Self-portrait by a wave

Video stills

I wanted to give the landscape some agency in its own representation. The wave carries a video camera on its surface. The final output is a combination of the camera recording and a distortion generated by the motion of the wave in which it was recorded.

The recorder in the ocean

A recording device comprised of a video camera and an accelerometer measures both the appearance and the motion of a wave. After recording, the accelerometer data is used to distort the video data according to the forces within the wave at that point in time.

The recording device was taken into the ocean several times and carried back to shore by the swells. Pete Hawkes generously carried the device into the ocean for the initial trials.

Rendered video from a wave