ABSTRACT
When paying for groceries, every item in the basket gets scanned. Checking out a library book, the scan records when it is checked out and when it should be returned. Taking an airline fight, your checked bag is scanned so as to not end up in the wrong location – but if it does get lost, the scan tells the airline exactly where the bag is located. Scanning is common and critical and will soon become a much more advanced and incorporated part of daily life. A scan of the most basic pricing barcode on every item in a retail store provides simple product meta-data. Other forms of scanning – emerging out of new technologies – can capture billions of data points stored on millions of servers around the world, describing every facet of the real world. Defned by X, Y, and Z coordinates, these data point collections are intended to represent a three-dimensional coordinate system where the external surface of an object has spatial implications to consider. Artists and theorists have historically explored the complexity that can result from form made up of points. As seen in A Sunday Afernoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, the French painter Georges Seurat’s method of painting dot-by-dot empowered a single point – its size, position, color – to create unique visual efects reciprocal with the points around it. In a similar way, the direct feed of data points into a BIM URL can create “new geometry,” capable of depicting alternative visualizations that reference energy audits, heritage site documentation, building analysis, or even more obscure physicality drawn from raw data. 1
