Synthetic Fossils
»Synthetic Fossils« is a visual thought experiment on how generations might study prior civilizations’ physical and digital evidence in the distant future. Inspired by how artifacts of our time will be perceived centuries from now, fakenew studio and Danny Ivan started a collaboration project to find possible answers to this question.
Studying human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture at the intersection of analog and digital information will define how future generations can reconstruct the past. Our time’s analog artifacts rediscovered on buried landfills centuries from now will be the archeological discoveries of the future. In a world where information is increasingly digitized, traditional archeological sites and findings won’t be the only area of interest. With digital information reproduced over time, errors occur, the data can be altered or lost, and the idea of objects might change as an oral tradition told over generations. Envisioning a mix between the remains of analog artifacts and digital information led to producing a series of artworks representing this tension. The result is a lighthearted thought on distorted reconstructions of the past displayed in a distant future.
»Excavation is only a method of producing evidence about the past, a means to an end, akin to surgery in that it is drastic, unlike surgery in that it is always destructive.«
(Philip Barker 1993 (3rd. ed.) Techniques of Archeological Excavation. Taylor and Francis Group, London).
»It might look a bit messy now, but just you come back in 500 years time.«
Bergholt Stuttley Johnson, (Terry Pratchet) 1996. Men at Arms: A novel of Discworld. HarperPrism, New York.
