Royal College of Art
School of Architecture - Media Studies
Autumn 2021 - Spring 2022
School of Architecture - Media Studies
Autumn 2021 - Spring 2022
Tutor: Keren Kuenberg
Keywords: Digital glitch, Multi-layered narratives, Photogrammetry, Fictional journey, Archival practice, Poetry
Keywords: Digital glitch, Multi-layered narratives, Photogrammetry, Fictional journey, Archival practice, Poetry
“Isles in the Aisles” is an introspective and experimental investigation using the digital glitches created from the photogrammetry as a visual language, composed of a series of images from the process of layering the recaptured reality with the poems prompted during the process.
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As an immigrant, the feeling of in-betweenness is something I cannot dismiss from my everyday life and is always lingering on the back of my head. And the longer I’ve been living abroad, the Korean supermarket - where the variety of Korean groceries are endlessly stocked - became a more significant site that bridges my physical and psychological detachment from my hometown. However, it sometimes became a place where the sense of in-betweenness is dramatically augmented by the dissonances. Encountering the familiar products but with foreign names, surrounded by the familiar music but with foreign faces, the uncanny scenery evoked my identity and the cultural gap floating between the two different continents.
Overlayed with multiple layers of personal narratives, the supermarket that has been considered the most mundane and banal turned into an anchor where the threads of everyday life are knotted. In order to unravel the multi-layered narratives, I instigated my investigation on the Oseyo Hammersmith branch and captured the space with a LiDAR 3D scanner, also taking notes that were prompted from the products and visitors. By employing photogrammetry, which is a technology extracting spatial data by overlapping the photographs, and with repeated visits, I started to build up layers in-depth.
Within the scanned environment, I became a virtual photographer inside the captured space, recapturing it in digital reality. My captures focused on capturing the digital glitches created by a discordance between time and space with access to the unrestricted perspective and freedom to explore. Among the hyper-realistic images, these gaps are the results of the machine trying to automatically fill the lack of information. Through the series of captured images of gaps parallel to the fragmented poems, I attempt to illustrate the gaps in my culture, identity and relationships.
This process questions the general belief that advanced technology enables us the flawless and seamless capture of our reality and explores the possibility of delivering something personal and inexplicable with a new visual language. In the title of this project, I’m using an analogy in the various characters and events that emerged from the memory as ‘islands’ while I’m walking around the ‘aisles’ of the supermarket. Like faceless ghosts endlessly wandering the virtual aisles, they are part of myself that I’ll always hold an endless affection for.
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