Recollection
Yuqi Wang
When a journey ends, trivial moments become memories, and mundane artifacts we lived with turn to monuments. Travelers have a love-hate relationship with their keepsakes, as these objects bring out emotions but also take up space. The project Recollection proposes a possibility of elevating everyday artifacts to special souvenirs and transforming them into digital mementos for better memory preservation.
Recollection consists of a physical diary, Berlin Souvenir, and a digital product, Momento. Berlin Souvenir revisits my personal memory of eight months in Berlin. The diary is composed of selected objects and textual records, representing particular days during the stay. The vitrine-like containers display artifacts, calling attention to their role as souvenirs. Momento, using 3D scanning, makes it possible to discard physical objects that one may have difficulty parting with. The application allows users to create diaries with their digitalized keepsakes on display, serving as a multimedia archive for individual past life events.
Recollection seeks to explore storytelling as a format through object-centered narration, to provide a new solution for the documentation of experiences, and to encourage the audience to be attached to and detached from objects collected throughout life.