Architectures of Memory
Natalie McKeever and Helen Hyun-Kyung Park
October 21, 2011
Santa Cruz, CA

project website graftedfromlight.tumblr.com

The project was developed as part of the 2010-2011 Performative Technologies Project Group at UCSC's Digital Arts and New Media MFA program, under the guidance of our supervising professors Jim Bierman, David Cuthbert, and Kate Edmunds.

Memory is a creative act. It is an act of reconstruction. A memory is rarely the same twice. How do you remember? In research, we conducted interviews asking how memories looked, felt, and sounded for different individuals. We chose to focus on the extremes of memory - happy memories, joyful memories, painful moments, memories you would never want to lose - with the idea that these polar extremes remain above all else when our memory deteriorates.

Using video to visually interpret our research, Architectures of Memory is a site-specific, thirty minute, three channel video installation exploring the many complexities and poetics of the construction of memory and its erosion within the human brain. The public art event took place October 21st, 2011 within Mitchell's Cove at West Cliff Drive and Sunset Avenue
in Santa Cruz, California. Images and text were projected on the cliffside, rocks, and waves within the ocean inlet.