Escape Route

Dirk Koy is an incredible visual artist, and I could have mentioned a number of their pieces. One particularly relevant to the course would be Escape Route, a video in which the viewer flies through a 360 degree photogrammetric scan of portions of Basel. As one flies through, the city itself deforms through a series of effectors, such as vertex displacement and different visualizations of color to the data, such as mesh lines, photo color, or depth. As one moves, a catchy soundtrack meant to evoke a spy movie escape scene plays in the background.

This piece is impressive partially due to the sheer size of the capture, which I feel is worth mentioning. What becomes particularly relevant to the course is the choices that Dirk makes about visualization. There exists the objective Basel, the captured Basel, and the Basel that is visualized at a given moment, including the displaced geometric version.