This assignment extends on the topic of the last one through the concept of creative lateral thinking. I first came up with five alternative concepts / meanings that are related to desert and then several things I can make from one of the five alternatives. The results are shown below.
Suddenly, the concepts of memories and magical realms lighted a spark in my mind. Even as an electrical engineering student, I have always been intrigued in psychological concepts, whose discipline investigating the brain, the closest thing that we cannot fully understand but utilize through instinct. Hence, memories, or other brain functions, can be having a sort of “magic-like” property under current understanding of neuroscience. I have also been actively collecting and sorting memories through photos, videos and social media posts to make them ready and able to be reviewed and relived anytime I want. Every piece of wonderful memory to me should be treasured, like gems in the desert of all information that I gathered through my brain. Moreover, I have been interested in and making transit maps for a long time so why don’t I merge these two together to create a map of my personal mystical realm beyond the furthest reach of the vast desert of consciousness?
Hence, I called my work the “Land of Memories” or “Erinnerungsland” in German. From my very own perspective and cultural and linguistic background, it is also interesting how the fusional nature of German word formation makes the word sounds like a place that exists somewhere in fiction. However, this realm is not consisted of actual detailedly grained memories but that feeling I escape to every time I feel frustrated. The general images / feeling of the memories that someone think of them a long time after they have experienced it are what remains to be long-term in mind, and they are usually the most positive / negative things you felt at that moment (of course for this work only positive ones are considered). It also included idealistic or fictional elements that I believe to be harmonic and connected with other real-world memories. This place should be an embodiment what I feel to be idealistic and perfect, and nourishes, fosters, and reboots my tired mind after frustration. Since the feelings are already abstract, I decided to put icons to represent memories instead of other literal elements. These icons
Using Canvas, a software that contains innumerable vector image resources, I can make this map. First, I took a sandy background to symbolize the immense desert of consciousness. Colorful sands are then added to different clusters corresponding to different kinds of valuable memories. Places and symbols are added by hand to give this map an antique and mystic vibe. The stars marks the places I wanted to be teleported to most whenever stuck in the corresponding feeling.
Explanation of the names:
- Mirs Bay – My hometown of Shenzhen, a coastal town with alternative name “Mirs City”, contains golden memories of my family, core of everything.
- Litchia – Rendered name of my elementary school, contains childhood memories.
- Jungfrau – Jungfraujoch, Switzerland. A Childhood Trip that inspires me to care for Mother Nature. Contains relaxing memories spent with everything naturally created around us.
- The Grid – My natural inclination towards systematic disciplines such as physics, chemistry, and engineering and my memories of seeing the beauty within the numbers and formulas.
- Stella – Changsha, a bustling town in Central China that is always in party mood and never sleeps, a place where I had my middle and high school educations, made a lot of friends there.
- Camellia Hill – Name of the place where my high school sits, contains good memories of me studying, competing, and preparing for applying our dream schools with my friends.
- Gazelle Island – Obviously Abu Dhabi. Contains memories about how I transcended myself when being in such an international and accepting environment in the past years, as well as the meaningful conversations I had with my friends.
- Grapevale – A trip to the Caucasus (Georgia and Armenia) last year, sparkled my interest in world travel and made two of my best friends in collage.
- New Territories – Memories being made and yet to come…
The stars marks the portals that connects to places, symbolizing bad feelings.
- Swirl of Nostalgia – Missing Home
- Forest of No Return – Too obligated / concerned
- Concrete Cage – Lost in the Modern Cities
- Infinite Maze – Purposelessness
- Some Island – Loneliness
- Coward’s Pass – Defeated
- Foggy Jungle – Pessimistic
- Pond of Clouds – Melancholic
- Timeless Town – Stuck in the Past
The direction indicator points towards “H”, meaning Home or Heart.
If made interactively, this may also be a good way for people to sort memories. Possible implementation: use AI to analyze and categorize gallery input and generate new “territories” and symbols as user record more of his or her life. The icons acts as an access point to the AI-synthesized video of that part of memory.