Chris Drury: Cloud Chambers

Photo Nicholas Sinclair 2000

Chris Drury is a British environmental artist born in Sri Lanka. His art is along the same lines as Andy Goldsworthy: large outdoor installations about human interaction with the environment, but Drury does these really interesting structures called Cloud Chambers.

Drury's website has a whole page dedicated to his different Cloud Chambers. He's built them all over the world: seven in the UK, two in the United States, two in Ireland, Belgium, Italy, and even Japan. Here is a paragraph from Drury's website explaining how they work:

"These circular chambers made outside, work on the principle of a camera obscura. The interiors are dark, the entrance being from a door or curved passageway, the floor or viewing surface is white, and there is a small aperture or lens in the ceiling or wall. Images of clouds, branches, waves, landscape, are thus projected inside." 

So basically if you've ever made a pinhole camera in an intro photography class, its the same kind of idea. Only there's no film and the box is big enough to sit inside.  Oh, and its made out of super heavy rocks.

This is the Sky Mountain Chamber. It was built for Arte Sella,  in the Sella Valley, Borgo Valsugana, Italy. It's made of 150 tons of limestone, which is roughly 300,000 pounds. That's a lot of stone.

The structure is also mimicking the Dolomite Mountain range that can be seen from this valley. It's also some of the Dolomite mountains that are reflected on the floor of the structure through the aperture.

Sky Mountain Chamber aperture image

How cool is that? through a small hole in the structure, using no electronics, there is this image reflected inside of the chamber. Granted, it's upside-down, but still. And the really cool thing is that the image changes constantly; it will be different every time you go in and for every person who goes inside. The image is just a reflection. As a result, the image will change throughout the day.

Star Chamber

Along with some of the photography students at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, Drury built the Star Chamber at Dyer Observatory. This structure not only utilized the camera obscura technology but also "functions as a huge sundial which marks the passing of the seasons by projecting a noon-day image of the sun on an analemma."

"Year-to-year if one marks the noonday sun, it will precisely follow the analemma's figure eight pattern falling on the interior of the chamber. The body of the chamber is surrounded by a spiral, a galaxy-like formation of placed limestone and is located amongst the trees on a secluded southern point of the Observatory grounds. Inset within these spiral arms are large alignment stones marking the sunrises of the solstices and equinoxes. At night, the top of the chamber may be opened in order to observe the seasonal passing of prominent stars and objects at the zenith." -- Vanderbilt Dyer Observatory.

Here's a video from youTube documenting the construction:

As you can see, there is a lot of work that goes into making one of these chambers. I mean, there's heavy machinery involved. That's pretty intense in my book.  Also there are a lot of art students. From what I understand, the school was also doing a construction project and so all of the stone used to make the chamber was excavated from the Vanderbilt campus. So, way to recycle!

Some pictures of the reflected image:

But Drury doesn't just use stone for his cloud chambers. There is one at Wildfowl and Wetland Centre in Arundel, Sussex, UK that is made of reeds appropriately titled the Reed Chamber.

This structure was actually made on a floating boardwalk among the reeds, made of willow battens and curved chestnut poles. It's thatched with the same reeds that it sits amongst. The aperture projects an image of the reeds waving in the wind.

This chamber is also one of the only chambers of his that is not conical or round in shape. It also doesn't reflect the sky like his other cloud chambers. So, this is much more a reed chamber than a cloud chamber, not only is it made of reeds but also reflects the reeds.

Carbon Sink

I actually like, at least aesthetically speaking, some of Drury's other works more, like his piece Carbon Sink, but this camera obscura idea was really intriguing.

Drury's art is kind of twofold: not only does he make these amazing structures, but he makes them into art makers as well. The structures make the images that he wants to produce. He's like a photographer that not only takes pictures, but makes the camera he uses to take those pictures.

Its something that is inspiring to me. I work a lot with different patterned paper and I've been contemplating making my own paper, a pretty labor intensive process, but not nearly as extensive as making your own 300,000 pound camera.