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Susan Collins works across a range of media including sound, internet, video and interactive installation, exhibiting widely nationally and internationally often in public and site-specific locations.

glenlandia

Glenlandia

Susan Collins

Live and online from 10 September 2005 until 10 September 2006.

Launch Glenlandia

  • Media related
  • Digital media
  • Webcam transmission
  • Methodology
  • Live recording
  • Webcam transmission
  • Previously exhibited or screened
  • Threshold, Perth Concert Hall, Scotland, 10 September 2005 until 10 September 2006;
  • FRAMED, Slade Research Centre, London, March 23-25 2006;
  • Timeless, York Quay Art Centre, Toronto, Images Festival, 16 March – 30 April 2006
  • Provenance
  • Glenlandia was commissioned for the launch of the Threshold artspace at Perth Concert Hall, Scotland by Horsecross in collaboration with Film and Video Umbrella, UK.
  • Presented with the permission of the artist.

Artist Statement

For 12 months from September 2005, a webcamera has been placed overlooking Loch Faskally, in Pitlochry, Scotland.

The webcam has been programmed to record images a pixel a second, so that a whole image is made up of individual pixels collected over 21.33 hours.
Each image is collected from top to bottom and left to right in horizontal bands continuously. The work is made to be slow, a reflection on the ever increasing speeds we demand from the internet. It encodes the landscape over time, recording fluctuations in light and movement throughout the day (and night).

This is a sister piece to Fenlandia a previous work which transmitted similar images over a 12 month period (April 2005-April 2005) from the roof of a 17th century coaching inn in rural Cambridgeshire. Fenlandia explored the relationship between landscape and technological innovation in East Anglia’s ‘Silicon Fen’, where technology is literally embedded in the flat horizons of a reclaimed landscape of canals, sluices, dykes and ditches.
Similarly in Glenlandia what appears to be a quintessentially ‘natural’ Scottish loch-side view – Loch Faskally – is actually man made. It was created behind the hydro dam at Pitlochry, and the water levels in the Loch rise and fall according to demand in power.

Regularly updated stills of Glenlandia can be viewed in the site’s archive, whilst a downloadable (flash) application lets the work function as a distributable artwork which can be viewed full screen and updated live to your computer in real time until September 10th 2006.