For this project we wanted to explore the untapped narrative potential of the urban fabric, through an approach nestled between the practices of plein-air painting, MR interventions and **locative arts.**
Trading the easel and VR headset for a 3D scanning device (an Apple tablet to be exact), we formed small groups of casual urban explorers, and set out to digitally sample 3D vignettes of the neighborhoods visited on our walks. Although we created our own installation to showcase the 3D captures, we imagined a project which could in turn contribute to further reappopriation.
Our main hope for the project is to contribute to the growing body of works that explore the creative and narrative potential of digital asset kits. This corner of the digital arts world, is closely linked to the gaming industry, environmental storytelling, concept art creation, and often leads to incredibly rich questions on representation, narrative biases, or even ad hoc production methods.
In this space, photogrammetry holds a unique position, with gaming studios from EA to PUBG investing considerable resources over the past decade into developing their own 3D scanning pipelines. Since 3D scanning is a process of digitizing elements found in the physical world, many questions quickly arise when thinking of which parts on Earth are digitized and why.
Is it a question of means? Of convenience? Of mainstream interest and gaze? When the use of these assets goes beyond the world of documentation and archiving to enter new narrative worlds, with on one end of the spectrum the Forza Motorsport 7 team turning to the technology to digitize existing race tracks, to the Battlefront team’s captures of the Grand Canyon to populate the deserts of the Star Wars universe, and the PUBG team traveling to Suratthani, Thailand, looking for “abandoned resorts in Southeast Asia” to create its Sanhok map, issues of cultural contextualization cannot be easily dismissed.
As these 3D captures of the physical world make their way into new fictional worlds (worlds often linked to cinematic or gaming blockbuster productions) they can as easily be meaningfully integrated into the work in question as they can be distorted, misrepresented or misappropriated. Being aware of the distortion caused by stereotypes and representational biases in the creation of virtual worlds is a topic Kate Edwards has been a great advocate for, and which makes projects like “Is this the Middle East” incredibly compelling.