Memoria
Viva

Memoria Viva approaches matter as an active archive. Each material carries its own biography, formed through time, pressure, use, extraction, growth, rupture and transformation.

The collection is conceived as a body of physical artworks in which organic and mineral materials are scanned, interpreted and transformed through artificial intelligence, generative code, plotter drawing, natural pigments and blockchain-based traceability.

Artificial intelligence functions as a system of interpretation rather than a generator of finished images. It reads material traces, identifies latent structures and translates them into relationships, parameters, vectors and gestures.

Memoria Viva is the first collection to use the O.A.K paper from OCTARR. Over 350 years ago, King Louis XIV ordered a complete reorganization of French forestry, establishing one of the earliest examples of sustainable forest management.

A few of these venerable oaks still stand today, protected by law and approaching 400 years of age. As they reach the end of their natural lives, they are monitored, harvested and transformed by the French National Forestry Office.

Through OCTARR’s partnership with Tonnellerie Sylvain and Ruscombe Paper Mill, part of this exceptional wood is transformed into handmade, pre-industrial, chemical-free paper — crafted from a unique blend of the tree’s fibres and ancient textiles.

Latent Memory begins with a sheet of paper that is not neutral, but historical. The support was made from the fibres of Grand Mother Dara, a Quercus petraea oak born around 1669 in the Forêt d’Écouves.

The physical sheet is scanned, allowing its fibres, stains, edges and irregularities to become data. This image is then interpreted through AI, not to generate a final picture, but to read the material: its density, scars, silences and internal directions.

From this reading, the surface is transformed into a field of points, vectors and paths. The code reconstructs the paper’s memory as a generative map, translating material traces into lines, voids, rings and movements.

The presentation introduces the conceptual framework behind the ten-work collection, focusing on how OCTARR’s handmade Dara paper becomes the starting point for a new language of organic memory, artificial intelligence, generative systems and physical drawing.