Project 6: Memory

Due: April 18, 2024 (link to submission form)

Deliverable

Create a project that collects, stores, or shares a memory. Consider the word memory across different contexts. Computers use binary, allowing our most complex computations and narratives to be stored and read as 1s and 0s. Some argue that computers have increased our capacity for memory, while others believe they have diminished it. Materials can hold memory, from a shirt with wrinkles to molded clay. We store our memories in material objects. We use memories of ourselves and our ancestors to build our identities, carrying them with us.

While this is a conceptual prompt, it is there to inspire you, not constrain you. Let your ideas flow from it, not just within it. Consider the materials you use and how they impact the emotional dimension of memory recall. You do not have to use Arduino if your project does not call for it (e.g. if you are creating a speaker with just an amp). As for some ideas to get you started, you might…

  • Create a speaker out of a meaningful textile that relates a memory.
  • Craft a speaker into or on a memory object.
  • Use flexinol to close a piece of fabric around a small memory object.
  • Design a flexinol circuit that conjures a memory or emotion through the materials it employs.

Document your project on a personal blog, in a Google doc, or another easily readable format that you can submit via the Google form. Please remember to update your share settings! It must include the elements below:

  • Images and/or a video of your project
  • A link to the code you used (if applicable)
  • List of your materials
  • A short reflection. How do you define memory? Is it concrete or abstract? Plastic and evolving or rigid and set? How did these ideas on memory inspire what you created?
  • Any wins with advice or challenges with a note on how you overcame it or additional open questions.

Submit your documentation to this Google Form before class on 4/18/24.

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