REMEMBERING:

Explorations and Methodologies in Investigating the Past

Adam Scher
Thesis Writing Portfolio
Fall 2010
Professor Chris Prentice
Adam Scher
September 20, 2010
Components: Design Questions, Concept, Domains, Methodology

Throughout the past several weeks of the semester I have found that
my thesis/research questions have changed quite a bit. They have somehow
migrated from this initial interest of movement and technology, into looking
at memory and ways it can be visualized. “History of movement” has always
been something that has fascinated me, and I have worked on several
projects where I attempt to capture the essence of movement by
documenting its paths over time. I wanted to take a step back and look at
memory from an emotional/narrative point of view, not from a physical
standpoint.

I began by sketching a map of

“things” that I felt could be used to
represent my memories. Included were:
audio files, video, iChat conversations,
documents, browsing history,
photographs. This basic mapping
exercise raised the question: “What do
these memories look like?” Of course
there is an immense body of literature
that I am beginning to gather on
memories, written by psychologists,
sociologists, novelists. I am beginning to
Figure 1: Brainstorming in my journal delve into this literature, but I felt the
need to just dive in and begin making. In
theory, my process over the past few days was to research and discover
through prototyping, not reading. And as a result, I have three different
prototypes exploring the theme of memory visualization.


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PROTOTYPE ONE: CHATS

Since 2005, I have been saving a log of all of my iChat and gChat
conversations. These logs save automatically into a folder on my hard drive,
and I have never really given them much consideration. I always know they
are there, but they have served no purpose for me. In looking at my initial
brainstorming map, I wondered how I could visualize this data. Essentially
these conversations, that span over 6 years, document my history. It isn’t
until I actually read them, that my memories are ignited.

Zach Gage created a project entitled Self-Portrait Bot, which was an

auto chat bot comprised of several years of logged chat conversations. I felt
that this was a fantastic precedence, as he used the exact type of content
that I am looking at visualizing. However, I was interested in creating
something more textural and transparent. Where Gage only shows you small
snippets of these chats through a specific interaction of “talking”, I wanted to
display these records more candidly. This led me to wondering: What do all
of these chat logs look like when they are presented together? What does it
mean to have all of my conversations displayed for everyone to read?

I decided that I was interested in printing these conversations in their

entirety. I began by exporting all of the chats out into one single text
document, which included the chat names of the people involved, the date
and time stamp, and the conversation itself. I knew that the length of all of
these chats was going to be quite long, so I decided to print it on the largest
paper size available on the plotter printers: 42 inches by 120 inches, or 3.5
feet by 10 feet. That is a very large piece of paper.

Using inDesign, I started experimenting with the most logical way to

lay out these chats. It was a process of trial and error, as I needed to keep
decreasing the font size to be able to incorporate more of the text. What I


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came up with was a row of 240 columns, each a half an inch wide and 3.5
feet long. In each column are the chat conversations printed at 4 points.
Once I was able to fill those 240 columns with my chats, alphabetized by the
name of the person I was chatting with, I realized I had only gone from A-Br.
I didn’t go so far as laying out all my conversations yet, but if 10 feet only
gets me to Br, how long is it going to need to be to get me to Z?

Figure 2: Screen shot of the inDesign file

Figure 2: Photograph of a printed test of one section of the file


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 By printing out these conversations at such a small point size, the
actual text becomes abstracted. Even when one is a foot away from the
poster, it becomes illegible. It is only when you are right up to the piece of
paper that you are able to read what is printed on it. I find this metaphor to
be quite poignant. There is something extremely intimate about exposing
these logs of conversations. They are personal and private to me and the
person I had them with. I am interested in sharing these with others, but I
am asking them to get up close and interact with the conversations in a very
different way than I initially intended. This interaction, of literally having to
stick you nose to the paper in order to read what is written on it, I find
extremely interesting. It raises such questions as “What are the physical
boundaries of personal space?” and “How close am I willing to let people get
to me?”

I am looking forward to printing this out on the plotter. I think its

magnitude will be powerful both from close up and far away. My next step is
to find a place to hang it up, and observe people interacting with it. These
observations will allow me to assess the success of this initial prototype.

PROTOTYPE TWO: DEGRADATION OF VIDEO

Abstracting the text of the chat conversations led me to think about

ways in which I can abstract other physical/digital things that I associate
with remembering. Over the past several weeks, I have been in the process
of digitizing all of my home videos. I felt that this was a perfect example of
an artifact that carries very specific memories for me. The majority of the
videos are from the early 80s, so I have almost no recollection of any of this
happening. Through these tapes I am able to “recreate” memories. This
raised several questions that I was interested in exploring: “Do I actually
remember, or am I remembering the media?” “What is the correlation
between watching and remembering?” “How is the degradation process of my


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memory similar to the degradation process of digital media?” “What is the
essence of these memories?”

I don’t think that these digital representations of events from the past
can constitute as my actual memories. However, I do believe that they assist
me in remembering the past. What I find interesting is the idea that memory
slowly degrades as time goes on, and essentially no longer exists as a
specific event but more as an overall feeling. For example: I don’t specifically
remember what I was doing in my grandparents’ backyard when I was 2 or 3
years old. What I do remember is the feelings of excitement and joy, the
giant blue swimming pool, the green grass. The memory becomes a wash of
emotions and landmarks.

I decided to look online to see if there had been any projects similar to
this. Patrick Liddell, took this same feat upon himself, and
uploaded/downloaded a video of himself to YouTube 1,000 times. It took him
one year. His interests in doing this were to see how he could “eliminate all
human qualities [that his] speech and image might have (Read 2010).”
Although our intentions are quite different, I decided to begin doing exactly
as Liddell had done. I was more interested in emulating the vagueness of my
memories, than voiding them of any human quality. By continuously
uploading, downloading, and re-uploading the same video, I wondered if I
would find the “essence” of the video. Would this “essence” be similar to that
of my memories?

The process itself is extremely tedious. Even as I am writing this I am

continuing to upload and download. I have been doing it for the past 3 days,
and am currently at version 57. The quality of the video certainly degrades,
but at very small intervals. When looking at two sequential versions, it is
almost impossible to see any change. When looking at version 1 and version
57, the change is very obvious. The images begin to become more
amorphous, resembling human figures and objects, but the details are


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completely lost. Even the audio becomes distorted. It is clear that we are
hearing people talking and singing, but much like the images, it is unclear
exactly what they are saying. It becomes more of a sound-scape than
dialogue. Much like my memories, I am left with a feeling of the experience
rather than an accurate account of what was recorded.

Figure 3: Screenshot of the 1st and 37th upload (url: http://vimeo.com/15149053)

So what next? I am unsure as to whether I will have the time and/or

energy to reach version 1,000 with this video, but I will still continue to
upload/download it for a little while more. I am interested in creating some
sort of compilation of all the videos so the degradation of quality is apparent
over time. I am considering making a matrix of videos all playing at the
same time. Another idea I have is to play the videos side by side; one side
being the original version and the other being the degraded copy.

PROTOTYPE THREE: DEGRADATION OF A PHOTOGRAPH

During this process of degradation, I began thinking about different

artifacts that I could apply this process to. Photographs instantly came to
mind. They are quick reminders of the past. How could I simulate the process
of uploading/downloading with these tangibles objects? I decided that I
would photocopy the originals and then photocopy the photocopy. I did two
separate iterations with this specific prototype: one using color and one using
black and white.


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 For the color iteration, I placed a variety of old photographs onto my
copier, creating a collage of images from the past. As I expected the images
became washed out with each copy, loosing their color and detail. However,
a very interesting thing occurred with each version. The images at the
bottom of the photocopy started to disappear and the images at the top
moved down. The 14th photocopy left me with a blank white piece of paper. I
found the results to be poetic, subtly commenting on the idea that our mind
slowly forgets what it has once remembered.

Figure 4: Screenshot of the 1st, 7th and 11th color photocopies

(url: http://vimeo.com/15256907)

The black and white iteration gave me results that I had been
expecting. Overtime the image lost all detail and became shapes of black of
ink. Although towards the last few copies, the black started to take on a
purplish blue hue, which I found to be very interesting. I love that my results
from these two iterations are tangible, just like the photographs that I
started with.


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 Figure 5: Screenshot of the 1st, 14th and 31st black and white photocopies
(url: http://vimeo.com/15256897)

CONCLUSIONS:

I find it hard to synthesize what it is exactly that I have learned

through this extensive and diverse prototyping process. Each prototype had a
similar do and repeat process involved in the making of it. For some reason
or another I found this repetition to be slightly cathartic. Also, it gave me the
time to reflect and remember about the artifact that I was working on.
Seeing it over and over again in this specific context has changed my
relationship to it. 3 days ago the video of my family dancing in my
grandparents’ backyard reminded me of my childhood. Now that video
reminds me of the process of uploading it and downloading it almost 60
times.

