AlexanderPorter

Exquisite

A city assembled from scanned fragments.

A family of collaborative scanning workshops that turned museums and city blocks into explorable, collectively authored worlds.

Period
2015–2022
Status
Complete / Archived
Form
Collaborative workshops / virtual environments
Exterior model inspection

The project

Exquisite joined photogrammetry, game design, and the structure of the exquisite-corpse game. Participants captured fragments of a place, built them into individual scenes, and assembled those scenes into a shared virtual environment.

Workshop notes

The first Exquisite City workshop used downtown Belgrade as its material. Architectural details, pavement, storefronts, and monuments became modular pieces of an imaginary neighborhood. Exquisite Museum shifted the method indoors: participants scanned objects and spaces across the Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History, then built individual galleries inside a shared virtual museum.

New Mexico educators used the process in Albuquerque in 2022. At each site, participants selected which fragments to scan and how to arrange them.

What others saw

“I really felt that I gained an extra sense that imbues my surroundings with new levels of meaning.”— Philo van Kemenade
CreativeApplications.Net / SensoriumThe Augmented Mind and Where to Look For It
“The whole notion that VR travel should mimic the real thing suddenly seems mistaken. The unknowns are what make travel great.”— Kyle Chayka
MaximThe New Head Trip

One initiative / Multiple sites

Each iteration keeps its own place, people, and evidence

Exquisite City (Belgrade) · 2015

A three-day workshop recombined scans of downtown Belgrade into an imaginary, explorable neighborhood.

Exquisite Museum · 2015–2016

Museum objects, rooms, and architectural fragments became participant-made galleries inside a shared virtual museum.

Exquisite City (Albuquerque) · 2022

New Mexico educators used accessible scanning and web tools to build a collective city between map, game, and collage.

Reconstructed roomDocumentation: Frank-Ratchye STUDIO
Scanned figure modelDocumentation: Frank-Ratchye STUDIO
Exquisite Museum title card over a grayscale virtual atrium.
Splash Screen
Workshop participants work around a long table with laptops, cameras, and scanned museum material.
Workshop tablestudioforcreativeinquiry / Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry

My role

Creative Lead / Workshop Designer

Scatter

Co-Founder / Immersive Director

I developed and co-taught the Exquisite City workshop in Belgrade. For Exquisite Museum, I served as creative lead, designed the workshop, and completed the final distributable after the workshop. The broader initiative was made through Scatter with collaborators and participants at each site.

Selected credits

Alexander Porter
Collaborator (Scatter collective project)

Links & presentations

Earlier speculative workshopCamera of the Future

In a world where every device can see, what is a camera?

Related teaching practiceComputational Portraiture

Using machine vision for portraiture.