Isabella Wordsworth
An archive of the obsolete
@central saint martins
An exploration in web design, 3D scanning, writing, and an archival process.
https://lostpropertyarchive.cargo.site/
Lost Property: An Archive of Obsolete Things is a physical and digital time capsule of the year 2023 - with all the weird, strange, useful and often overlooked objects that make up our lives.
A curated collection of 100 objects gathered by five students over the course of a month. These different objects aim to showcase life in the first quarter of the 21st century. In a world constantly reshaping itself, where the internet rules, hyper-online cultures thrive, political strife sours and climate anxiety spreads like wildfire and more, to define 2023 is a daunting task. Through the unique voices and perspectives of the curators they manage to cut through the noise and chaos of modernity in order to capture life’s lived experience.
Intended to be opened in 100 years time, this time capsule examines our current consumer based culture, and how our most prized possessions will inevitably end up in a landfill. By ascribing sentimentality into disposable, meaningless single-use items, we create a world whose future is synonymous with trash, robbing future generations of the pristine and sacred aspects of our natural world. This is precious trash, objects that we can't live without and the world will unfortunately never get to live without.
By archiving these distinct items, we hope to immortalise these objects and allow them to fill in the small moments that make up our lives, informing the viewer not about the world defining events, but the quieter aspects of our lives that are equally important to the shaping of history. The true importance of each object lies in the use, not in it´s materiality. The captions that accompany each article are carefully written by each archivist that iterates how each object shapes our lives. These items are not random, and as of right now they are not trash. They represent moments in our lives and aspects of our days. These are our property, destined to be one day lost in time. Here we present our Lost Property.
This was a group project, which allowed us to create a multifaceted experience for our audience. My role in the group was the web design and development. Using 3D scanning as a way to represent the physical objects digitally and interactive elements within the site I was able to recreate the physical time capsule digitally.