Camera O is a new project led and curated by artists and University of Suffolk lecturer-researchers Jane Watt and SE Barnet, in which they temporarily installed a camera obscura in the first floor of the Bomb Ballistics Building. The camera obscura is a lo-tech optical device – a lens and mirror are used to project an inverted image of the outside world into a darkened room.

Experiencing this live image of projected light is magical. It is a technique that was originally invented by artists to aid perspectival drawing, later adopted in science and the development of photography. It was used on Orford Ness in this Bomb Ballistics Building in the first half of the twentieth century to plot and gather data on bombing accuracy.

Barnet and Watt temporarily installed this working camera obscura during a two-day residency in February 2025. The artists worked with a group of first, second and third year BA (Hons) Fine Art students to use the camera obscura as an instrument to observe the sky, sea and land looking south towards the Power House and Black Beacon. The result is a series of tondo (round) drawings made directly from the projected camera obscura image. The exhibited works here vary in outcomes. Some of the drawings employ quick and abstract mark-making, capturing the patterns of shingle, horizon lines, figures moving across the landscape and cloud formations. Others document more recognizable, detailed architectural structures such as the Black Beacon and Power House.

Camera O is part of Barnet and Watt’s on-going research project Blast Radius
and their Power House art programme on Orford Ness.