BNMI Current Co-production Programs

Artist: Carol Flax (Tucson, United States)
Project Title: memoria/memoir

Dates: January 8 – February 11, 2006

In memoria/memoir Carol Flax collects the memories of the visiting audience and relates common threads of experience within a site specific installation and interactive website. Memoria/memoir draws the connections between our memories to those of the other viewers, as well as changes to our own memories over time.

The memoria/memoir installation begins by gathering and recording personal stories related by the voluntary viewer through an interactive input booth located before entering the viewing space. By speaking into a microphone in the booth, the viewer’s stories are then added to a continually growing database of recoded memory that remains personalized through a radio frequency identification tag (RFID) or personalized login name which is used to follow the visitor’s identity in both the installation and website. Once the viewer relays a memory, it is archived into the database and added to the collective memories already stored there. Each viewer will have a unique experience once they enter the installation.

The participant’s movement throughout the space is recorded by location transceivers that trigger and manipulate the heard audio within the room. Through the connection of key words by the individuals previously recorded documentation, along with other peoples stories already within the database, a new series of audio stories are presented along with the their own, changing the context and personalization of the memory. Along with the interactive audio components of the space, the viewer also observes multiple video images that are projected on the walls which are effects and edited with live video surveillance cameras installed within the installation space. The experience is an immersive environment that the viewer both participates within and observes at the same time, and ties together the larger questions of personal memory, the way we recorded and remembered, and eventually how it fragments and fades over time.

Carol Flax is a multi-platform new media artist whose work is both sensitive and engaging. Her most recent works explore the commonality between memory, history, and our relationship to the world, using various media, technologies, and forms to investigate these relationships. Supported by grants and artist residencies, her work has been exhibited and published throughout the world. Carol has received numerous awards and is in public and private collections. She has an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

Sound designer Kip Haaheim joins Carol Flax on this project, bringing his specialty in electro-acoustic music and collaborative media to the audio sensitivity memoria/memoir embraces. Sculptor Ed Fickbohm is also in residence, working with Carol on various aspects of the project.