Paper short abstract:

Narrating through Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI).

Paper long abstract:

Reflectance Transformation Imaging is a digital imaging method that has been adopted into cultural heritage settings and field archaeology. the process creates intra-active synthetic images whereby the lighting conditions can be altered during subsequent viewings and encounters. Diffraction patterns are often evident in RTI images and a such can be used to explore the 'poetics' of entanglements and the agential cuts.

In a series of unfolding projects situated across museums, archives, studios, classrooms and indigenous territories, RTI was not only used to document objects but as a way to perform diffractively so that the environments where people and digital imaging meet cannot be disjoined from the mediations and the remedations that occur within them.

A basic kit of camera equipment is all that is required to create an RTI data set, providing that a small shiny black hemispherical object is placed inside the 'scene'. Black Ball Ballads will tell the story of RTI in relation to the images, workshops, artworks and exhibitions that have been created through and with it.