In addition to the context and implications of the process that I have

imposed on the sentimental artifacts, I find their visual “remains” to be
highly intriguing and symbolic. The decomposition and abstraction of their
visual form, in some strange way speaks to what is at the core of them. In
its raw form the iChat conversations are just text on paper, the uploaded
video becomes a mash up of blown-up pixels and sound waves, and the
photocopies are inkblots on paper. Like my memories, these deconstructed
artifacts are not about detail or legibility. The truth lies in their abstracted
forms, becoming symbols of the past represented in shape, color, and form.


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Bibliography

Gage, Zach. “Data, Self-Portrait Bot,”

http://www.stfj.net/data2010/selfportraitbot.html.

Read, Max. What does a video look like after 1000 YouTube uploads? in
Gawker.com [database online]. [cited October 15 2010]. Available from
http://gawker.com/5554154/what-does-a-video-look-like-after-1000-
youtube-uploads.


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Adam Scher
September 27, 2010
Components: Design Questions, Methodology

As I get older, I find that my memories of the past exist as a small

collection of specific details rather than complete accounts. This lack of
specificity allows for the recreation of memories. In his book Total Recall,
Gordon Bell says, “…[that] your memory about something is only as good as
your last memory about it (Bell 2009).” The less frequently I remember a
memory, essentially the less authentic that memory becomes. It is this idea
that inspires me to question the fidelity of my memory.

Do I accurately remember the past or am I remembering the physical

manifestations of media that represents them? The use of technology has
enabled me to not only collect large amounts of personal data, which assist
me in remembering, but has also afforded me the opportunity to manipulate
and visualize it. What does my information look like? Does this accurately
represent my memories?

In 15 color copies and 47 black and white copies I question the

effectiveness of modern technology in the preservation of media. By
manually generating photocopies of a photocopied photograph, I have been
able to rid any trace of the original image. Throughout each subsequent
copy, the image looses its form until all that is left is a blank sheet of paper.
Despite its disappearance, one can still recreate the original image by
remembering the photocopies that proceeded. I am interested in the
accuracy of this mental recreation. Are details retained, or is it simply a
recollection of form and shape?

Similarly, 84 uploads raises these questions through the degradation

of home videos. The quality of both the video and audio slowly deteriorates
in a laborious process of uploading/downloading/re-uploading the same
footage to YouTube. How safe are the memories we store online? The


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technology we depend on, to preserve and share with others, has the
capacity to depreciate what we intend to save.

iChat conversations A – Br is a printed alphabetical log of iChat

conversations between others and myself from 2005 to 2010. The chats are
printed at 4 points, in 0.5-inch columns 3.5 feet in length. On a personal
level, this piece asks me to question what my massive amounts of data look
like, compared to the individual components that I am used to seeing. On
another level, what does it mean for me to share these private conversations
with an audience? Because I am unable to remember almost any of these
conversations, am I more apt to share them with others?

I aim to challenge notions of privacy and boundaries through the

display of thousands of these conversations. By printing them at such a small
size, the readers are forced to physically choose whether or not they want to
read the content. If in fact they want to know the content of the chats, they
must be extremely close to the paper. Thus the intimate interaction of
reading my conversations is emulated in the way I require them to interact
with the work.

In History of Motion I am interested in looking at ways to expose

procedural memory, rather than episodic. With the use of a projection, a
camera and a motion tracking software, one is able to see the trails of a
moving object in space. With each duplication the projected image becomes
smaller and farther removed from the original source, implicating its
durational difference from the initial action.


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Bibliography

Bell, C. G. 2009. Total recall : How the E-memory revolution will change
everything. How the E-memory revolution will change everything., ed.
Jim Gemmell. New York, N.Y.: New York, N.Y. : Dutton.


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Adam Scher
October 4, 2010
Components: Domains

Throughout the past 5 weeks, I have been exploring themes of

memory through a multitude of different medias. Several of my prototypes
are beginning to fall under what one could consider a fine art domain. Others
have developed more into interactive video installations. The diversity within
my prototypes has led me to look at variety of different venues with which I
might be able to present my work.

SIGGRAPH 2011 has two different categories that I am interested in

submitting to. The first, “Art Gallery”, is looking for pieces of artwork
centered on the theme “Tracing Home”. The site describes that submitted
works should “explore issues around the concept of home in the networked
age”. I believe that my ideas surrounding memory directly tie into feelings of
home. I would like to further develop my prototype from last week of the
deteriorated Jpg for this submission. The deadline is January 14th, 2011.

In their Computer Arts Festival, they have a category for Stop Motion
submissions. I would love to further develop one of my earlier prototypes
where I was choreographing using still frames. I’m not sure if the content of
the video directly relates to my overall thesis idea, but it is still something I
am going to try to do. The deadline for that is April 19, 2011, leaving me
with more time to develop the piece.

I am also interested in submitting a time based media piece to the

Dance on Camera Festival, however their deadline is quickly approaching.
Video submissions are due on October 18, 2010. For this submission I want
to videotape a choreographed a piece specifically for video, centered on the
Max MSP patch I made as one of my prototypes last week. The patch itself
shows video masked through live movement. The video content would be
home videos of me dancing as a little boy. I have already begun working on


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the material, and hopefully will be able to make the deadline later this
month.

Finally, and most importantly, I want to apply to be an artist in

residence at Movement Research. MR is “is one of the world's leading
laboratories for the investigation of dance and movement-based forms.”
Their Artist-in-Residence program is a two-year program that offers
commissions, rehearsal space, performances, and other opportunities for
their artists. An opportunity like this would allow me the time to research and
develop my methodology and practice in making art. The application is
available on January 15, 2011, and is due by March 31, 2011.


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Adam Scher
October 7, 2010
Components: Design Questions, Concept, Impetus, Domains, Methodology

REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING

“Memory about something is only as good as your last memory about it (Bell
2009).”

IMPETUS

When I was thirteen I was faced with the unfortunate and challenging
experience of loosing my mother. However, this paper is not about death or
my mourning process. In contrary, this paper aims to explore how I have
relied on my memory and personal artifacts, to recreate my experiences of
this past. My mother is simply a catalyst for the beginning of this story, as
my memories of her are most cherished.

Throughout the past fourteen years following her death, I have been
struggling with the realization that as time passes my memories of her lose
specificity. There are certain events that stand out as landmarks in my
mind, but there is a huge part of my memory that remains vague. In these
pockets of my mind there are blurred images of her face and the muffled
sound of her voice. For me, these memories are timeless and filled with
emotion.

I worry about forgetting. As time passes, and my memories lose

precision, I wonder how to best preserve these moments. I have my
photographs, videos, and letters to remind me of the specific details that
may have been lost throughout the years. However, these mementos
inform, rather than assist, my memory. If I had never seen a photograph of
my mother since her death, would I still remember what she looked like? Am
I remembering the memory or the artifact?


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 Modern technology allows us to save mass amounts of data, thus
assisting us in the process of remembering almost everything. Through a
combination of digital and analog media I have developed a series of fine art
pieces that comment on the process of remembering and forgetting. These
works attempt to explore the mind’s ability to remember and the way our
personal computers process data, investigating the ways we use technology
to remember.

INSPIRATIONS / PRECEDENTS

Jim Campbell: Photo of My Mother, 1996



 

Figure 1: Jim Campbell’s Photo of My Mother (photos courtesy of artist’s website)

In his series Memory Pieces, Jim Campbell explores the notion memory
through inherent bodily rhythm and personal artifacts. His specific work,
Photo of My Mother, uses his breathing as the “memory” which alters the
viewer’s perception of a photograph. Campbell previously recorded himself
breathing for one hour. The duration of each recorded breath is then used to
alter a piece of fogged glass in front of the photograph. With each breath,
the glass becomes foggy and then transparent, simulating the act of
breathing upon a glass surface.


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 What Campbell has achieved is a dual commentary. In one sense, he
reminds us that our memories of certain things become “foggy” over time.
He also speaks to the inherent routines that our body completes. We never
have to remember to breath, it simply happens naturally. For me, this duality
is powerful. This piece makes me question if I have any control over what I
will remember or forget. Perhaps my body subconsciously makes it own
decisions.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Under Scan, 2005

Figure 2: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Under Scan, (photos courtesy of artist’s website)

How can someone’s existence in a certain place be documented and

revisited? I believe this is one of the core questions of Rafael Lozano-
Hemmer’s interactive installation Under Scan. Installed in a public plaza,
Lozano-Hemmer sets up an elaborate system of cameras and projectors to
create this interactive experience. As people walk through the space, the
cameras are able to detect the public’s movement. The program is able to
predict where people will be in the future and places projections within their
paths. Portraits of other people are scaled and aligned to be displayed inside
the shadows of the public. One is then able to explore the space, looking for
the “hidden” projections of other people.


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 The installation is dependent on its viewers to activate the space. I
find this idea exciting, engaging a dialogue through the relationship between
the viewer and the media. In addition, the interaction encourages the
audience to question the space and people who have occupied it previously.
Information about the past is learned through present exploration.

