I want to scan things.

This week we were asked to present 1) a logline which describes the current place of our studies 2) three scholarly sources that inform our work 3) the ability to explain why at every point in our project.

I still stand by my original pitch--
"I want to scan things."

This might also be expanded into "I want to develop beautiful virtual spaces in realtime applications"

I was also asked, what if my term goal doesn't work, then what? What if a year from now my single camera process is obsolete?

I didn't have an answer in the moment, but I do now-- I'm not at a place where I'm worried about either of those questions.
I'm building work and refining a single person / single camera scanning process. I am working towards using these processes towards a larger end goal.

I don't really care if my technical process is obsolete before it's finished. That's not really the point of my work.

Sources:

Use of Photogrammetry in Video Games: A Historical Overview

My link
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1555412018786415

“A large portion of game artists is educated in professional and
graduate schools that focus heavily on traditional modeling techniques
and key software such as Autodesk Maya and 3ds Max, churning out
highly efficient asset producers who have little to no training in
classical art, art theory, art direction, composition, setting, lighting, or
even game design.”

The ACCORD project

My link
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13527258.2017.1378905


SIGGRAPH Art Papers (free access)

From SIGGRAPH's Art Papers category description:
Art Papers are submitted in one of four categories (project description, theory/criticism, methods, or history) and selected by an international jury of scholars, artists, and developers of immersive technologies.  Papers are published in a special issue of Leonardo, The Journal of the International Society of the Arts, Sciences and Technology (MIT Press).
*Note Leonardo posts open calls, residencies from time to time.

Holojam in Wonderland:

https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon_a_01644

Augmented Fauna and Glass Mutations:

https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon_a_01640
*Best paper Award


Industry:
I have found a number of job titles such as 'reality capture artist', 'reality capture technician'. There are also related fields such as digital preservation.

http://avatta.net/

Tokyo, offers variety of scanning services

https://www.cyark.org/

https://www.cyark.org/projects/

Oakland, site conservation

https://quixel.com/megascans/library/latest
Megascans library

--

I realize I am participating in an MS program, and ultimately producing a design research paper, but my practice lies in being an artist. 

I have noticed a phenomenon in the games/animation industry (and I'm sure others as well, but I am familiar with these disclipines)

"Are you a programmer or do you Do Art?"

Which, at it's worst is anti design methodology, anti social context, anti art foundations. How are we supposed to become good designers if we are making things up as we go? 

Every step I take in producing scanned content I have found more directions of research. Reality capture is so new and so quickly requires a broad range of skills and tools to master. I want to emphasize the importance of developing a project or body of work first before thinking about the kind of paper that will be published. It does not make sense to me to engineer solutions before the design problem.