The Greek island of Lesbos, once known for its beautiful beaches and mediterranean landscape, has become the heartbreaking geographic symbol of the refugee crisis. Now, some of the scenes have been captured in painstaking detail using 3D laser scanning.
About 450,000 asylum seekers arrived on the island’s shores over the past year and it seems that the challenging situation has changed the island forever. The following video shows the scarred face of Lesbos, as the description explains:
Lesvos has become the unofficial ‘gate’ for refugees trying to cross into Fortress Europe over the past year. Lesvos is perhaps the largest ‘island’ on the archipelago of exception along the migrant corridor, along which physical and social space are set under constant negotiation. The rugged, mountainous landscape of the north is perforated by synthetic piles of survival, ones that challenge its legitimacy over the land. Curved is also the social terrain, with displaced people, locals and volunteers renegotiating social space in the island.
The creators, a design-based collective called Embassy for the Displaced, mapped some of the most dramatic parts of Lesbos using 3D laser scanning technology, grabbing dismal moments of the crisis and turning them into moving digital images of the ongoing social disaster.
The result, a flyover of highly accurate point-cloud models, is somehow as sorrowful as even the most impressive photo reports we’ve seen so far.
