Because of stress levels last term, I decided to take the term break as a time for rest. I've kept up a little work for studio and theory, but not very much. Below are some photogrammetry experiments I've been creating in Blender using objects created via LIDAR scans or photogrammetry (Meshroom). The objects are a bouquet of flowers given to my Mum for her birthday, an olive branch covered in lichen from a tree at my family's home in Sivlerdale, and the mustard plant in the flat's planter box respectively.
Some of the images are simply of the object itself, others have a wireframe modifier applied to them, hence the wire-like structures; others have a combination of the two but experiment with camera focal length and depth of field. Many of these works were inspired by Tim Morton's notion of the strange stranger and the ecological mesh (perhaps a little too literal in execution). I'm trying to find a balance between abstracting just enough for the object to be curious but not too far that it become unreadable or a spectacle in nature. Currently I'm finding the olive branches of added interest because of the ecology of the branch itself (the dead branch as a ground for the lichen, which perhaps contributed to the tree's health or the branch's death).
In focusing on domestic objects, I'm hoping to explore the idea of ecology not being something abstracted from ourselves or thought of as "over there", but something that we're already in the heart of. We form part of the ecologies we occupy, whether consciously aware of it or not, and those ecologies are vast and curious even if they are everyday and familiar...
(Please click to view the full image)
While Blender is just another tool at my disposal, and isn't something I want to incorporate simply for the sake of doing so, I am still enjoying experimenting with it. Part of learning how to work with the depth of field in its camera settings was through completing this tutorial and work to the below right.
I then applied that new knowledge to the objects I scanned, and I'm happy with some of the outcomes - some I think have the effect of really warping the perception of scale; many of the objects are relatively small, less than 1m squared, but I think that in taking them into this digital space there's an added ability to really look at and contemplate them because they are no longer tied to a particular space, environment, size, etc... I'm curious to see what happens when I start projecting these on a larger scale...
Below: video experiments using 3D scans (mustard plant and bouquet respectively)
Is this treatment entirely necessary for these works to function? Probably not; I think the objects themselves are curious enough to sit as they are without too much fiddling. But it's been fun playing with alternative treatments and learning how to control perspective at least :)
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