Ian Keeler

MEMORY DECAYING - 3D Letters & Video

This project was based on the theme “degraded media artforms”. I have been fascinated for a while with natural textures. Of course with digital technology, most, if not all of these can be simulated. However, I found that there was something special in photographing these textures. From the beginning of this project, I had more than enough ideas of what types of degradation I could do. It took very little to fill a sheet of paper with ideas, and a folder with inspiration images. What I struggled with was a theme for the project. It was easy to find a YouTube tutorial on how to glitch an image, but I had no idea what image to glitch.To me, degraded media suggested memory and nostalgia, and I played with the idea of using old images. I often found myself drawn into the past when looking at old images, and I thought there might be a way to translate this into a project. But my experiments did not produce anything I liked. Eventually, I sat down and wrote out my thoughts and frustrations regarding the project. How could I reference the past while respecting the people involved? How could I recreate the past without being inauthentic? How could I make an authentic project, without personal vulnerability? How could I make a personal project without being self-indulgent?Eventually, I hit on the idea of re-purposing text messages from people I no longer am in touch with. I like the idea of turning something so ephemeral into a solid tangible design. This also solved the content issue and all the roadblocks I was facing, if I could pull it off.In the end, I used modeling techniques to make it monumental concrete letters at smaller scale. It’s made from cast plaster of Paris, cracked, painted and re-glue to weather it. I was mid-way through this project when the pandemic caused the school to shut down, so I was limited in what I could do, but managed to make both the lettering and the final video in my apartment.

“A simple phrase gets stuck in my head. I revisit it over and over. And in this process, it goes from simple conversation to a monument. Nuances and context disappear and it grows in importance while losing accuracy. Supposedly, every time we remember something, we simply remember the last time we remembered it. It becomes a copy of a copy of a copy. It’s degraded and worn over time.”