Cinema is a specific type of medium that totally captures the attention; to watch a movie means to mentally be in the depicted space.
However, the movie does not physically take place only on the screen, but also in the entire room; as viewers, we are unconsciously immersed in its light that, reflected by the screen, illuminates our space, which continuously changes its color depending on the scene.
Movielight is a photographic work that makes this variation of the environmental light visible. Technically, the recording of this phenomenon is made by photographing a white, therefore neutral, paper sheet, hung on the wall opposite to the screen on which the movie is projected. In this way, the camera records the average colour of each frame, taking a picture of the sheet every second. To produce an image of the phenomenon and show different colours in time, of each shot only a line of pixel is kept. Then, it is automatically juxtaposed with the others from left to right, resulting in a collage that represents, in the horizontal space of the new image, the evolution of the colour of the movie light in time.
Thus a change in the direction of the gaze happens, from the movie to its light, which completely transforms not only the point of view on the movie, but also on photography. By loosing the subject-image and shifting the attention on the subject-light/colour, Movielight recovers the etymological meaning of photography, becoming photography in the strict sense and, therefore, “a writing with light”. The subject of the pictures originates from a medium; so the new photograph is the medium of a medium. Usually, this process is a disruptive practice for the mediated content, but, however, in this case is enough to convey the message of interest, the light.
The pictures of light are printed on a movie screen tarp, the traditional media support in cinema, which in this work changes its function though; from general surface constantly changing in time, it becomes the place of a fixed, but extremely detailed multiplicity that includes the chromatic imprint of the movie in a single moment.