The seascapes by media artist Michael Aschauer develop from black back to black, through all the colours of the daytime sky; it cannot be the breadth of the landscape that passes before his lens, nor the space: it must be time. The seven panoramic photographs were taken on the Greek island of Syros on seven days of one week in November 2007. From the mythical mountain Oros Harasson, which translated means the mountain that inscribes the direction of light, the specially designed line-scan camera was meticulously aligned on the point at which, during the winter solstice, the sun dips into the sea. Thus the “decisive moment” becomes an eternity; the fraction of a second becomes seven days, the contents of which are entirely and continually recorded by the static camera. For this project Michael Aschauer chose the form of an art book whose design enabled the representation of the panoramas’ continuity.

Michael Aschauer, *1977 in Steyr, Austria. Lives and works in Vienna.