Into the search field, I type “terracotta pot”. Six hundred sixty-seven results populate upon my request. None of them are what I am looking for though. None of them are what I’ve found in the past, but it’s clear I’m missing the correct verbiage. Whatever keywords and attributions will lead me deeper into meaning escape me. What I see instead is an array of broken fragments, an image for each piece of a broken pot (several pots?).

So much care is taken in the documentation of each shard. They’re placed onto a neutral gray background with a printed grid to orient them in space. A plastic ruler on the left hand side of each image ensures the proper measurements are taken. On the lower edge, an AIC PhD target rests for color calibration. The artifact has been excavated away from its origins, but it is not without significance.

Once artifacts like these (by which I mean virtual) start moving, however, they pick up speed. They mix in midair as if lifted from the ground by a gust of wind. 

Words, histories, and nuance naturally travel slower than images. Context is left behind in the wake of such movement. And just like that, comprehension peels away from the visual leaving only shrapnel. The meaning-making I’m hunting for here, with my imperfect words, is not the regurgitation of something known or expected, but instead a reconstitution.