Two artists have stripped Dublin bare.
Artists Filip Berte and Cliona Harmey collaborated to erase the hand of man from upon the land that is Dublin’s Phoenix park along with a large swath of greater Dublin.
https://filipberte.com/
https://www.clionaharmey.info/
They succeeded in a most graphic sense.
The fiendish duo accomplished this feat this using a technology known as LiDAR – Light Detection and Ranging – combined with imagery and data from Ireland’s Ordinance Survey. Using lasers, LiDAR produces high definition 3-D images of landscapes.
Berte and Harmey took an aerial LiDAR image of an area of Dublin and erased all man-made objects. Then they wantonly did the same for any and all vegetation.
Harmey, an artist and lecturer at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, and Berte, a Ghent-based visual artist trained as an architect, did more things to the image.
These things included dismembering it into a series of perfect squares and then mounting those images on something rigid and square, possibly made from plastic.
The artists call the resulting work BMd1, Berte
admitted.
https://www.nulpuntwolk.nu/bma/
BMd1 was available for public inspection 13 Oct. to 15 Oct, 2022 in a pop-up installation in the rotunda of the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin.
BMd1 is part of Berte and Harmey’s larger concept Nul Punt Wolk (Null Point One) https://www.nulpuntwolk.nu/ that combines fragments of aerial images, mapping and landscapes.
https://www.nulpuntwolk.nu/about/
Nul Punt Wolk aims to present these aerial images in a format that could create discussions about how things might be done differently.
BMd1 reveals outlines and shapes, the underlying topography of an urban landscape, in stark shades of gray. Closer inspection of the squares show how LiDAR images are composed of tiny rectangles that when viewed from a distance blend into something softer.
During the installation the artists willingly made themselves available for interrogation.
Both artists revealed a collaboration took place during the Covid 19 lockdown. Safe distancing was maintained throughout the project, the artists claim.
Further, Berte and Harmey said they deliberately used CAD software and 3-D printing to make clever plastic hardware that incorporates wooden dowels as a way to display BMd1’s component squares.
Not content to openly display BMd1, Berte and Harmey brought along another work, the four-screen Glossa. Glossa uses small computers to display words.
Berte and Harmey, armed with BMd, are known to be headed in the direction of Galway.
https://www.tulca.ie/programme-2022?utm_source=pocket_mylist
Be on the lookout. It is understood BMd1 will appear 4-20 November, 2022, in Galway at the TULCA Festival of Visual Arts located in Gallery 1 Hynes Building, St Augustine Street, Galway, Ireland
Map:
https://goo.gl/maps/iwB4XXKkmJWsZVkPA
Berte & Harmey will participate in an artists’ talk at TULCA on Saturday, 5 Nov., 2022
https://www.tulca.ie/berte-and-harmey