UNRAVELLING THE FUTURE-MEMORY

UNRAVELLING THE INFRA-ORDINARY

INTRODUCTION

DESCRIPTION

- Coming up with a memory tool/medium/technology/format that should be our future memory experience. - "Making the memory working", memorable experience of someone's past. - Faking the experience

KEYWORDS AND FACTS

- Overwriting the past memory
- Transcripting a memory
- Generating memories
- Sound of memory
- Memory system

INTENTIONS

random-art exemple

Initially, our intention was to create a visual and sound interpretation of an "handwritten memory. To proceed, we looked for examples of software which transcribes a text to an image to a sound in order to obtain a symbolic souvenir. Following examples like "http://random-art.org/" we started to begin to develop our own processing/rules code on this direction but we quickly stopped it because the calculation of the picture was totally random and the images produced did not have really significant value regarding to our problematic.

We would like to create an interpretation of the memorial process when sound information enters our brain hemisphere and begins to pass and transform itself on the inside depending on where it is located.
Is also included in this memorial process, the ability to record this information, manipulate and observe its deformations over time. So we decided to create a sound recording system with the capable to create an infinite loop.
This system is equipped with a microphone, a recording function and two speakers.
The idea is that each speaker corresponds to a brain function defined by its relationship with the outside world.
The left speaker is the live sound recording and thus the left hemisphere of the brain. Indeed, this speaker is directly connected to the microphone output with a recording function coupled with a "loop".
Thus, when recording a message to the microphone, it will be automatically replayed indefinitely at the end of the recording.
The right speaker is the deformation of this message and therefore has the right hemisphere of the brain. It is also connected to the microphone and the recording function.
However, it is also equipped with a delay effect creating an infinite feedback and thus distorting the message into an abstract noise. This particularly noise also represents the presence of a memory in the brain which is not "active", when the memory comes back, you can hear the recording very clearly. The infinity feedback loop is a metaphor for instant memory process.
With two potentiometers, the spectator has the ability to change these two characteristics, thus, he can access at any time to the original fragment of the first record and also can replace it with his own.
Then, the new record represent the fact that this memory overwrite the past memory.
The left button equals the direct recording of you memory and the right one equals its deformation/the fact that you begin to forget this memory, then it becomes a sound.

REFERENCES

FeedBack SoundArt Exemples

Alvin Lucier I am sitting in a room
Rainforest IV - David Tudor

BUILDING

Equipment List

Microphone & controlers

potentiometers

first loop try on Max

Description

To create a first draft of our prototype, we made various experiments on Max software to understand the different ways to integrate a feedback effect in a sound installation. Basically, a feedback effect can be achieved using a microphone and a speaker, one referring to the sound toward the other and creating an infinite loop effect. The risk of this operation is to make out of usage the speakers, so you have to be equipped with various sound controllers to manage the strength of the frequencies. What interested us was to be able to make a loop recording and obtain its deformation by the feedback effect. One the main record get deformed, it was also important that we can go back to this main message in some ways.

Memory plan sketch

FINAL LOOP

Maxuino/Max OUTPUT CONTROLER

By using the maxuino program which allows to connect an Arduino to Max, we should be able to directly plug the potentiometers and the records button out of max to get a real manual interface which is more interesting.

Final

Maxuino Test

CONCEPT

Our device is a transmitter that simulates an audio frequence of the human memory as it distorts. And it is a translation for a memory overwriting a memory as a memory of a memory. Only this device allows you to return the original memory

INSTALLATION CONTEXT

This installation will take effect in a public exhibition context. It interest would be to give an interpretation of a sound, this "noise" representing the shape of an "inactive" memory , buried in us, but nevertheless always present. Each person in contact with access to this sound and installation may at any time recover the base memory. It can also record over its own memory, creating a new loop.

Because, what happen to a memory when it is buried within us. How does it manifests itself in our memorial process when not requested and how can it evolve, getting feed by other memorial fragments or suddenly disappear ? This new mode of memorial transmission allows people to communicate, share the "noise" of their "inactive" memories, how do they interpret and decrypt these sounds? The right side of the brain is responsible of deciphering the emotions. Here is a poetic process making possible by a basic memory transformation into an unic abstract sound becoming a brand new vector of sound imagery made by memorial encryption.