FIRE DOLLS

5 minutes 45 seconds, Colour
HD Video, 2012
Presented at Project 31 Auction 2012

"... in their earliest uncanny spells of loneliness... dragged as companions into cots, abducted into the deep furrows of illnesses, appearing in dreams, entangled in the disasters of feverish nights - letting themselves be dreamed, just as they were accustomed to being inexhaustibly lived during the day by alien forces." -- Dolls: On the Wax Dolls of Lotte Pritzel, Rainer Maria Rilke, 1913

Modelled from familiar things, the Phantom Objects are virtual mementos, evoking experiences of memory and forgetting including loss, discard and breakdown. Working in the Memory Link Studio, I hand-scanned dolls from a personal collection, adding extended digital transitions (dissolves, blurs, wipes) to build temporality and fading. Stock fire footage and pyro effects display heat, as well as individual personality. Early memories are so resilient they are last to be lost after brain injury or degeneration.** The dolls evidence the intensity of touch of the children holding them. What persists when these 'force animals' are consigned to digital realms? This project extends questions about memory in virtual conditions that I asked in my work in Phantom House - a memory architecture of my family home I built in the virtual world SecondLife.