What is it about?
LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) is a remote sensing technology. It needs no ambient light, nor the guidance of the human eye to capture and reproduce a likeness of the world around us. Given the breadth of its potential uses, LiDAR generates a constant stream of technical literature. In this article however, scanner imaging is envisaged not merely for its functional capacities, but also for its aesthetic and expressive value. This article focuses in particular on Anouk De Clerk’s film Thing (2013), a work entirely comprised of LiDAR images.
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Why is it important?
The article adresses the question of the growing ascendancy of the ‘technical’, or the displacement of the human by automatic operations that supplement human choices in the recording and production of images. It does so by focusing on the formal and poetic dimensions of scanner imaging, including the sense of becoming produced by ephemeral pixels clouds formations.
Perspectives
One key dimension of De Clerk's film is the relationship between machines and memory. Already, remembrance has become a largely dematerialized, remotely handled business. We have moved on, from the shoe box full of faded photographs, the jittery spectacle of super 8 films projected on the wall of the family dining room, to digital files saved on distant servers or clouds. What form will memory take in a world where a majority of images will be produced without human input or presence?
Martine Beugnet
Université Paris Cité
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This page is a summary of: To scan a memory: On Anouk De Clercq’s LiDAR film Thing, Philosophy of Photography, April 2022, Intellect,
DOI: 10.1386/pop_00043_1.
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