Kerry Laitala

Kerry Laitala is a moving image artist and a self-described media archaeologist. Laitala’s work synthesizes ideas and ephemera from the realms of science, history, and technology. Her multifarious investigations into evolving systems of belief involve installation, photography, para-cinema, performance, kinetic sculpture, and single-channel forms. She studied photography and film at the Massachusetts College of Art and received her Master’s degree in film from the San Francisco Art Institute. She received the Princess Grace Award (1996), and the GOLDIE (Guardian Outstanding Local Discovery Award, 2007) from the San Francisco Bay Guardian, in addition to awards from many film festivals. Her chromadepth 3D videos have screened in dozens of venues worldwide, including 2015 presentations at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Oberhausen Film Festival. Her recent electrophotographic works were made possible by a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission. Laitala’s new kinetic sculpture, The Cosmoscope, was made with the support of a Special Projects Grant from the Princess Grace Foundation. http://kerrylaitala.net/

Project Statement: Re-mounted on its twentieth anniversary, "The Retrospectroscope" presents moving images as sculpture, unshackled from their usual constrictions of linear time. This kinetic sculpture simulates the illusion of cinematic motion, and was described in the SF Bay Guardian as a "UFO/roulette wheel of Athenian proportions." "The Retrospectroscope" represents a simulation of motion analysis in the lineage of proto-cinematic devices of the nineteenth century. I’m inspired by Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey, and other pioneers who were interested in capturing and freezing slivers of time. "The Retrospectroscope" apparatus was first constructed in cinema’s centenary year, 1996, and has been displayed at the San Francisco Art Institute, The Lab, and Artists’ Television Access. Partial funding for the Retrospectroscope was provided by the San Francisco Art Institute as part of their 125th Anniversary Grant.

"The Cosmoscope" is a kinetic sculpture that explores how observing extreme distance complicates our understanding of the relationship between space and time. By animating images of nebulae and other interstellar phenomena from the edges of our visible universe, "The Cosmoscope" investigates relative aspects of time as well as the perceptual illusion of motion using photographs from NASA’s Hubble telescope among other images. The extraordinary truth of astronomy that to look outward into space is to look backward into time. As light travels at a set speed, when we view objects millions of light years away, the light reaching us now has been traveling for millions of years. The stars we see at night are stars from our universe’s past. "The Cosmoscope" explores the ways in which objects viewed from a vast distance are experienced on a totally different time scale.

The basic phenomena of the combined physics of frequency of light, velocity, and the intricate human perceptual processes of persistence of vision and apparent motion, help to fuse still images together to create several cyclical constructions. The series of images constructed are printed onto transparencies affixed to a circular lexan sheet in a concentric fashion, one ring of images informing the next. The device allows the viewer to experience the cyclical aspects of time as well as the perceptual illusion of motion. All of the rings of images can be interpreted from the outer ring to inner ring or in the reverse direction. The surface of the disk becomes the matrix upon which various associations develop between consecutive rings. Images provided by the following: NASA Hubble Heritage team (Aura/STScl), the SOHO Project (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory,) NASA’S Goddard Space Flight Center, Godard Media Studies, and I Chandra, (NASA’s X-Ray Observatory), Marshall Space Flight Center X-ray: NASA/CXC/Wesleyan Univ./R.Kilgard.

My Cosmo-Electro-photographic series resides at the intersection between science and superstition, belief and manifestation. This series draws its inspiration from early cosmological musings about the universe in relationship to humankind. To create these cameraless photographs I electrify metal-coated letterpress plates of cosmographic images that describe ways that people envisioned the universe prior to the 20th century, long before interstellar telescope technology became a reality. I’m making these images as an artist-in-exile, working in an abandoned studio space, condemned to imminent destruction, after having been evicted from my South of Market studio. Large format film is exposed using a generator of electricity by charging objects placed on the surface of the film. The shadowgraphic trace of the objects are imprinted on the film by the coronal discharge, creating a photographic impression. Otherwise known as Kirlean imaging, this unusual type of photography harnesses a high voltage electromagnetic discharge to expose film directly and leave its luminous trace on the surface of the film. This process can be traced to such luminaries as Nikola Tesla in the 1880s who captured images of his "Tesla Coil."

The Retrospectroscope
Plexiglass disc with silver gelatin transparencies on rotating motor
5’ diameter disk x 4' height
Partial funding for the Retrospectroscope was provided by the San Francisco Art Institute as part of their 125th Anniversary Grant
1996

The Cosmoscope
Lexan disc with transparent images on rotating motor
6’ diameter disk x 5’ height
2016

Milky Way for Carl Sagan
Electrophotograph, Archival Inkjet print on Canvas, made from 4" x 5" negative
35" x 40"
2012

Eight Minutes from The Sun, Electrophotograph
Archival Inkjet print on Canvas, made from 4" x 5" negative
35" x 40"
2016

Theatre of Comets, Electrophotograph
Archival Inkjet print on Canvas, made from 4" x 5" negative
35" x 40"
2016

Cosmographic Ancienne, Electrophotograph Archival Inkjet print on Canvas, made from 4" x 5" negative 35"x40" 2016