Tag Archives: digital art

Memory Landscapes: Going to Brooklyn

Laurie says:

I posted recently about shadow photos for my Memory Landscape project. Check out the whole project here.

“These photos are images that may be part of the aesthetic of memory, where rather than have your mind go from one associative memory to another, instead it goes very briefly to a space that is not about remembering but simply about being. I’m in a place where I am considering things rather than making decisions.”

For myself, I think of it as my mind going to Brooklyn. And Emma Humphries, who is working with me on the tech for this, is simply calling these images Brooklyn.

Guerrero Tree ShadowsfinalTree branches on Guerrero St, where I live now.

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While the project has a very strong intellectual framework, I’m fundamentally thinking about it visually. Seeing extended patterns of memory images, some times partially changing, sometimes not. When Emma was talking to me about the code, she drew some it out for me in pictures (we both think in pictures in different ways). Then I realized that the html code and the hyperlinks were very much my memory visualization, and just how well suited this language is for a non-linear memoir. A non-linear memoir feels much realer to me than the usual narrative forms that we use to reframe and remake our stories in. So there seems to be a deep harmony between Emma’s use of code language and the visual language of my art.

Shadows Roxburytrees final 3Trees and sky in Roxbury in upstate New York, where I lived along time ago.

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Guerrero wires ShadowsfinalLamp post and wires on Guerrero St.

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If you look at these images and the ones in the previous blog, you can see the harmony between them.  At the moment that feels very right to me, and may have ways of developing that I’ve just realized while writing this post.

I’m still considering the kinds of images I want for the brief state of simply being, but these will be part of the work in progress. As the new associative memory images and paths develop, I’ll be posting about them.

Memory Landscapes: Shadow Pictures

Laurie says:

My current digital project is called “Memory Landscapes”, a feminist visual memoir. Below is a brief description of the project. The gallery is here and a much fuller description of the project is here.

Memory is a form of time travel through your own time line. A visual memoir takes you into the artist’s time line and lets you choose your paths through their lives. I started thinking about memory, and how what is remarkable is not how much we forget, but how much we remember. I realized that my memories are not linear – because ‘inside the head everything happens at once.’ (Penelope Lively) Linear narrative is a useful construct, but it’s not how we actually remember.

I want to re-engage with the memories of my life, to create an autobiographical visual memoir, to express the poetics of non-linear time. Memories are filtered, by who we are now, who we were then, and what has happened in between. We view our past through layers of memories, and the past is everything that happened except this moment. It will eventually be on iPad app that creates an aesthetic of memory.

The iPad’s technical possibilities allow me to create an aesthetic of memory, reflecting the way that memories in the brain are a series of contingent associations. If you tap an image within the picture, it can link to another image, voice, or text, and these links can continue on. So you can have an aesthetic of memory, associations, connections and layers. Like our memories, the associations and connections can change.  I’m creating an experience modeled on the way we live in our memories.

One of the major photos with the associative memory threads is here.

These photos are images that may be part of the aesthetic of memory, where rather than have your mind go from one associative memory to another, instead it goes very briefly to a space that is not about remembering but simply about being. I’m in a place where I am considering things rather than making decisions.

These are 3 of the photos I’m considering. Now that I’m thinking about this I’m finding images as I walk around in the world.

Shadows Roxbury 3finalweb

This one is from some of the photos I took in Roxbury in upstate New York.

Pavement Shadowsfinalweb

These shadows are from a bare plum tree in front of my building.

Guerrero Church Shadows finalweb

The sky view is from the Mission in San Francisco.

I’m going to be very interested in how these resonate for people. And I expect I’ll be putting up more of them as I continue to think about this.