Icelandic roads turned into art
The artist used webcams from www.road.is
The Australian artist Kailum Graves lived in Iceland twice over the last two years while he undertook an artist residency at Nes in Skagaströnd. He discovered www.road.is, the website of the Icelandic Road og Coastal Administration, where he found a vast network of webcams that show the road and driving conditions in Iceland all year around. Graves collected photos every day for a year, starting early 2017 in Skagaströnd and finishing a year later in the same town. He spent another year creating a yearlong time-laps video covering the entirety of Iceland. The work is called Spukhafte Fernwirkung, or spooky action at a distance. The term was used by Einstein to sceptically describe quantum entanglement.
„I wanted to explore a different aspect of Iceland to that of the tens of thousands of photographers and videographers who travel to the same locations each year to portray Iceland as a wild, rugged, and untouched otherworldly landscape. I'm more interested in exploring the disappearance of clear boundaries between culture, technology, and the environment, so Route 1, which runs around the entire island connecting most of the country's inhabitants, as well as the most popular tourist attractions, was for me a more interesting subject,“ says Graves who is a great fan of the outdoors, hiking, climbing and harsh environments. Thus, he searched for a residency in as remote a location as possible.
„NES Artist Residency, situated in an old fish factory, was the ideal research hub for me. In the centre of the small fishing village of Skagaströnd, with cliffs and beaches overlooking Húnaflói bay and the Westfjords and mount Spákonufell towering over from behind, I ended up spending more time outside wandering, embracing the weather, and standing with a few Icelandic horses for company in a field watching the spectacle of the auroras than I did in the studio.“
Road.is was one of the first websites Graves visited when arriving in Iceland. „I first came to Iceland in late February 2017 and I needed to catch two buses from Reykjavik to Skagaströnd, so I monitored the weather and used road.is to ensure the buses were going to make the journey. While looking at the website I loved seeing random photos of sheep, surreal sunsets, tourists stopping on the side of the road to take selfies, snow storms, and Olís trucks, so I started collecting all the images.“
When asked about his favourite webcam, Graves chooses Sudavikurhlid 2. „The lines in the road make it look similar to the Icelandic flag.“
After his residency, he spent another three weeks following the Ring Road around the entire country and up into the Westfjords. „Again I used the website on a daily basis to monitor the road and driving conditions. While the waterfalls, mountains, and seascapes were stunning, I can sadly admit that I got equally excited by driving the roads and seeing landscapes that I recognised from the webcams.“
Graves time-laps video can be found here.
As well as collecting the roads, some of the other research projects that Graves investigated during his stay can be viewed here.
