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Splintered Optics: Spatio-Temporal Polyfocality and Technologies of 3D Capture

This thesis examines the spatial and temporal complexity of the multiple viewpoints inherent to photogrammetry. Delineating how 3D photogrammetric technologies are entangled with cinematic, military, governmental, scientific imaging and the visual arts, this research seeks to discern how the multi-perspectival nature of 3D capture shapes and reconfigures modes of visuality across these domains.

It proposes that the camera arrays integral to photogrammetric capture provide a methodology for investigating both the spatio-temporal coordinates that determine these algorithmic forms and the multiplicity of power relations that they, in turn, condition. Through the written dissertation and the practice-based component, the thesis explores the multi-positional nature of these camera orientations to examine the subject-object relationships that structure the bodily, affective, and cognitive experiences configured by these technologies. It contends that these omnipresent perceptual conditions, specifically spatial dislocation, fragmentation, and the ubiquity of machine vision, are central to determining the interactivity of capture technologies and the operational modes in which they are deployed.

Drawing on Michel Foucault's concept of power as multi-directional, this project employs shifting ocular vantage points across practice and writing to analyse the heterogeneous relations through which 3D capture is intertwined with educational, military, entertainment, and scientific knowledge. It examines how methods of capture straddle the spectacularity of cinematic special effects, drone-based pattern-of-life analysis and soldiers' training simulations oscillating between the externality of viewing an image on a screen and immersion through virtual reality. Structured through a series of case studies, the thesis problematizes and probes the polyfocality of 3D capture, through the practices of Forensic Architecture, Oliver Laric, David Claerbout, Paul McCarthy, and Harun Farocki.

Chapter 1 foregrounds the way the photographic moment is shattered by 3D imaging technologies. Photogrammetry鈥檚 processes of mapping, tracing, and abstracting the body are shown to be inseparable from how these spatial-temporal measurements orient towards a necropolitical use for geo-locating and targeting. Chapter 2 interrogates the knowledge claims that uphold these technologies. The chapter sets up a friction between the automaticity underpinning assertions of objectivity, the racial biases that underlie inferring 2D data into 3D form, and the digital intervention incorporated into these procedures. Chapter 3 focuses on the infrastructure shaping 3D capture. It argues that the propulsive forces behind these technological processes are situated at the intersection of governmental, entertainment, and military objectives.

Across the dissertation and the practice, these configurations of optics and spatiality interlace whilst creating productive frictions. While the dissertation examines this multiplicity through photographic and cinematic perspectives, the practice responds to the spatial and omnidirectional capture environments through installations that mirror how these technologies immerse, surround, and disorient the viewer. Moving in tandem between analyses of power and viewing relations, the thesis utilises cinematic theory in combination with Foucault鈥檚 strategic meaning of the dispositif to advance new framings of the power dynamics that structure 3D capture technologies.

Supervisors

Primary: Edgar Schmitz
Secondary: Simon Martin

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