# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In November, Studio Above & Below launched their first artwork on Sedition; Semi-Diurnal Spaces (Concept Sketch)stemming from their project Semi-Diurnal Spaces which was originally created together with sound artist Einar Fehrholz as part of the immersive residency at CultVR in Cardiff in the UK. We talked with the co-founders of Above & Studio, Daria Jelonek and Perry-James Sugden about the foundation of their collaborative practice, the concept of Semi-Diurnal Spaces and their projects which sit at the intersection of technology design, arts and science. Watch the short video interview or scroll down to read the interview and learn more.

"We think digital tools can inform, create awareness, provoke conversations and new connections and regulate empathy towards our environment, nature and society. In our artistic practice, we aim to use digital tools to augment overlooked or invisible elements in our environment, such as air pollution or soil quality changes - we think technology can help to extend our capacity of seeing and sensing." - Studio Above & Below
Dear Daria & Perry-James, could you tell us how you initially joined your forces and established Studio Above & Below? How did your paths cross?
Studio Above & Below: We both studied at the Royal College of Art. After graduating in 2018 we both had the desire to carry on working at the intersection of art, design and technology - founding our own studio practice. Our common interest of experimenting and working with cutting edge technologies, questioning their potential for society outside of commercialisation and its impact on our world have been leading motifs since day one. Interested in computational systems and code, we are interested in working with data, which we see as an interface of digital and physical materiality.
How do you think digital tools can help society to create positive changes in relation to our environment, nature, and society? And what are the things you view as the possible challenges in the digital world?
Studio Above & Below: We think digital tools can inform, create awareness, provoke conversations and new connections and regulate empathy towards our environment, nature and society. In our artistic practice, we aim to use digital tools to augment overlooked or invisible elements in our environment, such as air pollution or soil quality changes - we think technology can help to extend our capacity of seeing and sensing.

The biggest challenge that we see right now is the ecological footprint of digital tools, their use for production and distribution. We wish to not only reflect on our own projects, however we are also interested in creating future projects around this in order to generate and share knowledge, including green technologies and power consumption of digital art projects.

, Einar Fehrholz and Studio Above & Below, 2020/2021
Most of your works revolve around the natural world and its habitats. Specifically, Aquateque, a short film and multimedia installation that explores the river through a variety of new media technologies such as AI tools. What were the main ideas behind this work?
Studio Above & Below: is a shortfilm and Mixed Reality installation which uses visual AI tools and a number of 3D software tools. With the project we navigated a 200km river in Germany called 'Ruhr' through the lens of computer vision in order to explore the landscape in collaboration with machines. With the project we have been interested in exploring the term digital 'material ecology', originally coined by Neri Oxman. The process of Aquateque included to build a material dataset made of thousands of images and sounds which have been taken of the river, to process through two artificial neural networks to dream by working together (or against each other) and create new visual narratives.
Who or what has inspired you recently? Could you name some of the artists/writers or philosophers that made an impact on your practice.
The project aims to get the audience to think about how we will collectively work with machines and ecology in the future within the art, design and technology field. We wish to inspire and push how digital material ecologies and modelling of objects could be created and designed using popular artificial neural networks (AI tools).

We hope that viewers take away that machine-human-nature collaborations can be very enriching, and unexpected outcomes from software are as valuable as curated content, stretching our understanding of autonomous and non-autonomous systems in this context.
Semi-Diurnal Spaces is a site-specific immersive installation in form of a full dome which makes use of audio-visual materials such as local tidal and atmospheric data, collected from coastal sites of South Wales. Could you tell us a bit on how you came up with this project? How is Semi-Diurnal Spaces(Concept sketch), that is recently launcehdon Sedition, connected with the project?
Studio Above & Below: The book and thinking behind Ways of Being by James Bridle has recently inspired us. With this book, and also in his general philosophical studies, he claims for new forms and new emergent ways of being and relating to our surrounding. The book explores the intelligence of different animals and plant species.
As a part of this year's London Design Festival, you were one of the speakers at the talk 'Design Responsibly: Designing a Better Future in Metaverse'? What are some of the key give-aways you'd like to share?
With an upcoming project, we are currently looking into human and non-human communication in the form of bioacoustics. We are interested in researching how communication technologies have purposely been built with a human centric approach, however we question what happens if we'd design those technologies to involve, listen, communicate and exchange signal with other intelligent species, other than humans. We will be using different CGI and AI tools and critical thinking to approach this topic.

