In the summer of 2024, as part of the Photography Review in Sokołowsko, I had the opportunity to experience a unique adventure during workshops led by Aga Jarząb and Maciek Bączyk – the Kino Manual duo.
If you have never heard of their work, be sure to visit their website and social media, where they share their current projects and events:
Apart from being introduced to the extraordinary world of slide projectors and their creative use, I had the opportunity to stand on the balcony of the Zdrowie Cinema in Sokołowsko during the projection of a diaporama containing photographs taken during the Review.
I was completely swept up in the excitement of performing on stage—feelings I'd last experienced years ago, when I was pretending to be a bass player in a band, now resurfaced. I discovered that photography can be a performative art.
(photographs below: Piotr Niedźwiedź)
Some time later, we began working together, combining my technical expertise with the ideas and needs of the Kino Manual duo. It all started with an idea: "What if we could replace outdated, hard-to-find projector bulbs with newer equivalents?" Over the time, we modified and improved various projectors—not just changing bulbs, but adding cooling systems, microcontroller-controlled stepper motors, and creating an entire power supply and brightness control system that I tried to adapt to the needs of installations and performances.
We decided to make all the technical details of the modifications made public so that anyone interested can use them to improve their old slide projectors, giving them a second life and encouraging analog imaging enthusiasts to try their hand at creating slide shows, installations and diaporamas.
The link below provides a repository on Github.com where all the knowledge related to the project has been collected:
As the project develops and new devices appear, the knowledge stored in the repository will be expanded and updated.
If you have any questions or suggestions regarding this project, I would love to hear them!