What We Take With Us

In 'What We Take With Us', which is a work in progress, I am exploring the implications of new technologies and technological processes such as 3D scanning, photogrammetry, and virtual reality. I am specifically interested in the way these technologies enable us to preserve the objects that are precious to us, such as souvenirs, inherited mementos from deceased relatives, and other mementos that spark memories. These memories may be of a childhood trip with family, or of a specific family member.

Starting with assemblages of my own keepsakes from various moments in my life, as well as objects inherited from my grandparents, I used a combination of techniques to create 3D renderings of these arranged objects.

I then explored these 3D renderings on my iPhone XR, and in the 3D environment of Google’s Tilt Brush app for the Oculus Quest virtual reality headset. In a 3D environment, the scanned objects become landscapes that can be expanded and contracted, zoomed into and through, and viewed in 360 degrees. Next, I took 2D snapshots of the rendered objects using either the screenshot tools in virtual reality apps or my iPhone XR to create editable images which I then minimally edited in Photoshop. The combination of mobile and camera-less digital photography creates the images you see.

The utopian promise of these technologies is that your memories can be preserved; that in fact, you could be preserved into some kind of virtual afterlife. In a world where you can take the things that most matter to you into the beyond, what do you choose?

The process of scanning is very difficult, and the tools that are available are both sensitive, and not good enough yet to do a completely error-free job. The reality now is that none of these 3D scans are perfect, and technologically speaking, in order to create a perfect 3D object of any kind, there is a creative process that necessarily makes the scanned object something totally new. To what extent, I wonder, does that impact the true storability of memory in the future?

I like that the scans are imperfect. I like that a scan of a handheld drum breaks apart into pixels where the scanning process ‘broke’. To me, these imperfections, captured in this series as 2D snapshots taken in a 3D environment, open up a whole line of questions and reflections on what we might take with us into a digital afterlife, and to what extent we can, or should, replicate ourselves.