This month, I presented Ground Truth with remote sensing scientist Daniel Schraik at Levels of Life, a conference co-organized by the Photography Programme at London College of Communication, The Photographers’ Gallery, and The Centre for the Study of the Networked Image at London South Bank University.

Sheung Yiu and Daniel Schraik: How To See Something When There Is Nothing (With a Remote Sensing Scientist)

Remote sensing researchers travel to forests and measure on-site to see better from space. Daniel Schraik and his colleagues conduct ground truth measurements to develop a reliable reflectance model for a better interpretation of forest satellite images. Remote sensing researchers use this model to look into how light enters the forest and reflects back to satellites, to retrieve information about the landscape beyond what is visible on the image. The presentation reflects on the collaboration between myself, a photographer, and remote sensing researchers from the Department of Geoinformatics at Aalto University in the ongoing artistic research Ground Truth. Together with Daniel Schraik, we examine hyperspectral imaging of forests while looking back at photography’s love affair with natural landscapes. Remote sensing observes the planet at different scales and dissects images into multiple data layers. The presentation touches on statistical models, computational photography and hyperspectral imaging to reveal remote sensing's technique of observation —a trans-scalar and statistical vision. As technology develops and the network infrastructure expands, the act of seeing is more abstract than ever.