NARRATIVE TRACES

Germany & the Netherlands, 2015 - 2016

The ‘Narrative traces’ project started during a residency at EKWC (European Ceramic Work Centre, NL) in 2015. During that residency period, 50 objects were collected from the site. The ‘found objects’ were small pieces, consisting mostly of construction waste like wood chips or isolation foam, which were catalogued and stored in plastic bags. 

Exploring representation tools, I decided to register them with 3D scanning techniques. The task of performing this procedure rigorously 50 times generated novel and rich information, such as new textures and shapes, now present on a digital medium. 

The digitalization procedure from material object to digital file is a translation process. As a result, it produced novel material and morphological conditions which were impossible to notice prior to this ‘translation’.

The goal of this research was to reveal the invisible, like a photographic lens that alters an object to the point that a new one is created. The second stage of this research attempted to materialize this new digital information into a physical object. 

This series of 3D printed tiles are an important chapter of this research. They were produced by translating physical information into 2D drawing which was then re-processed as a 3D landscape tile. Each tile corresponds to a specific texture, while at the same time matching a physical object. 

As an artistic research proposes, a possible reflection on the use of digital tools and their possibilities of generative exploitation.