Patrick Lidell: I Am Sitting in a Room, 2009

Figure 3: Patrick Lidell’s I Am Sitting in a Room (photo courtesy of gawker.com)

Musician Patrick Lidell, decided to partake on an experiment. He

recorded a video using his computer’s webcam, uploaded it to YouTube, and
then downloaded it. He repeated this process 1,000 times, achieving some
very interesting results. YouTube uses a certain codec when uploading
content, and this compresses both the video and audio components of the
file. With each download, the file became more compressed, loosing pieces of
its information. By the 1,000th download all definition is lost. The video is a
blur of colored shapes where all of the pixels blend into one another. The


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audio too is completely distorted, creating a cacophony of muffled tones and
noise.

I find the results to be fascinating. The piece itself speaks to massive

amount of content that our society is sharing online. We choose to post
content so that it can be immortalized and preserved. We believe that what
we upload is being presented in the form that we intended, but in fact the
content is being slowly destroyed.

PROTOTYPES

iChats: Conversations A-Br

Figure 4: Thesis studio looking at my printed iChats (photo courtesy of Don Yoon Park)


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 Since 2005 I have been using online chatting as a major means of
communication between me and my family, friends and colleagues. There is
something effortless about sending a quick message via the Internet, as it
usually gets an immediate response. I think it is fair to say that I chat with
at least a dozen people a day, every day. My computer automatically saves
every chat into a folder on my desktop, filing away the contents of my cyber
interactions into my hard drive’s 500 gigabytes of memory.

I made a conscious decision 5 years ago, to have my computer save

these chats, but why? I have hardly ever gone through them and read their
contents, and even when I do, I don’t remember having the conversations.
Re-reading them is like experiencing them for the first time. I question the
importance of all of this “documented history”, because I am unable to
recollect any of it.

iChat conversations A – Br is a printed alphabetical log of these saved

conversations. The chats are printed at 4 points, in 0.5-inch columns 3.5 feet
in length. The columns span 10 feet, creating quite a large visual record of a
small portion of my conversations. I am accustomed to only viewing my
current iChats, and perhaps seeing several conversations at one time. The
magnitude of seeing all of these records printed in their entirety is powerful.
In front of me is proof of thousands of interactions I have had with people
over the past 5 years, and I remember almost none of the content. This
notion is mirrored in the fact that the conversations themselves are almost
illegible. The small font size abstracts the text, presenting the conversations
as a wash of experiences rather than a specific detailed account.


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Silhouetting The Past

Figure 5: Screen shot from video (url: http://vimeo.com/15548016)

Having a background in dance and the performing arts, it is important

for me to explore memory in regards to physical movement in space. I have
always been fascinated with the notion that dance is fleeting; a motion
occurs and it is gone. My intention was to explore visualizing the “history” of
my movements. Can my physical memory be documented and used to
express my feelings about the past?

Using Max MSP/Jitter, a programming language that specializes in

processing video and live feeds, I developed an interactive application. The
program is able to detect when something is moving in front of a set up
camera. A projection is then shown through the silhouette of the moving
object. When there is no movement detected, nothing plays. I chose a home
video of me dancing to be the content of the projection. In a sense, I am
able to see the movement of the past only through my present movements.

After developing this program, I wasn’t sure that my intentions would

be clear if it existed as an interactive public installation. I decided that I


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wanted it to exist as a performance. I set up the projector and camera on
my roof, so that the projections would play on a large blank wall. I then
recorded myself improvising with the technology. The image becomes
recursive because the camera is recording what is being projected. With each
duplication, the projected image becomes smaller and farther removed from
the original source, implicating its durational difference from the initial
action.

While my main subject of interest lies in my relationship to my

memories, this particular piece raised questions about performance. The
event of making the video was in fact a performance, but is the final video a
documentation of my experiences or a performance in itself?

Self-Portrait

Figure 6: Screen shots (url: http://vimeo.com/16075634, http://vimeo.com/16075651)

I was sitting in my computation class last week, when my professor

said something that blew my mind. As a tangential thought, he mentioned
that certain audio software could open up specific image file types and play
the information as if it were sound data. I found this concept to be
fascinating, I wondering how it could apply to the work I have been doing
thus far. The initial question is raised was, “What do these photographic
memories sound like?”


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 I began by taking a picture of myself at 6 or 7 years old. It is one of
those formal studio shots, with the generic set background. I scanned the
photograph, opened it up in Photoshop and re-saved it in .raw format. I was
then able to bring this .raw file into Audacity (an open source audio editing
program) and listen to it. Initially it sounds almost as if a robot were grinding
its teeth, crunchy and mechanical with a tinny timber, so I experimented
with slowing down the duration of the sound file. When played at 800%
slower than the original speed, a slight melody appears. I was able to listen
what my 7-year-old self looked like.

This process made me wonder if I could achieve a similar effect by

performing the exact opposite process. Would I be able to create an image
from sounds from the past? I only own one cassette tape, and it is of me
singing “Somewhere Out There” around the same time that the portrait I
used was taken. I felt that this would be the perfect content to use. I was
able to easily convert the song on the tape to an .mp3 by plugging a stereo
patch cord into my computer from the tape player. I then used Audacity to
convert the .mp3 into .raw format, which was then opened in Photoshop in
order to see what the audio looked like. As expected, the image is an
abstracted portrait of black and white “snow”.

When paired together, the two visual portraits with their respective
audio components create a poignant commentary. The abstracted
components of each self-portrait are in a sense composed of the digital
essence of the original artifact. I believe they speak to the idea that what we
remember might not be the actual account. We tend to recreate moments
based on what we feel and think they were, but in actuality they may be
composed of something completely different.


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15 Color Copies

Figure 7: Screenshot of the 1st, 7th and 11th color photocopies

(url: http://vimeo.com/15256907)

We have become dependant on software and hardware to save and

share our most precious moments. I question the effectiveness of modern
technology in the preservation of these memories. I believe that similarly to
the way in which our minds process, these digital artifacts will loose fidelity
with time.

I began my experimenting with tangible photographs that hold

important significance to me. I chose several pictures of my parents and
grandparents and laid them out on my photocopier. I made a copy and then
made a copy of that copy.

By manually generating photocopies of a photocopied photograph, I

was been able to rid any trace of the original image. Throughout each
subsequent copy, the image loses its form until all that is left is a blank sheet
of paper. I expected the images to become washed out with each copy,
loosing their color and detail. However, a very interesting thing occurred with
each version. The images at the bottom of the photocopy started to
disappear and the images at the top moved lower on the page. The 15th
photocopy left me with a blank white piece of paper. I found the results to be
poetic, subtly commenting on the idea that our mind slowly forgets what it


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has once remembered. Despite its disappearance, one can still recreate the
original image by remembering the photocopies that proceeded. I am
interested in the accuracy of this mental recreation. Are details retained, or is
it simply a recollection of form and shape?

Save/Save-As

I am currently in the process of

scanning all of my photographs because I
think it is important for me to have digital
copies of these irreplaceable reminders of
the past. During the process of digitizing all
of this, questions of safety arose. Similarly
to 15 Color Copies, Save/Save-As explores
the preservation of our digital files.

I opened a scanned photograph of my

Figure 8: Image saved 300 times

mother in Adobe Photoshop and created a
duplicated version by using the “Save As”
function. In theory, this should create an exact replica of the scanned file.
However, Photoshop compresses the image in such a way that it only retains
the most important data, thus reducing its file size by a very minimal
amount. I then opened the duplicated file and repeated this process. After
creating 300 subsequent duplicates, it becomes very obvious that certain
pieces of information are being removed from the JPG. The remaining image
looks as if strips of color have been taken out of it. In some areas the
degradation is dense, while in others the original image remains perfectly in
tact.

How does Photoshop choose which information is important it

compression process? I have no answer to this, as my research in image


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compression and file size has not been in depth. What interests me are two
fold. First, is the metaphorical similarity between the way that Photoshop and
our mind’s process information in repetition. Certain details are lost and
distorted, while the “important” information remains in tact. Second, is the
notion that what we depend on isn’t so dependable. Granted many people
will not perform a “save as” function on a document 300 times, but I am sure
people would be surprised to find out that the more you save it the more it
deteriorates. The process that we use to store and protect or digital
memories is actually not as secure as we thought.

CONCLUSION/REFLECTION

These series of prototypes have allowed me to explore a wide variety

of media (performance, video, print) and I am excited by the results that
each bring. I believe that continuing with this method of wide
experimentation will bring creative and fresh perspectives on my themes of
remembering and forgetting.

One thing that I need to consider is how I plan to share and test these
prototypes. I think that the iChat work, lends itself to be exhibited in a very
public place. It would be interesting to see how people interact with it if it is
openly exposed. Not only is the physical interaction interesting, people
needing to be very close to read any of its content, but the concept behind
sharing this very personal information, interests me.