Studio Above & Below: Seeing it as an interface between the digital abstracted data and the natural outside world, Semi-Diurnal Spaces was originally created together with sound artist Einar Fehrholz as part of the immersive residency at CultVR in Cardiff in the UK. We were given a large scale dome space with multiple projectors and surround sound system to create an artistic experience. We are often interested to work with local material and data, hence we decided to work with the local surrounding and therefore explore the coastline of South Wales and how a enormous water body, such as the ocean, is being monitored through different technologies.

We investigated into the physical and digital locations how we have found digital data points that monitor the real time tidal data of the tides going in and out twice a day, we visited those data points and corrected sounds from the different locations and weather conditions. Then, we created a digital generative system which is inspired by different wave patterns in a non-linear way. This resulted in the immersive installation which takes real time tidal and weather data, such as humidity, wind, temperature to influence a particle system which appears more harmonic or chaotic during different times. We have been interested to create a living sculpture with it, so people see their biophysical water body in a different way.

The piece we are selling on Sedition is the original concept sketch of this project, showing the two half spheres representing the hemispheres of our planet, ultimately being represented in the large scale dome projection. A digital particle system made in 3d software resulting in a CGI piece, can be purchased by a large audience to think about if digital particles surpass physical.

Studio Above & Below: Our main takeaway is: in order to design a better future or present of the metaverse, we should not thrive to replicate the physical world, but more use the digital and virtual world building process that we are currently going through to incorporate new solutions, new thinking and new productions in those spaces.

What if we create a 'natureverse' in the current idea of a metaverse in which we support more environmental projects, instead of commercialising assets and spaces?

What if diverse identities are a must in the metaverse to change our vision in the physical world?

What if the digital building and programming tools, which are necessary for this world building process, are naturally being taught to school children - the next generation builders?
What are your thoughts on the future of art in the digital landscape? How do you think about the impact of NFTs on the digital world and the public?
We think critical design as an extremely important subject for designing a responsible future, in the bio-physical and virtual world. As artists and technologists we are extremely interested in pushing , which try not to replicate the physical words 1:1, but more to create unusual experiences.

We are especially interested in how material ecologies could be formed in those digital spaces to link to the living outside world, informing and influencing them in real time.

Personally, we are especially interested in how material ecologies could be formed in those digital spaces, so that the living outside world can inform and influence the virtual world in a balanced and healthy way.

Daria Jelonek at the talk 'Design Responsibly: Designing a Better Future in Metaverse', London Design Festival 22

Studio Above & Below: We strongly believe that artists who work with technologies, such as creating digital art, constantly enlarge the probability of how culture, technology, society and the environment cooperate with each other. Therefore, we think it is important to stress that the future of art will impact the wider culture and nature we will be surrounded and living in.

We think that digital art has a large platform in the future to thrive even more to interfere with other sectors of society and businesses. The phenomenon of the NFT boom in 2021 and 2022 is an example for this, however we also think digital art will fill more public and private, indoor and outdoor spaces. Other industries, such as science, education and branding will increasingly use digital art to bring knowledge through culture into the public space. We think collaboration between artists and non-artists is extremely important.

