Mementos
Generative installation with 45 lasers and a large crystal, conceived to make the mutual dependence between physical and digital palpable.
- Number
- 007
- Editorial status
- Felipe-authored work
- Reading regime
- system / body / mechanism
- Status
- REALIZED
- Year
- 2019
- Location
- Farol Santander, São Paulo
- Context
- Metaversø / Farol
- Type
- INSTALACAO
- Series
- Metaversø
- Technique / medium
- lasers + cristal
- Realization
- Metaversø · Farol Santander
- System
- 45 programmed lasers passing through and refracting in a large crystal
- Programming
- Matheus Leston developed the system in Max/Jitter/MSP
- Operation
- The patterns were not pre-rendered videos, but generative forms emerging from the system's rules
- Question
- How can the inseparable connection between physical and digital be made visible?
Public connections that situate this work inside the archive before the narrative text.
In 2019, I conceived Mementos for the exhibition Metaversø at Farol Santander. It was my first work in that space, and I wanted to make visible something the eyes can’t see: the inseparable connection between the physical and the digital.
I designed an installation with 45 programmed lasers interacting with a large crystal. The programming was developed by Matheus Leston in Max/Jitter/MSP — a fundamental partnership to materialize what I had imagined. The lasers, as they passed through and refracted in the crystal, created ephemeral and ever-changing light patterns. These weren’t pre-rendered videos, but a generative system that emerged from the rules we programmed.
What interested me was making evident that the real and the digital, seemingly distant extremes, are actually a necessary balance in building civilization’s future. The dependence on both contexts became palpable there, in that immersive environment. Antonio Curti signed the exhibition’s curation, which included works by Bijari, Vigas, and Sala 28, all exploring this hybrid territory between worlds.
The work exists because Leston transformed concept into code, because the crystal refracted light in unpredictable ways, and because each visitor completed the system by witnessing the invisible becoming form.
The visual documentation currently published still needs more specific captions for each image. In this round, it remains minimal documentation of how the installation functioned.