The other prototypes need to be shared with people other than my

classmates. It is important to for me to get feedback from other people
outside of the Parsons network on these fine art pieces, to see if my
conceptual ideas are coming through. One thought is developing a website
that houses them. I am also joining several online artist registry sites, so
that I can expose my work to a network of individuals who are interested in
fine/conceptual art.


 12

Bibliography

Bell, C. G. 2009. Total recall : How the E-memory revolution will change
everything. How the E-memory revolution will change everything., ed.
Jim Gemmell. New York, N.Y.: New York, N.Y. : Dutton.

Campbell, Jim. 1996. Photo of my mother.

Lozano-Hemmer, Rafael. 2005. Under scan.

Read, Max. What does a video look like after 1000 YouTube uploads? in
Gawker.com [database online]. [cited October 15 2010]. Available from
http://gawker.com/5554154/what-does-a-video-look-like-after-1000-
youtube-uploads.


 13

Adam Scher
October 18, 2010
Components: Evaluation

FEEDBACK

Throughout the duration of the semester I have not been overwhelmed

with discovering the larger, over-arching concept behind my thesis
prototyping. I believe this has allowed me the freedom to create in a way
that has been fruitful and seamless. This process has left me with a wide
range of prototypes that I was able to present during our midterm thesis
presentations. It was important for me to get an outsider’s prospective on
the work and my process, and overall the feedback was extremely positive.
Both, Parsons faculty member, Scott Pobiner and, MFA design and
technology candidate, Ryan Raffa, were excited by the diversity within my
prototypes. They were glad to see me exploring a variety of mediums, which
Scott said I seemed to be “in control of”. I thought about this particular
comment in depth over the past week. I do feel very much in control over
this project, and the research and experimentation involved in developing a
solid thesis. It was gratifying to know that professionals in the field
acknowledge and identify the work that I am doing.

During the critique I was presented with some wonderful feedback and
suggestions. Scott and Ryan both agreed that I need a more developed
“back-bone” incorporated into my thesis. While the idea of memory it
budding, it needs to be more deeply rooted in precedence and research.
However, in regards to the precedents that I did talk about, it was noted that
I had built and reflected on their ideas, rather than emulating the work. It
was suggested that I look into the concept of “technological singularity”,
which Wikipedia describes as “reflects the idea that the change may happen
suddenly, and that it is very difficult to predict how such a new world would
operate.”1 Other suggestions were to read Einstein’s Dreams by Alan


























































1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity



 1

Lightman, The Information Bomb by Paul Virillo, and (No)Memory by 7
Publishers.

In addition, Scott offered an insightful thing to consider when

developing my thesis further. He suggested that to think about technology
that we use to remember, versus technology that we use to forget. I feel that
this idea is rich with possibilities, and could be a wonderful through line for
the work that I am creating.

Some other significant pieces of feedback were regarding the validity

of “fine art” as thesis. While the work that I presented was thought of as
well developed and on a strong track, the questions of “So what?” and “Who
cares?” arise. The work needs to be more than something just nice and
beautiful. I agree that it is important to make my work accessible and to
allow for my audience to identify with certain elements of the work, but I
cannot loose my point of view in that process. I believe that the deeper and
more personal the work becomes, the more people will “care”.

One-on-one meetings followed the midterm critiques with my

professors Chris Prentice and Cynthia Lawson. In my meeting with Chris, we
discussed the similarities in the process of choreographing dance and
prototyping. As an exercise, she recommended that I develop a piece of
writing that explores the relationship between these two practices. How does
my experience working as a director/choreographer influence my design
practice? At the beginning of the semester it was suggested that I consider
how I could “choreograph” technology. I have been considering this question
with all of my work thus far this semester, and am in the process of
synthesizing what this means. Choreographer and researcher Ralph Lemon
was recommended as a precedent based on his process. I was encouraged to
look into his methodology and the ways he incorporates cross-disciplinary
exploration.


 2

 Chris also talked to me about an advance in the study of Alzheimer’s
disease. They are in the process of developing treatment that is able to
reverse the effects and recover people’s memory. This could be an
interesting scientific model to study and research as I continue to develop my
thesis. It also got us talking about developing work that explores how we can
piece memories back together. Currently my work has been looking at
degradation, so this will be a wonderful way to approach my questions from
a different angle. On the topic of questions, Chris told me that my overall
thesis question needs some serious work, while my subsequent design
questions were pretty good. I’m sure as the semester continues, I will be
able to refine and solidify my overall thesis question.

Another domain that Chris suggested I look into is Glitch art. Glitch art
is a genre of fine art that celebrates the glitches and malfunctions of
technology. While most of this glitch art is manufactured, meaning the artists
creates formulas and programs to distort their images, there are quite a
number of technological malfunctions that occur. I have already started to
research this domain and it has led me to the investigation of many subsets,
including data bending.

Cynthia also offered some insightful feedback. Most important was her
comment that although the work is exciting there is something relatively
shallow about it, she isn’t left with lingering thoughts about it. Perhaps this is
because most of these prototypes were developed as quick sketches, which
took no longer than a few hours to develop. She suggested that I work on a
piece that takes a much longer time to develop. This investment of both time
and energy, has the potential to allow me to create something much more
deep and meaningful. This could perhaps help me answer the “So what?” and
“Who cares?” question that Scott raised during my critique.


 3

NEXT STEPS

To begin with, I have two different prototype ideas that will lend
themselves to Cynthia’s suggestion to take more time in developing my next
prototypes. Based as homage to Jim Campbell’s Home Movie Series, I want
to create a series of memory light boxes. I initially see them as little
keepsake boxes with a lid on them. When opened, one could peer inside and
view clips from my home videos. This idea is in its initial stages of
development, and I feel like I am going to need a lot of time to sketch and
prototype several different iterations of this concept.

Stemming from Silhouetting the Past, I am interested in developing a

body of work that incorporates performance and time based media. I know
that questions were raised regarding the notion of performance in the work
that I showed during my presentation. Was the video a video of a
performance, or was the video the performance itself? These questions really
excite me. For my next iteration, I am going to look at the subject of
portraits. I will most likely still use home videos as my “material”, and want
to create a series of family portraits based off of my pre-existing footage.
In addition to developing these two more in depth prototypes, I think it is
important to test my current works with an audience outside of our studio
class. I am finding this particular step of the design process challenging.

For my iChat piece, I am planning on putting it up in several different

“public” spaces, just to see how people tend to interact with it. The easiest
and most obvious place for me to test this will be some place in the Parsons
building. Although I think it is important for me to test it in a more public
arena. Some ideas I have had are placing it on the ground in the middle of
Union Square and taping it to the walls where posters are wheat pasted.
Methods to test my other prototypes are more ambiguous.


 4

 Cynthia told me that I need to think about how I want to visualize my
final work, in order to best decide how to “test” work that is considered fine
art. Do I see it in a gallery? Does it belong in public space? Is it meant to be
viewed on-line? These are all things I need to consider, quickly. These
questions will inform how I decide to test the work.

I am meeting with Anthony Aziz, a professor in the Fine Art

department at Parsons, this week and hopefully he will provide me with
another perspective on my work. I think it is important to get feedback from
someone who is removed from the Design and Technology department,
especially when my work is situating itself in a fine art domain. After my
meeting with him, I expect to have more clarity about where I would like to
position my work, and next steps in testing it with its proposed audience.
In terms of research, I am in the process of familiarizing myself with
autobiographical memory from a scientific perspective. I believe that having
a strong foundation and understanding of memory and forgetting from this
point of view will help ground my work. In addition, I am reading the
literature that was suggested during my critiques as well as researching
other fine artists and performance artists that have explored similar themes
in their work.


 5

Adam Scher
October 25, 2010
Components: Domains

Works and Process at The Guggenheim





Figure 1: Anthony Goicelea’s Self Portrait Series

(url: http://www.anthonygoicolea.com/)

Last night I attended a the Works and Process series at the

Guggenheim. I had never been to one of these performances, but have
known about them for a while. The program featured three different
choreographers embodied the theme “Voices of the Americas”. What I
appreciated most about this program, was a moderated Q&A with the artist,
after each piece. Regardless of the medium, looking into an artist’s process is
always informative, especially when I am currently developing and working
through a process of my own.

The one piece that really struck me was a collaboration between

choreographer Jonah Bokaer and multimedia artist Anthony Goicolea. There
was a unique marriage between the movement and the design of the piece
(which included the costumes, sets, and overall aesthetic) all, which


 1

embodied a subdued, monotone, feel to it. There was a sense of ritual as
four male dancers, who looked almost like identical quadruplets, led each
other through a forest of gold leaf trees. In the center of the stage was a
gold platform, in which the dancers precariously balanced on, testing their
limits on an unsteady surface.