NFTs and the mechanism of smart contracts have the power to fundamentally change the way we produce art as artists and collect art as collectors. The transparency of tracking purchases and re-sales are extremely attractive for artists - we think this together with the ambition of creating art for this still unknown space is exciting and will continue to inspire artists across the globe.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We talked with the co-founders of Studio Above & Below; Daria Jelonek and Perry-James Sugden, about the foundation of their collaborative practice, the concept of Semi-Diurnal Spaces and their projects which sit at the intersection of technology design, arts and science.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Commissioned for Collusion 2019
The Doomsday Blockchain is a totem-style memorial to the 21st century that broadcasts excavated texts hidden within the blocks making up the Bitcoin blockchain. Standing at an imposing four metres high, the totem's eight speakers broadcast the mined texts, which are sorted by theme and rendered electronically into speech.
These texts embedded in the blockchain by people around the world include marriage vows, memorials to the dead, expressions of faith, advertisements, and more. Together they create a cacophonous representation of contemporary life through a mysterious new medium - much as the Domesday Book resulted in a totem to its time via the medium of a census.

To create Doomsday Blockchain, Collusion supported DDBC through a 12-month programme of research and development, including connecting them with key partners. The piece builds on the work of Messages from the Mines, an open source project that excavates and archives custom messages permanently embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain.

Artists

Doomsday Blockchain is a collective of artists - James Stevens, Daniela Boraschi, Christian Nold, and Alexei Blinov - who have come together to explore the phenomenon of the blockchain as an emerging technology that could profoundly affect how resources are transacted, shared, or recorded.

Partners

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
David Russell - The Fusion Works (https://www.thefusionworks.com)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Doomsday Blockchain by DDBC // Collusion 2019

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A totem-style memorial to the 21st century that broadcasts excavated texts hidden within the blocks making up the Bitcoin blockchain.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
David Russell - The Fusion Works (https://www.thefusionworks.com)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Datacosm by Jo Lawrence // Collusion 2019

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Artificial intelligence and music drive Jo Lawrence's large-scale animated film installation Datacosm . As a live pianist plays the piano in front of a movie screen, an AI program called The Aficionado identifies the genre of each piece - baroque, classical, ragtime, or jazz - selecting corresponding film footage from a pool of animated sequences to be played in layered composites.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Wisbech: Made in Minecraft is now live!

As part of our in_collusion 2016-19 project, we commissioned international virtual builders Blockworks to recreate a section of the town of Wisbech - in Minecraft! This amazing hand-built virtual world is now available for you to explore. To access the map, you will need to use Minecraft Java Edition 1.12.2. Download from: https://github.com/collusion-org-uk/minecraft-wisbech
Wisbech: Made in Minecraft sets out to demonstrate some of the creative possibilities of working in a virtual town. Animation artist and filmmaker Bunny Schendler worked with us to devise and produce a film titled Wisbech 2019: Made in Minecraft , set entirely in Wisbech Minecraft. It includes interviews with local people, capturing in their own voices thoughts about the town and ideas for the future, offering a refreshingly different point of view.

We also had the invaluable input of leading Minecraft artist and innovator Adam Clarke - aka Minecraft YouTuber Wizard Keen. Adam captured all of the Minecraft action for the film and led a live-streamed build on a number of specially designated Wisbech plots - including the river, the Gap in the High Street, and the Castle - as part of our launch event.

To help us investigate further the creative potential of Minecraft Wisbech, we've engaged with local organisations Wisbech Projects CIC and VAR Club , as well as the Penelope Club (creative women in business), the Wisbech Heritage Forum, pupils from the Thomas Clarkson Academy, and Wisbech Library. Together we've explored Minecraft Wisbech as a game space for cooperative play and problem solving, a fun tool for exploration and discovery, a place for recording remarkable facts about Wisbech's heritage, and as a way of capturing people's proudest moments and achievements.

Artists

Bunny Schendler is a London-born animator and filmmaker whose work includes the BAFTA-nominated Channel Four commissioned short The World of Interiors, Candy Guard's first Channel Four series Pond Life, and Adam B, a documentary about avant-garde musician Adam Bohman.

Adam is a leading Minecraft artist and digital producer. He uses Minecraft, games, traditional art, and technology to inspire and entertain, working globally with institutions, museums, schools, and companies. His work includes collaborations with Tate Britain, The Space, Guardian Newspapers, United for Wildlife, Disney, and many more.

