Digitalising ephemerality

Abstract

The overwritten walls of Athens during the economic crisis offer a rich variety of ‘traces’ that emerge from the human interaction with their urban everyday environment. Slogans, visual and textual representations, graffiti and street art, posters, stickers and paper mass, all demonstrate a relentless persistence and incessant appearance in the contemporary city. The city walls accommodate the human echo, transforming the urban sphere into a narrator of the current Greek socio-political context. Despite the trace’s indefatigable rebirth in palimpsests of time, it remains vulnerable to encounters with perpetual human intervention, and time facilitates its inescapable deterioration. As an artist, engaging in digital technology as a research tool in my city-roaming methodology, I attempt to preserve and utilise the ephemerality in fine art practice. The urban trace, an element considered controversial and ambitious, but also dominant and omnipresent, functions as an apparatus and driving force for contemporary art approaches. Aiming at charting it, I rely on digital technologies to document and create detailed 3D representations as a direct way to preserve the temporal phases of Athens evolution through periodical scannings. 3D scanning and its potential as well as the continual development of digital technology and computerised intelligence establish it as a powerful medium of tracing the ephemerality in the field of fine art.