Bare Map BMo is part of the project Nul Punt Wolk

Nul Punt Wolk is a project and ongoing collaboration between Irish artist Cliona
Harmey and Belgian artist Filip Berte (berte & harmey). Joining their shared interests in
history, human geography, social justice and technology they have developed a
collaborative practice which combines remote and site-based investigations. The artists
started their work by exploring a number of locations in the environs of two European
cities (Ghent and Dublin). Their collaboration began just before the first European
pandemic lockdowns (2020) and after a residency at Timelab Ghent which explored
commoning, futurity and circular economies.
Nul Punt Wolk – which means “zero point cloud” in Dutch – refers to the aerial LiDAR
point cloud data, which the artists have used to generate their first collaborative
series of works called Bare Maps. The Bare Maps were created using aerial LiDAR
data. LiDAR is a sensing technology that uses pulses of laser light to measure
distances to Earth which are then processed into point cloud data. The physical
printed maps which berte & harmey have created with this data show the earth
stripped back to its underlying terrain. Bare of buildings and vegetation, the landscape
retains trace outlines of buildings as well as routes, ‘desire lines’, patterns of land use
and areas of enclosure. The Bare Maps also include locations which are contested and
the landscape sometimes reveals traces of friction, points of forced enclosure,
containment, exclusion and logistics.