Volumetric Video With Skateboarders: Creative Opportunities of Working With an Emerging Screen Technology Beyond the Studio

Volumetric video is an emerging moving image technology in which each pixel is recorded with
a location in three dimensions. Volumetric videos are normally created in studios using rigs made up
of multiple cameras with LiDAR sensors and computers that combine the moving images. We took
this technology out of the studio to explore variations of this technique in public skateparks. We found
that as the technology is still in developing stages it has creative constraints: it can records at a limited
distance to the subject, the image is of a relatively low resolution, and there are often glitches in the
image. In our creative experiments with the skateboard community, we found we could use these
qualities to our advantage. For example, we could create images that emphasise movement over
surface texture. In this paper we explore this emerging screen technology through the theoretical lens
of Modes of Existence of Technical Objects by Gilbert Simondon (2017/1958). Simondon articulates the
individuation of novel technologies from abstract phases, which are multiple and emergent, towards
a metastable phase of concretisation when they become consistent and coherent. This paper argues
for the valorisation of working with screen technologies in their abstract phases. In this phase and
the situation in which the technology is employed can easily shape the techniques, the means of
production becomes more readily visible to the viewer, and unintended functionality may be explored
for creative outcomes.