Project overview
This project considers the role of data visualisation in the carbon economy. Novel technical imaging practices, such as LiDAR and multispectral remote sensing, are being used to monitor industrial emissions and verify forest carbon biomass. These visual cultures are being treated as objective arbiters in measurement systems that seek to regulate the atmospheric composition economically. The implication of these systems is that fixing that picture can be equated with fixing the planet. Through collaborations with remote sensing scientists and forest ecologists this project interrogates the forensic power of these images.
The first output from the project is an art-science film made in collaboration with Theo Stanley and the Earth Science department at the Frei Universität (Berlin) which was developed during a residency at ZK/U. The film focuses on the use of terrestrial laser scanning in mapping, monitoring and measuring forests, questioning how the precision of these three dimensional image environments blinds us to their occlusions. What is omitted from our knowledge of the forest when we focus exclusively on calculating its biomass? The project has also been presented at two conferences: Planetary Experiments (Dresden) and Digital Ecologies (Bath), and a book chapter is in preparation for a forthcoming book with Meson Press.
The first output from the project is an art-science film made in collaboration with Theo Stanley and the Earth Science department at the Frei Universität (Berlin) which was developed during a residency at ZK/U. The film focuses on the use of terrestrial laser scanning in mapping, monitoring and measuring forests, questioning how the precision of these three dimensional image environments blinds us to their occlusions. What is omitted from our knowledge of the forest when we focus exclusively on calculating its biomass? The project has also been presented at two conferences: Planetary Experiments (Dresden) and Digital Ecologies (Bath), and a book chapter is in preparation for a forthcoming book with Meson Press.
