Artworks / The Ghost of History: On (Collective) Memory, Light, and Vision

Installation, video, custom software, electroencephalograph (EEG) brain-computer interface
2012


How has the embodiment of memory in networked media influenced how histories are re-inscribed onto themselves? How do these recursive constructs relate to perception, memory, and cultural coding? Inversely, how does this multiple, discontinuous, collective memory shift the temporalities and loci of material history to the personal, affective body?

This project creates an immersive digital cinema composed entirely of appropriated web content, re-/assembled as animated loops and remixed in real-time by the viewer’s fluctuating brainwave rhythms. The cinematic component of the piece is structured to mirror the neurological processes of mental image formation – creating and dissolving visual information, forming recursive loops, and exploring content through complex networks that connect seemingly disparate elements. Oscillating between visual perception and mental observation, the viewer navigates a labyrinth of multiple, discontinuous, collective memories, exploring the disorienting and transformative liminal spaces between these virtual records, their material manifestations and psychic traces.

[note: piece is exhibited as a large scale projection. original video quality is significantly sharper in its native format 1280x720, 30fps]