A cairn is a man-made pile of stones raised for a purpose, usually as a marker or as a burial mound. In prehistoric times, they were raised as markers, as memorials and as burial monuments. In modern times, cairns are often raised as landmarks, especially to mark the summits of mountains. Cairns are also used as trail markers. They vary in size from small stone markers to entire artificial hills, and in complexity from loose conical rock piles to elaborate megalithic structures. A cairn has functions very close to the specificities of digital technology and the Internet. Indeed, in a completely disconnected space, its role is to inform, guide, situate and involve several people on different paths and who find themselves at a specific point, materialized by an always different participatory sculptural form.

The nomadic residence Failles Fronteras led me to cross the Pyrenees mountain range on foot from Pau (fr) to Zaragoza (es) at the Etopia art center. During this one month journey in July 2021 I 3D scanned 20 cairns around the Spanish border between the Nouvelle Aquitaine region in France and the Aragon region in Spain. To make these recordings, I took a smartphone with me equipped with a lidar sensor. During the scans of each cairn I deliberately created accidents in order to mix the materialology of the stones and all other natural elements with the glitch aesthetic specific to digital images. Dna of natural blends with that of digital to create a hybrid shapes and textures. The project is to exhibit an exploded visualization of these 20 cairns in form of several photographs of different formats from each scan and accompanied by screens for the glitch 3D display of the model.

Installation for Fronteras Nomadas exhibition, from November 16, 2022 to January 30, 2023, at Etopia Centro de Arte y Tecnología Zaragoza.

25 meters hanging line of 130 photographs taken during the nomad residency in july 2021, modified with several AI and printed on brushed aluminum. Ground printing of a glitch satellite view of Vignemale (highest peak in the Pyrenees) and augmented reality display of cairns scanned in 3d in the Ossau valley (fr) at more than 2000 meters above sea level.

Tribute to the Pyrenees!

Production: Association acces)s(, ETOPIA, Région Nouvelle-Aquitaine & Région Aragon.