Associates

Partners

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
David Russell - The Fusion Works (https://www.thefusionworks.com)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Wisbech: Made in Minecraft // Collusion 2019

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We worked with artists, creative technologists, film makers, and the people of Wisbech to build Wisbech in Minecraft and make a short film about the town.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Real Time Commission 2015
Artist Mark Farid's Data Shadow aimed to encourage the public to question the privacy we sacrifice by sharing our personal data. Just what are we agreeing to share? Participants entered, one at a time, the 8 x 2m shipping container that contained the piece. During their journey through the container, each participant came face-to-face with their own personal data shadow. The installation was presented in central Cambridge from 26 October - 1 November 2015.
Data Shadow challenged the public to question the privacy they sacrifice by using an internet-connected mobile phone and apps, cloud storage services and social media. Just what are you agreeing to share? View our film and the Anglia TV coverage.

Despite average citizens' increasing understanding of the currency of personal information shared with companies such as Apple and Google via apps and on social media, our use of them increases daily. As our data shadow continues to grow and evolve, what happens when people are individually confronted by their seemingly random personal and private information?

Whether we are aware of it or not, we treat our phones as we would treat a human. We set the background to personal images, we customise their cases to our liking, we have conversations with them through programmes like Siri, and find answers to every passing quandary. We use them for work and for socialising. Unlike a personal computer, it never leaves our side. Phones are a link to family, friends and foes, and they've become an extension of ourselves.

Our mobile phones go with us everywhere, and when they aren't within arm's reach, we're lost until we find them. We can search for people on the internet and learn a lot about them very easily. Through Google, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook we can quickly ascertain many elements of a person's character - and our phones can likewise tell us a lot about ourselves.

We are aware, to varying degrees, that our information is not private. The amount of information and how intrusive this information is raises questions over the level of security over our data and becomes a pressing matter as we enter an age where the digital is starting to supersede the physical, and further cries from the government to increase surveillance continue. Data flows all around us from our phones all the time, each phone sending out on average 350,000 messages a day.
Commissioned by Collusion in partnership with The Technology Partnership, the University of Cambridge and Arts Council England.
Do you still have nothing to hide when you're faced with your own personal information?

Mark Farid was awarded Collusion's Real Time Commission in June 2015 following an international open call for submissions.

Artists

Mark is a conceptual artist who examines the formation of the projected self, and how our constructed identity is shaped by societal expectations. He graduated from Kingston University, London, with a first class degree in fine art, 2014, and has since participated in group and solo exhibitions in London, Paris, Frankfurt and Abu Dhabi. At 23 years old, Mark hit the headlines (Nov 2014) when he announced that he planned to spend 28 days in virtual reality, immersing himself in someone else's life - even eating the food they ate.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
David Russell - The Fusion Works (https://www.thefusionworks.com)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Data Shadow by Mark Farid // Collusion 2015

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Data Shadow aimed to encourage the public to question the privacy we sacrifice by sharing our personal data. Just what are we agreeing to share?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Find out what is going on with the QGIS project and its community.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
You are either using a browser that does not support JavaScript, or you have disabled JavaScript.

OpenStreetMap uses JavaScript for its slippy map.

https://openstreetmap.org/copyright

https://openstreetmap.org

Copyright OpenStreetMap and contributors, under an open license

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
OpenStreetMap is a map of the world, created by people like you and free to use under an open license.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Mapbox | Maps, Navigation, Search, and Data

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
APIs and SDKs for AI-powered maps, location search, turn-by-turn navigation, and geospatial data in mobile or web apps. Get started for free.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Mapping platform designed for developers. Publish interactive maps in your web applications and on mobile devices.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
From an award-winning project comes an inspiring, collaborative book that makes data artistic, personal - and open to all.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Five artists using big data

We generate 2.5 quintillion - or 2.5 million trillion - bytes of data that record our online activity each day: an inconceivable amount. With recent advances in technology and over 4.2 billion people using the World Wide Web today, the volume of data being produced, collected and stored has never been greater.

