74 degrees

Artistic research residency that explores contemporary relationships with our material heritage, developed within the 'Cultura Resident' programme of the Valencian Community at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Castellón.

74 degrees celsius is the temperature reached by the computer graphics card as it reconstructs ceramic pieces from the collection of the Fine Arts Museum of Castellón, scanned in 3D using the photogrammetry technique.

Far from the 1000-1300 degrees celsius needed to fire the clay pieces, these new objects form an entity in themselves. They are not replicas of the physical world, although they are built from it. They are new objects with their own materiality and characteristics. In this exercise of digitalisation, clouds of points, vertices with coordinates, colours, meshes, texture maps appear. A sort of 'anatomy' of the virtual object that we will return, once again, to the physical world through a multi-media installation composed of synthetic textiles, plastic prints, HD screens and virtual reality experiences.

Ceramics room of the Museum of Fine Arts of Castellón

Opening the display cases of the Museum of Fine Arts of Castellón

The primary function of the museum is to acquire, restore, preserve, arrange and display unique objects according to a categorical logic, usually based on time. This generates a relatively complex information cloud of interrelated objects and linked data of size, colour or age. An abstract network of knowledge materialised -almost frozen- in the space of the museum. The narrative logics characteristic of digital culture allow us to approach this cloud of relationships in a different way.

In 2019 we were selected to take part in the Cultura Resident research residencies at the Museum of Fine Arts of Castellón. Based on the museum's collection of Valencian ceramics, we investigated new ways of approaching culture and our material legacy from the virtual environment.