Touching Memories

2024
Personal Project
Digital Art

Project Overview

Touching Memory is an interactive digital art installation that explores the notion of collective childhood memories shared by individuals from similar cultural backgrounds and communities. The project invites participants to interact with physical objects embedded with gesture sensors, which triggers the dynamic transformation of an abstract particle point cloud displayed on a large screen. These particles evolve into vivid images and colorful 3D scene animations that evoke nostalgic associations.

Inspiration

Shared Memories

I was inspired by the concept of collective and shared memories, and I found that people who grew up in the same cultural and social context have very similar memories of childhood objects. These objects - often commonplace objects such as toys, books or household tools - are vehicles for nostalgia and shared experiences. By transforming these personal yet shared memories into interactive visual narratives, viewers are able to rediscover and connect with these shared memories, thus fostering a sense of belonging.

Based on this inspiration I created an online questionnaire, placing childhood objects from my own generation and background and collecting responses anonymously. Most of the responses generated similar keywords and scene descriptions for the same objects.

Screenshots of some questions I posted with memory items

Example: Childhood memories of bedroom layouts that many Chinese families would have had

Supermarket in childhood memories

How it works

The presentation of this digital art will be in a gallery, in the form of tours that allow viewers to interact with it. Through an initial questionnaire, contemporaries were invited to share their personal associations and memories related to some reminiscent objects. I then combined the descriptions with 3D modeling to create three familiar scenes (childhood bedroom, school classroom, and neighborhood supermarket) to visually represent these collective memories.

In the gallery, each scene has a nostalgic object connected to a distance sensor that detects the distance of the visitor's gesture. As the visitor approaches and interacts with the nostalgic object, a system of particles projected on the screen reacts to their movements, changing their dispersion and flow in real time. As the visitor continues to engage, the particles gradually combine to form a recognizable image associated with the collective memory of the scene. Once the image is fully materialized, it activates a corresponding animation on a nearby vintage television that plays the rich visual animation of the memory.

Flow Chart

Gallery Sketch Map

Detailed Sketch Map

Ranging sensor connected to TouchDesigner to control particle dispersion testing

Process

Scene One - Supermrket

In the information I gathered, people of my generation often lived in neighborhoods that had a similar supermarket down the street when they were kids. In front of the supermarket there were always coin operated amusement rides for kids, that played similar music.

Scene Modelling

3D Modelling Process

Particle Interaction

Touchdesigner Screenshot

Scene Two - Classroom

The second scene is the classroom. Schools and classrooms have become more and more high-tech and comfortable in recent times, but the memories of wooden desks, chalked blackboards and steel lecterns will never fade away.

Scene Modelling

3D Modelling Process

Particle Interaction

Touchdesigner Screenshot

Scene Three - Living Room

The last scene is a bedroom in the childhood home. From memory either the bedpan, desk or bookcases would be a rustic yellow color. There would be a corner cabinet in the doorway with a water bottle and some miscellaneous items. On hot summer days, there would be an electric fan and a delicate little alarm clock at the foot of the bed, along with my favorite dolls.

Scene Modelling