One of my favourite bands, Arcade Fire, has collaborated with Google and writer/director Chris Milk to create an experimental video for their song “We Used to Wait”. Made to play in Google Chrome, The Wilderness Downtown starts off asking for the address of your childhood home and then becomes in an incredible audio and visual experience that uses choreographed browser windows of varying sizes popping open or closing and displays animations of digital flying birds flying from one window to the next and a pair of feet running along a street. All of that builds up to a climax when images of your street and childhood home are blended into the video, creating moments of surprise, delight and nostalgia. Self-reflection and sentimental thoughts are triggered near the end with pause allows you to write a message to your younger self, after which animated trees sprout all along your old street.

Using HTML5 technology, the collaborators have created a technologically impressive and creatively piece of work to create an awe-inspiring audio/visual experience.

Reminiscence

May 14 – June 12, 2010

Opening Reception: Friday, May 14, 6pm – 10pm at Twist Gallery

Twist Gallery is pleased to present it’s first photographic exhibition featuring work by photographers Dianne Davis, Andrew Myers, Sabrina Maltese, Clare Samuel, Mimi Cabell, Michelle Li and Sarah Burtscher. These 7 photographers create work that offers an array of personal reflections on nostalgia, the vernacular, and one’s sense of home. Whether critical, intimate, or introspective these artists delve into both their own personal memories as well as cultural memory, creating visual manifestations of them and transforming them in their work . The result is an interesting mix of photography that insists upon the importance of remembrance and memorialization.

Twist Gallery
1100 Queen Street West
(416) 588-2222
www.twistgallery.ca

Gallery Hours: Tuesday to Sunday, 11am – 6pm

Twist Gallery is a 5000 square foot social event and art venue located at 1100 Queen Street West in Toronto. Twist Gallery showcases emerging and established artists, exhibiting a variety of contemporary art practices, as well as hosting various cultural events.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org

For the past few weeks I have been thinking about memory as my thesis project aims to design around memory recording, sharing, and recollection. Thus, it was quite interesting to read that scientists have just recently captured images of memories being formed at which point new proteins are created at brain synapses. This provides a step forward in helping to understand the mechanism of long-term memory as well as the memory-related diseases and impairments.