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Edmund Kuppel «The Valley, the Wave, and When the Sea Replaces the Sky»
Edmund Kuppel, «The Valley, the Wave, and When the Sea Replaces the Sky», 1982
© Edmund Kuppel
2. The Wave Like an aluminum sculpture, a 'wheel of life' 3.30 m in diameter that functions on the principle of Plateau's Phenakistikop stands 2 m behind and parallel to the photo sequence, there where the sea ought to be visible. On the wheel's periphery are mounted 120 phase photos (b+w, 8 x 20 cm) of a breaking wave; but the wave cannot be recognized as long as the wheel turns. Only when the viewer uses a hand crank does the ocean wave appear in the mirror opposite, visible through the slit between the photos. It builds, breaks, and rolls out, and then forms anew. The viewer has the version of an endlessly crashing sea. He determines for himself how long to continue this filmic illusion.


 
Edmund Kuppel «The Valley, the Wave, and When the Sea Replaces the Sky»Edmund Kuppel «The Valley, the Wave, and When the Sea Replaces the Sky»Edmund Kuppel «The Valley, the Wave, and When the Sea Replaces the Sky»Edmund Kuppel «The Valley, the Wave, and When the Sea Replaces the Sky»Edmund Kuppel «The Valley, the Wave, and When the Sea Replaces the Sky»Edmund Kuppel «The Valley, the Wave, and When the Sea Replaces the Sky»Edmund Kuppel «The Valley, the Wave, and When the Sea Replaces the Sky»Edmund Kuppel «The Valley, the Wave, and When the Sea Replaces the Sky» | play videoEdmund Kuppel «The Valley, the Wave, and When the Sea Replaces the Sky» | play video

Categories: Film | Photography | Installation

Keywords: Apparatus | Geography


 

 Edmund Kuppel
«The Valley, the Wave, and When the Sea Replaces the Sky»

This is a 3-part interactive photo and film installation over the 'Gorge d'Ailly', which flows into the sea on the French coast of the English Channel. The photo installation 'The Valley' and the technical projections 'The Wave' and 'If the Sea Replaces the Sky' combine the media of photography and film with a reflection on the apparatus needed for visual realization and also for perception. In the center of the installation, Edmund Kuppel placed the photomontage 'The Valley', which assembles and reconstructs the triangle of a valley and the ocean horizon in the same way that the film camera records it when moving along this line to form an always horizontal axis. Using a hand-operated film projector, the viewer can start the film with this camera move. The center of this photo work remains bracketed away and is the topic of the film installation 'The Wave' that is set up behind 'The Valley'. 'The Wave' is cut together as the negative image of a wave in the form of a loop and a cycle of individual photographs. The viewer sees this filmic motion in a mirror. In a direct, craftsmanlike way, it is thus always the viewer who sets the images in motion. The materiality of the film, the obviousness of the projection mechanism, and the montage are set in a complex, installation context here.