I was previously familiar with a lot of Bokaer’s work, as he is very

interested in the merging of new media and performance. However, after
seeing the performance, I looked into the visual work of Goicolea. I was
surprised to see that his work grapples with themes similar to the ones that I
have been exploring in my thesis prototyping, childhood, family genealogy,
reflection. In most of his work, Goicolea dresses up like a young boy, and
creates photographed scenarios reenacting moments of childhood. The
photographs usually contain multiple versions of him, creating an illusion that
defies space and time. How is it that one can exist in many spaces at once?
Perhaps they represent the different facets of the self, all experiencing
something different from the same situation.

Nonetheless, both the performance and the work I researched later

were thought provoking and inspiring. I have made myself a promise to see
art at LEAST once a week from here on out.

Christophe Behrens: Compression Series


Figure 2: Christophe Behrens’ Compression Series

(url: http://www.fallt.com/compressionseries)

Digital artist, Christophe Behrens, worked on a piece almost 10 years

ago entitled Compression Series. Interested in compression algorithms,


 2

Behrens developed a series of portraits that celebrated the pixilated and
compressed images on the web. The project was an investigation in web
standards, and using a text editor to modify and manipulate the image data.
I am interested in the final aesthetic chosen for this work. The notion of
pixilated images, generally have negative connotations of poor quality and
little detail, but those are the exact metaphors I am looking to explore in my
own work. Also, I am interested in learning more about manipulating images
with programs other than image editors and am currently doing more
research about those topics.

William Basinski: dlp 3
























 

Figure 3: William Basinski’s dlp3 (url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhvdo-
64Ah0&feature=player_embedded#!)

Musician and composer William Basinkski digitized a series of old

cassette tapes, capturing the sound a deteriorating medium. Due to the age
of the tapes, much of the information had disintegrated, leaving Basinkski
with a literal translation of decay and mortality. I love this notion of
capturing a real process in life that translates itself quite literally without


 3

being cliché. The sounds are haunting yet beautiful, mirroring the cycle of
life.


Ishac Bertran: Linyl


Figure 4: Ishac Bertran’s Linyl (url: http://vimeo.com/7984238)

Bertran set out to design a record that would play “memories” instead
of music. He developed a system where a color pallet was extracted from a
specific photograph, then turned into a pattern, which was printed on the
record. These colors were then analyzed to generate music. While I love the
idea of creating audio based on memories and/or images, I felt that the
sounds produced were not abstracted enough. They felt almost too melodic. I
also feel like it would be interesting to see the images that the records were
derived from. This way we could compare the feeling of the memory/image
to the sound of the record.


 4

Adam Scher
November 8, 2010
Components: Concepts, Domains

Like most of my papers I thought I would begin with a quote, but I

couldn’t remember the one I intended to use. My methodology for recalling
this succinct phrase to nicely contextualize this piece of writing is exactly
what this paper is about. I “googled” it.

We have arrived at a certain point in our culture’s history, where

remembering certain pieces of information have become obsolete. This is not
due to forgetfulness, but rather for the desire of maintaining a “perfect”
memory. Our capability of saving, storing and retrieving an almost infinite
amount of information is facilitated by our connectedness to a global network
of information that never forgets. With the click of a mouse or the tap of a
finger these “memories” become instantly available to us, allowing us reflect,
recollect and reconstruct these pieces of information.

The ideas regarding memory in today’s digital world are filled with
controversy. Many would argue that our ability to access any piece of
information at any time has increased our capabilities and productivity
immensely. Other’s feel that this advancement has begun to induce more
harm that good, by exposing all sorts of information that shouldn’t
necessarily be accessible to the general population. Regardless of opinion,
this future is inevitable, and we must understand the benefits and
consequences of living in such a reality.

For almost ten years, Gordon Bell, a Microsoft researcher, has been
attempting to maintain a “perfect” memory. In a research project entitled
MyLifeBits, Bell has been actively recording almost every aspect of his day-
to-day life. This massive undertaking has included the scanning of every
piece of paper, including all his family’s health records. He saves every email,
a snap shot of every website visited, and even records most conversations he


 1

has with people. He has even gone so far as to wear a camera around his
neck that automatically snaps a picture every 30 seconds.

With the current state of technological development, this task has

never been easier. Recording devices have never been more compact, and
the functionality of uploading the content onto the web is built in to many of
these products. Additionally, with the price of data storage becoming more
affordable with time, we are able to save massive amounts of personal
information. What is it that we do with all of this information? We store it,
share it, and save it as a testament to what has happens in our lives.
What I find particularly interesting is not how we collect the information, or
what we do with it, but why we do it. Bell explains, “that biological memory
is fallible…unlike, computers, brains aren’t all that great at faithfully storing
masses of detail. (Bell 2009, 54)

Through what Bell describes as “Total Recall”, one can circumnavigate

the limitations of human memory by storing and annotating everything
digitally. His book, “Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change
Everything”, glorifies how this method of constant personal documentation
will enhance our work flow, our health, the way we learn, and even simple
tasks in our every day lives. More importantly, Bell argues its importance in
allowing us to search through our data and ultimately “find correlations and
multidimensional patters in [our] life experience.” (Bell 2009, 23)

In his book “Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age”, Viktor
Mayer-Schönberger explores the consequences of this inevitable trend
towards massive external personal memory. He begins his book with an
anecdote about 25-year-old Stacy Snyder, a university student, finishing her
coursework to become a teacher. University officials had come across a
photograph of her on MySpace wearing a pirate’s hat while drinking from a
plastic cup. The photograph was captioned “drunken pirate”. Despite the
arguments that the Snyder was over the legal drinking age and the content


 2

inside plastic cup was indiscernible, Snyder was denied her teaching
certificate. The photograph has been deemed inappropriate behavior of a
teacher; consequently all appeals were denied.

The lesson from this story is the crux of Mayer’s argument, that “with
the help of widespread technology, forgetting has become the exception and
remembering the default.” (Mayer-Schönberger 2009, 2) It is impossible for
Snyder to erase the effects of uploading her controversial photo. With the
ease at which others can download material from the Internet and cached
websites on search engines such as Google, it is even fair to say that it is
impossible to delete the existence of the photograph. Essentially the Internet
remembers every move of our digital footprint. It is with this “perfect
memory we may lose a fundamental human capacity —to live and act firmly
in the resent.” (Mayer-Schönberger 2009, 12)

It is important to realize that these contentious ideas surrounding

preservation of memory are not new. The notion of perfect memory was the
central theme of Jorge Luis Borges’ 1942 short story “Funes the Memorious”.
In a chapter from Alan Lightman’s “Einstein’s Dreams”, a society is depicted,
that suffers from the inability to remember. I think it is important to look at
these works of fiction as allegories for the future direction of our society in
relation to both Bell and Mayer’s texts. Perhaps they can offer some insight
as we move closer and closer to becoming a culture that is incapable of
forgetting.

A fictional Borges is introduced to the character of Ireneo Funes, a

teenage boy with a prodigious memory, capable of recalling the minute
details of every moment. While Funes’ perfect memory enables him to learn
new languages in a few days time and reconstruct a full day’s worth of
events, it is questioned whether this “ability” is considered a curse or a gift.
“To think,” Borges writes, “is to ignore (or forget) differences, to generalize,
to abstract. Since his accident, Funes is condemned to see only the trees,


 3

and never the forest. In the teeming world of Ireno Funes there was nothing
but particulars.” (Borges 1962, 154)

Has Gorgon Bell become a contemporary Ireneo Funes? To some

degree, I believe he has. Similarly to Funes, everything Bell encounters is
“new” relative to the time and perspective it was experienced in. His
MyLifeBits has afforded him a near perfect memory. Although the methods of
recalling and reconstructing are fundamentally different for the two, their
results are the same, consequently endangering their human reasoning. With
one’s past being constantly in the forefront, the ability to make clear
decisions and remain in the present can be impeded. One may loose trust in
their own remembering capabilities, and rely solely on those digital
collections of stored information.

In contrast to Borges’ Funes, is Lightman’s vision of a world that is

forever in the present. He imagines a place “without memory, [where] each
night is the first night, each morning is the first morning each kiss and touch
are the first (Lightman 1993, 63).” Due to the fleeting properties of this type
of life, Lightman describes that people have two choices: to record every
thing they do and spend their days reviewing their life, or to abandon
memory all together and live in the present. There is no mention as to which
choice is better than the other, but Lightman does suggest that those who
forgo trying to obtain the past, live with a much more positive outlook on life.

Is this type of world obtainable? In a time where everything is

documented and saved, is it possible to experience things from a fresh and
untainted perspective? Perhaps if we took the time to find the new in the
mundane and ordinary, we would be surprised and excited.


 4

Bibliography

Open (rotterdam, netherlands); open. 2004. Open. (-).

Autobiographical memory and the validity of retrospective reports1994. , ed.

Norbert Schwarz Dr.phil. New York: New York : Springer-Verlag.

Vanish: Self-destructing data. in University of Washington [database online].

Seattle, Washington, Available from http://vanish.cs.washington.edu/.

