Alhazen’s Problem

A project by David K. Ross

Alhazen’s Problem is a multi-site installation conceived for the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at Maine College of Art as part of a thematic exhibition devoted to ideas of exchange and collaboration. Alhazen’s Problem used a number of optical technologies — the camera obscura, digital video, large format photography, digital printing, and web-based geomatics — to connect two proximal sites in Portland, Maine (USA), with a third remote site in Basra, Iraq.

In Portland, a sophisticated camera obscura located inside the attic of the Children's Museum and Theatre of Maine produced images that were broadcast via a live feed to the street-level gallery space of the ICA located some 500 metres away.

In homage to Alhazen, an 11th century Iraqi scientist recognized for his accurate articulation of optical principals, the camera obscura at the Children’s Museum was pointed at the coordinates of his birthplace in Basra. To determine the exact location of Basra, calculations were based on the Mercator Projection and the Great Circle Route (both systems are used by Muslims worldwide to determine the direction of the Qiblah during prayer).

Surprisingly, when the camera obscura was pointed in the direction of Basra, the image table showed (in the first instance) the block of buildings in which the ICA is located, and (in the second instance) a large oil tank farm located in the Portland harbor. By fixing the sightline of the camera obscura on these two navigational views, the project produced an unexpected triangulation linking the Children’s Museum to the ICA (the site of the exhibition where 11th and 21st century optics intertwine) and to the oil depot (a quite different proxy site of American-Iraqi economic exchange).

Alhazen’s Problem was chosen as a pertinent title for this project since, in mathematical parlance, the “problem” in question is an algebraic proof (first resolved by Alhazen) that determines the relationship between three interconnected points of reflected light. The figure of Alhazen thus inhabits this project as a potent symbol of global interchange between remote sites and peoples who, for millennia, have been inextricably linked through technologies of both navigation and calculation, vision and consumption.