Memory Made Tangible (2024)

How would it feel to step into someone's vision of a place that was special to them, and to see all the ways locations trembles with memory in their eyes? "Memory Made Tangible" aims to answer these questions through layered compositions evoking my own personal experience. I explore how my memories influence how I see and remember locations special to me, through projecting images of these locations onto myself, then further editing the photos through digital collage and drawing and color adjustment to best convey the emotions that go along with them. I edit versions of my past self next to my current self—the two smaller versions of me next to my current self looking at them are from April 2024 (left) and January 2017 (right). Each patchwork section of the sky and sea are taken from the same place—Cox Bay near Tofino, British Columbia—through different days, seasons, and years. I hope to convey the way one’s personal experience can create something special and magical and layered with nostalgia out of a place that may seem mundane to others.

This piece was part of a larger project in CTCH 209 exploring research questions through practice-based research. The question I was pursuing was “How do I visually convey how richly my favourite places reverberate with nostalgia and emotion, through a Creative Technologies framework by layering photographs, projection, and digital and traditional drawing?”, and this is one of the works that came out of it.