SITE / ARCHIVE / CITE

Site/Archive/Cite is an augmented reality art intervention based on the National Archives at Seattle that interrogates the relationship of archive to place and public. At a time when many institutions hold out hope for digital accessibility to broaden the audience for their holdings, the realities of what gets digitized and who has access do not always live up to those heightened expectations. What is cited on a website may only be a fraction of the materials available onsite, providing a partial—and highly subjective—window into a collection that fundamentally gains meaning through public access and interaction. What ghosts haunt the archive? Who has put them there? And how might we both bear witness to and intervene into the construction of a public archive?

In two large-scale prints that layer and distort archival holdings, visitors can materialize the spectral presence of digital documents, inviting us to re-envision an archive that is simultaneously here and gone. Visitors were invited to take home a poster and open their own portal into the collection.

My role as a collaborator in the project expanded my experience with conceptualizing artwork and how technical limitations of mediums shape an artwork. During the time of development, AR was a relatively experimental medium for artwork. Within the creation of Site / Archive / Cite, we were often pushing software past it intended use. Experimenting with technology was an essential part of understanding what the artwork could be throughout the creation process.

We showed this work at the Seattle Art Book Fair, May 6-7, 2023, at Washington Hall, an event open to the public. This teaser of the exhibit acted as a test trial for a larger exhibit being developed.