How do we record memories? As we know our memories are not perfect and can’t capture everything, but also because we know they fade and overtime they can be eventually forgotten, we use different methods of recording the experience and information so that down the line we can revisit our experiences. There are many different ways of doing this, but some examples are photographs, and decades ago, polaroid’s were and still are a way of creating instance snapshots in time, you take a photo and they were instantly be printed and to be stored, but due to the invention of smartphones and digital photography not as necessary. Instead of photo albums which I loved flicking through when I was a child we can flick through years of memories on our phones, and digitally stores these memories to revisit at any time and any place.
Diaries and Journals are a way of creating a written account of a time, and an experience. Many people write in a journal or a diary frequently and consistently. Also, this is commonly used as a place to record feelings and emotions relating to a time, which is difficult to capture in a form such as a photograph. These are very personal accounts of a time, and are presented in the way the individual recalls, or interpreted events therefore they don’t necessary give an objective view of events.
Scrapbooks are a mix of the two, they mix imagery, collected items, written text and photographs. I think this style might be an interesting to investigate for this project, as to me it is similar to how we remember memories, how we do remember how things look, but we also have that ‘text’ like from a diary, the story of the memory and event. But also like a scrap book, you have snapshots of related things, and ideas and memories of the little details from around a time. I am looking into all these because when thinking about what does a memory look like? I was coming up blank, I am going to use/do some drawing exercises to work how do memories look like to me, and I am trying to explore how to make memories physical.