>Ian Dawson
> Ian Dawson and Paul Reilly: Track and Trace, and Other Collaborative Art/Archaeology Bubbles in the Phygital Pandemic,
Journal Article in Open Archaeology Vol 7 Issue 1. Published online: June 4, 2021 https://doi.org/10.1515/opar-2020-0137
ABSTRACT: This paper describes our creative responses to a surface assemblage (a scatter) of lithic artefacts encountered on either side of a worn track across a field early on in the pandemic. Our art/archaeology response takes place within a phygital nexus in which artefacts or assemblages can be instantiated either physically or digitally, or both. In the nexus we create, connect and explore an ontological multiplicity of – more or less – physical and digital skeuomorphs and other more standard forms of records for sharing (i.e. Latour’s immutable mobiles, such as photographs), but rendered with radically different properties and affordances, at different scales, with different apparatus. These include interactive Reflectance Transformation Images, graphical surface models, machine intelligence style transfer, and 3D prints, all of which were produced in a variety of isolated analytical “bubble” settings and transmitted to and from (both digitally and physically) a home office in an isolated Hampshire village and a home studio in a London suburb. Our approach is to describe, diffractively, the ontological shifts and itineraries associated with some of these objects and assess how this assemblage came to matter as an art/archaeology installation. Ultimately, some of these deterritorialised, (re)colourised, affective, biodegradable, and diffractively born metamorphic instars, now inscribed with new meanings, are returned to the original findspot of the lithics to be (re)discovered..
OPEN ARCHAEOLOGY
ISSN: 2300-6560
First published: May 9, 2014
Editor-in-chief: Joakim Goldhahn
Publisher: De Gruyter Open Access
Publication Frequency: 1 Issue per Year
Open Archaeology is a peer-reviewed, electronic-only journal that publishes original, high-quality research on all aspects of archaeology. The journal encompasses novel, interdisciplinary approaches to archaeological data including archaeological science, theory and interpretation as well as archaeological heritage management and promotion.