In February 2018, I had the opportunity to be in residence for a month at Elsewhere in Greensboro, NC. As described on their website, “Elsewhere is a museum and artist residency set in a 3-floor, former, thrift store.” During my time there I completed Glimpse, an object past-life viewing station that remains part of Elsewhere’s permanent (and ever-shifting) collection.
Glimpse gives viewers the ability to experience and speculate on the past, present, and future forms of four objects from the Elsewhere collection. I let my intuition guide me in selecting the objects (pictured in the gif above) to undergo a process of digital immortalization using 3D scanning.
After three-dimensionally preserving these objects in full-color, I pulverized the originals using a variety of hand-tools and blenders. Transformed into indiscernible piles of colorful material, they were then individually sifted and layered into handmade ornate vessels, each with an embedded USB flash drive in the tip storing the corresponding digital 3D data. The new objects can be plugged into Glimpse’s past-life viewing station revealing an associated video file of the 3D scanned object. These files can also be downloaded by future Elsewhere artists to be 3D printed or used in 3D animations allowing the digital versions of the objects to in use and circulation.
At Elsewhere where nothing new enters and nothing existing leaves, the building itself functions as a giant grinder, slowly churning its contents into new arrangements and inevitably smaller pieces. While I speed up the material breakdown process, the objects’ digital preservation welcomes future potential and the promise of a longer, everlasting presence among heaps of other objects in a constant decay.
Sponsorship from Pendragon 3D Arts, with special thanks to owner Heather Pendrak and employee Adam Bowers. Production Support: Adam Bowers & Steve T., The Forge makerspace.
GLIMPSE, Elsewhere, Greensboro NC, February 2018
Pulverized museum collection objects, wood, glass, masonite, metal armature, Raspberry Pi. 10″ x 33″ x 42″
Elsewhere resident portrait
