Wake Vortex: Orthogonal Scanning of Digital Artefacts

ISEA 2017

Wake Vortex is an ongoing series of generative videos and images built around the idea that digital raster image can be treated as a threedimensional object and viewed not just frontally but also from any other side. This process can be understood as line-scanning of digital imagery. Scanned orthogonally from the side, the image is perceived as a sequence of one-pixel wide lines, while orthogonal scanning of a stacked set of video frames creates a new sequence of images which can be animated, and certain combinations of source materials and scanning sides/directions produce interesting results. Dimensional collapse in orthogonal scanning reveals new formal values and facilitates layered observation.

While visually estranged, the generated imagery retains the suggestiveness of the original so the viewer intuitively regards it analytically. Wake Vortex employs (re)creativity in taking as source material the artworks and cultural artefacts which were themselves developed through various modes of innovative combinatorics. In aviation and seamanship, wake vortex is an unpredictable, often dangerous turbulent trail generated by the craft’s motion. In this project, it points to the complexity of the imperceptible or unregistered default values of an artwork or cultural artefact, to their unforeseen expressive, cognitive, ethical, relational and political consequences.