Richárd Kiss - Camera Sonus

My work Camera Sonus is an attempt to implement an alternative image-making process. I designed and built a device that, unlike traditional photography, uses sound waves to create a two-dimensional representation of reality.

To produce the image, the device uses a sonar sensor located at the intersection of its two axes of motion. The device is able to move this sensor in two dimensions, which collects depth data on each spatial element of reality as it moves. The distance data, determined from the reflection of ultrasonic sound waves, is then stored in the form of a data cloud. Later, this data can be transposed into two-dimensional images, where the depth data are represented as tonal values. The low resolution images produced during the three-hour acquisition process are thus spatial impressions of the real situation, which take the form of anti-photographs, since they do not carry any of the attributes of traditional photographs. By breaking away from the dominance of photon-driven mapping, Camera Sonus breaks with centuries of light-based image-making and offers an alternative that fundamentally challenges our current visual culture.

In the installation of the work, I have focused on this very contradiction, where we find the device in a situation in which both the light, which is essential for photography, and the sound wave used by the device appear. But here the light is only needed indirectly, to power the image-making device. In the installation, the electricity needed to produce the image is generated by the light of the light bulb that is the subject of the image, using a solar panel. Thus, the process results in a sound image created by the power of light.

The project was made within the framework of the Master’s Degree in Photography at the Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

2024