built by professor Meggan Gould’s material photograph class.
“Aquascope” is a collaborative art show created by the 11-student class which runs from Oct. 16-18 in the UNM Art Building.
The show was built from the ground up by the students, from concept to photographs to installation, Gould said. This show differs from others in that the students did not just put up their own work like a regular group show, but instead, the group had to work together to create each art piece.
“It’s a hard thing to ask of artists, I think,” Gould said. “The first week or two was a lot of angst and hair pulling over what they were going to do.”
The answer came after the class took a trip to the UNM Art Museum, where classmate Christian Waguespack interns. Waguespack said he showed the class a diascope, a 19th century invention used to view early forms of photography, and everyone immediately became fascinated with the object.
“None of us had ever seen one of these things before,” he said.
Over the next few class sessions, the group decided to create their own spin on a diascope that would use water instead of mirrors: the aquascope.
The class decided the subject of the photographs used in the show would be the potato, Waguespack said. This was because the predecessor of the photograph, the autochrome, used potato starch to create colors in the piece.
Senior Cassie Brown said she thought the idea of building an aquascope and using potatoes as the subject was great.
“I think it’s awesome and hilarious at the same time. I really like it.”
Brown is the artist who put the potato on the fishing line. The potato features a picture of Auguste and Louis Lumière, the brothers who invented the autochrome as well as the first motion picture, she said.
Brown has spent the last year experimenting with transferring images onto unconventional materials, like tortillas and potatoes, she said. She hopes to continue creating art on uncommon objects.
“Experimenting on different types of bread would be cool,” she said.
UNM graduate George Richardson said he put a lot of effort into building the installations, particularly the lighting and the aquascope. The aquascope, he said, was surprisingly simple to build.
“I just built a light box and in a way, this is just like a big light box,” he said.
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Richardson, who is taking the course as a non-degree class, said working collaboratively was different from how he was used to working, but that it was fun.
“The cool thing is, everyone has contributed and helped out in some unique way,” he said.
A new diascope for 2013
In 1903, brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière patented their invention known as the autochrome. An autochrome was an early type of color photography process that used potato starch dyes in red-orange, green and blue-violet on a glass plate, said Christian Waguespack, senior art history major.
The autochrome plate would be loaded into a camera and when light passed through it, a color photo plate would be made.
“Because it was so dense, you couldn’t see the picture just be looking at it,” he said.
To view the pictures captured on an autochrome, the diascope was invented.
The diascope was a handheld device that had a slot on the top for an autochrome plate with a mirror positioned underneath, Waguespack said. A person could hold a diascope near a light source and see the image from the autochrome on the mirror.
Autochromes were discontinued in the 1930s, when the Lumière brothers released their film-based version, known as the Lumière Filmcolor Sheet. As a result, there are very few autochromes left in the world, he said.
When professor Meggan Gould’s material photography class took a trip to the UNM Art Museum, everyone was awed by the diascope.
“Everybody was really interested in the diascope. Nobody had ever seen it before; nobody really knew was it was,” Waguespack said. “We just thought it was really interesting.”
As a result, the class invented a modern version of the diascope, called the aquascope. The aquascope, which is much larger than its predecessor, uses a fluorescent light encased within a large square tube.
At the bottom of the tube stands a hinged wooden box. The lid of the box sits at an angle with an image inside of it. The box itself is filled with water. Viewers look not at the image, but at the water where the image is reflected, Gould said.
“That one little diascope just sparked ideas and it became this,” she said.
“Aquascope: A Group Show”
Wednesday through Friday
UNM Arts Building, Room 112B in the photography hall
Reception today from 5-7 p.m.
