GROUND TRUTH

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. 

Founded in 2010 Forensic Architecture (FA) is a group that has developed a new practice for undertaking investigations into political controversies and human rights abuses. This practice uses architecture as an optical device to generate evidence, and cross references it with a variety of sources, such as new media, remote sensing, material analysis, witness testimony, and crowd-sourcing. Bringing together architectural, artistic and media research, FA constitutes a radical formulation of media art in the 21st century. Its work seeks to reverse the direction of the forensic gaze and to turn it back on those very state agencies — the police, military, or secret services — that otherwise use forensics (surveillance, tracking, and pattern analysis) to govern or control populations. 

(Text provided by The Future of Demonstration)

Contributors
Forensic Architecture
Aziz al-Turi (Bedouin Activist)
Ariel Caine (Project Coordinator & Researcher)
Eyal Weizman (Principle Investigator)   

Collaborators: Zochrot (Debbie Farber & Umar al-Ghubari), Nuri al-Uqbi, Aziz al-Turi, Salim al-Turi, Sheikh Sayakh al-Turi/ Al Araqib, PublicLab.

Collaborating Organisations: Zochrot, Public Lab, ActiveStills, Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality (NCF), Associations of Unrecognised Villages, The Law office of Michael Sfard. Princeton University Conflict Shoreline Course, Forensic Architecture MA (MAFA) at Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths

Film/Live-broadcast
Manu Luksch

Opening: 31 Oktober 2017
Open Doors/Bar: 6 pm
Performance: 8 pm

Mukul (Sound Tapestries)
Get together & drinks

pre-sale: 10 € | 6 €
box office: 12 € | 8 €

festivalpass: 35 € | 25 €
box office: 45 € | 30 €

Workshop & Seminar: 1 November 2017, 6 pm, admission free.
RSVP at contact@theoriesinmind.net

Workshop: Civic Science and the View from Above

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 modeling using images captured with the kites. 

1 November 2017
AM 10:00 - 12:00
PM 13:00 - 16:00 

Workshop Timeline AM

• Meeting at Reaktor, Introduction presentations
• building rigs and equipment
• photographing with kites/ballon outside - let’s hope for some sun… We will have a set of images in case weather is bad.

PM

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

 What should participants bring/install

• Laptops (mac/pc)
• install photogrammetry software (photoscan pro trial - will not allow to save but does allow full functionality otherwise)
• Install meshlab + cloudcompare
 

Seminar: Granular Realism: New activist possibilities within the changing spatial condition of photography
1 November 2017, PM 18:00

Moderator:      Noit Banai
Participants:   Ariel Caine, FA
                      Aziz al-Turi, Bedouin Activist
                      and invited guests from an open call

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.

http://thefutureofdemonstration.net/program.html

al-Araqib 1945/2017 (composite of Royal Air Force aerial photograph & ‘Community Satellite’ Point-clouds).
Image: Ariel Caine / Forensic Architecture  / Aziz al-Turi / Nuri al-Uqbi / Debby Ferber: Zochrot / Hagit Keysar: PublicLab
Trailer: Manu Luksch