Jared Krauss
Supervisor
Abstract
Citizen Capture
This practice-led PhD research aims to investigate how barriers to 3D spatial documentation can be reduced for non-specialist users. Using the researcher’s own documentary practice as an initial testing ground, the project aims to develop and critically evaluate accessible methods of spatial capture and reconstruction. The research begins with A London History of Facial Recognition Surveillance, an ongoing project mapping the expanding use of Live Facial Recognition (LFR) across London. Combining documentary photography and open-source intelligence (OSINT) with spatial reconstruction techniques such as Gaussian splatting, the project examines how surveillance technologies occupy and reorganise public space. It asks how navigable 3D environments might extend conventional documentary practices by making spatial relationships between surveillance infrastructure, architecture and the public perceptible from multiple viewpoints. Through practice-led fieldwork, workshops, open resources and collaborative partnerships, the PhD aims to develop and test workflows using widely available consumer devices. Working with artists, activists and communities, it will examine how these methods might enable broader participation in the documentation of contested environments. Rather than proposing a fixed technical system, the research aims to establish spatial documentation as an evolving participatory methodology and a form of citizen-led knowledge production.
Bio
Jared Krauss is a documentary photographer and researcher developing a spatial documentary practice through 3D imaging and Gaussian splatting. Their current project, A London History of Facial Recognition Surveillance, examines the emergence and spatial deployment of Live Facial Recognition (LFR) technologies in London, from their early use by the Metropolitan Police at the Notting Hill Carnival to their growing adoption by state and corporate actors.
Their research investigates how emerging 3D technologies can extend documentary photography beyond the single viewpoint, enabling audiences to navigate and understand the spatial relations through which surveillance and other forms of power operate in public space. Their practice is informed by their experience as a working-class, disabled practitioner and by a commitment to forms of documentation that foreground perspectives often marginalised within established representational practices.
The research seeks to develop accessible and teachable workflows for spatial documentation using consumer technologies. Drawing on principles of citizen science and participatory practice, it explores the potential for crowdsourced 3D documentation of contested spaces and unfolding events. Their practice understands documentary work not as neutral observation but as a situated public intervention capable of making otherwise invisible or opaque expressions of state and corporate power perceptible.
Supervising
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Architecture PhD
Postgraduate Research
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General Information
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Contact
Prof Dr Ines Weizman
Professor of History and Theory of Architecture
Head of PhD Programme
School of Architecture
Royal College of Art
Kensington Gore, London
SW7 2EU
ines.weizman@rca.ac.uk
School of Architecture, Royal College of Art
Postgraduate Research (PGR) Programme