SMOUT ALLEN
INFRACTUS
Statement about the Research Content and Process Description
Methodology
Infractus is a design and exhibition piece consisting of six laser-etched crystal models capturing moments in the life of the post-war housing estate Robin Hood Gardens prior to its demolition in 2019. The project was commissioned by the V&A for A World of Fragile Parts – a re-examination of Henry Cole’s 1867 Convention for Promoting Universal Reproductions of Works of Art – at La Biennale di Venezia, 15th International Architecture Exhibition (2016). Infractus took an innovative and critical approach to recording and re-presenting architectural elements, using LiDAR scanning and laser-etching techniques.
1. Research into the V&A Cast Courts collection and nineteenth-century copying and reproduction techniques; research into contemporary digital copying and reproduction techniques; 2. Site recording by LiDAR and photographic techniques; 3. 3D printing and the use of crystal laser etching.
Dissemination
Exhibited at A World of Fragile Parts, Applied Arts Pavilion, La Biennale di Venezia, 15th International Architecture Exhibition (2016). Featured in the Italian/English exhibition catalogue of the same name (Cormier and Thom 2016). Selected and discussed by David Bickle, Director of Design, Exhibitions & Future Plan at the V&A, as his ‘favourite object’ of the exhibition (Bickle 2016). Presented by Smout Allen at the lecture series ‘Kitchen Conversations London: On Destruction and Preservation in Creative Process’, The Wapping Project and The Future Laboratory (2017).
Questions
1. What are the limits and potentials of digital processes as records of built cultural heritage? 2. How can digital tools contribute to and extend existing techniques of preservation and reproduction in museum environments? 3. What alternative creative and constructive approaches might be taken to digital copying? How might these perpetuate material culture for public audiences, now and in the future?
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