Data Fossils — nirit+be

Data Fossils: Speculating on Restoration

Temple of Bacchus - 3D digitally translated model generated from a 2D photo of the folly at Painshill Park. The upper part of the model is the 3d translation of a cloud above the building’s roof.
Data Fossils is a speculative project imagining futuristic archaeology and alien anthropological research. Assuming a site might completely demolish and the only remnant would be digital data from photos, how might a physical restoration look like if a machine is doing an automatic translation from 2D to 3D?

This series of 3D printed models represent follies from Painshill Landscape Garden. The artefacts were generated out of data from digital photos of the actual site. Rendering the 2D images through 3D automatic filters resulted with distorted yet curious objects where a cloud in the sky becomes an integral part of the temple’s roof, trees become cracks in the walls; water reflections blend into the architecture and shadows become holes.

The fossils of digital data challenge the human categorisation and classification system and suggest an alternative way of seeing, redefining what a view is.
The Data Fossils accumulates layers of information. The follies are mimics of the original historic buildings; the photos are subjective documentation of the follies; the digital data of the photos is a parametric analysis of an image, translated into a 3D geometry, which is then formed as a material structure through a 3D printer—an artefact transformation.

- Exhibition View -

Data Fossils, Installation view (120x100 cm), 3D printed models on a wooden stand, X-cavations, Crypt Gallery, St Pancras, London, 2019

- Process and Details -

Process of automatic digital translation from 2D photo [1], using a depth mapping filter [2], rendering a 3D digital model out of it [3] and finally converting it into a 3D file for 3D print [4].

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Data Fossils: Speculating on Restoration

“It is the artistic mission to penetrate as far as may be toward that secret ground where primal law feeds growth.”