Cornford, Stephen (2023) Spectral index.
Abstract
Digitisation has shifted the materials on which our media technologies rely. The minerals and metals required for digital imaging are the same as those required for energy transition away from fossil fuels. There is currently a new resource race underway, with nation states and political blocks scrambling to ensure secure supplies of these critical raw materials. This race is both driven by and reliant upon visual cultures, a recursive circularity in which images are used to produce minerals which are used to produce images.
This single-screen video work considers the role of the ‘spectral index’ in framing our relationship with landscapes that are perpetually surveilled by orbital satellites and aerial drones. A spectral index is a mathematical image function in which different wavelengths of the visible and infrared spectrum are combined to produce false colour images that analyse different terrestrial conditions. To gaze at the earth through these instrumental lenses presumes both ownership and functionality of the planetary surface below.
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