As a raw digital material, data may seem dry and inaccessible, but it has given rise to a new type of artist. Data artists specialise in making the unseen visible through artworks, using innovative data visualisation techniques to show the viewer something that the numbers alone cannot. Many source their raw data from the web, while others take offline data and use the web to turn it into something accessible, and often beautiful.

Moritz Stefaner

Moritz Stefaner is a data artist from Germany practicing, as he states on his website, 'on the crossroads of data visualisation, information aesthetics and user-interface design'. Much of Stefaner's work draws on the widespread use of social networks and smartphone cameras that has defined the 21st century so far.

As part of the 123 Data exhibition at the Fondation EDF in Paris, Stefaner presented Multiplicity, a collective photographic city portrait created using social media data. For this interactive installation, Stefaner and the project team used machine learning techniques, where a computer self-learns from data, identifies patterns and makes decisions with minimal human intervention. Through this process the computer arranged a sample - from 6.2 million location-tagged photos uploaded to social media in Paris in 2017 - into clusters. The resulting digital tapestry was projected around the exhibition space for visitors to explore.

Similar images taken at specific locations around the city, such as La Grande Roue (the Big Wheel) at Place de la Concorde, were grouped together, bringing to light recurring visual motifs and showing the similarities in the ways that people see and document the world around them.

Nathalie Miebach

Nathalie Miebach is an American data artist who works at the intersection of art and science, translating weather data into complex sculptures and musical scores.

With the web as her main source, Miebach collects geophysical data points such as high-tide marks, water temperatures and wind speeds. Using her own methodology, Miebach translates this data into musical scores, creating sheet music for orchestras. From these scores, Miebach then builds three-dimensional grids to give the data complex sculptural forms.

As Miebach explains: 'The power of data lies in its poetic quality; it is so much more than a number. I use sculpture to visualise the nuances of weather, in a way that a traditional scientific graph cannot.'

Aaron Koblin

In a TED Talk about his work, Aaron Koblin explains his belief that 'data can make us more human' - his project Flight Patterns demonstrates this. To create the work, Koblin processed vast amounts of the US Federal Aviation Administration's flight data to illustrate the paths of air traffic over North America. In the video below, you can see how individual flight paths appear as a single coloured line, creating complex and colourful moving webs. The patterns that emerge visualise human behavior, suggesting that, in spite of the advanced technology used for air travel, we remain governed by the rules of nature.

Koblin's work consistently pushes the boundaries of data visualisation, from his interactive map created from SMS messages sent on New Year's Eve in Amsterdam, to a project illustrating the volume of long-distance telephone and IP (Internet Protocol) data flowing between New York and other international cities.

Paolo Cirio

Paolo Cirio is an Italian conceptual artist who uses publicly available data to raise awareness about social issues and present a cultural commentary on the politics of data.

In his work Obscurity, Cirio addresses the exploitative practices of companies that publish the personal information and photos of people accused of crimes on the web, regardless of offence, circumstance and court ruling, and then charge extortionate fees for them to be removed. For his piece, Cirio blurred 15 million police photographs of people arrested in the US, taken from six different culpable companies, which he then exhibited on a dedicated website.

Through Obscurity, the artist highlights what he sees as the injustice of this practice and poses questions about wider social issues, such as economic inequality, a lack of mental health services and racial discrimination. The project received such a positive response that it sparked a new campaign - Right2Remove - led by a community of lawyers, journalists and activists, to introduce the right to remove sensitive information from search engines in the US.

Julie Freeman

Julie Freeman has a PhD in Media Arts Technology and her work experiments with the ways in which scientific data can be used across art and science. Her web project Rodent Activity Transmission (RAT) broadcasts visualisations of real-time behavioural data gathered from a colony of mole rats. One of the resulting audio-visual artworks, A Selfless Society, interprets the mole rats' behaviours, bringing the creatures' unpredictability to the piece and creating an effect that could not be anticipated or synthesised.

