Immemory

Friday, 11AM

In this weeks lab session I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, and upon leaving the multimedia lab I wasn't entirely sure what had happened. I kept thinking about the different experiences I had with the medium (?) and kept thinking about Shelley Jackson Patchwork Girl, and various other ideas that we discussed: like history, and forgetting. And though I could go on and on about the luxury that new media gives us to forget, the importance of history, and the impositions it has on the education of future generations... these really aren't the things that spoke to me and subsequently they are not the things I'm going to talk about in this post. What did stand out to me were the sections of Photography and The Museum (for the record I do like the archival effect of the photograph and the museum, their perseverance to keep the past as intact as possible and specifically in the case of the photograph to capture the moment. To, in a way, keep time still.).

In the photography section of immemory, as in other sections, there were sections of speech; now I can't tell you what everything said, though I do remember stories about phis uncle and travels, but the only thing that wouldn't/won't leave me is a single line: "When one prays in a foreign cemetery one risks bringing home foreign souls." Of course, I didn't take it for the literal-though that would be interesting- but the idea that wherever you go or whatever you do, those experiences will always stay with you, they will become a part of you. I applied this to new media and the internet, no matter what site is visited, no matter how often, and even no matter how many times you clear your history, that site will always be there and there will always be a trace of you being there, even if its just in your memory. This brings me to my next topic: the museum.

There was a handprint, a single handprint with the words: "What does this mean? Halt? Hello? Or I was here one day?" This brought me to my same idea that you always leave a mark behind, a handprint, something... you always leave a trace of yourself, literally and metaphorically. I guess I'm still not entirely sure what I was exposed to in immemory, and I'm certain that even if I wanted to I couldn't discuss everything I gleaned from it or all the philosophical implications it imposes, but I can say that the experience left a handprint on my memory.