Do-It-Yourself Aerial Photography
15 June 2019 10:00 - 17:00
A practical two day workshop on building camera rigs, capturing aerial imagery using kites and balloons, as well as processing those images to create geo-rectified aerial photographs.
The technique for producing DIY aerial photography with balloons or kites was developed by Public Lab (publiclab.org), an open-source community that develops tools and methods for community-based environmental investigations. It is based on a camera rig made from a reused plastic bottle, equipped with a simple digital camera that is pointed vertically to the ground and tethered to the kite/balloon string.
This technique takes part in a broader practice and discourse termed "civic science" or "community science" that concerns the democratization of technoscientific tools and methods through the development of participatory technologies and collaborative practices between scientists and citizens, and citizens and themselves. Its first use traces back to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, where it was (and still is) used for creating evidence of the environmental hazards caused by extractive petrochemical industries. Since the oil spill, the development of the toolkit revealed a network of online and on-the-ground actions, people, issues and experiments who contributed to its dissemination and application in the US and other places around the world.
In this workshop we will build a camera rig using simple materials, get to know the different variations of the tool, and capture aerial imagery in the area of the New Institute in Rotterdam. Using Public Lab's open-source software (mapknitter.org) we will stitch the aerial images into a geo-rectified aerial photograph that can be used for research, activism, and other various purposes.
Workshop
In this two day workshop we will build a camera rig using simple materials, get to know the different variations of the tool, and capture aerial imagery in the area of Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. Using Public Lab's open-source software we will stitch the aerial images into a geo-rectified aerial photograph that can be used for research, activism, and other various purposes.
Architecture and Investigative Journalism series
This two day workshop is part of a lecture and workshop series on architecture and investigative journalism, curated by Alison Killing together with Het Nieuwe Instituut. The program gives an overview of the current state of this emerging field through a series of talks by leading practitioners; develops practical skills through in-depth workshops; and builds professional links between architects and journalists to enable future collaborations.
Architectural and spatial analysis tools have been critical in a series of recent groundbreaking investigative journalism projects: from the New York Times investigation into last year's mass shooting in Las Vegas, to Bellingcat's investigation into who was responsible for the shooting down of the MH17 flight over Ukraine, to Forensic Architecture and Forensic Oceanography's work on search and rescue for migrants in the southern Mediterranean. These tools enable investigations to be carried out that would not have been possible in the past. While Architecture could be an asset to journalism, two circumstances stand in the way of these approaches being adopted more widely - the two professional groups often don't interact, and there is a (relatively small) skill gap that needs to be bridged. This series addresses both conditions.
The architecture, investigative journalism and documentary series will explore how an architect's skills (design, ability to think in three dimensions, technical drawing and 3d modelling, visual representation and analysis) can be used to support journalistic and documentary practice - to investigate and tell stories that are in the public interest. The series, starting in spring 2019, will cover the range of activities involved in investigating and communicating a story, from gathering evidence, to its processing, analysis and communication. For each event, a world-class practitioner will be invited to give an evening lecture, followed by a hands-on workshop to share tools and methods with students and professionals in relevant fields - architects, digital designers, journalists and documentary makers, among others.
This project is supported by the Creative Industries Fund NL
Hagit Keysar
Hagit Keysar lives and works in Jersualem and Berlin, her research is practice-based and brings together visual work, activism and critical theory. In her PhD thesis she critically examined the political potential of do-it-yourself and open-source tools practices in situations of civic inequalities and human rights violations. She is currently a Postdoc fellow of the Minerva Stiftung in Berlin, exploring emergent uses of small-scale drones by indigenous and grassroots human rights activists.Case studies
On 13/06/2019 19:30 Hagit Keysar will give a talk at Het Nieuwe Instituut. The talk will focus on two case studies in Lebanon and Israel/Palestine that demonstrate the use of DIY aerial photography as visual testimony for articulating and asserting rights in struggles over land, space and place.
Pablo Rey Mazón
Pablo Rey Mazón works in the intersection of academy, art and activism. His work is related to the opening, analysis and visualization of complex data from a critical approach, covering a diversity of topics such as corruption, waste, touristification or school segregation using collaborative research and free software as tools. He develops his activity in Montera34 and Basurama collectives, of which he is co-founder and participates in other initiatives such as: Publiclab, a open-source community about citizen DIY science where he learnt kite mapping; WIEGO, supporting waste picker networks; or Wikitoki. He lives, in Bilbao, Spain.
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