Post-lenticular Landscapes is a re-enactment of the early photographic expeditions of Watkins, Weed, Muybridge and Adams into Yosemite National Park, equipped with the latest terrestrial laser 3D scanning equipment. The completed work - high fidelity 3D holograms of Yosemite Valley - exhibit across dioramas, large LED screens, and Digital Lambda C-type prints.
In the 1870’s Eadweard Muybridge looked to Yosemite as a setting to test his pioneering photographic techniques. These early expeditions have been replicated throughout history, most famously by Ansel Adams, but more recently by thousands of digitally enabled adventurers with comparatively tiny cameras tucked into their pockets.
Post-lenticular Landscapes re-enacted these expeditions equipped with the very latest in terrestrial laser scanning technology. This process has unearthed the three dimensional facts of the landscape, allowing the photographic experience of Muybridge, Adams and a thousand other visitors to be digitally replicated and realising Muybridge’s original endeavour to document and share the scenes in three dimensions as stereograms.
Expedition - May / June 2016
In Yosemite ScanLAB established a digital base camp, the centre point of which was a matte grey 4x4 vehicle which acted as our hub for processing collected 3D scan data. Over 15 days we ventured up into the National Park and to a series of key locations including Vernal and Nevada Falls. In the age of the iPhone camera and the selfie our expedition was comparatively heavily laden (our laser scanning equipment took eight people to transport during the expedition!). The logistics of taking such high tech equipment into a comparatively inaccessible environment formed a major part of the re-enactment, mirroring the epic nature of the early pioneer photographers.
Urban Diorama - LACMA, USA - Spring 2017
Set within the stripped out interior of our expedition vehicle floats a high fidelity hologram of Yosemite Valley. Millions of precisely measured points hover together in space to form a ghostly apparition of mountains, forest, cliff face and tumultuous waterfalls. Viewers peer through a series of eyeholes cut into the side of the vehicle and glimpse a slowly rotating digital effigy of the landscape.
Diorama Transplant - Biennale NEMO, FR - Autumn 2017
For the second edition of Post-lenticular Landscapes, the hologram of Yosemite Valley travelled to Paris for the Biennale NEMO in a new revisited form.
Visitors peer through the holographic viewer and glimpse a slowly rotating digital effigy of the landscape. Millions of precisely measured points hover together in space to form a ghostly apparition of mountains, forest, cliff face and tumultuous waterfalls of the Yosemite National Park.
Hyundai ArtLAB (KOR), - Summer 2018
Post-lenticular Landscapes (LACMA 2017) found a fantastic new home at the Hyundai ARTLAB in 2018. Our holographic vehicle was accompanied by a series of stunning 2000x1000mm prints and a new 4K animation for the ARTLAB’s enormous video walls.
This pointcloud animation journeys down the Merced River taking in the exact POV of many of the most famous historic images that have defined Yosemite and the idea of the America wilderness for nearly 150 years. Seen through the eyes of the terrestrial laser scanner the entire landscape is perpetually on view; a single frame taken from a Muybridge perspective contains every Watkins and Weed that preceded it and every Adams or iPhone selfie to follow it.
EQUIRECTANGULAR LANDSCAPES
2000 x 1000mm Digital Lambda C-type prints
Yosemite Valley seen through the eyes of the terrestrial laser scanner. These digital images occupy strategic POVs that hover close to the iconic (and often dangerous) tripod positions of Watkins, Weed, Muybridge and Adams. Our digitally privileged cameras step beyond the cliff edge that restrained the early photographers and modern iphone users alike to reveal the entire Yosemite Valley in a cloud of over a billion precisely measured (but sometime erroneous) points.
Royal Academy, UK - summer 2018
EQUIRECTANGULAR LANDSCAPES, and our Diorama Transplant was exhibited in the group show Invisible Landscapes: Imagination (Act III) alongside – Gilles Retsin Architecture, ScanLAB Projects, Keiichi Matsuda and Soft Bodies.
