I have been using scanning technology as a way to mark the passage of daily life. The action of scanning objects serves to archive daily life, at a particular time, and as a way to record our relationships to these objects as containers of our memories. I traveled around Moldova with a wonderful team from the American Embassy in Chisinau. We visited orphanages, schools and public libraries to ask Moldovans to participate in a project that recorded objects, both personal and cultural, from contemporary daily life. In the project, “Objects are closer than they appear,” participants take a moment to record by scanning, objects that are of emotional or cultural importance. Sometimes these objects are gifts, sometimes treasures, sometimes things that are hand made and often simply daily possessions. Participants received prints of their scanned objects
