Abstract
This paper develops the concept of ‘scannability’ as a democratic aesthetic through a practice-based artistic investigation, relocating urban image‑making from the fixed, framed perspective of photography to the embodied visual engagement of the walking flâneur equipped with a LiDAR‑enabled smartphone. Drawing explicitly on art-practice-based fieldwork conducted in the Medina of Fez, Morocco, the research integrates perambulatory artistic methods with smartphone-based 3D scanning to creatively document how the narrow alleyways, fragmented sightlines, and richly textured surfaces of this dense urban environment enable a distinctive mode of artistic visual experience—incremental, fragmented, and relational. Through comparative analysis between these smartphone-generated 3D scans and traditional photographic representations, the study demonstrates how scanning foregrounds spatial relationships and discontinuities, thereby challenging camera-centric paradigms of Lynchian legibility and imageability. Findings emerging from this art-practice-based approach reveal that scannability exposes informal urban logics, reshapes traditional observer–image relationships, and enriches the cognitive interplay among physical, representational, and mental image of the city. By framing mobile 3D scanning as both artistic practice and analytical inquiry, this paper positions scannability as an art-based visual methodology capable of critically examining how technologically mediated vision reshapes observational identity. This approach directly addresses the transition from democratic aesthetics to digital culture.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2025 Special Focus—From Democratic Aesthetics to Digital Culture
KEYWORDS
Scannability; Art Practice-based Research; Smartphone LiDAR; Embodied Vision; Urban Image-making