Take a look at the project on the RAT systems website or app.

As we observe the colony's activity patterns, we are invited to consider new social models for family and society. What would it be like to be eusocial - living in a society where labour and childcare is shared amongst the group - like the colony? How might this alter our expectations of our own gender identities, actions or motivations?

Although these artists work with data from different sources, they all aim to visualise challenging concepts and inform the viewer about the world around them. They make the unfathomable meaningful to us, showing us just how big our world is, and how connected we are to each other through the web.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Telling stories with numbers: five artists using big data

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Meet the artists using big data to make the unseen visible.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What happens when you combine 520 computers, 470 projectors, and up to 100 self-described 'ultra-technologists'? teamLab decided to find out.

Since 2001, the Japanese artist collective - which comprises artists, architects, mathematicians and more - has been pushing the boundaries of art with their immersive, often ephemeral, digital works. The group has held wildly popular exhibitions across the world, and their eye-catching installations are shared widely on social media. They recently took a major step by opening Borderless, a bricks-and-mortar museum in Tokyo. It is the first institution in the world to be devoted to digital artworks, and one in which online sharing takes centre stage.

teamLab Borderless, which opened in Tokyo's Odaiba district recently and spans 10,000 square metres, was created in collaboration with Mori Building, a property management firm with a strong track record of supporting the arts and cultural sector in Japan. The museum features 50 of teamLab's large-scale works, which are organised into five sections: Borderless World; Athletics Forest; Future Park; Forest of Lamps; and the En Tea House. Every exhibit is interactive, responding to visitors' movements to create an ever-changing display of light and colour.

'We want visitors to understand how digital technology can expand the conception of art. The art we create is made up of both the art and the viewer, and the existence and behaviour of the viewer can influence the art.'

Among the exhibits is Flower Forest: Lost, Immersed and Reborn, 2017, a room covered in projections of flowers that wilt when touched or stood upon, while others grow when visitors remain still. Forest of Resonating Lamps, 2016, features a series of lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling, each of which changes colour when approached, while Multi Jumping Universe, 2018, allows visitors to form planets by jumping up and down in an outer-space themed room with a bouncy floor. At the heart of these works is a desire not only to bridge the gap between art and its audience, but also to initiate a 'shift in the relationship between the individual viewer and the crowd', teamLab says.

By creating an environment in which human engagement drives the works, the collective hope to make the act of sharing the space with another visitor something powerful and integral to the experience of the artworks. 'The paradigm in traditional art has been to treat the existence of other viewers as a nuisance, but if the effect of another person's presence on the art is beautiful, it is possible that that person's presence itself will be seen as beautiful,' they add.

teamLab have created Borderless with 21st century art-lovers in mind, designing each exhibit to be shared on Instagram. Exhibitions featuring highly 'Instagrammable' artworks such as Yayoi Kusama's 'infinity mirror rooms' have drawn huge crowds across the world, showing the growing global appetite for this kind of participatory and photogenic art.

For teamLab, the focus on 'shareability' is underpinned by a firm belief in the uniting power of the web. It's a theme that is addressed in Crystal Universe, 2015, a kaleidoscopic maze of hanging LED lights that change as visitors wander around, creating what the artists describe as 'a sculptural body'. Key to the work is a dedicated smartphone app that allows users to shape the environment they are standing in. 'When you control the app, the artwork reacts, helping visitors create a scene that will never be repeated again,' say teamLab. 'The internet connection is what makes this artwork possible.'

By making the visitor an integral part of the world's first digital art museum, teamLab are showing how technology and art can work together to bring people closer. 'We hope that this exhibit will encourage people to rethink the relationship between humans and nature as well as their relationship with the world,' they say. Beyond that, Borderless also provides an alternative view of how we can relate to, and interact with, cultural spaces in the future, and explores the role that technology and the web will play in that transformation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Inside the world's first digital art museum

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Japanese collective teamLab's museum of interactive art is wowing the Instagram generation. We spoke to them about how the web can revolutionise the way in which we engage with art.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This tutorial aims to guide on how to access LiDAR data from the Scottish Remote Sensing Portal, download the data and visualize it in QGIS, a Geographic Information System software. This document is not intended to be a fully comprehensive guide but a brief overview and a pointer to further resources.