Araki, Takahisa, Norbert Arnsteiner, Martial Barrault, Kurt Branstetter, Bob

Elfstrom, Mead Hunt, Nancy Schreiber, Joel Shapiro, and Dyanna Taylor.
2005. Memory, eds. Mike Kelley, Josiah McElheny, Susan Rothenberg and
Hiroshi Sugimoto, ed. Charles Atlas. Vol. Online WebisodeArt 21.

Bell, C. G. 2009. Total recall : How the E-memory revolution will change
everything. How the E-memory revolution will change everything., ed. Jim
Gemmell. New York, N.Y.: New York, N.Y. : Dutton.

Borges, Jorge Luis, 1899-1986. 1962. Ficciones, ed. Limited Editions Club.
New York: New York : Published by The Limited Editions Club.

Campbell, Jim. 2006. Home movie 608.

———. 2000. Illuminated average #1: Hitchcock's psycho.

———. 1996. Photo of my mother.

———. Jim Campbell. [cited October 15 2010]. Available from

http://www.jimcampbell.tv/.

Conway, Martin A., 1952-. 1990. Autobiographical memory : An introduction.

Milton Keynes ; Philadelphia: Milton Keynes ; Philadelphia : Open University
Press.

Goicolea, Anthony. Anthony Goicolea. [cited October 20 2010]. Available

from http://www.anthonygoicolea.com/.

Jeffrey, Rosen. 2010. The end of forgetting. New York Times Magazine: 30.

Kesler, Stan, and Charlie Feathers. 1955. I forgot to remember to forget, ed.
Elvis Presley. Vol. Audio Recording.

Keyes, Doug. 1997. History of modern art.

———. Doug Keyes. [cited October 26 2010]. Available from

http://dougkeyes.net/home.html.


 5

Kirk, David, and Richard Banks. 2008. On the design of technology
heirlooms.

Lightman, Alan P., 1948-. 1993. Einstein's dreams. New York: New York :
Pantheon Books.

Lozano-Hemmer, Rafael. 2005. Under scan.

———. Rafael Lozano-hemmer. [cited October 15 2010]. Available from

http://www.lozano-hemmer.com/index.php.

Mayer-Schönberger, Viktor. 2009. Delete : The virtue of forgetting in the

digital age. Princeton: Princeton : Princeton University Press.

Mori, Joji. 2010. Jojimo.

———. 2010. Technology which supports forgetting personal information

online.

Read, Max. What does a video look like after 1000 YouTube uploads? in
Gawker.com [database online]. [cited October 15 2010]. Available from
http://gawker.com/5554154/what-does-a-video-look-like-after-1000-
youtube-uploads.

Salavon, Jason. 2003. The late night triad.

———. 1998. The class of 1967 & the class of 1988.

———. Jason Salavon. [cited October 15 2010]. Available from

http://salavon.com/.

Vaidhyanathan, Siva. 2010. Our digitally undying memories. The Chronicle of

Higher Education 56 (21): B11-2.


 6

Adam Scher
November 28, 2010
Components: Design Questions, Concept

Is memory about quality or quantity? It is my belief that our society is

in the process of moving towards an all or nothing approach to this question,
with hopes that both quality and quantity can be achieved. This idea has
manifested itself in a “total recall” of personal information, being recorded,
recalled, and reflected upon through digital means. I am aware that this shift
towards the mass collection of external personal memory is inevitable, as I
contribute to this phenomenon, however I am not convinced that this method
preserves and honors the sanctity of human memory.

The trend towards quantity, has conditioned us to store and save

almost everything. I have collected and filed 6 years worth of iChat
conversations and e-mail correspondence, thousands of photographs, and
days of video footage. These records, to a certain extent, document a
chronological narrative of my life. If one were to sit down and look at the
massive collection of personal e-memories, they would hypothetically learn a
lot about me. But am I saving this massive amount of data for other’s to gain
insight into my own life, or is it for my own personal records to reflect upon?
Much of this content is made public online. Hundreds of the photographs
have been posted into my Facebook gallery and all of my iChat conversations
have been placed on a URL page that is linked to from my blog. I have
deduced that nobody has the time or patience to sift through all of this data.
Its sheer quantity detracts from finding the quality content. It is only when a
commitment and investment of one’s time is made, that the “quality
memories” are uncovered.

Of course the notion of what is to be considered quality is completely

subjective to that of the owner versus the viewer of the content. Most often,
these views will differ considerably. It is not ensured that what is important
and significant to me will have a similar effect on others. Quality could be the


 1

composition of a photograph, the resolution of an image, or the specific
content of a piece. However, for me, much of the quality of my e-memories
lies in the context with which it was created. Unfortunately, this context is
difficult to capture with static data.

Despite our attempts to capture everything, it is impossible to retain

any level of clarity without filtering the contents. A conscious effort must be
made while choosing what data we store and save as memories. The
mentality of saving everything must be changed; otherwise we will be left
with an ever-growing burden of information. The larger it grows the more
effort it will take to find those quality gems hidden within our hard drives.


 2

Adam Scher
December 3, 2010
Components: Design Questions, Concepts, Methodology

A Series of Video Tests

During a conversation with Cynthia it was suggested that I start

developing prototypes that take longer to develop. All of my previous
exercises were quick to implement, and she felt that if I was able to invest
more time into one prototype the results might be deeper and have more
impact. With that in mind, I know that I want some type of video element
integrated into my thesis work. I thought I would take some time to create a
series of video tests, exploring projection, reflection, and my role in the
video.

Figure 1: Video Test 1 (url: http://vimeo.com/16416485)

For the first test, I wanted to see how I could incorporate myself into
the old home videos, without being a distracting element. My idea was to
somehow “blend” into the footage, creating a live superimposed version of
me into the past. I simply became a canvas for the projected image. In
terms of my performance within this particular test, I was just watching the
video. I know that my expression and stare is blank, but I was attempting to
visualize the act of reflection. It doesn’t necessarily look like anything. My


 1

intention was that the projected videos on top of me would infer that I was
thinking about the past.

Figure 2: Video Test 2 and 3 (url: http://vimeo.com/16416495, http://vimeo.com/16416868)

For the next two experiments I wanted to look at the idea of reflection.
I placed a mirror in front of the projector, and had it bounce the image onto
another wall. This method distorts the original image and also creates
duplicate copies of it. For the first of these tests, I filmed the reflected
projected image that was in the corner of two walls. For the second test I
filmed the reflection of the projected images in the mirror. Both results are
abstracted.

Figure 3: Video Test 4 (url: http://vimeo.com/16417912)


 2

 For my final experiment, I was looking at ways to composite the two
videos together. With a simple overlay technique in Final Cut Pro, I was able
to give the current self a ghost like quality. Through the movement of the
home videos, parts of myself appear and disappear.

It is difficult to find results in these tests, other than gravitating

towards the aesthetics. Because these video tests aren’t in any sort of
context, I can only judge them from what they visually represent. I think
that of all of them, the most successful is the experiment where my present
face is overlaid onto the home movie. This visual speaks to an idea that I am
viewing the past through a present state of mind. The other tests, while
“cool” looking, remain very abstract. It is difficult to distinguish meaning
from the collage of distorted images. Perhaps if they were presented in
context with some of the other work, their meaning (reflected memories)
would come across stronger.

If All My Photos Were Combined Into One…


Figure 4: Photo Overlay Composite

Based on some of my expert/user feedback, I wanted to look at

creating static images that had more depth than the Save As/Resize series.


 3

For me, it was about developing a series of images that evoked a response
other than “well that’s cool”. I also wanted to comment specifically on the
massive amount of e-memories that we are acquiring.

The following photographs are a combination of 50 scanned images,

compiled into one image. Each image is on its own is almost completely
transparent, but when combined with all the others creates a mysterious
collage of images of the past. These images were then printed out as 4×6
photographs.

I was thinking about the fact that photographs are rarely printed
anymore. This is the result of us having thousands and thousands digital
images saved onto our computers. It is just not practical for them all to be
printed, thus they remain on our computers rarely seen.

iMemoir

After thinking a lot about this idea of “Technological Heirlooms” I

decided to a series of prototypes and iterations based off of my research. I
began with the conceptual object, which I am calling, for now, iMemoir. This
prototype is directly based off of the iChat 3ft x 10ft poster I made at the
beginning of the semester.
I decided that I wanted to explore the context of these iChat
conversations when placed in a more traditional “book” format. Because of
the extreme amount of content, this book would essentially be around 8,000
pages. This massive amount of content could be displayed as volumes in a
series, exploring my relationships with people though our online interactions.


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 Figure 5: Initial iMemoir Sketches

From here I wanted to create some more substantial iterations of this

to get a sense of what reading this might feel like. I began by laying out the
content in inDesign, page by page. Laying out these conversations is a very
tedious and time consuming process, in order to insure that all the content is
laid out in a clear format. Current there are several columns: sender,
receiver, date, time, and chat. Because certain content varies in length, I
need to go through the document page by page to make sure that everything
is aligned nicely. In a span of 2 hours I was able to lay out the first 100
pages.

