>Ian Dawson

> Black Ball Ballads, Digital Video, Duration 55'03"

> Black Ball Ballads, Digital Video, Duration 55'03"

>During the Mootookakio’ssin project, Blackfoot belongings held in UK museums were recorded using a variety of digital imaging processes in order to virtually reconnect them with their people. One of these technologies, Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), creates interactive pictures where lighting conditions can be altered afterwards. RTI creates lighting effects akin to a diffractive process, because of this RTI was also used in workshop environments to help demonstrate and explain how images are never innocent representations of a subject and actively participate in the emergence of meaning. Experimenting with RTI became in intrinsic part of this project and Black Ball Ballads documents these experiments with RTI. One of the constancies of the process is a black shiny ball which always appears in the photographic frame. Through an animation of the various images created during this project  Black Ball Ballads tells a story of the project through the pictures that slowly evolve across the screen.

>Black Ball Ballads was exhibited in OST, OPENing, 11 Angel Court, Moorgate, London EC2R 7HB, 29th - 30th September 2023 and Mootookakio’ssin: Creating in Spacetime,  Hess Gallery University of Lethbridge Canada, Nov 6 – Dec 16, 2023