Tuesday, January 7, 2020

Billy Ocallaghan, inverted rainbow: hue variations, inkjet print, improper printing, 2017, open edition

A rather unique and visually delightful accordion that the artist calls a "cascading accordion". Ocallaghan explains below the process involved in creating this work:

in an effort to make a more affordable/accessible cascading accordion (to share the idea with more people and hopefully help propagate this form), i am making a new hue variation cascading accordion. i started with a photo i took of a rainbow (cropped full frame at a point where the rainbow is mostly horizontal), inverted this rainbow, stitched together a series of 30 hue variations of that inverted rainbow (every 12 degrees of the 360 degree hue circle), creating a 3 inch high by 120 inch wide print, which i folded into a 60 page accordion book that animates, when played as a cascading accordion, showing the inverted rainbow bleed into a rainbow and back.

The key element to this work is that it's meant to be animated by the viewer so that one experiences the cascading of colors as it moves between your hands. This is the first time that I have come across an accordion in which this hand-held element is foregrounded in such a fascinating manner.  For more about Ocallaghan's work with this format, and short videos illustrating how to animate this book, see his website at: http://www.billyverse.com/x/accordions.html

Each page of this single-sided 60 page book is 3" (h) x 2" (w) and when extended it's 10' long.







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