Art & Archeology: Figure and Ground

Over the past year, artists and archaeologists at the University of Southampton have engineered a set of meetings, encounters and events to stimulate exchange of ideas and practices. Initially framed around the trans-disciplinary implementation of digital visualization technologies, the exchange has involved practical workshops, visits, exhibitions, and an artist’s residency at an excavation over the summer.

This paper will present an opportunity to open out some of the outcomes of this exchange and discuss the potential of creative methodologies for producing new formulations of image data and to contribute to he visualization and materialization of complex thought. Part of the project involved the reconstruction of a nineteenth century Photo-Sculpture apparatus, an antecedent to contemporary 3D prototyping. We would take this as a case study to assess the implications and paradigms produced in workng through historic imaging systems and technical modes of representation.

This paper was presented in the session Seeing, Thinking, Doing: Visualization as Knowledge Creation.