Penelope
(working tittle)
2023-Ongoing
Project developed during the “Return 2 Ithaca residency”
In Homer's "Odyssey," Penelope employs a cyclical weaving process to manipulat time. She defers her suitors by perpetually constructing and deconstructing a shrou for her father-in-law, weaving by day and unweaving by night. This act of creation and destruction serves as the inspiration for this series. Digital photograph capturing the island of Ithaca undergo a similar process of construction an deconstruction. Initially captured, the images are then deleted, only to be retrieved through data recovery software. However, this retrieval process is imperfect, resulting in a degradation of the original data and introducing a layer of distortion an data loss. A further layer of manipulation occurs by embedding fragments of tex from the "Odyssey" within the image files, further corrupting them. This act create a physical link between the ancient narrative and the contemporary visual representation of Ithaca, intentionally corrupting the digital data to forge a ne connection. This cyclical process of creation, deletion, and imperfect recover becomes a ritual that echoes Penelope's weaving and deconstructs traditional notions of memory, representation, and the impermanence of digital content. The last step of this project involves weaving these corrupted images into a physica tapestry. This transformation from the ephemeral digital realm into a tangible objec symbolizes the convergence of ancient storytelling traditions with contemporary digital practices.
