Tag Archives: Photography

Book Launch: ‘GROUND TRUTH’ by Sheung Yiu

Image of the book by 'Ground Truth' by Sheung Yiu

SEASONAL BOOK LAUNCHES PRESENTS: ‘GROUND TRUTH’

A book by Sheung Yiu

Book launch this Saturday, November 27th, 16:00 @ Art Gallery Kosminen, Helsinki

Sheung Yiu is launching his book ‘GROUND TRUTH’ this Saturday at art gallery Kosminen, Helsinki, at 16:00 (4pm). Please feel free to join the casual celebration and meeting around the local community TTBookshelf books and friends!

Event Name: Seasonal Book Launches, The Temporary Bookshelf
When: Saturday 27.11 17-20:00
Where: Kosminen, Pursimiehenkatu 13,00150 Helsinki

Kosminen
Instagram + @sheungyiuphoto ,  #sheungyiu #theeriskayconnection
The Eriskay Connection

‘GROUND TRUTH’

What is the relation between what we see and what is there? Ground Truth observes the evolution of visual technology in conversation with our perception and surroundings. The more technology develops, the more abstract seeing becomes.

Equipped with the phenomenal power of computation, photography and hyperspectral imaging, a group of scientists set out to approach the boundaries of satellite imaging in the forests of Finland. Using meticulous on-site measurements of physical structures and spectral properties of trees, ‘ground truth’ data are experimental results to verify the performance of predicting models. Their quest is to develop an improved interpretation model of satellite data for remote sensing research, which allows us to distinguish various features of the surface beyond what is shown optically in satellite imagery.

In Ground Truth Sheung Yiu (HK/FI) interweaves archival imagery, documentary photography, experimental data, and artistic work, to acquaint the reader with the mathematical models that provide us the tools to ‘resurrect’ trees from a two-dimensional image. Ground Truth highlights the complexity of seeing in the age of algorithms. What do we see when we are not around? What can we see when there is nothing there?

Concept and photography: Sheung Yiu
Essay: Miina Rautiainen, Daniel Schraik, Aarne Hovi and Petri Forsström, Sheung Yiu
Design: Emery Norton

170 × 240 mm | 176 p
EN | softcover
ISBN: 978-94-92051-74-5
€ 25.00

ABOUT SHEUNG YIU

Sheung Yiu is a Hong-Kong-born image-based artist and doctoral researcher based in Helsinki. His research interest concerns the increasing complexity and agency of computational photography in contemporary digital culture. He seeks to expand its ontology by formulating the connections between photography theories and new forms of realism, object-oriented ontology, and network thinking. Engaging with artistic practice and multi-disciplinary collaboration as a mode of research, his works examine the poetics and politics of computational photography, such as computer vision, computer graphics and remote sensing. Yiu’s work takes the form of photography, videos, photo-objects, exhibition installations and bookmaking.

More info: www.sheungyiu.com

ABOUT THE ERISKAY CONNECTION

The Eriskay Connection is a Dutch studio for book design and an independent publisher. We focus on contemporary storytelling at the intersection of photography, research, and writing. In close collaboration with authors, we make books as autonomous bodies of work that provide us with new and necessary insights into the world around us. The key for us is to convey the essence of their work through high quality editing, design, and production. Our editions are mainly offset printed and bound in The Netherlands and we strive to work with local producers and sustainable materials as much as possible.

More info: https://www.eriskayconnection.com

EXHIBITION: ‘Sarajevo Roses and Clouds of June’ – Third Space, Helsinki – From 4th – 10th October 2021

Samra Šabanović and Sheung Yiu, as the duo I was there but you didn’t see me*, are having a week-long pop-up screening of their video work on mass protest photography at Third Space starting from next Monday 4th of October. The exhibition is part of Third Space open call selected projects for the year 2021 with the theme ” Vulnerability, collaboration, exchanges”, supported by Taike. The opening will be on Thursday, October 7th, from 17:00 – 20:00.

Exhibition period: 4th – 10th October 2021 from 14:00 – 18:00. Welcome!

*** To visit the exhibition please wear a face mask and consider the safety distance ***

INFO

“Unless we stop indulging in metaphors and start to recognise the politics of visibility and invisibility within the power structure, ‘photography’s future will be much like its past. It will largely continue to illustrate, without condemning, how the powerful dominate the less powerful.’” (Excerpt from video)

Photography has always been a game of hide-and-seek — what to make visible and invisible — but at times of wars and mass protests, these decisions have real consequences. Humans and images are now entangled in the network, each controlling the life and death of the other. Visibility is not just a picture; visibility is lethal.