I printed this out on 8.5 x 11 paper to get a feel of what this object
might look physically. A PDF version of it can be seen below. The first thing I
noticed was that the 12pt font might be slightly large. In addition, I am also
going to explore with using different book sizes. This should be easy enough
to prototype, and I wouldn’t make 100 pages of each version, just a few.
After showing the paper version to Cynthia, she suggested that I think about
how I want the content to be laid out. She felt that the repetition of the
person’s name and date were unnecessary, and I might want to consider
only showing them at the beginning of each conversation. Something to think
about, something to test!


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 Figure 6: Printed iMemoir page

In addition to the paper version, I made a flash applet that simulates

turning pages in a book. This was another quick and easy way to explore
different layouts and paper sizes.

Figure 6: iMemoir flash book (url: http://adamscher.com/ichat/flipbook.swf)


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 While laying these pages out, I was able to read through the content
of the conversations. There must have been almost 50 pages of
conversations between a good friend and I that have happened over the past
5 years. Reading through the conversations gave me an immense feeling of
nostalgia as I relieved the moments that we were chatting about. During one
conversation we were talking about how excited we were for an upcoming
music concert. As I was reading that I realized that I have photographs from
that night. It gave me the idea of perhaps creating a hyper-linked version of
these chats that connects the conversations to pictures, movies, and
websites, really anything that is related to the conversation. What this could
potentially come is a web-based narrative. As a basic prototype for this, I
copied all of the iChat conversations and placed them into an html document.
The content is not yet linked, but it is there in its entirety.

Figure 7: iMemoir full html (url: http://adamscher.com/ichat/iChat.html)


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iChats Revisited – yet again

After the previous series of iterations working with the iChat content, I
felt controlled by the massive amount of text data. The software that I was
using to export my chats into a text document was very limiting in the way
that I was able to layout the text. Two repetitive user names and dates
accompanied each line of the chat. All of this extraneous information makes
the chats very unreadable, defeating my purpose of these exercises.
I realized that if I brought the text file into excel, I was able to have more
control over the content. The software allows me to organize each field into
its own column, which gave me the capability of deleting the repetitive
columns. I also could now organize the content either alphabetically or
chronologically.

Knowing that I had control over the content, I decided to send a

message out to my friends on Facebook. I asked people with whom I chat
with consistently (over AIM or gChat) if they would be interested in testing
out one of my prototypes. I had two friends respond saying they were
intrigued and up for it. For each of them, I created a web page that was
comprised of all of our chat conversations since 2005. I sent them each their
personalized page, and asked them to take however long they needed to go
through the material and send me their thoughts.


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 Figure 8: iMemoir chat with Katie (url: http://www.adamscher.com/ichat/Katie.html)

One of them was completely overwhelmed with the magnitude of the

conversations. At first she didn’t believe me that they were our
conversations, as she had no idea that I had been saving them for the past 6
years. After beginning to read them, she told me that she just didn’t have it
in her to delve into the content. We have discussed some pretty intense stuff
throughout the years, and it wasn’t a place that she was ready to go to. This
was not a reaction I was expecting, but nonetheless it is a valid one.

Other friends of mine that are aware of my project, struggle with the
notion that our chats are online for anyone to view. They feel that they have
a certain degree of ownership to the content (which they do) and don’t like
that I have made those intimate conversations public. This again was an
unexpected reaction. For the most part I wasn’t really considering the people
I was having the conversations with as my audience, but to a certain degree
they are. They are the ones who have a direct relationship to these


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conversations and me. They are emotionally invested, thus it makes sense
that they have the most loaded reactions.

iChats – re contextualized

Yesterday in my meeting with Cynthia, we talked about the idea of

contextualizing the iChat conversations. She showed mechanical turk, which
is a service where you pay people a small nominal fee, for doing tasks that
are better done by humans, rather than machines. She thought that it might
be interesting to look at artists that have used this resource to create art,
such as the artist who paid people one cent to draw a small portion of a
hundred dollar bill (ten thousand cents).

Another idea that we talked about was using the iChats as a way to
comment on some of the home video footage I’ve been working on. This
juxtaposition could potentially create a dialog of past versus present,
imposing an adult perspective on the innocence of childhood.
I began thinking of other ways that I could remove the iChats from their
original context. I asked my friend if he would audio record the two of us
having the chats as a verbal conversation. He was up for it, but suggested
that maybe I use one of those computer voices to refer back to the fact that
these conversations are in fact digital. I decided to use a web service that
turns text into an animated conversation to re contextualize these
conversations.

I worked on two different conversations. In developing these text-to-

animations I was able to decide where and when the conversation takes
place. It no longer exists with two people at a computer. Also, I was able to
design who the two people having the conversation are.


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 Figure 9: weChat Brosenyc 11/23/2008
(url: http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7920477/)

Figure 10: weChat Huckfinn311 08/13/2008

(url: http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7921895/)













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Rainbow Brite

At the time of my mother’s diagnosis with breast cancer, I was around

7 years old. During this time, Rainbow Brite was a television show that I
watched regularly. Despite the fact that I was dealing with very serious and
complicated subject matter regarding my mother’s health, I was always able
to retreat to this fantasyland that my cartoons offered me. For this exercise I
was interesting in inserting the reality of my home life into that of the
cartoons I watched. I used the audio from a public access interview my
mother did with footage of Rainbow Brite from one of my old birthday tapes.

Figure 11: Rainbow Brite (url: http://vimeo.com/17444431)

Video Overlay Tests

Inspired by the overlayed photographic compositions that I made

earlier in the semester, I wanted to make a version using the home video
footage. I wanted to create a wash of images and sound, which blurred
everything into one picture. For test one, I left all the video footage playing
at the same transparency for the entire duration. For test two I wanted to


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experiment by bring certain clips into the foreground, and then recessing
them back. This was to give the idea that memories fade in an out, creating
a stream of conscious association. I also played with desaturating the
collective memories, with the clearer memories having color. For the third
experiment I slowed everything down to create a visual that was more
amorphous and cloudy.





 

Figure 12: Video overlay composites
(url: http://vimeo.com/17444420,
http://vimeo.com/17444327)


E-Mail Diary :: 6/18/08

I have a habit of sending myself emails that act as journal entries of

sorts. I find myself typing the thoughts and sending them to myself when I
am away from my journal or stuck at a computer. I did this act most
consistently when I worked at an advertising agency. I would spend hours a
day at my desk, bored, and would spend my time writing, appearing to work.
I came across this particular “diary entry” that expresses my emotional state
during a particularly difficult time in my life.

I was still playing around with the xtranormal.com site, pairing certain
content and see how the juxtapositions read. I decided to use the text from
this entry as a sort of monologue for the monotone actor that plays me. I
was able to choose a green screen backdrop for the video, so I superimposed
it on top of the home videos of me dancing as a child.


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When combined, it speaks to the loss of innocence that occurs when we grow
up. We never consider the hard ships and traumas that we face as an adult,
and perhaps take for granted our naivety. It is almost as if their pairing gives
me to opportunity to talk to my younger self.

After talking briefly with Cynthia about this initial investigation, I was
encouraged to think about my decision is choosing an avatar to represent my
“present” self. Initially I wanted to use it to represent the fact that the piece
of writing was generated and stored digitally. I also am interested in the
emotionless quality of the avatar, as it reveals some deeply personal
information. That being said, we did discuss the performative nature that a
piece like this could take. I promise to entertain the idea over break.

Figure 13: E-mail diary (url: http://vimeo.com/17586153)


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Adam Scher
December 6, 2010
Components: Impetus

My memories are sacred. My memories are amorphous. My memories

are mysterious. My memories are unique to me and me alone.

It was the summer of 1996, and I sat in the television room of my

mother’s new house in upstate New York. Her and my stepfather had
recently moved across the country, and this was my first visit to their new
home. The heat of the summer was different than what I was used to in
California, thick humidity paired with a constant stickiness. Afternoon
sunlight filled the room, as my mother and I sat watching the Summer
Olympics. Although I normally would have protested the programming, I sat
quietly and watched. It was her company that I was invested in, not the
gymnastics.

She rested in her dark leather recliner chair, as I sat on the couch.
Between us, was a small square coffee table that had traveled with her from
Los Angeles to New York. I remember how strange it was to see the piece of
furniture out of its original context. On top of it, a bowl of peanut M&Ms. All
of the green one’s skillfully removed from the bowl, ending up in my mouth.
There was little conversation between us that afternoon, just the sound of
the television and the comfort of each other’s presence.

That is my last memory of my mother.

I replay this scene over and over in my head, trying to grasp on to any
other detail that my mind can afford to give up. What was it that happened
right before this moment, or right after? I just can’t remember. And I am left
distressed, accepting the loss of those vacant moments. Perhaps the
acceptance that precious memories of my childhood have faded over time
has driven my current research and design practice.


