Releasing the Absent Ghosts

Our interactive installation “Releasing the Absent Ghosts” On display at the V&A Museum in South Kensington, 18–20 September 2026, as part of Digital Design Weekend 2026. “Releasing the Absent Ghosts” explores the temporary structures and everyday traces that disappear as cities are built. Through photography and 3D scanning, we collect fragments from the physical world, then use computational assemblage, generative AI and world models to reconstruct them into a seemingly complete architectural world. What interests us about AI is its ability to create coherence: give it fragments, and it tries to fill in what is missing and return a believable whole. The installation reverses this process. By continuously turning a hand crank, visitors physically break apart the reconstructed world, revealing the fragments hidden within it. Once they stop, the fragments disappear and the coherent image begins to rebuild itself. The “ghosts” are things that were once physically present, but have disappeared from the finished image of the city. What has to disappear for an image of a place to look complete?