memories in palpable forms
texture of longing is a research on how the experience of empathy can be expanded through data retrieval and analysis, by translating memories into physical objects. The aim is to explore how human feelings could be duplicated, in other environments, into tangible elements. Poetically speaking, the project aims at being a form of “teleportation of emotions”, a way to exist in parallel spaces.
The project was recently exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum, in London, during the Digital Design Weekend. This page will be updated soon with recent images.
The research has started from practical experiments – which were published in an article on the research in theBCS Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC). You can check it out here: https://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVA2024.64.
Participants wear sensors while retrieving and sharing personal memory. The sensors trigger different motors, which pump liquid resin mapped to the organic data. In the final step of the process, the resin solidifies creating an abstract sculpture with form, texture and colours coming defined by the emotions.
The gadget gathers data from different parts of the body, suggesting that memories do not only exist in rational thoughts, but superimposed to the body itself, as if we are constantly wearing layers of parallel existences.
A similar approach is found in native performative practices in countries with a history of colonisation, in which materiality is used as an expanded body, an extension of emotions related to certain socio-political situations experienced by that community. texture of longing has a similar starting point, where the performer’s emotional guts are represented by a tangible material – but this time, having technology as a mediator to generate these elements.
Now, the research continues with a neuroaesthetic approach to analysing the resulting sculptures, and towards the implementation of the gadget into performative and sculptural settings.