Archive for the Future @ Studio Kura @ Matsusue Jingu Itoshima Japan
Research output: Creative and Literary Works in Non - textual Form › RGC 44 - Performance and participation in exhibits
Author(s)
Related Research Unit(s)
Detail(s)
| Original language | English |
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| Publication status | Presented - Jun 2024 |
Link(s)
| Document Link | |
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| Permanent Link | https://scholars.cityu.edu.hk/en/publications/publication(ed651785-921d-48da-9987-3471c2cfff1e).html |
Abstract
In the past, our society built many archives of culture and knowledge that remain in various forms today. Museums, libraries, and monuments are all examples that record the past and allow present-day visitors to try to recreate aspects of the past. But these memories are filtered through our perspective of the present. Museum recreations of prehistoric sites are fantasies about what these destroyed buildings once looked like, filtered through our imaginations based on our interpretations of "palace" or "marketplace." A piece of wall painting from the past is sometimes interpreted by an anthropologist as part of an ape, and sometimes as part of a boy.
In this context, what do the archives we make today say about our culture as seen from the lens of the future? How do we build archives that are designed for the consumption of the future, and not just for the preservation needs of the present? With this in mind, we created speculative design artifacts that are archives of the present and archives for the future. These seven items are:
- The Temple: A temple with a room created for each year of its existence. While the temple worshippers weather it like any other temple, each year visitors rebuild a new room in their own image, building on the previous ones rather than destroying them.
- Portal: A password portal that is the key to the archive. As the visitor navigates the labyrinth, their progress becomes the password to the portal. The representation of this portal is a digital surface that represents the labyrinth the visitor navigates as they try to unlock the portal.
- Sculpture: A sculpture that changes with every look, but is different each time the same person looks at it. This sculpture is a dynamic archive whose interpretation changes with every look. The initial state of this sculpture is a monolith.
- Fragments: Shards of pottery that remind us of the past. These fragments are made anew every day by today's visitors, and today's fragments become tomorrow's reality, so the archive of the future sees us as fragments, not as an idealized version of us.
- Language: Signs of communication that change throughout history. As a representative example, the pirate symbol does not always have a meaning of danger either. Here is a representative table of people's facial expressions to archive the communication language of this era.
- Community: A community that survives a great disaster but remains at the point before it. A real example is Urakami in Nagasaki City. Here, there is a tradition of continuing the commemoration of peace for centuries, and while weathered, the landscape changes little by little, and the traditions of the people are kept intact. One of the famous inscriptions is the street address of Urakami, such as "28 Peace Street".
- Tree: A physical tree with many branches that grows a little with each visit and spreads beyond the concrete and man-made obstacles. It survives for centuries.
In this exhibition at Studio Kura, we will exhibit two artifacts specifically related to community and trees:
1. A video representation of the community in Itoshima and how it is represented as a future archive that exists without the influence of time. The narration is provided by ChatGPT and reflects our archiving process, using generative AI (GenAI) to represent large amounts of data, showing it as a form of archiving of our culture.
2. A site-specific artifact installed at the local Matsusue Tenmangu Shrine in Itoshima. 3D printed cityscapes and tree forms represent the Itoshima community that surrounds Tenmangu Shrine. Visitors will notice that the artifacts are naturally built into the stones of Tenmangu Shrine. This is not an archive for the present, but for the future, which already knows the history of the past. In fact, the future may already have all the data. That "museum" is already in the world, a society with the equipment for recording. All the future needs to know is our process, original concept, and situation. This artifact records the "attitude" in 3D form and places it in the context of Tenmangu Shrine, the spiritual center of the Itoshima community.
In this context, what do the archives we make today say about our culture as seen from the lens of the future? How do we build archives that are designed for the consumption of the future, and not just for the preservation needs of the present? With this in mind, we created speculative design artifacts that are archives of the present and archives for the future. These seven items are:
- The Temple: A temple with a room created for each year of its existence. While the temple worshippers weather it like any other temple, each year visitors rebuild a new room in their own image, building on the previous ones rather than destroying them.
- Portal: A password portal that is the key to the archive. As the visitor navigates the labyrinth, their progress becomes the password to the portal. The representation of this portal is a digital surface that represents the labyrinth the visitor navigates as they try to unlock the portal.
- Sculpture: A sculpture that changes with every look, but is different each time the same person looks at it. This sculpture is a dynamic archive whose interpretation changes with every look. The initial state of this sculpture is a monolith.
- Fragments: Shards of pottery that remind us of the past. These fragments are made anew every day by today's visitors, and today's fragments become tomorrow's reality, so the archive of the future sees us as fragments, not as an idealized version of us.
- Language: Signs of communication that change throughout history. As a representative example, the pirate symbol does not always have a meaning of danger either. Here is a representative table of people's facial expressions to archive the communication language of this era.
- Community: A community that survives a great disaster but remains at the point before it. A real example is Urakami in Nagasaki City. Here, there is a tradition of continuing the commemoration of peace for centuries, and while weathered, the landscape changes little by little, and the traditions of the people are kept intact. One of the famous inscriptions is the street address of Urakami, such as "28 Peace Street".
- Tree: A physical tree with many branches that grows a little with each visit and spreads beyond the concrete and man-made obstacles. It survives for centuries.
In this exhibition at Studio Kura, we will exhibit two artifacts specifically related to community and trees:
1. A video representation of the community in Itoshima and how it is represented as a future archive that exists without the influence of time. The narration is provided by ChatGPT and reflects our archiving process, using generative AI (GenAI) to represent large amounts of data, showing it as a form of archiving of our culture.
2. A site-specific artifact installed at the local Matsusue Tenmangu Shrine in Itoshima. 3D printed cityscapes and tree forms represent the Itoshima community that surrounds Tenmangu Shrine. Visitors will notice that the artifacts are naturally built into the stones of Tenmangu Shrine. This is not an archive for the present, but for the future, which already knows the history of the past. In fact, the future may already have all the data. That "museum" is already in the world, a society with the equipment for recording. All the future needs to know is our process, original concept, and situation. This artifact records the "attitude" in 3D form and places it in the context of Tenmangu Shrine, the spiritual center of the Itoshima community.
Citation Format(s)
Archive for the Future @ Studio Kura @ Matsusue Jingu Itoshima Japan. LC, RAY (Actor). 2024.
Research output: Creative and Literary Works in Non - textual Form › RGC 44 - Performance and participation in exhibits
