About the work
In the 1930s, Harold Edgerton used stroboscopic photography to capture a milk drop at the instant of impact, too fast for the eye to see. ENDLESS CORONET inverts the experiment. A visitor triggers a strobe on a falling droplet. The timing, and a single setting between observed and imagined, generate a photograph of an event that never took place. Each exposure is numbered and added to a permanent, uncurated archive.
Artist statement
ENDLESS CORONET is a generative artwork by Bryan Boyd that inverts Harold Edgerton's 1930s stroboscopic photography, in which a strobe timed to a falling milk drop captured an instant too fast for the eye to see. In ENDLESS CORONET, a visitor triggers a strobe on a falling droplet rendered on screen. The exact timing of that trigger, together with a single OBSERVED–IMAGINED setting, deterministically parameterizes a server-side process that generates a synthetic photograph of an event that never occurred. Where Edgerton recorded a real instant, ENDLESS CORONET produces one that has no referent. Every exposure is assigned a number and entered into a permanent, uncurated archive, regardless of its outcome.
Live artwork