Week 7 // Artists interpreting the world

Our project is about exploring the differences and similarities between traditional art and physical space using photography/photogrammetry. Essentially how artists capture the world, like our campus and Northfeild. I want to produce a “virtual tour” of campus and town using artworks made by observational drawing and 3D scans of buildings made by photogrammetry. What would be promising is contacting the Perlman Art Museum curator and some studio art professors to possibly collaborate and or get their insights and feedback on our project.

My initial project topic is inspired by the question: what do traditional artists perceive vs photography? I wanted to investigate how different mediums of representation affect the way we see and experience real-world space. I also want to showcase the artistic talents of our community and celebrate the diversity of perspectives that they offer, being a studio art major myself and have taken Observational Drawing and Field drawing. My plans and what I am trying to produce for this project include:

• To collect artworks made by observational drawing that depict various locations on campus, and document metadata such as date, artist, medium, etc.
• To photograph the same locations using a camera and geotag them with their coordinates and time.
• To use photogrammetry software to create 3D models of some buildings on campus from the photographs, and upload them to an online 3D model viewer.
• To project some of the artworks onto the 3D models as a way of blending the two mediums and creating a new visual experience. To give an idea, I imagine Projection mapping (picture from Wikipedia’s definition). This will be virtual but a physical object for example could be a nice tangible idea from the photo scans turning into a 3D print.
• To create an interactive map using ArcGIS Online that displays the artworks and the photographs as markers, and links them to the 3D models if available.
• To contact the Perlman Art Museum curator Sara Cluggish and some studio art professors such as David Lefkowitz for any possible contributions and to ask them about their opinions on our project, and how they think traditional art and photography differ or complement each other in capturing reality.
• David in particular has created works and exhibits of Northfield and Carleton locations, as well is one of our several observational drawing class professors. Perhaps we can work with his older projects such as C.A.C.T.S which depicts the Arboretum trails as a London Tube map. His Nrthfld: Nirthfolde Visitors’ Bureau is the thumbnail of this post. A prime example of an observational drawing of a building. It is called “Accursed Location”, 2013, 8 watercolors on silkscreen prints.
• To write a blog post that summarizes our findings and reflections, and embeds our digital assets such as the map and the 3D models.

Our proposed methodology is as follows:

• Sources: I hope to use artworks made by observational drawing that depict various locations on campus as our main source of data. I plan to find them by contacting studio art professors and students, visiting the Perlman Art Museum, and browsing through social media platforms such as Instagram. I also hope to use photographs taken by ourselves or other members of the community as another source of data. Like what we did for class, I plan to take them using our smartphones and include their geotags with their coordinates and time using resources such as Google Maps or photo metadata
• Processes: I plan to use various tools and techniques to gather sources and store our data. For the artworks, I’d like to create a CSV file that contains their metadata such as date, artist, medium, relation to campus, etc. For the photographs, we plan to use photogrammetry software such as Agisoft Metashape 2.1.0 to compile them into 3D models of some buildings on campus. We plan to upload these 3D models onto an online 3D model viewer such as Sketchfab, where we can also project some of the artwork. I imagined using Blender to clean up and simply projecting the 2D Image like a “stamp” onto the model. I also wanted to see if we can store all our artworks and photographs on Omeka, where we can also add tags and descriptions to them.
• Presentation: For our main display, I imagined to be using ArcGIS Online to create an interactive map that displays the locations of our artworks and photographs as markers, and links them to our 3D models if available.

I thought of a VERY LOOSE proposed timeline of deliverables as follows:

• Week 7: (Our current week) Contact the Perlman Art Museum curator and studio art professors to get their insights and feedback on our project.
  Find artworks and photographs that depict various locations on campus, and document their metadata in a CSV file.
• Week 8: Use photogrammetry software to create 3D models of some buildings on campus from the photographs, and upload them to an online 3D model viewer. Project some of the artworks onto the 3D models using texture painting, and store all our artworks and some photographs onto Omeka for gallery viewing.
• Week 9: Create an interactive map using ArcGIS Online that displays our artworks and photographs as markers, and links them to our 3D models if available.
• Week 10: Wrapping up, summarize our findings and reflections, and embed our digital assets such as the map and the 3D models somewhere cohesive (kind of like making a mini-exhibit to display everything).

One DH project that I think might make a good model for what I invision as a potential project plan is the “Book of Fortresses” project lead by Edward Triplett, which was brought to my attention while talking to Austin. This project uses architectural technologies to map according to Duarte de Armas’, and allows users to explore the connections between 2D art, history, and recreations of geography and structures. I think this project is similar to ours in terms of using artworks as data sources, creating interactive maps, and blending different mediums of representation. There is also Inventing Abstraction, a site I wrote a previous blog on and explored, but instead of network graphs I want to explore mapping and objects instead.

I thought that our unique tag for our group could be #campusarttour to tag all our posts related to our project.

This whole post is kind of my personal interest and hopes for the project, but as a small blurb about myself: I’m interested in 3D modeling in general, and also art. Both can create new ways of seeing and experiencing reality, and so I was thinking about how I can incorporate the two and thought of the “projection of 2D artwork onto 3D model” concept. The mapping idea is that but toned down into a manageable project that wouldn’t require hundreds of photos of buildings and locations given our time. A 3D printed model of a part of a building would be nice to have though. I hope our project will showcase some beauty and diversity of our campus through different mediums of representation (digital, photographic, artworks).

• Members of the group
  • janet duong
  • sho tanaka    
  • wesley yang