“Hyperobject: Homeland” presented by Dawson
Symposium:
Session Title:
- Locative Media and Mapping
Presentation Title:
- Hyperobject: Homeland
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
This paper describes the conceptual underpinning and workflow of a haptic drawing hologram project, Hyperobject: Homeland, which proposes that one’s homeland is emergent … that it comes into existence as it is needed.
The primary context of this project is the extensive use of holographic maps in tactical battle visualisation for Homeland Security. So far about 12,000 synthetic holographic images combining army- classified and unclassified- along with open-source data, photographs, and light detection and ranging LIDAR imagery, have been made for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Small groups of soldiers cluster around these monochrome green holograms on a horizontal rotating turntable with a specially designed, ruggedised grasshopper lighting stand for situational awareness. The existence of these holograms foreshadows the destruction of the places they depict and also the people that they do not.
The Hyperobject: Homeland project generates a homeland of The Common through holograms of drawings of multitudes of human lifelines, each one the subjective index of the existence of one human life. These holograms are made by using Holoshop software, currently underdevelopment by the author, in conjunction with the Phantom Premium 1.5 haptic interface, to haptically feel and trace in 3D, a sensitively modulated line along the lifeline terrain of each palm. This metaphorical touching of the life through the deferred tactile gesture inflects the mark with a sense of care. The hue, saturation and width of marks are modulated by the velocity and directional parameters of the gesture. By making different tracing along the same lifeline, one for every year of life, spatial structures, some enclosed like shells and other opening as nests are created. These structures are positioned in relation to each other in the virtual 3D space according to their Hapticity – fastening, contact and combination.
