Exposition

Spotting A Tree From A Pixel (With Remote Sensing Researchers) (2022)

Sheung Yiu
open exposition

About this exposition

This exposition contemplates the collaboration between me, a photographer, and remote sensing researchers from the Department of Geoinformatics at Aalto University, in an ongoing artistic research collaboration called Ground Truth. Ground Truth is a photography project about ‘seeing something when there’s nothing there’. Based in the research group’s initial intent to overcome the spatial resolution limits of satellite imagery, the project now investigates new imaging techniques such as computational photography and hyperspectral imaging of forests, while also referencing photography’s love affair with natural landscapes. Such a comparative approach to natural photography has allowed me to offer a vision that typically escapes human sight perception. I open this auto-theoretical text with a personal experience, namely being on a field trip with remote sensing scientist Daniel Schraik. I use this moment to, among other things, articulate my thoughts on the construction of the ‘real’ in different disciplines. I then contemplate the body of interviews and field trips that became a two-year-long interdisciplinary dialogue, and also brought together two distinct ways of looking at the forest: one symbolized by the camera, another by the terrestrial laser scanner. Inspired by remote sensing concepts such as ground truth and the inverse problem, I have come to examine photography through a new analytical framework. In everyday language, the term ‘ground truth’ refers, in part, to a first-hand experience. In our project, it makes sense, then, that Ground Truth connotes the documentary tradition and the act of witnessing. In the language of science, however, and specifically in remote sensing as a field, ground truth means something different. It refers to data collected on-site, which can then be used to calibrate, to build models, to predict, to interpret, and to decipher information from images; in this case, satellite images. Similarly, our interdisciplinary collaboration functions on another operational layer of photography beneath the immediately visible, one that illustrates an expanded notion of photography across contemporary discourse. Ground Truth interweaves archival imagery, documentary photography, experiment dataset, 3D digital art and conceptual photography. The constellation of employed elements contrasts the representational approaches of drawing and photography with the data-oriented and algorithmic approaches of computer-aided seeing. The two modes together allow for a parallel reading of the forest — one that contextualizes different epistemological regimes that allow for new configurations of the relationship between image and reality.
typeresearch exposition
keywordsphotography, hyperimage, remote sensing, VISUAL CULTURE, 3D scanning, computation, algorithmic image, interdisciplinary, artistic research
date30/12/2022
published29/12/2022
last modified29/12/2022
statuspublished
share statusprivate
affiliationAalto University
copyrightSheung Yiu
licenseCC BY-NC-ND
languageEnglish
urlhttps://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1265334/1869636
doihttps://doi.org/10.22501/jar.1265334
published inJournal for Artistic Research
portal issue28. 28
external linkwww.sheungyiu.com/ground-truth


Simple Media

id name copyright license
1265349 2_1_2 Aarne Hovi All rights reserved
1265362 Goniometer_tree_6 Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1265364 film_test Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1265369 film_test Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1265379 2_1_2 Aarne Hovi All rights reserved
1265393 spherical shoot_subsurf4 Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1265469 2_5_2 Aarni Hovi All rights reserved
1265471 2_10_2 Aarne Hovi All rights reserved
1265475 2_15_2 Aarne Hovi All rights reserved
1265478 2_20_2 Aarne Hovi All rights reserved
1265480 5_1_2 Aarne Hovi All rights reserved
1265483 5_5_2 Aarne Hovi All rights reserved
1265485 5_10_2 Aarne Hovi All rights reserved
1265491 5_15_2 Aarne Hovi All rights reserved
1265506 0018 Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1265512 sheungyiu on 2021-03-12 11-40 Sheung Yiu CC BY-NC-ND
1265656 0144 Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1265700 proc_5258 Daniel Schraik All rights reserved
1293516 Schriak Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1295337 Roll67#20_RB67_Field Station Hyytiala_7591_2100ppi_008 Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1295364 Roll67#20_RB67_Field Station Hyytiala_7591_2100ppi_008 Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1295380 shooting_20200615_0029_1 Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1295385 Daniel_notebook_003-1 Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1295393 trees Daniel Schraik All rights reserved
1295402 Roll67#21_RB67_Field Station Hyytiala_7592_2100ppi_001 Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1295412 Roll67#19_RB67_Field Station Hyytiala_7590_2100ppi_007 Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1295418 V10015_59 Finnish Forest Museum, LUSTO All rights reserved
1295420 015_Ground Truth_Sheung Yiu Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1295437 Example_visual_B567_G653_R867 Aarni Hovi All rights reserved
1295446 voxel_projection_6dir Daniel Schriak All rights reserved
1295452 TLS_silhouette Daniel Schriak All rights reserved
1295457 Tree pointcloud sample Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1295477 tree2_074tif120320 Daniel Schraik All rights reserved
1295479 tree5_265tif120320 Daniel Schraik All rights reserved
1295482 tree2_090tif120320 Daniel Schraik All rights reserved
1295484 tree6_314tif120320 Daniel Schraik All rights reserved
1295486 Ground Truth Book Excerpt_001 Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1295487 Ground Truth Book Excerpt_002 Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1295488 Ground Truth Book Excerpt_003 Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1295489 Ground Truth Book Excerpt_004 Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1295490 Ground Truth Book Excerpt_005 Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1295492 Ground Truth Book Excerpt_006 Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1295493 Ground Truth Book Excerpt_007 Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1295494 Ground Truth_mockup_001 Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1295502 Ground Truth_mockup_001 Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1295513 5_11_2 Aarne Hovi All rights reserved
1295515 fig125 Aarne Hovi All rights reserved
1295519 2_4_2 Aarne Hovi All rights reserved
1295521 2_53_2 Aarne Hovi All rights reserved
1295548 5_48_2 AARNE HOVI All rights reserved
1295550 6_15_2 Aarne Hovi All rights reserved
1295555 6_54_2 Aarne Hovi All rights reserved
1295557 6_42_2 Aarne Hovi All rights reserved
1295559 6_19_2 Aarne Hovi All rights reserved
1295563 2_14_2 Aarne Hovi All rights reserved
1295565 5_12_2 Aarne Hovi All rights reserved
1295569 5_7_2 Aarne Hovi All rights reserved
1295572 6_11_2 Aarne Hovi All rights reserved
1295588 2_18_2 Aarne Hovi All rights reserved
1295590 tree6_328tif120320 Daniel Schraik All rights reserved
1295592 tree5_275tif120320 Daniel Schraik All rights reserved
1295598 ground truth_point cloud_view 45_1 Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1703788 Hovi et al. - 2021 - A dataset composed of multiangular spectral librar-6 Hovi et al. CC BY
1704326 band_2-8-36 combined_false colour Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1704328 In other words, to know and to see without being there Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1704329 Ground Truth Photobook Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1704331 Ground Truth_004 Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1704334 Ground Truth_043 Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1704339 Ground Truth_007 Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1704342 Ground Truth_006 Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1704343 6_Ground Truth_20210511_Exhibition Scan_009p Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1704345 9_Ground Truth_20210511_Exhibition Scan_002p Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1704347 12_Ground Truth_20210511_Exhibition Scan_001p Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1704510 23_spherical shoot_icosphere_highres_p Sheung Yiu All rights reserved
1704561 5_11_2 Aarne Hovi CC BY
1704574 5_49_2 Aarne Hovi CC BY
1704576 2_1_2 Aarne Hovi CC BY
1704590 V06011_12689 LUSTO (The Finnish Forest Museum) All rights reserved

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