Micro Projections

History's Garden 2006

History’s Garden is a life size metronome. Faces of Central European and Middle Eastern refugees from the 1930’s to the present peer out as the pendulum swings back and forth. The figures move through the counterweight’s frame measuring the march of a despairing history. The counterweight is a small prism that functions as a video screen (.5 inches square). The lens and video projection system are mounted underneath the metronome on a motorized arm that swings from side to side.

History's Garden

In Memory of Truth 2003

In the tour-de-force department, the duo Ligorano/Reese projects vintage Hollywood propaganda movies onto the head of a pin.

– Holland Cotter, New York Times, September 22, 2008

In the lead up to Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, we turned to Thomas Aquinas’ parable on the passage of angels. It becomes an epic polemic about witnessing Truth. Working with an optical engineer, we designed and built an optical system of a micro-LCD display and primary lens projecting a montage of Hollywood war films on the head of a pin. Tinier than 4 mm the film images could only be seen with a magnifying glass. We treated the fictional images giving them the verisimilitude of documentary films.