LiDAR

LiDAR stands for Light Detection and Ranging and is an active remote sensing technique that records the earth surface. The LiDAR sensor emits pulses of laser and measures properties of the reflected light - the timings, the angles and the wavelengths. The integration of GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) permits to accurately define the location (XYZ coordinates) of the point from which the signal was returned.
In addition to geographic position other attributes of the LiDAR points can be recorded, for example, intensity, classification, RGB values, number of returns or scan angle. Although, not always all the attributes are provided to the end-users.

LAS and LAZ files

LiDAR points XYZ measurement, attributes and other metadata are stored in LAS files, an open format considered to be an industry standard. LAZ files are compressed LAS files.

Digital Elevation Models

Digital Surface Model (DSM) is a numeric representation of the earth surface produced from the first return of laser signal. DSM includes objects on its surface such as vegetation or buildings.

Digital Terrain Model (DTM) is a numeric representation of the earth surface produced from the last return of laser signal. DTM shows the bear earth with vegetation and buildings removed.

Scottish Remote Sensing Portal

Scottish Government and JNCC collaborate to develop an online data portal to host public sector LiDAR datasets. The Scottish Remote Sensing Portal currently provides access to three sets of Scottish public sector airborne LiDAR data, which can be downloaded as 10km tiles or accessed via Web Map Services (WMS). The data are provided as point clouds (LAZ) and raster files (GeoTIFF) All data are shared under the Open Government License v3 unless otherwise stated.
The Scottish Remote Sensing Portal can be accessed following this link https://remotesensingdata.gov.scot/.

QGIS

QGIS is a free and open-source Geographic Information System created to view, edit and analyse geospatial data. The software can be freely downloaded from the project website - https://qgis.org/en/site/index.html - and installed on various platforms including Windows, Linux and Mac OSX.

If you are not familiar with the software it is recommended that you familiarize yourself with the documentation section - https://qgis.org/en/docs/index.html

Open the file

Once the LAZ file is downloaded and extracted it can be opened in QGIS.

open a new project in QGIS

open Data Source Manager and select Point Cloud tab

navigate to the LAZ file location and add to the map view

alternatively you can drag and drop the file from the file browser

After adding the file QGIS will create a new sub-directory for EPT files indexing the LiDAR points. As a result, when panning and zooming QGIS will render only a subset of points for better performance.

Check CRS

Point Cloud should have Coordinate Reference System (CRS) assigned but it is not always a case and sometimes we have to specify the projection manually.

right-click on the question mark next to the filename

specify the CRS to OSGB 1936 / British National Grid (EPSG:27700)

Investigate Attributes

Once the file is loaded QGIS is looking at the attributes stored in the point cloud to apply appropriate colouring. In our example, the points are visualized based on the classification (Ground, Vegetation, Building, and so on)

The Identify Map Tool can be used to investigate further information about specific point attributes e.g. XYZ or Intensity.

The Layer Styling Panel allows changing the point visualization using the additional attributes.

The summary statistics of the attributes can be accessed in the layer properties.

3D map view

QGIS can also visualize the points in 3 dimensions.

go to View and select New 3D Map View

go to Layer Styling Panel and select the 3D View Tab - change the rendering to Attribute by Ramp and Attribute to z

in the same Layer Styling Panel select Symbology and change rendering to Extent Only

use the navigation tools in 3D view to zoom and rotate the scene

It is possible to achieve more realistic rendering of the terrain by clicking on the Options and selecting Show Eye Dome Lightning.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This tutorial aims to guide on how to access LiDAR data from the Scottish Remote Sensing Portal, download the data and visualize it in QGIS, a Geographic Information System software. This document is not intended to be a fully comprehensive guide but a brief overview and a pointer to further resources.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A trusted UK facility providing data stewardship services ensuring environmental data of long-term value are findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Part of BellArtLabs project for Collusion's King's Lynn R&D project. The brief was to utilise the town's outdoor projectors to showcase new work using the rich history of King's Lynn for inspiration. The river and port of King's Lynn were our sources for data and visuals.

