In Memory | Of Being review: old photographs reborn through AR

Orson Welles once discussed how constraints can spark rather than stifle creativity: “the enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” That line came back to me while I was moving through the elegantly shaped augmented reality exhibition In Memory | Of Being—a work that not only accepts constraints but turns them into defining strengths. Its creator, Yoyo Munk, seems to view themself less as a designer than a conduit, using contemporary technology to revisit and revitalize archaic media. Participants find themselves in a lovely overlay between old and new.

As I walked through the exhibition, which was held on the fifth floor of Melbourne’s State Library Victoria, Munk—who has previously created generative works for galleries such as London’s Victoria and Albert Museum—told me that after receiving a green light they were given just eight weeks to deliver the project. This led Munk to decide that no new materials would be created, the exhibition being composed entirely of pre-existing materials—primarily photographs—sourced from the library’s extensive database. Portrait photography taken in Victoria during the late 19th century makes up a large part of the exhibition.

These images are available for anyone to access via the library’s databases. But who would do that without an academic, professional, or artistic purpose? They aren’t “lost” media, but they’re certainly waiting to be found, sitting in digital quietude outside the public consciousness, without the features that tend to canonise such pictures—i.e. famous people and recognisable places. The exhibition’s official website notes that Munk gravitated toward “unnamed portraits, landscapes without labels, fragments of memory with no clear context.” Core themes include—in Munk’s words—“the relationships between technology and cultural memory, and the ways in which the technologies we embrace for the purposes of cultural preservation influence our inter-relationships within culture.”

The photographs are truly striking: I can still see some of the faces of these long-dead people lingering in my mind’s eye. After we’re fitted with our headset—this exhibition uses Magic Leap 2 devices—we enter the first space, which consists of a wall of virtual images introducing us to the essential elements of the experience. These include light responsive touches from the experience itself, each picture expanding when you look at it, and also enlarging according to how many others are observing it.

A photograph presented here, of a horse standing in a paddock, is surreal and ghost-like, caught between the reality of the moment depicted and the dreamish state created by the imperfect (i.e. blurry) nature of the representation and the corroding effect time has imparted on it. This photograph signposts the exhibition as one that embraces such imperfections—or at least, refuses to turn away from them. Visitors walk through a series of spaces, one with portraits presented on rows of virtual shelves, and another with images of collectives of people—predominantly from sporting and military groups—laid out on either side of it. Other elements include a collection of stereoscopic photographs (which look great in AR) and an oral histories section.

The spaces are broken up by small balconies that look out onto the library’s famous domed reading room—a stunning octagonal space, six stories high. This is where the exhibition’s centerpiece comes into view. On the ground, people read, study, and scroll through their devices, while above their heads—unbeknownst to them—a circular progression of photographs drifts through the air, spiraling upward into the dome. Here it’s more challenging to appreciate individual images (there are plenty of occasions to do that elsewhere) because the oomph of the presentation comes from volume.

It’s quite a sight; not one I’ll be forgetting anytime soon, even though particulars of individual images inevitably blur with time. There’s something lovely and melancholic about the whole experience: the way forgotten elements of the past can unexpectedly drift back into view, then inevitably drift away again, dust motes of history briefly catching light before returning to darkness. The use of new technology to repurpose the old further deepens that cyclical effect, creating a sense of time looping back on itself.