Stephen Cornford

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 To Photograph A Rock   
 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 


 

 

 

  

 

 

2023
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Spectral Index
Petrified Media

2022
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Dark Current Collages
Horizon of Fulfilment

2021
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To Photograph A Rock
Pixel Mining

2019
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RGB [Retinally Governed Behaviours]

2018
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Saturation Trails - Acid
 - Laser
- X-Ray
Destruction of an Image Sensor

2016
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Constant Linear Velocity
Augenmusik
Methodology for a Synaesthetic Screen

2015
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Migration
Digital Audio Film

2013
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Solipsism Cinema
Archipelago

2012
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Recorded (on) Delivery
Five Introverted Machines

2011
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Binatone Galaxy

2010
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In Search of a Concrete Music

2009
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Works for Turntable

2008
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Three Piece
Air Guitar
Extended Piano

2007
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Trespassing The Olympic Site
For Violin, Viola & Tape



 

 

  

This video, made during an Earth Art Fellowship at Bristol University, is constructed around a short text of theoretical reflections on the volcanological experiments that I observed during the Fellowship. Taking the imaging and visual analysis technologies used by the scientists as its basis, the video draws comparisons between the earth processes simulated in the labs and the technical processes involved in the manufacture of a digital camera: comparing the furnaces used to study magma with those used to bake semiconductors.

The work considers the continuous presence of silica and silicon throughout the scientists’ experiments, both as earth media - the silicates pyroxene and plagioclase in magma - and as technical media - the camera sensors and computer chips used to image these samples and analyse the results. Silicon is then both the subject of the experiment and the instrument used to study it, the substance through which both magma and data flow. Minerals processed into machines photograph molten minerals and compute their behaviour in changing states of temperature and pressure, writing out abstractions of their own minerality.