| dc.description.abstract | The point cloud medium in digital survey has been little explored in its overlap with philosophy and theory. Exploring this overlap between the point cloud and philosophy can affect our approach and consideration of such data in unforeseen ways. This research considers the point cloud medium in architectural and archaeological contexts through the lens of object-oriented ontology, specifically ideas surrounding Graham Harman’s concept of the ‘third table.’
For Harman, this is a table beyond its undermined parts and its overmined effects, a table that withholds its being from us, but can be accessed indirectly. For me, this ‘third table’ is beyond its measure and meaning – the point cloud is more than its accuracy and our practical relations to it. Harman’s solution to the inaccessibility of the ‘third table’ is theatricality, metaphor, or vicarious causation. This is the inner space of a new, hybrid object where one object can hold elsewhere qualities for another object that withdraws from access. I interpret Harman’s approach as expressing something through a non-discursive, aesthetic medium.
This study explores elements from two survey techniques used to create point clouds: photogrammetry and laser scanning. These elements are the everyday, throwaway debitage of the digital process, as well as erroneous data outputs, misalignments, and noise. Beyond the found object and the undesired misfits of process, we can develop further aesthetic expressions of point clouds that exhibit the actuality of the living digital model. | |
