The installation created by Dornbracht Research Lab focused on water as an interface for multi-dimensional immersion

How can new technologies transform, enhance or even replace the experience of water? What are the consequences of virtual experiences on the mind and the formation of memories? How similar can they be to real experiences?

These are just some of the themes addressed by Dornbracht Research Lab with Is Memory Data?, an experimental installation that permitted visitors to experience water as an interface – between people and technology, material and immaterial, real and virtual – in a ‘subversive’ approach: countering the virtual – dominated by technology that becomes exaggerated at times – with a physical space of simple, even provisional experience. A pause, a contrast that made the excursion between virtual and physical reality even more evident.

Presented during Milano Design Week 2019, Is Memory Data? was the first project of the Dornbracht Research Lab series launched by art director Mike Meiré to study the relationships between real and virtual dimensions.

The installation, conceived as a ‘temporary workshop’ focusing on water seen as an interface for multi-dimensional immersion, is part of a long-time cultural effort on the part of Dornbracht, which has promoted research projects since 1996.

Visitors to Is Memory Data? experienced a hyper-real world containing an original dialogue between space, matter and water.

With this project Dornbracht Research Lab investigated if and to what extent virtual experiences have the power to create memories and provoke emotions, in a rigorously scientific and experimental approach.

How can new technologies transform, enhance or even replace the experience of water? "