Memory Mining

One private project I've been thinking about recently is related to the idea of mapping and memory, and ways of representing location, time and space. Sounds profound, but it's not really, and I'm sure it's been done before - but that doesn't negate me doing it, does it? (What is it with 'originality'? If one of my students came up with a theory of relativity unaware of Einstein's should I criticise him and say 'it's been done' or declare him a genius?)
This project has gone through various forms in my head with its most recent manifestation being a map of the UK with inkblots on specific places, the size of the blot relating to the amount of time I lived or stayed there. That was a bit crap, and I don't have the technical skill to do what I want to do with Google Earth, so the idea's on the back-burner along with my great 'shipping forecast' idea which very nearly became a radio documentary last year, which was cool while it lasted.

Anyway, I suppose my fascination for this idea came from a few things. One of them was a project I set students in which they had to select a few photos of themselves from age 13 to present and analyse the images in terms of influences, fashion, friends and that sort of thing. They also had to do the same with images of a friend they'd met recently, but didn't know too much about.
The results, on the whole, were far beyond what I'd expected - a couple of the resulting pieces actually brought tears to my eyes and there was at least one example of a student 'realising' something about herself for the first time, making connections about things she hadn't thought about for quite some time.

Me, I don't have any photos. I don't know why but despite having a digital camera, and a Treo phone/PDA with a camera I have nothing except a few 'cute' shots of my cat and a few crappy self-portraits I took for a magazine article that required an author's photo.

I have nothing from my childhood, no family pics, no shots of ex girlfriends and nothing of trips abroad or choir tours to Germany or the Netherlands. And yet I still have my memories.

This thing about photos was quite a conscious decision. I remember going to Amsterdam on my own when I was about 20, and deliberately not looking like a tourist, camera round neck, missing things that were going on around me because I was too busy trying to frame a perfect shot. And so a hobby (and slight talent) I had seemed to fade. I found, after that, that looking at photographs was generally a sad experience - people and places that I missed and regretted losing touch with.

I'm also remarkably undocumented myself, when I think about it. I'm not very photogenic, and only look good in profile (from my left side) and in black and white, so I tend to avoid being photographed at all, volunteering in groups shots to be the person that takes it.

Recently, I've begun to regret this lack of physical (or rather, digital) evidence that I've been alive. (If I died in a dreadful accident tomorrow the only image they would find to put in the newspaper would look like it was from the post mortem - maybe I should get one taken just in case).

Now I find myself looking at my copy of iPhoto and wishing I could do all the snazzy slideshows and DVD presentations, the cheesy stock music backgrounds, the new RSS feed and the like.

Anyway, a few days ago i stumbled upon a new computer program called Memory Miner which I think a lot of people will want to take a look at. There's a great demo movie on the site that explains what it can do.

I'd quite like to use it for a project like the one above, scanning in images of students and tutors from their personal collections to see how their lives and influences have overlapped. It ties in with something I've been thinking about, the connections that surround a particular institution - like a family tree but in a 'six degrees of separation' way. How many photos of people outside Buckingham Palace can we find? How many people were at the anti-war rallies or Reading Festival at the same time but never knew? How many people went to the same school at different times and ended up working together?
There's got to be something there... The more people get added, the more connections get made. The further back we go, the odder the coincidences. Another one to think about.

The central idea behind MemoryMiner is a belief that the most interesting records of modern society and culture exist in analog form, 'trapped' in boxes of old photos, letters and the like.

With this thought in mind, we hope that MemoryMiner will be widely used to bring these materials, and more importantly, the stories that can be told from them, into the networked, digital world. The long-term goal of MemoryMiner is the creation of a many-to-many marketplace for 'Creative Commons' digital media that would allow people to exchange media elements in order to fill in gaps that they may have as they set about recording and publishing their personal histories.

The first step to realizing this vision is a better tool for linking digital media in a coherent way. While there are plenty of tools for 'managing' digital media, there is a real need to link media in meaningful ways, using an easy to grasp 'People, Places and Times' structure. The next step is to network these libraries together, efficiently and securely. The 1.0 release of MemoryMiner is the first step in a long journey, and we invite you to participate."