The volcanic mind of Niklas Roy seems to produce an unending flow of surprising ideas. After animating the curtains of his studio, he has now turned his attention towards a bizarre camera. Electronic Instant Camera is a hybrid medium made from a combination of an analog video camera and a b/w thermal printer (of the style used for printing receipts). With every shot this Polaroid-esque setup captures an image and simultaneously prints it on a receipt. The process is very slow - the camera must wait for each scan line of the picture to be transferred to paper before it can capture another line of the image: a long wait awaits anyone posing for a picture. The main peculiarity of such an instant camera is its having no memory (either analog or digital). This means that every thin strip of paper becomes a unique record of the moment captured with the click. On closer inspection, Niklas Roy reintroduces some of the auroral characteristics of photography, which were gradually lost due to the tumultuous movement towards repeatability of images at the expense of uniqueness.
Vito Campanelli