Masked Generations

During my junior year I took a Co-lab course on media archeology, which refers to a set of approaches to media studies that “go against the grain,” focusing on the forgotten and obsolete, losers and dead-ends, and secrets of history. Engaging with these media artifacts can reveal new perspectives on cycles of human behavior, challenge linear and canonized history, and tell untold stories. In this course, I had the opportunity to conceptualize, design and produce my own novel media artifact that speaks to a past, present, and/or future discourse of media technology. 

Masked Generations demonstrates the vast similarities between current and past eras through the common ground of a pandemic, while also capturing the differences in new and old media by displaying past media using modern technology. Detailed on the mask is a 3D printed lithophane image of professional baseball players wearing masks during the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic, and shows the eerie similarities between a past pandemic to our recent pandemic through the use of 3D printing. 

This piece goes against the grain of what is expected of a typical mask with an image on it, as viewers are only able to see the image on the mask when light is shining through it. This piece also engages with historical themes by drawing from actual archives, but presents it in a modern way using new technology.