Photosculpture: a sum of the profiles

Abstract:

In 1863 Francois Willeme patented an apparatus for turning photographs into sculpture. His forgotten device was part of the nineteenth century positivist surge of technological innovation that we are familiar with through Muybridge. Willeme’s project however, does not use a serial, cinematic model but instead spatialises image in an instant. Multiple images are aggregated as system. His work provides an antecedent for photogrammetry and 3D prototyping, arguably prefiguring parallel processing and the information model.

One characteristic of 3D modelling applications is the production of a hollow body, something akin to Benjamin’s description of the discarded fetish - second nature – a reified, dead world. Data takes on a new presence as skin; a digital flaying or appropriation. Data capture is a form of spoliation; a stripped asset in economic terms. Decimation and interpolation succeed interpretation and translation

Working with archaeologists to better understand new imaging and visualisation technology we began to appropriate data capture and processing methods, misapplying orthothetic techniques to produce ruined models, incomplete files, dirty artifacts prolapsed from the software.

We find ourselves at once in prehistory and in science fiction.

The symposium 'Shadow without Object' considers emerging photographic technologies against a wider historical context of overlooked and marginalised practices, exploring in particular one of the medium's long-held and contentious theoretical tenets which describes the physical relationship between a photograph and its subject – the index.

Bringing together new research from across the visual arts, particle physics and conservation studies, the symposium addresses renewed interest in photographic indexicality, reconsidering ideas around materiality, subjectivity and realism in light of emerging imaging processes and their historical contexts. Challenging linear histories of photography, the contributions at this event promise to open up photography's technical and conceptual operations beyond narrow dichotomies of past/future, analogue/digital and light/matter.

Speakers include Peter Geimer, Michael Doser, Daniel Rubinstein, Jananne Al-Ani, Sam Burford, Giacomo Raffaelli, Louisa Minkin, Betty Sacher, Duncan Wooldridge and Bernd Behr.

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