麻豆传媒

THIS ethereal image reveals a surreal, not-quite human view of the Argenti猫re Glacier in the Chamonix. Since 2014, the artist Dan Holdsworth has been making surveys of the region, sometimes employing helicopters and drones to capture hundreds of images of the ice sheet. These have now been digitally composited into one large moving image. The result is a shifting landscape of unprecedented topographic detail. Projected on two facing walls at the new Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art in Sunderland, UK, the animation transforms photographic stills into a composite 鈥減oint-cloud鈥�. Using new experimental approaches to photogrammetry, the coordinates were extracted from the original surveyed images, generating a dataset of millions of precisely mapped spatial points. Working closely with geomorphologist Mark Allan, these technologies were harnessed to achieve the effect, which required software more commonly used by climate scientists and the military.

For 20 years, Holdsworth worked mostly with large-format film cameras, using long exposures to capture nature鈥檚 hidden processes. His art began to use data around 2012, and he describes his current series, Continuous Topography, as a sort of 鈥渇uture archaeology鈥�, preserving in data and photographic imagery an icy world that is disappearing, even as it is being recorded. A five-year study begun in 2004 showed that the Argenti猫re听glacier retreated 1.5 metres annually between 2004 and 2009, and lost over 10 metres in thickness.

Photographer
Dan Holdsworth, Continuous Topography (still), 2018

听