Images from Ungrounded Objects

The following images are taken from my first studio project of M1 - Ungrounded Objects. The exercise was to take two artifacts in the city and then perform a series of manipulations to them. I chose the Ara Pacis altar constructed to commemorate the Augustan Peace in 9BCE as well as the fire extinguishers of the new Richard Meier building that houses it. See my earlier posts, below, for my reasons for being interested in these artifacts.



I began by making watercolour sketches of both of my artifacts. This was partly in order to get kinetically involved with the task at hand (rather than jumping directly into photoshop) and partly to generate a stylized icon to then be able to manipulate on the computer.


These two images deal with the idea that there are many conceptions of peace, of which the military peace of Augustus is just one. The images depict a hypothetical garden of peace in which all of these different ideas of peace are commemorated.

The Ara Pacis, sunk into the 'lagoon of history'. This is actually the location where the Ara Pacis was discovered.

Imagine if the stylized Hellenistic vegetation of the Ara was to spring to life, discarding its harmonious self-symmetry.

Fire egress plan of the Campo Marzio in Rome

As fear of fire proliferates, the same logic of fire safety expands from our buildings into the streets.

The final image of my project (cropped here) depicts a potential union of the Ara Pacis and the fire extinguishers in a 'Festival d'Estintori'. The two types of peace and order that I am concerned with, at their two different scales, are brought together in this ritual. At the end of the ceremony, the Ara Pacis stands cleansed of its vines, in its original sculpted purity. In putting out the fire, the citizens perform an act of domination over entropy and over the danger that it represents.