Tracing_Phantoms

Retracing the transiency of labour

This series investigates the Qaitbay Fort in Alexandria. The fort possesses a complex history of haunting from earthquakes, to bombardments. The fort is built over the same site as the Alexandria Lighthouse built in 247BC which was destroyed during an earthquake in 1323. Some of the left-over rubble was used to build the fort walls. The prototype for this project aims to trace the history of this site as a way of resurfacing the invisible variegated haunting.
The prototype is based on linkages. Linkages are sets of commands and functions that allows for copying, scaling and transformations. The earliest examples of this are pantographs which were used to scale existing drawings. All these analogue tools have been digitized in modern days into linkages which exist in all the drawing software that we use. This project comprises of 2 parts that have developed simultaneously. First is the iteration and development of analogue models as means of testing and combining functions of the instrument and the second is redrawing and compiling all available drawings on of the site to create a surface which the prototype can trace on.