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 I am afraid that my memories will be lost over time if I do not carefully
file and store them away. I believe their organization must be meticulous.
But memories are not tangible and cannot be handled like the artifacts I
associate with them. In fact, they operate on their own terms, leaving me
powerless to their comings and goings. At times I struggle to remember the
sound of my mother’s voice, but can recall the act of eating green M&Ms the
last day I saw her. These inconsistencies and unpredictable behaviors appear
to be out of my control, and perhaps is what fascinates me about them.
As I’ve gotten older I’ve begun to compensate for my inability to preserve
these memories through documenting and saving the present moment. The
brief act of snapping a photograph or saving a file reassures me that the
moment will not be lost in my mind, and will be available for reflection at any
point. How often do I go back and filter through these growing bins of digital
memories? Hardly ever. How often do I think about that single afternoon in
the summer of 1996? Almost daily.

What I feel it comes down to is significance. We don’t remember static

moments of our lives. The memories build upon one another to create
magical scenes that we are able to recreate in our minds. A photograph
might ignite such a stream of thoughts, but the actual object is incapable of
transcending time and space. Without the fluidity and unpredictability of our
minds behavior, we might never trigger lost memories. However it is a
gamble, because there is always the chance that those thoughts could be
gone forever.


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Adam Scher
December 10, 2010
Components: Concepts, Domains

With a desire to uncover moments of my past, Portraits of My

Childhood, is as much about the methodology with which I made it, as it is
about its final form. Comprised of short excerpts from over 200 hours of
home video footage, the piece explores themes of remembering and
forgetting in relationship to our technology. We have developed a
dependency to digital artifacts to assist us in recalling the past, and despite
the mass amount of content we acquire, I personally believe we rarely go
back to it. The VHS cassettes that I have saved over the years sit in a
drawer and are never played. In making this video, I was afforded the
opportunity for reflection on these artifacts through my process of watching
all the footage and extracting the specific moments that I wanted to
highlight.

Figure 1: Portrait of My Childhood (url: http://vimeo.com/17544173)


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 Heavily inspired by the works of Jason Salavon, the video takes on a
painterly quality by overlaying hundreds of transparent video layers on top of
one another. In pieces like Late Night Triad, where Salavon compiled 64
nights work of late night talk show footage on top on one another, he creates
a collage of vaguely familiar forms all compiled into one single image. I was
interested in taking this idea and exploring how to reveal and recess certain
footage throughout the duration of the piece. This technique symbolized how
our memory works, a loosely knitted assemblage of thoughts and ideas that
weave in and out of each other. Developing a visual wash of imagery was
essential to the success of the piece.

Another critical element to this work was the incorporation of Rainbow

Brite footage, edited to an audio track of my mother discussing her
experience with breast cancer. The juxtaposing content was a response to
my naivety at such an early age. I was interested in inserting the reality of
my childhood with the fantastical cartoons that I associate with that time in
my life. Similarly to the way that Haruki Murakami, perverts cute and
animated characters into highly sexualized and violent caricatures, I was
interested in shifting the perception on this iconic reference of my past,
giving her a voice and placing her in a more “realistic” situation that I can
relate to.


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Adam Scher
December 13, 2010
Components: Design Questions, Concepts, Evaluation

Reflection

Stepping back and taking a critical look at both the conceptual and
process oriented work I have done this semester is important as I continue
to develop my thesis over the winter break and next semester. Sometimes it
is difficult to evaluate the work I am doing, when consumed with prototyping,
testing and iterating on my concepts. Regardless taking space is important,
and with that I will attempt at an objective reflection.

My initial design question centered on two ideas: the use of technology

to remember and the visualization of our e-memories. By mid-semester I had
successfully developed many different prototypes that looked at these ideas
from different angles. I printed all of my iChat logs over the past 6 years; I
explored repetitive processing of photographs and videos, and developed an
interactive/performance piece.

It was suggested that I develop a more critical design question that

afforded me more room for experimental and growth, as the initial questions
had been explored thoroughly. Further exploration led me to a larger
question in which I believe my earlier questions are situated: What does
saving our digital artifacts afford us? How often do we refer back to these
artifacts? How does our perspective of these artifacts change over time?
These led me to my overall thesis concept: through a series of multimedia
explorations that investigate my relationship to my e-memories, I attempt to
challenge one’s notion of digital archiving and the digitization of personal
artifacts.

I genuinely feel that my process over the past 15 weeks has had an
organic flow. Each series of prototypes, whether they were iterations of
previous exercises or new ideas, were influenced, informed and built upon


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my earlier works. This has left me with a body of work that is all centered on
the central theme of how we experience memory through our relationship to
our personal e-memories. Each work has investigated further ideas that
developed out of this theme: the notion of process as product, the balance
between quantity versus quality, and experiencing the past through the lens
of the present. Additionally, various mediums and techniques were used:
print, video, web and performance.

Figure 1: Map of my prototyping process. I grouped my prototypes 2 ways: media

(print, video, web, and performance) and theme (process as product, quality vs
quantity, and past through present)


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Past Through Present

How can the perception of the past be altered through the re-
contextualization of personal e-memories?

Prototypes such as Silhouetting The Past, weChat, and Rainbow Brite

took very specific content from my past and altered it, in such a way, that its
meaning was shifted and in some cases distorted. Similar to the way the our
memory tends to generate unlikely associations, or remember things that
never happened, these exercises tap into that subconscious process. By
manipulating my content, I was able to look at the past differently. Also, by
using more familiar content (such as iconic cartoon characters and
animation), I was able to draw in an outside perspective that might relate to
the work. Through the re-contextualization, it becomes less personal and
more universal.

Quality Versus Quantity

Through the mass collection of external personal memories, is it

possible to discover the few meaningful bits?

The majority of the iChat explorations comment greatly on this idea of

finding the important information admits the massive amount of data we
continue to acquire on a daily basis. The intention behind this particular work
is to overwhelm the audience with the content. I have been constantly
questioned about the fact that I am deliberately exposing very private
information in a very public manner with this work. However, I feel that
viewers will not be able to get past the piece’s magnitude to extract personal
information. The small excerpts that are digested are too miniscule to piece
together to see the bigger picture.


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 In the more visual oriented pieces, such as the photo and video
composites, it is more of a self-quest to find the sentimental moments lost
within the hundreds of photographs and hours of video footage. The results,
although collage-like and indefinable, are beautiful in themselves. In fact,
these are perhaps my most successful attempts at visualizing what I feel the
insides of our minds look like, in regards to memories. The quantity of
memories, the sheer amount of things that we are able to retain, is an
amazing and beautiful phenomenon.

Process As Product

Can a process that includes a repetitive, time intensive methodology,

provide opportunity for reflection and evaluation?

Most of the work that I did throughout the semester required that I
invest the time and energy to carefully go through my collection of e-
memories. Many of the prototypes included a process that afforded me the
chance to see things and read things that I never go back to. This
opportunity, is just as crucial to my work as the product. In a way, the
repetition ingrains the media into my mind, making it fresh. Whether it is the
100 uploads of my family video to YouTube, the 300 saved versions of the
photograph of my mother, or the hundreds of lines of chat conversations that
needed to be formatted, each process allowed me to revisit specific moments
of my past.

Feedback

The feedback from my faculty, peers and experts has been positive. I
have been encouraged to spend this semester exploring all avenues with in
the over arching themes that I have chosen. Next semester is where I will
have analyzed the success/failures of each prototype, and then decide which
areas I want to develop further.


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 The people I have shared the work with have found it to be engaging
and universal, despite the personal content that each work uses. By offering
a window into my own life experiences, I offer the opportunity for self-
reflection in my viewers. It is also understood that the work is difficult to
critique. Due to the highly personal nature of the work, it is almost
impossible to quantify. Do I care if people like it? Do I care if people “get” it?
This all depends on the context in which I choose to present the work. I feel
that as long as I am able to illicit some element of personal
reflection/response, then the work is successful.

Next Steps

I can’t say that I have had a driving vision of what my thesis is going
to become. I feel that I always known in the back of mind that it would be a
suite of “somethings” that explored themes of remembering and forgetting in
relation to technology. The final form has not been my priority. I believe that
the work that I have done has successfully explored the themes and ideas
central to my thesis questions, and as I clarify my point of view over the next
several months I believe that the work will hold even stronger.
Moving forward I feel I need to focus on two things: the form and the
presentation.

If the majority of the work results in time based media, I need to think
about the context in which it is shown. Will I somehow tie all the pieces
together and view them in a screening? Will they come together in a multi-
channel installation? Will they exist online as part of a web based portal?
These are important questions that I need to think about. There is also a
very strong possibility of including a performative element to the work. This
could result in a installation/performance that incorporates the video and
images I have made in the context of a personal dialogue with the audience
about my memories.


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