In Utena and the remaining world, economic changes, a technological surge and a digital development shape urban places and landscapes. Amid these changes, when physical places are vanishing, and the new ones are getting established in a digital world, the following questions appear. How to maintain and continue creating stories and new memories in a digital space? How can the disappearing stories continue to live in a virtual world? How can new technologies restore the life of destroyed places?
In this project, new media tools — photogrammetry, LiDAR scanning and self-teaching systems (machine learning) — were employed.
To fully recreate the place, photogrammetry and LiDAR scanning were used. Photogrammetry is a process that analyses the location photos and generates visual, though not always accurate, 3D models. In this project, thousands of drone photos were used to make a digital three-dimensional equivalent of Utena car market. Contrary to the photogrammetry, LiDAR scanning is a precise distance measuring technology that generates 3D models with only a few millimeters error.
The work is surrounded by text that Artificial Intelligence has created. Artificial neuron networks were taught with thousands of pre-selected texts to reveal the new stories and memories from the car market.