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SENSING IS BELIEVING, BELIEVING IS SEEING
(Solo)
Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre (NiMAC)
Nicosia, Cyprus
7 May - 23 July 2022
www.nimac.org.cy
Sensing is believing, believing is seeing is a series of photographic works which utilise remote sensing techniques, namely photogrammetry and LiDAR scanning. While not strictly photography, 3D scanning has the same principles and ambitions of “reality capture” as traditional photography, but within a three-dimensional digital framework.
A recurring theme in the images are gateways, imagined or suggested. A focus of my recent research has been portal fantasies in imaginative fiction, with portals being structures that the hero travels through, leaving their world behind for unknown places. While escapism from reality brings with it a series of negative connotations from a Freudian and Marxist perspective, when viewed from a literary standpoint, it allows us to view imaginary worlds as spaces that offer new perspectives (and perhaps even solutions) to ongoing issues.
In the past year, I have been systematically documenting my surroundings, building an archive from which I draw elements to compose the virtual worlds depicted, following a method similar to collage. Virtual worlds occupy a strange ontological status located in the liminal space between the actual and imaginary — they are visible and appear to be material, yet their materiality is merely an illusion, requiring a leap of faith on the viewer’s part in order to become fully actualised. Combined with the high-quality textures of photogrammetry and LiDAR, a virtual world can take on the qualities of a dream.
Through this process, the works negotiate both the process as a medium of photography, but also the Cypriot landscape as a place that remains in many ways virtual; it exists one way in actuality, in another way in the projections of its various communities, and a completely other way in their hopes and dreams. Most recently, as the outside world grows increasingly more hostile and uninviting, I have been seeking alternate spaces to inhabit. The act of capturing and re-composing allows me to claim a sense of ownership over the landscape.
Works included:
- Black Rooster Sideroom, 2022
- Construction in Zygi, Frozen in Time, 2022
- RIP Fountain-in-a-courtyard, 2022
- Axiothea Under Water, 2022
- ACAB Temple, 2022
- Sensing is believing, believing is seeing (Walkthrough), 2022
Related tags: 3D scanning, digital, photography, video, flowers, solo shows