Performance installation. Running time: Variable.
Work consists of one performer, audience participants, three CRT monitors with media players, air-dry clay, ABS 3D prints, plywood.
The Gift explores intimacy, interpretation, and how meaning transfers between people and objects. Members of my cohort were asked to describe an object they deeply valued without providing the object itself. Using these descriptions, I attempted to reconstruct each item through physical and virtual modeling, using VR and 3D printing to translate another person’s memory and attachment into material form.
The installation presented monitors alongside objects at different stages of completion, making visible the iterative process of listening, interpreting, misunderstanding, and remaking that shaped each reconstruction. In the culminating performance, I assumed each object's voice, addressed its owner, and then gifted the resulting sculpture back to them. The Gift considers the distance between description and understanding, the emotional lives we assign to objects, and the possibility of making as an act of attention and care.
