Over the last couple of weeks I've been playing around with pointcloud visualisers in Blender, taking inspiration from Sorawit Songsataya's recent Mnemosyne at Te Uru Gallery. It took a lot of fiddling to figure out how to make them work - first having to create new meshes and objects in RealityCapture using the raw images captured on Rangitoto during LiDAR scans, then exporting those as pointcloud data sets, then getting Blender reprogrammed to render them properly... Eventually I got it working though! There has been some colour loss in the experiments unfortunately (the original file data is much more vibrant, but can't be rendered as it is), but the structure and base is there for now... Increasing the point size seems to help remedy this a little. Below is a quick example based on a lichen and scoria landscape on Rangitoto that I'm hoping to test in the gallery space this week (technology permitting). It's my hope to continue building on this concept in the coming weeks once I gather more footage:
I've been trying to figure out how to link the ideas I have that connect Rangitoto, pioneer species and space exploration together, and I think the liminal nature of the digital landscapes created in these experiments really lends itself to the concept. As discussed in my Literature Review and post on HERVISIONS earlier in the year, digital landscapes allow for alternate narratives and conceptualisation of familiar scenes, spaces and ideas around space and environment. The semi-fictional, reality-based pointcloud landscape could have the ability to navigate that issue and bridge the space between here and there...
I'm still trying to decide whether I want the space exploration concept to be a part of my EOY work or whether I just want to focus on the theme of strange strangers on regenerated islands/environments, but if I do decide to focus on something more speculative, this could be a good way to go about it. In thinking on recent events space events and the now postponed launch of the Artemis shuttle, the pointclouds sit in a nice visual space - there's enough depth to their structure to hint at a landscape while also appearing reminiscent of a galaxy, cloud or star system. The small points, to me at least, mirror the theme of the lichen substrate and the idea of the pioneer species establishing themselves once layers of tiny particles have accumulated enough to provide a habitat for them to thrive in. Given the new push for space exploration and lunar research, there are some nice connections there for me between the themes I've been thinking at over the past few weeks...
3D printing experiments
I've put this to the sideline for now - I made a few models, but the cost of printing them is too high to do so without a good reason, and I'd prefer to be more intentional about it. For now, I'm continuing to focus on moving image :)
The uncrewed Artemis flight is a crucial test mission designed to gauge the capabilities of the SLS rocket and six-person Orion crew capsule ahead of humanity’s planned return to the moon for the first time in half a century. If Artemis 1 ultimately succeeds, astronauts will be onboard an interim test flight along the same route 40,000 miles beyond the moon and back, a trek scheduled for 2024. The first moon landing since Apollo 17 in December 1972 would follow a year or so later, with Nasa declaring it will carry the first woman to walk on the lunar surface.
But the Nasa administrator, Bill Nelson, a former space shuttle astronaut, said there was greater purpose in placing new human footprints in lunar soil now from those of the 12 men of the Apollo programme who did so over six missions in a past generation. “We need to be on the moon for much longer periods of time than just landing like we used to, stayed a couple of days and left,” Nelson told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “This time we’re going back, we’re going to live there, we’re going to learn there. We’re going to develop new technologies, all of this so we can go to Mars with humans. “All of this is to develop where we may be living on other worlds. They may be floating worlds, they may be the surface of Mars. But this is just part of our push outward, our quest to explore, to find out what’s out there in this universe.”
Interesting to note in Greek mythology, Artemis is, among other things, goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, wild animals, nature and vegetation.
Helpful links used in the process of learning:
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