Martha McGuinn

What is the future of preservation? Throughout history, people have used silicon in some form to perpetuate ideas, information and knowledge through time. Some of the very first human relics are flint tools which have carried information about our ancestors through thousands of years. The base of modern computing is the silicon chip. 

This project investigates these similarities. As it becomes easier, cheaper and quicker to generate 3D digital models of objects, are we moving towards a time where preservation is no longer about keeping the object physically intact, but rather, about preserving what it means or what it stands for? Is this a more true, and historic type of preservation?

I have designed and made a machine that uses photogrammetry to generate 3D models of artefacts donated by museums. After the artefacts have been scanned, they are sent to the base of the machine, where they are crushed. What is lost of the artefact if its image is stored digitally and its material is preserved in a compressed form? 

A film documenting the process of acquiring these objects will be shown alongside the machine.