Statement about the Research Content and Process

Description

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.

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?

Methodology

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).

Project Highlights

The work was a commission for the first Special Projects, Applied Arts Pavilion, a collaboration between the V&A and La Biennale di Venezia. Taking as its starting point the 150th anniversary of the V&A’s foundational Convention for Promoting Universally Reproductions of Works of Art for the Benefit of Museums of all Countries, this international exhibition was an ambitious effort to consider the implications of digital technologies for cultural heritage. The debates it initiated resulted in the V&A’s major initiative, The Reproduction of Art and Cultural Heritage (ReACH), launched at UNESCO in 2017. ReACH sets out to create guidelines for how to reproduce, store and share works of art and culture heritage today. This culminated in the ReACH Declaration on 8 December 2017 (V&A 2017). While A World of Fragile Parts was generally important, Infractus also proved to be specifically significant for the V&A as an institution: its highlighting of the imminent demolition of Robin Hood Gardens set the museum on a path of travel that led it to acquire a threestorey section of the estate for preservation purposes. This was then exhibited at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition in 2018.