College Community is Invited to Participate in a Digital Time Capsule – The Dorian Gray Project

Posted on: 19 November 2009

The Dorian Gray Project, named after Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, will give both students and staff an opportunity to have their portraits taken for inclusion in a digital ‘time capsule’.  On November 30th next those members of the College community who would like to participate in the project are invited to come to the Examination Hall to have their photograph taken.  The photographs are to be stored digitally and kept for a decade before they are released again to each individual.

Oscar Wilde is one of Trinity College’s most famous alumni and his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, is the inspiration for this dual stranded College-wide project.  It is a tale of youth and beauty retained in reality whilst the scars of time and dissolution are contained in counterfeit.  “This digital time capsule will preserve the perennial youth of the College and although it is unlikely that any individual will have the good fortune to retain unblemished youth like Dorian Gray, each participant will have the chance to capture an instant in time for that ‘Oh my God!’ moment in 2019,” commented Joseph O’Gorman, Honorary Treasurer of the Central Societies Committee.

The second element of the project is to manipulate each of the portraits so that they are rendered into a miniature format.  Each miniature will act as a tile to produce a large scale mosaic portrait of the College.  This montage of portraits caught, in an instant of time, symbolise the living element that embodies College life and will act as a testimony that College is more than just bricks and mortar, quads and cobbles.

The Dorian Gray Project is open to all members of College and registration can be done online.  Participants can dress up for the occasion or capture their current look for future reference!