Forensic Architecture will inaugurate Ground Truth: The al-Araqib Museum of Struggle. This transitory museum is a collaboration with the unrecognized Bedouin village of al-Araqib and dedicated to the ongoing struggle for their ancestral land in the Naqab Desert, Israel. A collaborative mapping involves aerial photography from kites (with Public Lab) and historical research (with the NGO Zochrot). With the local families we have produced a body of evidence that assembles historical reading of the silver salt grains of the 1945 RAF aerial images of the area, through the pixel grids of contemporary satellites to the floating point-cloud particles of our low flying kite surveys.

Workshop:
Civic Science and the View from Above
1 November 2017
Free admission (RSVP), max. 20 participants
This workshop on civic-led aerial imaging will begin with a short introduction, focusing on Public Lab’s community science workflow, the balloon/kite mapping toolkit and some examples of research and practical work undertaken with the DIY aerial photography in Israel and the US. It will then be followed by a workshop for creating aerial mapping (depending on weather), and photogrammetry based 3D modelling using images captured with the kites.

Workshop Timeline
10:00-12:00

Meeting at REAKTOR, introductory presentations
Building rigs and equipment
Photographing with kites/balloons

13:00-16:00

Assess quality and select images for processing
Photogrammetry workflow
Basic geo-referencing (using existing georeferenced image from camera + manual)

Seminar:
Granular Realism: New activist possibilities within the changing spatial condition of photography
1 November 2017
Free admission (RSVP)
Over the last decade, emerging forms of digital and computational imaging using depth registering capabilities have forged a new condition in photography – one in which the photographic functions not as a flat image to be viewed, but as a 3D environment to be navigated. Currently, this understanding (manifestation) of photography as environment is most advanced in point-cloud data objects. The point-cloud brings together dry data and an other-worldliness, a translucency and hyperreality that we may call (refer to as) granular realism.
3D photo imaging in its various technological forms has permeated the fields of archaeology, architecture, civil engineering, and municipal and state planning as well as agricultural, geological and resource-driven industries. Restructuring them from the inside, it simultaneously opens up new spaces for intervention and resistance.
In this seminar, we will consider the ways in which practitioners, researchers and activists have been repurposing such imaging tools in order to open up spaces for civic participation.
We would like to extend a call to practitioners and researchers involved with such investigations to prepare five-minute presentations on their projects and join the discussion.

Moderator: Noit Banai

Participants: Ariel Caine (FA), Aziz al-Turi (Bedouin activist), and invited guests from open call.