One of the potential contexts identified in my research proposal to allow audiences to engage with my work is via a virtual gallery. It will be hosted on a website and will require the generation of social media content that can be used to create a following. This will be in parallel to capturing and developing the content for the exhibition. Information from market research companies shows that people spend more time engaging with images compared with text along. The level of engagement increases further with moving images. This gave me a challenge how do I develop material to drive engagement without using unresolved work in progress content on the online gallery. The walks along the coastline are at the heart of this project and are a possible solution to my marketing challenge. Each individual walk will last multiple hours so using timelapse photography will compress each walk into clips that are readily consumed on social media. There are parallels to the film making of Nancy Holt who recorded the artist like Michael Heizer and Robert Smithson during their land project in the 1960s and 1970s.
As usual my pets unwittingly volunteered to be part of my first experiment with a timelapse video walk.
Overall I feel this first experiment indicates promise with the creation of timelapse walks. One downside of using the GoPro is the images contain significant distortion as the lens on the camera is a fish eye and not rectilinear though with the moving images that is likely to be less of an issue. The output is acceptable when mounting the camera on achest mount, as it provides a good point of view and makes the camera less obvious to others. It has the advantage of reduced lateral movement compared to using a head mount. On future walks consideration will have to be given to weather and the need to remove rain from the lens. Though I will also explore the use of the photo timelapse mode which would make it easier to grab individual images from the timelapse for other purposes.
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