A recent exhibition at the Barbican, London, featured footage taken by a long-range infrared thermographic camera capable of detecting body heat some 30km (19 miles) away.
The filmmaker and artist Richard Mosse took video and images of refugees arriving in Europe using the military-grade technology for an art installation called Incoming.
The camera blurs the faces of the subjects and makes it impossible to tell what they look like or what their origin is, both dehumanising them and simultaneously showing there is no difference between people.
“This camera technology is a very special, unique way of imaging the world,” says Mosse. “It’s not a particularly hi-res camera, only one megapixel, and it’s monochrome. It’s a heat signature of relative temperature difference. It’s showing us the contours of relative heat difference within a given scene, so it’s about contrast.”
To display the works at the Barbican, Christie M Series 3DLP projectors were used for their ability to show the luminous quality and tiny details of the footage on a large-scale projection.
Three HD10K-M 11,000 lumen projectors took the tiniest details – as small as human hairs, which were filmed from hundreds of metres away – and displayed them on 8x5-metre screens around the Barbican’s curved walls.
“The high-end projection technology married to this very unusual military surveillance technology created an experience that felt entirely new, shockingly unfamiliar, and beautifully articulated,” said Mosse.
“The Christie projectors provide enormous scale and staggering level of detail, very crisp and sharp, and an extraordinary intensity of luminosity. Christie was also able to adjust focus on a curving arc. The articulation of the original image is far beyond our wildest expectations.” Cinematographer Trevor Tweeten and composer Ben Frost worked with Mosse on the project.
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