Wheelie bin camera obscura

A nebula is a place where stars can be created. During the festival, Arts Access Victoria will open their purpose built, fully-accessible mobile studio, Nebula, at Birrarung Marr, for this unusual take on the camera obscura.   Camera obscura, the ancestor of the photographic camera, was a device that enabled the projection of an image through a tiny hole or lens into a darkened chamber, where it would appear inverted on the opposite wall.   The camera obscura’s first recorded uses are from around the 4^thcentury BC, where they were used as a way of safely viewing eclipses without gazing directly at the sun. By the 16^th century, the camera obscura was used as an aid to drawing, whereby perspective and foreshortening of forms could be calculated and recorded.   In this workshop, the workings and science of the camera obscura will be explored in a fun take by Arts Access Victoria, using wheelie bins as cameras. The bins have a lens that projects an image onto a flat surface at the top of the bin, and when viewed under a hood, the image can be traced, resulting in very accurate representations of the projected image.