Volumetric Video: Creative Opportunities of Working With an Emerging Screen Technology

Abstract

In this paper we develop a metaphor from unrefined future screen technologies to explore participation and representation of skater culture within the wider urban environment. Our practice research in volumetric lidar video was unusual in that worked in an ad hoc observational documentary situation rather than a controlled studio recording scenario. We filmed skaters in the exploration of meaning within the aesthetic of the technology to contribute to exploration and evaluation of new ways of seeing and experiencing skating. We reflect on how working with technologies in their emerging states produces glitches and limitations that reveal the means of production, and therefore provide unique affordances for creative praxis.  We find insight from the becoming of technologies to reflect on futurity in screen practices.

We used low resolution motion lidar recording that produced images with unusual qualities we could use in the creative work. Firstly, the lidar was short sighted, producing no data beyond four or five meters. Secondly the image was broken up due to glitches and inconsistent lidar reflections. The resultant image quality enabled production of moving image that emphasised movement for the viewer over surface detail.  The image becomes ghost like, recording the passing of time as movement rather than the recalling of it. The early stages of a technology before it becomes concretised or perfected can provide opportunities for artists to explore traces of the recording event in the image produced.

Before media forms become stabilised through widespread development, they exist in a liminal state where their affordances—defined by Gibson (1979:27) as perceived action possibilities—remain fluid and open to reinterpretation. Simondon (2017:40) finds technologies at this early stage are in an abstract phase, wherein multiple functionalities overlap yet remain unrefined. Within this pre-concretised phase, Menkman (201:26) contends that glitches reveal the underlying code by disrupting normative perceptions, offering a heightened awareness of the medium’s specific capacities. This defamiliarisation resonates with Bolter and Grusin’s (1999:21) notion of remediation, in which new technologies reshape older media, highlighting overlooked affordances before standardisation occurs. By foregrounding technological limitations and error, these practices interrogate normalisation processes, critiquing the closure of possibilities as software and hardware become optimised for mass adoption (Chun, 2016:45). Hence, exploring media at this pre-concretised stage, through glitch and related methodologies, uncovers emergent affordances that before the may be lost in the drive toward fully concretised systems.

In the discussion we highlight the possibilities of future screens technologies in reference to underrepresented skating subcultures and technologies in the state of becoming. For Muñoz (2009:1), futurity denotes the horizon of the ‘not-yet-here'—a space of possibility exceeding present normative frameworks. Once concretised the qualities of modes of sensing and display can become transparent, through ubiquity. We engaged in creative inquiry exploring how skater filmmaking may contribute to the formation of nascent volumetric video practice. As Thompson and Byrne (2022) state future making requires the creation of actionable strategies and active participation. We propose that creating a new form of interaction and representation requires both open enough technologies and active participation from the community of interest.