Restoration / Regeneration

the New Media Caucus Symposium

March 6-8, 2026

Arizona State University

Regeneration, Ritual, and the Divine Feminine in Augmented Italian Landscapes

Ritual / Belonging
4:30PM to 6:30PM
Duration: 20 min

Description

This presentation explores the relationship between regeneration, ritual, and digital art through two interconnected projects—The Galatina Project (2024) and the ongoing Well Wishes (2025–present)—which consist of virtual installations and site-responsive digital offerings, documented photographically, to reimagine healing, ecology, and the divine feminine within culturally resonant Italian landscapes. Responding to the conference theme of restoration and regeneration, these works consider how digital creative practices can act as contemporary rituals of renewal—restoring connections between body, spirit, and place. Both projects transform technology from a tool of extraction into a medium for offering and care, engaging with ecological, spiritual, and feminine dimensions of restoration. The Galatina Project was developed during a residency in southern Italy, inspired by Galatina’s history as a site of women’s ecstatic healing rituals. Using photogrammetry and augmented reality, I created virtual installations of natural elements within the city’s architecture. These ephemeral interventions acted as digital offerings, reawakening suppressed narratives of feminine healing and transformation while exploring how digital art might participate in cultural regeneration. The resulting images capture fleeting moments of these virtual installations—ghostly appearances of natural elements infused with dreamlike hues, hovering within the city’s urban landscape. Well Wishes continues this inquiry as an ongoing series of seven virtual offerings tracing a personal and symbolic journey across the Sardinian landscape. Each offering originates from a natural object—familial, personal, or locally gathered—transformed through photogrammetry into vivid 3D forms and placed near sacred wells, fountains, and coastal edges. These sites, long associated with feminine healing, renewal, and communal care, become spaces for digital ritual, where personal histories, ancestral memory, and the spirit of place converge. Together, these projects propose that restoration can emerge through acts of digital and artistic care—where virtual offerings and installations become conduits for engaging with the divine feminine, ancestral memory, and regenerative relationships between humans and the natural world.

Artists

Brita d'Agostino

New Mexico State University