Amid global protests to support the Black Lives Matter movement, some have called for photojournalists to blur out protesters’ faces to protect their identities. The encrypted communications app Signal released a feature to blur faces in photos. Software developer Noah Conk created an iPhone shortcut that does the same thing and erases their metadata. Some photojournalists oppose blurring and insist that the key issue is consent. That argument misjudges the lethality of visibility, especially in the context of overt and expansive state surveillance. On the other side of the world, Hong Kong pedestrians are filming the arrest of the protestors on their smartphones as they shout their names and ID number, in the hope that their families and lawyers know which police station to look for them and in the fear that they won’t see the sun again — visibility as a means to protect.

“Sarajevo Roses and Clouds of June” (2020) is a 22-minute video essay on images and their relation to peace. Reflecting on personal experience and photographic practices in general, the video essay contemplates the role of photography in the recent waves of mass protests and social activism. The title is a reference to the memorials of the Bosnian War and the months-long protest in Hong Kong that began in June 2019. The video essay, made during the pandemic in 2020, is composed entirely of video footage found on popular free stock websites. In five chapters, the essay delves into the ever-complex politics of visibility and invisibility, offering a critical examination of how photography may or may not contribute to peace in the age of mass surveillance enabled by hyper-connectivity and the omnipresence of cameras.

“Sarajevo Roses and Clouds of June” (2020) is the third chapter of I was there but you didn’t see me*

BIO
I was there but you didn’t see me* is a series of research-based public interventions on photographic images curated by Samra Šabanović and Sheung Yiu. These interventions use images as starting points of inquiry about their indisputable impacts on philosophy, history, literature, technology, science and visual culture. Through prolonged looking and peripheral vision, the duo revisits images (or the lack of them) and situates them in new discourses that extends beyond visual arts. This involves doing double-takes on images seriously and regularly, writing footnotes on and around photographs to rediscover ‘what was there’ and ‘what was not seen’ at first glance.

LINKS

More about Third Space

PHOTOGRAPHY OFF THE SCALE – Talk by Jussi Parikka – Thursday, 20 May 2021, from 15:00 – 16:00

PHOTOGRAPHY OFF THE SCALE

Talk by Jussi Parikka

Thursday, May 20th on Zoom from 15:00 – 16:00

Image © Abelardo Gil-Fournier. Rotating GIF image with text 'Photo Talks' and 'Jussi Parikka'.

Image © Abelardo Gil-Fournier.

Doctoral Seminar – Open to everyone!

When: Thursday, May 20th, 2021
Time: 15:00 – 16:00
Zoom link: https://aalto.zoom.us/j/66102166387

INFO
“For the inaugural Aalto Photo Talks, we have invited media theorist Jussi Parikka as our guest speaker. Parikka has written extensively on new media and digital culture. His writings unravel the historicity of emerging media, tracing our past, articulating our present and imagining our future relationship with technology. In his recent publication Photography Off the Scale, Parikka turns his attention to operational images and image en masse. From the mass image in vernacular culture to transformations of photography in contexts of big data and artificial intelligence, the essays in the book explore the massification of photography. During the talk, Parikka will present his work and his recently-published co-edited photo theory anthology Photography Off the Scale. The presentation will be followed by a casual Q&A discussion.

The talk is open to public and we welcome Aalto students from the Department of Media and other disciplines to join us. Please also feel free to invite students from outside of Aalto.”

You can download the introductory article using the link, under the tab ‘resource’ here.

SPEAKER BIO
Jussi Parikka is Professor of Technological Culture & Aesthetics at University of Southampton and visiting Professor at FAMU at the Academy of Performing Arts, Prague. He is also Docent/Dosentti in Digital Culture Theory at University of Turku. He is the project director for “Operational Images and Visual Culture” (2019-2023, funded by the Czech Science Foundation). Jussi’s books include Koneoppi (2004), Digital Contagions (2007), Insect Media (2010), A Geology of Media (2015), as well as What is Media Archaeology? (2012) alongside several edited collections, including one on Erkki Kurenniemi (Writing and Unwriting Media Art HIstory, 2015, with Joasia Krysa). Recently, he published the co-edited Photography off the Scale (2021, with Tomas Dvorak) and The Lab Book (co-authored with Darren Wershler and Lori Emerson) is forthcoming later in 2021. Jussi also serves on Ihme Helsinki advisory board.

For more info and Jussi Parikka’s blog: http://jussiparikka.net

ABOUT AALTO PHOTO TALKS
Aalto Photo Talks is a series of conversations with thinkers, theorists and practitioners of photography with the aim to expand the notion of photography and explore interdisciplinary connections. The talk is organized by doctoral candidates from Aalto Photography. Although it may take different forms, most talks are organized as casual conversations with the invited guest for a free-flowing exchange of ideas and questions.

For any questions, please contact: Sheung Yiu // Aalto Photo Talks