Photogrammetry and the virtual more than tools in artistic creation. Israel Tirado
The impact of technology is bursting into the artistic world to offer new forms of expression as well as providing tools for its dissemination or development.
If photography and video-art coexist in museums and galleries with painting and sculpture, with the rise of technology other formats such as virtual reality or digital printing are making their way, making new disciplines possible.
To talk to you about photogrammetry applied to art I bring you this Guest Post by the artist Israel Tirado (Seville, 1981).
In his artistic production we find the city and, very especially, the periphery as objects of investigation, in an incessant search for non-places, where he plays with the idea of the real landscape and its representation. Long before his video-creation “Irreversible” was selected for the Monographic III of cement pieces, we were able to see his sculptural pieces in different group exhibitions, not to mention the fact that we will soon be able to enjoy his first solo exhibition in Seville.
It is a pleasure to present this Guest Post by the artist Israel Tirado, in which he will talk about his creative process using new technologies as instruments as well as being part of his artistic language.
In large part, throughout these years of artistic training, encouraged by curiosity, knowledge and experimentation, I have focused on the process side of things, that is to say, on the constructive methods that give rise to or generate a work of an artistic nature. This creative experimental spirit gives importance to the journey, as on numerous occasions we come across unforeseen fortuitous circumstances that either determine the final result of a piece, a project, or they broaden it or lead us down new paths.
This personal inclination for experimenting with methods, processes and technological principles has made me drift towards artistic multidisciplinarity, as I understand the great expressive richness and the different points of view that this can give us for the same subject of our interest.
Like other current artists, I have hybridised in my artistic work, not only traditional tools or processes, but also technological ones, as a result of the boom and the impressive democratisation that we have at our disposal nowadays. Jaume Plensa and Antony Gormley himself make use of the latest industrial advances for the elaboration and design of their sculptures. Sabine Howard or Juan Manuel Miñarro hybridise in a very successful way their more traditional process of sculptural modelling with the technique of photogrammetry or 3D scanning for the production of many of their pieces. We have other artists such as Dionisio González or María Núñez, with purely virtual pieces, or Edward Burtynsky, with the use of the latest advances in drones for his photographic captures from great heights.
As a thematic focus, my artistic work is situated in the urban landscape, especially, and for the moment, in the periphery, where we use walking as an artistic practice and a means of recognition, which allows me, in turn, to reflect on its complexity, trying to go beyond its framing and explicit representation. I have focused especially on marginality, which is commonly associated with such landscapes, helping me not only to fill the gaze with information and knowledge, but also to navigate physical, political, ethical or environmental issues.
As a result, I am developing a landscape, a universe with its own language, which aims to take the viewer’s gaze – by means of the artistic work – beyond its time and space to introduce it into the sublime nature, separating it from the world to leave it without answers in that enigmatic search for the unknown.
For this personal landscape development I have spoken of walking, which is fundamental for me as an artistic practice. I rely on it to gather information, not only in the traditional notebook and graphic notes, but also in other more modern technological means such as the smartphone, the drone or the distance meter. In order to obtain different information or to go deeper into it, these devices allow me to look, measure or take notes from another point of view or supports impossible for the notebook itself. The technique of photogrammetry has become essential in my walks, as it gives me the possibility of capturing through photography the spatial or architectural volume of those areas of interest. In this case, photography acquires a new value and meaning, at the same time as I build up a photogrammetric archive that I can use for my own artistic creation.
A subsequent manipulation of the copy under virtual environments is the potential I particularly see in it, as it gives me the possibility, after a certain amount of processing, to give the works a new aesthetic value. Thus arose, for example, the work Altar (I) or the video work of the Espacios Acotados project, the result of the urban drift carried out in the Seville neighbourhood of San Juan Alto and Seville East, respectively. These photogrammetric shots subsequently allowed me to reconstruct a new landscape as a result of the sensations that the place itself gave me; a process that can remain in digital form as a work in itself or reinterpreted under pictorial, sculptural or video-creation practices.
I not only use photogrammetric photography during urban drifts, but it is also a very common practice in my studio, as it allows me to question, test and evaluate a specific object, to give it other values and meanings. Thus, the work Montaña (I) arose from a small cement sketch measuring 5x4x3 cm, with which I tried to represent the physical idea of a specific peripheral territory. We see here, for example, how scale becomes fundamental and largely determines its context and meaning.
These examples show my artistic and experimental concerns, trying to go beyond the physical frame, which, even though I understand that it is fundamental and necessary, lies in my DNA the need to delve into other paths, other formats, other ways of questioning the world. The new technological media, with their possibilities, offer me this. The 21st century, with its new forms of communication, with its new media, with its technology, is relegating us – little by little – to another spatial, simultaneous, parallel plane. We can almost measure this intangible but existing space if we think, for example, of the time we spend every day in front of our smartphone. My artistic work wants to situate itself on this border between the tangible and the virtual. Like Friedrich’s The Walker on a Sea of Clouds, the virtual gives me a certain feeling of sublimity, which frightens, but also attracts.