Light Leak takes its name from a photographic accident: light slipping into a camera through a gap and burning red and orange into the film. Here the accident is the only way an image can be made. The screen is a roll of twelve frames in a darkroom under a red safelight, and any light that reaches it is recorded.
A touch, the cursor or a hand held up to the camera lets light in. It burns red first, then orange, yellow and finally white, and it keeps creeping and curling through the emulsion after its source has gone, a feedback system written in p5.js and GLSL. An open hand held still in front of the camera becomes a photogram, its shadow printed into the frame in the manner of Man Ray and Moholy-Nagy; a pointing finger draws with light. The camera image is read on the visitor’s own device only to find the hand, and is never shown, stored or sent.
Left alone, each frame develops, the camera stamps it with the date, and the film winds on. A frame can be pulled back into the gate and exposed a second time, so that one accident falls on top of another. When the roll is full it is printed as a contact sheet the visitor can keep. Or the back of the camera can be opened, and every frame on the roll is lost to the light at once.
How to take part
- Touch or press on the film to let light in. Hold to burn deeper; touch near the edges and the light leaks in from the side.
- Leave it for a moment and the frame develops, is dated and winds on. The arrow below the film closes the shutter straight away.
- Drag an earlier frame back into the middle, or tap its mark in the roll below, to expose it a second time.
- Tap the hand icon to use your camera. Hold up an open hand and keep still to print its shadow, point one finger to draw with light, and pinch to wind on. On a phone, lay it flat and hover your hand above it.
- Tap the grid icon to see and save the contact sheet. Hold the camera icon to open the back of the camera and lose the whole roll.