6th Session: Group Setup and Scans

This session has two purposes: setting up groups and working on scans.

To prepare for the class, students can be asked to use one of the scanning apps on the smart phones linked to above, and to have already scanned either a few objects or spaces. Generally, the more students engage with the techniques of scanning the better the results will be, as learning curves are steep (e.g. how to hold the phone, speed of movement, direction of movement, etc.).

Students can bring the scans to class or upload / send them in advance, then during the session experiences of scanning can be discussed and scans can be worked on with Blender or a similar software. The idea of working on the scans is to see how difficult it is to generate models of physical objects, to see how models work (e.g. with vectors and polygons), and to gain some practical expertise.

It would also be helpful to offer an additional tutorial to enable students to learn how to use Blender and introduce them to some of the core functionality.

It is also worth pointing out issues with file formats. For Blender documentation can be found here: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/files/import_export.html. For Mozilla Hubs .glb or .gltf work best.

The text by Steyerl serves as background reading. It highlights among other things issues of documentation and objectification, indexicality and fictionality. It is worth discussing in some detail in relation to the very practical work of scanning and modifying scanned objects.