The point cloud aesthetic: Defining a new visual language in media art

Abstract

The development of remote sensing technologies, such as Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) and photogrammetry, accompanied by the exponential growth of easy-to-use 3D scanning applications and associated post-processing software, have made point cloud datasets accessible to a widening range of artists, designers and creative technologists. Does this growing interest and increased accessibility indicate the emergence of a new digital art medium? This article offers an analysis of artworks that help define this point cloud aesthetic as a distinctive visual language while contextually situating these contemporary artworks. After a brief introduction to key technologies in scientific and technical terms, we outline the medium’s natural progression, from its use as a recording medium to an expressive one. We briefly address the visual similarity that point cloud-derived imagery has to pointillism, noting the shared reliance upon the science of optics to inform both techniques. An aesthetic analysis of selected artworks follows, focusing upon four key elements proposed to distinguish the artwork’s visual language: (1) subject matter (i.e. derived from a scanned 3D object or environment of the real world), (2) transparency (i.e. the dissolution of objects and environments into data structures), (3) ambiguity (i.e. technical artefacts, ‘glitches’ or ‘mistakes’ generated by the scanning process itself) and finally (4) algorithmic shaping (i.e. data manipulated into expressive or representational forms as moving image, generative visualization, virtual reality [VR]). Through an artist-led exploration of both the technical process and visual systems generated by scanning technologies, this article argues that by using a specific aesthetic, point cloud artworks challenge our way of ‘looking at’ artworks that use scanning technologies and in the process, indicate a new direction for this digital medium.