Processing was used to make a visualisation of King's Lynn tidal data.

King's Lynn was part of the Hanseatic league of ports and luckily many of the port books have been categorised. This data was used to create a video (again using processing) to illustrate the trade to and from the port in 1614.

Still from video showing trade in 1614

We also used 16mm footage of the Denver sluice complex from the 1970's which was projected onto layers of gauze inside part of the King's Lynn art centre.

Chris setting up projections of Denver sluice.

Tom setting up more projections

Even the calibrations look cool!

Thanks again to Dan Pollard at Denver sluice and for his help.

On the night!! Looking great!
Photo credit. Matthew Usher

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Part of BellArtLabs project for Collusion's King's Lynn R&D project. The brief was to utilise the town's outdoor projectors to showcase new work using the rich history of King's Lynn for inspiration. The river and port of King's Lynn were our sources for data and visuals.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Pushing the boundaries of large-scale projection technologies
Taking place over four months beginning May 2017, Collusion presented the outcomes of our R&D Challenge over one weekend in September 2017: a showcase of four experimental, interactive, large-sale site-specific projections in King's Lynn town centre created by teams of local creatives.
Sounds, images, data, film and archives featured in the prototype projects, created by four teams of creatives over a period of four months, supported by Collusion with a series of artist-led masterclasses.

FLOW by team BellArtLabs used archive audio and film from the region to create a multimedia art presentation linking the past, present and future of King's Lynn, revealing the story of people's lived experiences. It was shown at King's Lynn Art Centre.

Assemble by team Payne Hurt featured a three-player audio sequencer using sounds and imagery taken from in and around King's Lynn, and was shown in the Tuesday Market Place. The public interacted with the project using an old-school arcade game-type controller.

Voyager by team Elements was a promenade project involving an AI system which scanned historical data from medieval manuscripts and physical graffiti to biological data to piece together a love story over time and discover its conscious self. It was shown on Greyfriars Tower.

At the Custom House, Moment by team FishGills brought retro gaming to the heart of the town, allowing people to use a simple controller system to play classics such as Pac-Man and Space Invaders.

Around 600 people attended the show over three nights. Audiences described it as "epic", "fascinating", "immersive" and "original". It successfully attracted non-arts audiences and brought cultural tourists into town. The success of this project provided the basis for REVEAL.

Artists

BellArtLabs

BellArtLabs is a UK-based independent, multidisciplinary arts group whose practice encompasses moving-image, sound, installation and performance. The group comprises Chris Mizsak, Tom Scott, Anthony Scott and Colin Dewar .

Elements

Elements included film producer and director Gavin Toomey, creative technologist and software developer Pete Cleary, and writer and local historian Beatrice Bray.

Payne Hurt

Oliver Payne is a sound artist, designer and musician interested in improvisation. He creates sound and music for installation, filmmakers and broadcasters.

Will Hurt is a visual artist and describes himself as an artist working with computers.

FishGills

FishGills was composed of Wisbech-based creative communications company Tin Fish Creative and graphic designer Max Gill, as well as developers Jacob Nixon and Matthew Lymar.

Photography

King's Lynn-based photographer Matthew Usher's work includes portraits of prime ministers, royalty and celebrities and coverage of international, national and local sporting events.

Project Manager

Marcus Romer is a director, producer, playwright, and filmmaker.

Filmmaker

Gavin Toomey is a film director, writer and producer of drama, promo and documentary films.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
David Russell - The Fusion Works (https://www.thefusionworks.com)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
King's Lynn R&D Challenge // Collusion 2017

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Our King's Lynn R&D Challenge engaged artists and creatives to create and test interactive projections for the town's large-scale outdoor projection system.