LiDAR Lights Up My Life
I’m full of juice! Don’t know if this is how other artists experience it but I’ve got a whole new body of work percolating in me. Always an adrenal burst.
I can feel how much I’ve been copying myself. OK, I’ve learned that already. Last week’s news.
A few days ago I upgraded to the iPhone 12 Pro. From a 6 — it’s been a while. This one has a LiDAR scanner besides three superior cameras. LiDAR is a whole new way to use photons.
Stepping back before the capabilities of digital — photons used light that bounced from the subject to activate a photographic plate. Chemicals were excited, likenesses formed. Same as when photons hit your retina and give you your view of roses and sidewalks and today’s late lunch.
Lasers are the active light in LiDAR. An airplane can fly over dense jungle, a sea of green, and the scanning LiDAR aboard can pick out the hidden shapes of Mayan cities buried centuries ago. This isn’t chemical, it’s a point cloud of information about exactly where in 3D space the walls and ball courts lie.
I’m trying to date a LiDAR image that I’ve kept on my desktop at least since 2015. Here’s the oldest URL I came up with, obviously not the first. The fourth image down riveted me (the boy with the crack) and I’ve been wanting to play with LiDAR ever since.
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/lidar-art-ethiopia-nyit/
The little boy got distracted and turned his head mid-scan. This caused the crack to form and has told me ever since that there are possibilities hidden in LiDAR that the engineers didn’t mean to put there.
That’s where I’m going, with a slew of new compositional ideas keeping me up at night too.
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So here’s what’s changing. I’m temporarily sleeping any additions to my Created page — it’s for artwork that feels finished. My focus turns to the Playground page where I’ve got a lot of exploring to do.
And expect changes to make the website easier to use — but in all good time.