The Chronophotographic Hack

In ‘Fragmented Cities’ we are using the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s panorama function to execute a chronophotographic hack.

By deliberately misusing the device’s internal software stitching logic we force it to capture a continuous stream of whatever passes in front of the iPhone’s lens, a seamless sequence of images/stretched temporal frames (screen recorded) that contains everything it saw as a technological witness: a horizontal record of time.

By fixing the device in a static position on an in-motion tram —angled slightly in the direction of travel—we subvert and bypass the device’s 180-degree (panorama) panning mode. Instead of the user moving the camera, in our working methodology we allow the movement and speed of the tram to dictate the scan, where the world moves, not the lens.

This approach also records and exploits the point of technical failure, where the iPhone’s buffer is overloaded, marking the limit of its digital memory and the end/(manual)beginning of a new frame.

The resulting stretched or fragmented images exist simultaneously as abstracted ‘truths’, accurate documentations of both the physical space/distance encountered and the specific duration of the journey: compressed into a multi-layered visual deluge, a recollage of information.