Ontic Glow
by Lisa Di Donato
portfolio shortlisted call 'URBANAUTICA INSTITUTE AWARDS 2020', 2020
Category: Representations of Space, Architecture, and Conflicts
Ontic Glow combines the old mass-media technology of tintypes with new mass-media imagery collected on digital "walks" through industrial sites and remote natural spaces generated by and found in Google Earth’s 3D ground view. Reproduced in the tangible materiality of tintypes, the irregularities inherent in physical chemistry and the handmade photograph interact with the accidents found in the digital digestion and projection of space. These images raise and blur the distinction between the indexical photographic reproduction of reality, its generation of images, and the use of those images to formulate new images and models of a different reality. These direct-positive documents are artifacts from an intangible world, imbued with a naive nostalgia for the future that really, no one has anymore.