Since 1999 Alberta artist M.N. Hutchinson has been creating panoramic photographs using a home-built camera, which rotates on a tripod through 360 degrees. Exploring the sciences of both mechanics and optics, his works challenge our perception of reality and the traditional role that photography has had in reproducing and recording it. In this installation, the large circular anamorphic image began as a panoramic film, which was distorted with the use of a mirrored ball or tube. The resulting image portrays an engineered solution to the experience of landscape in much the same way that Randall Stout’s architecture incorporates the motion of the Aurora Borealis into the design of the AGA building.
Initiated in the fall of 2011, the Manning Hall commission series provides a unique opportunity for the AGA to support the creation and exhibition of new, site-specific works by Alberta artists.