Black Box Investigations

2023
3 minutes 6 seconds
Single channel video with audio

Official Teaser of Black Box Investigations:

Few people understand the inner workings of cameras — or the human body — but Black Box Investigations literally travels inside both “black boxes” to attempt to document the inside of both the human body and the camera body. Filmmaker and performer Paige Smith uses a disposable camera to explore the inside of her own body, revealing how little we know about how these complex systems work.

After unwrapping the disposable camera, Smith consumes the device, trying to document the inner workings of her own body. The grainy photos are then displayed, revealing how illegible the black box system of her body truly is. She then turns to the inside of the camera itself, smashing open the plastic body with a hammer and revealing its electronic anatomy.

”I wanted to create a work that viscerally conveys the excitement of the game between photographer and camera — and that makes the viewer aware of how these apparatus influence how we imagine and see the world.” — Paige Smith

Online Screener of Black Box Investigations (available via requests for review):

Press about Black Box Investigations:

The Peak, “Paige Smith Explores Unknown Insides in Black Box Investigations”, Petra Chase

The Goods Film Reviews, “Black Box Investigations (2023)”, Dan S

Director Bio – Paige Smith: 

Paige Smith is an experimental filmmaker and visual artist whose artwork collapses distinctions like fiction/reality or nature/culture to fabulate new understandings of ourselves and the places where we exist. She primarily works with lens-based mediums, often emphasizing the materiality of her chosen medium through use of overlapping layers and material interventions. She studied Film and Contemporary Art at Simon Fraser University and is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.  

a film by
Paige Smith