Coastal Camera Obscura

or one week at the height of the summer, Other Sights welcomes kayakers, canoeists and paddleboaters to paddle into the Coastal Camera Obscura, a floating artwork that is both sculpture and optical device. Overseers will assist with entering and exiting the structure, while on shore, guides will assist those without access to boats to climb into 1 and 2-person kayaks and accompany them to the artwork.

Anchored in the waters of False Creek with views to the last remaining undeveloped waterfront of Northeast False Creek, the camera obscura offers participants a multi-sensory experience, connecting with real time in the act of seeing a highly detailed reflection of the water and landscape that is both familiar and remarkable at the same time. Light entering a simple lens fitted within the dark, tent-like structure, projects a real-time image of the surrounding environment, where, upside down and backwards, it falls onto a screen. With distant viaducts turned on end, and the water rising, the elusive image conjures the conditions of the foreshore as a place of constant flux and asks what is, as yet, unseen?

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