de//reference

Atherton Gardens estate, Ngár-go

In the future, the public housing towers of Atherton Gardens will be gone, along with a majority of residents. Just as the homes and families before them were removed, deemed slums. And Wurundjeri people before them, dispossessed from their Country.

de//reference is an experimental, future re-mapping prototype that captures how the site is being experienced today while its fate remains uncertain. Our process creates poetic, spatial and technological layers that can be seen today, in order to create a memorial for tomorrow.

We mapped a number of community sites at the Atherton Gardens, archiving image, place information and geolocation to miniature NFC (near field communications) tags added to street furniture and surfaces around the estate. Finding and tapping a tag with a smartphone will connect viewers to the archive. While the archive requires effort to discover in situ today, it is ready to be reinstated as a memorial in the future, when the towers and their communities are gone, so future residents can explore and understand what has been lost.

Each NFC tag is a 5mm square, and almost imperceptible unless one is looking out for it. These almost impossible-to-find markers speak to the stories of the residents–perhaps invisible, almost hidden from view, yet present and permanent.

For the exhibition, a maquette of NFC tags are presented on a panel to communicate the scale of the tags (they are tiny), and how they might be found on-site.

(More images forthcoming)