Attuali orizzonti del rilievo e della rappresentazione = Current Horizons of Surveying and Representation

In 1931 W. Benjamin published “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” where he states: “photography freed the hand of the most important artistic functions,” which have become prerogative of the eye. The development and widespread of software able to obtain a point cloud from photographic sequences make Benjamin's words most relevant, and invite to reflect upon the role that Drawing and Survey need to acquire in Didactics and Research. Articles, dissertations and book chapters have been written on photo modelling techniques and software, but their rapid evolution constantly makes these works outdated – sometimes even before being published. Instead, it is rather rare to find works reflecting on the conceptual approach to be adopted towards these technologies and their potential in making traditional tools and methods appear superfluous for the Drawing-related disciplines. The today vastly available possibility of obtaining a parametric and photorealistic model of an environment, a complex vault, an archaeological site, an architectural detail, by using a simple photo sequence, without specific technical device or theoretical knowledge, leads to a field of investigation that imposes the definition of new methodological and formal protocols. What needs to be thoroughly investigated, rather than the already proven reliability of the metric results, is the post processing phase – crucial for analysis and interpretation. The case studies examined underlined the great potential of the method on any scale, but also reinforced the belief that virtual data is not to be intended as a complete synonym of real data.