Metalithic postcards during the pandemic

Dawson, Ian and Reilly, Paul (2024) Metalithic postcards during the pandemic. In, Eldridge, Luci and Trivedi, Nina (eds.) Robotic Vision and Virtual Interfacings. Seeing, Sensing, Shaping. (Technicities) Edinburgh. Edinburgh University Press, pp. 267-307.

Abstract

We present a series of Art/Archaeology digitalised 'postcards’ developed by the authors while working - physically separated - on a transdisciplinary collaboration during the lockdowns of the coronavirus pandemic. These postcards track and trace the initial act of discovery and the subsequent registration, analysis, and (re)presentation of a silica artefact initially made in the mesolithic period, and the contemporary setting and its place of discovery, through silicon-based new channels of re(dis)covery.

Through a series of recursive post-human imaging projects, archaeological and artistic practices are diffracted through one another, and through human and machinic ways of vision. The ‘strange loops’ of perception we produce through our diffractive approach forces us to radically reconsider and (re)present the scale, materialities and temporalities of the original artefact and its setting in new thought-provoking physical, digital and indeed both combined (i.e. phygital) Art/Archaeology assemblages that disarticulate, repurpose and disrupt traditionally safe institutional modes of interpretation and narration. We try to free both the human and machinic practioners (Flusser's 'functionaries') from slavishly following anachronistic practices. We describe these digitalised new|old objects as 'metalithic'.

Each postcard is composed of a captioned image, a diffractively contextualising quotation (i.e. a viewpoint offering an interesting different perspective), which is supported by a deeper account of the main diffractive insights obtained at key stages of the project.

Keywords: Art/Archaeology; (meta)lithics; recursion; Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI); Structure from Motion photogrammetry (SfM); Style Transfer

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Contributors

Author: Ian Dawson

Author: Paul Reilly

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