Minimal Hacks for Big Statements (Short-term Project)
Winter 2019
Merani Schilcher — Life and Death of a Memory
Minimal Hacks for Big Statements (Short-term Project) — Winter 2019
Each time you remember an event it is rebuilt and then deconstructed again to be stored. Remembering something creates a critical window in which memories can be erased or manipulated, meaning that the last version is different from the previous ones because errors slip in and distort what was once there. This interference leads to forgetting.
“Life and Death of a Memory” is an allegory of this process. The cycle begins with the capture of an image: the camera is directed upwards, capturing the ceiling of the current setting. The additional heating elements that are essential to the machine’s functioning but taken from their intended context manipulate the image every step of the way, never replicating the same patterns. The thermoprinter now gives out the frame it captured as well as being altered by the intruding heat. The image is printed and captured as soon as it is put out. A feedback loop of an over and over again manipulated image commences.
