In March 2017, Daniele Profeta was invited to teach a workshop at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow. There, he joined an expedition along the Arctic Coast with renowned speculative architect Liam Young and his students in the “New Normal” program at Strelka, who were studying the effect of humans on the planet.
The group visited different nodes of the logistical infrastructure that services the global shipping industry in the Arctic region, including dry ports, ice breakers and rail terminals. They used Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), a remote sensing technology that uses light pulses to measure and three dimensionally map vast territories with precision. Across the Arctic, LiDAR is used to establish politics, protocols and economies of autonomous distribution.
Profeta, assistant professor in the School of Architecture, explores the potential of digital mapping as a practice of world building. Over the past two years, he has built upon the research collected on that trip and evolved it into “ARCTIC LiDAR,” an immersive 360-degree video installation exploring the quickly expanding logistic landscape of the Arctic coast.
It will be one of 38 interactive exhibits at ACCelerate: The ACC Smithsonian Creativity and Innovation Festival, which will be held April 5-7 at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. Virginia Tech’s Institute for Creativity, Arts and Technology and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation will host the festival.
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Image via Pixabay.