Grades of Visibility: Human Body Questions Digital Representation

Abstract

This paper explores the hypothesis that visual representation of space through the use of visual arts, particularly short films, can be used as a digital ethnographic technique (Leonie Sandercock, Changing the Lens: Film as Action Research and Therapeutic Planning, 2014) to be integrated into the practice of spatial planning.

Surfing in the era of digitalisation, artificial intelligence and remote working, on-site human perception of place tends to vanish as a secondary aspect. Spatial planning and geospatial data eventually refer to different grades of visibility: what is visually represented and how that place is perceived throughout the body in time and space, sounding and points of view.

Contemporary dancer and choreographer Virgilio Sieni highlights the urge for the human body to rediscover itself as the very first space of inhabitation (Virgilio Sieni, Progettare Scalzi, 2021). Already in the past century, Italian novelist Italo Calvino underlined the multiplicity of different perceptions that human beings experience in time and space (Italo Calvino, Ipotesi per la descrizione di un paesaggio, 1995). Today, Danish visual artist Olafur Eliasson centres his work around the concept of perceptive representation. Starting from these assumptions, how can we represent space? How can we visualise something that is not objective and yet represents something that involves everyone?

Working in the context of digital twins and geospatial data, the current academic research aims to investigate the fragilities of these digital models where human presence is quite evanescent. Real perception eventually differs from what is digitally represented. Within this frame, the current study aims to explore visual arts, namely short films and documentaries, as powerful tools to enhance the practice of spatial planning and provide a parallel, although complementary, methodological tool.