Creative experiments with aerial photography in visualising built heritage

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While aerial photography and digital visualisation technologies can serve as powerful tools to reveal and interpret built heritage, they often do so at the cost of a disembodied perspective that is removed from lived experience. This research explores the hypothesis that creative practice can serve to bridge the gap between visualisation technologies on the one hand and the visitor's experience of built heritage on the other. Developments in digital imaging, such as remote aerial platforms and structure from motion photogrammetry, have afforded archaeologists a highly accessible and versatile toolkit for spatial survey and analysis. Bringing these tools into an environment of creative practice offers the possibility of complimenting these cartographic representations with more personal perspectives, allowing a creative decision making process to tackle the sense of place that is so integral to the character and interpretation of built heritage.

Kieran Baxter is a PhD Candidate at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee. His research is practice-based and draws from a background in the visual arts specialising in animation, digital media and aerial photography. Since 2012 Kieran has been working with archaeologists to explore how visual storytelling using these methods can be used to enhance public engagement with built heritage.