Society. Spaces. Screens

Abstract

It is human nature to collect objects from our lives. Objects hold layers of individual and collective meaning, of emotional, cultural and even monetary value. Though many objects are not kept for their performance value, but instead as representation of an experience, or part of our identity through physical presence. They become the souvenirs of our lives, witnessing our memories. It’s almost as if we let go of the object, then we will also be letting go of the memory, as such, we catalog our objects, place them in storage, and keep them protected, even if they never resurface again. Over time, memories are known to become distorted. The details get blurry, and even the time of occurrence can be difficult to place in our minds. Keeping objects to document our lives can help us to recall these experiences. However, an object out of context is like having a memory but not knowing who it belongs to. While in our everyday lives, the objects of our spaces witness our existence, when placed in storage, they are without their spatial context, which like our memories, over time the objects themselves also become blurry. While it might be unrealistic to preserve every space that has meaning to us, we can capture spatial context through digital methods. Using Light Detecting and Ranging (LiDAR) scanning software, interior spaces can be scanned to capture the context of memory. Through accessing the spatial context of an object of memory, we can begin to unblur some of the edges of our memories, and perhaps even let go of the physical objects that we keep, to make space for something new. Through this new cache, we can hold on to ourselves, and the lives that we live, for just a bit longer, and with a bit more clarity.