NOISE: Error in the Void

Using terrestrial LIDAR technology it is now possible to capture the world in three dimensions. This technology can create near perfect digital 3D replicas of buildings, landscapes, objects and events. But these digital replicas are always an illusion of perfection. NOISE: ERROR IN THE VOID explores the inherent mistakes made by modern technologies of vision. Here we see the unedited view of the world as seen through the eyes of the LIDAR machine. Reality is shrouded in a cloud of mistaken measurements, confused surfaces and misplaced three dimensional reflections.

NOISE:ERROR IN THE VOID presents two films NOISE//01 and //02. Each film takes us on a series of orbits around a single, unedited scan captured in Berlin in November 2013. The camera journeys through the droning spheres of error and cataclysmic arrays of inaccurate points.

NOISE//01

• Berlin Oberbaum Bridge - The Spree
• 52.501738 Lat, 13.448020 Long
• 11 November 2013, 15:15:40
• Early afternoon
• Overcast
• Cold
• Range 153 meters

The dome is almost full; the sky thick with points. The city surface is multiplied and reflected. Echoes of bridge and facade are manifest out of place. A column of overlapping points burns overhead. An axis of stainless steel railing, water and glass slices through. Fenestration bursts and loops. Infrared wavelengths dictate distance. The noise here is grided, aligned and perfectly wrong.

NOISE//02

• Berlin Tempelhof Airport
• 52.477305 Lat, 13.391460 Long
• 13 November 2013, 09:48:37
• Early morning
• Bright sky, some cloud
• Cold
• Range 153 meters

The scan sees more than is possible for it to see. The noise is draped in the colours of the sky. The clouds are scanned, even though out of range. Everything is flat; broken only by runway markings. Traces of dog walkers spike up into the cloud. The ground falls away to the foreground in ripples. The horizon line is muddy with the tones of the ground and the texture of the sky. The center is thick with points, too dense to see through. Underground only the strongest noise remains.