The Temporal Forest 

…is an artistic-scientific project that combines the fastest and slowest photographic techniques to create new perspectives on the environment. This creates an impression that goes beyond the everyday human time horizon.

The movement of the light, which has a speed of 299 792 458 meters per second, is shown in a video installation in the gallery. Using a pulsed laser and a time-lapse camera with ultra-short exposure times, this installation shows how light moves through a range of native tree species. The videos thus literally show how the light (photo-) writes a picture (-graphy) of the forests of the Salzkammergut.

In the middle of the Alps, on the top of the Zwölferkogel, a millennium camera photographically documents the next thousand years of changes in the cultural and natural landscape of the region. This handmade camera has a tiny pinhole aperture that focuses the light onto color pigments, slowly creating a unique image. The resulting photo will be a testimony of time, taken with an exposure time of a thousand years.

"The Temporal Forest", a project of the European Capital of Culture Bad Ischl Salzkammergut 2024 by SEEC Photography (Enar de Dios Rodríguez, Philipp Haslinger (project management, TU Wien), Thomas Juffmann (University of Vienna)) and Jonathon Keats with the support of Victoria Helm (University of Vienna) and Dominik Hornof (TU Wien).
 

 

Image: Black background with four circular projections of four different trees arranged next to each other. Below them in large white letters 'The Temporal Forest'

Impressions of the Exhibition

Opening scene of the exhibition. Some visitors (women and men) are looking at a man speaking into a microphone. They listen to his words. Painted pictures in the background.

A dark room with walls covered in black fabric. 4 circular projections of individual trees - two on the left, two on the right. The ceiling of the hall is softly lit.

A dark room whose walls are covered with black fabric. 3 projections of the same movie on the left and one projection on the right. The ceiling of the room is softly lit.