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The Volca Project: a Sensory Experiment in Collaborative Visualisation
journal contribution
posted on 2018-04-19, 00:52 authored by Transdisciplinary image ConferenceTransdisciplinary image Conference, Daniel BuzzoThe Volca project is a speculative photography research
project that is in parts a proposal, a sensory experiment
and also continual work in progress. Volca is an experimental
camera apparatus for recording what Flusser [7, 8]
would term ’technical images’, that is, images produced by
machines or technical processes. It’s design is to deliberately
open the discussion of what it is to be photographer,
or collaborator or even facilitator of a complex apparatus
with a discrete system at it’s core. A system that extends
beyond the physical body of the device and reaches into the
heart of our human culture of creation, consumption, reflection,
storytelling and the active shaping of our identity and
self image.
The Camera is seen as a collaborative apparatus, as the
camera has ’possibility’ encoded into it. The photographer
or ’facilitator’ of the apparatus selects one of these possibilities
in a collaborative process with the apparatus, and the
program of image production encoded within it.
The project has several separate aspects dealing with hardware,
software, interaction design and media and photographic
theory. The making, distribution, display and consumption
of these new speculative photographs is a vital
part of the investigation of what can be considered the system
of photography. A system where camera and photographer are only a small part of the philosophical whole. This
paper and the body of work it describes is aimed at a discussion
of what it is to engage with speculative design and
what the notion of speculative photography may be.