Memory

This is where I will story all my research on memory and all the things that inspired me.

So I started to think about memory and what I could do for my piece for Memory. I wanted to look at people favourite memory’s. I remember some work I saw when I was sixth-form by someone from the year above me, it was a piece about a lady that has a picture of her brother who died during the war. When I think about memory this is usually the piece I think about. I thought I could do a video piece where people show us there favourite picture and then talk about the experience that go behind it. I got this idea from looking at the pictures on my own wall and then thinking about the story behind each picture.

A pictures worth a thousand memory’s.

This would be the title of this piece. It would involve me finding 5 people and getting them to identify their favourite picture and then telling the camera the story. I would use a mixture of people young and old to find out the difference between their favourite photos.

This picture is one of me and two of my Best friends since school. I love this picture because for me it triggers happy memories of my first year at uni. I went to visit Tim (right) in Loughbourgh where he was at uni and we all met up there including Tom (left.) For me it is photos like this that trigger memories. My bedroom is covered in photos of my friends and events that I have been to remind me about all the good times I have had with my friends. I love all my picture and would like to find out the stories behind people favourite pictures.

But with this picture I like other memories not just of visiting them but of also doing other things with that particular group of friends and that would be why the project is called a pictures worth a 1000 memories. Which is a play on the saying a pictures worth 1000 words. This project would be a great opportunity for people to express how they felt about certain situations.

Poems on Memory

I was thinking about memory and one of the things that really inspires me is poetry, I was thinking with this I could do a piece based on poetry. I also wrote one myself that I thought that I could put over the top of the piece.  It is a really simple short poem but I thought of it and wanted to mention it. It went like this:

A Memories worth a thousand pictures,

A pictures worth a thousand stories,

Stories are worth a thousand words,

And word are worth a lifetime.

I thought that I could maybe use this poem to go over the top of some animation or over the top of some moving image. I think I could use some stop motion to animate what is being said in the poem. I wanted to look at other poetry to see if I could find a better one to use. I would also use toy motion to animate what is being said this would be good to represent childhood memory.

Memory Idea 2

I thought that I would use the poem that I wrote above and try and make some pictures to go with it that illustrate every word. So for the word one I would write the word one on a piece of paper then take a picture and make it into a sort of animation. I think that this would be simple to do and I think that it could also have a great impact. I also think that picture better represents memory then moving image does.

Pictures of memory

I think that Picture are taken of event to help us remember them. So my third idea would be to go and take picture of memorable events.

photosthatchangedtheworld.com/911

This Picture is from the website:

www.photosthatchangedtheworld.com

(Photos added: July 14th 2008)

This for me was one of the most memorable event of my life time. I wanted to put this in because I think that the picture from this where some of the most interesting and memorable picture I have ever seen. The pictures actually show what happened on that day.

This event will always stick out in my mind and it is events like this that people always remember and that is why I wanted to put this picture in here. I will always remember where I was when this event happened and it is the same with the terrorist attacks in London. Events like this our ones that stick out in our mind. Part of memory is remembering events like this. I wanted to use the events like this and pictures like this are things that make our memory. I think that when you mention most memorable events most people will say one of these events. If you talk to people about what the most memorable events in there lifetime our they will mention something like this.

Memory Idea 3

My third memory idea was to do some voxpops and ask people what there most memorable event in there lifetime is. I was thinking that this could be audio or it could be visual piece. I would go into the city centre or around the uni and ask people what they think was the most memorable event in there lifetime and try to see if I would get a different reaction throughout the generations.

Getting Mugged

Ok so this is about my own personal experience which happened today (4th November 2008) about 6 O’clock. I just wanted to comment on the way our brain remembers things. So today at 6 my phone was taken straight out of my hand as I walked down the street. Its not a major disaster I just wanted to comment on the way that my brain has stored it so that every so often I keep having to ask myself if its real or not.

I think that this experience for me has highlighted the way the experiences that happen to us like that don’t seem real the way that we remember them because everything happens so quickly. I also wanted to look at shock and the way this affects the way we remember things.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/conditions/shock1.shtml

(last update July 2006)

Shock can be caused by a number of things from a minor traumatic experience to a massive one. And it comes it two different forms Physically shock when you experience physical symptoms and psychological shock when it has an affect on you mentally. I experienced the second one of these. The whole situation for me feels like a dream and that is what made me wanna write about it cause. So I was thinking that for my next piece I mite record what I remember about that day onto a marantz and use that audio piece as my next project as I would like to use my own experience in this section.

Final Piece

So for my final piece I decided to do a stop motion as this is what most of the ideas that I came up with were about. I wanted to do a stop motion because I don’t really like doing any kind of animation and this was a very big challenge for me to do it. I also decided that I should do it on the events that happened to me on Tuesday. It’s not good when things like that happen to you and I wanted to make the most out of a bad situation. It was a real challenge for me to remember what when on that day and it makes it harder every time I think about it. I chose to draw out what happened because for me this is how it feels. It feels like a dream and I think that a black and white drawing was the best thing that I could use to demonstrate what happened to me that day. I wanted to tell the story like it was a childhood memory and to me those pictures look like a child drawing what happened and I think that this is really important. I also like the way that the street pictures look like the drawings that the police used and made to show what had happened.
With this piece of work I wanted to draw on my own experiences because I always said that your own experience made the best stories. I thought about going and taking pictures of where it happened but I didn’t want to do another photograph project and although this is photography it is different because it is a sort of animation. I had a lot of fun and spent a lot of time drawing the images and trying to get them right but I found it hard to keep bringing up what happened.
I wanted to put some sound over it to explain what was happening and what was going on in the story. But unfortunately I didn’t get the time. I did however write a script of what I would have said if I had the time to record it. I am intedneding to come back at a later date and recored the sound.

To see the script Click Here

The script itself is quite short because I wanted to make it fit to the animation. I am intending to read the script myself and then cut it up so that it goes with the pictures that are being shown on the screen. I wanted to do it this way so that this piece has a narrative and although you don’t get a proper ending it does have a begging and middle. Maybe I will also put in the end when I know it myself.