VA 505/Address Studio Creative Practice

Title: At the Threshold of Moments Abstract: In this paper, I will try to trace my documentation instinct which leads me questions about my identity and makes me anxious about losing my memories and having amnesias. I am trying to capture the moment and collecting memories via different type of visualization tools, in a sense of social and personal context. I am constructing a personal nostalgia through constructing memory. “Capturing” these moments is a communication way with my own past. We are rewriting and reshaping our memories involuntarily. However, in late capitalism of this post-modernist era, we live in great speed and vast consumption society. The average life of people is prolonged while the average life of products, objects and buildings is shortened and this leads to cultural amnesia both in terms of personal and cultural memory. While the longevity of human life is changing, how can we build an identity and keep our memories as they are? In this paper, I’ll

The longevity of human life is influenced by genetics, the environment, and lifestyle. Environmental improvements beginning in the 1900s extended the average life span dramatically with significant improvements in the availability of food and clean water, better housing and living conditions, reduced exposure to infectious diseases, and access to medical care.   The average person born in 1960, the earliest year the United Nations began keeping global data, could expect to live to 52.5 years of age. Today, the average is 72.  Life-span views embrace the joint influences of multiple factors on memory development, including the important roles of environment interactions at different stages of the life. From a social-cultural perspective, these adult differences in autobiographical memory should be related to specific socially organized activities earlier in development.  When we repeat memories like in childhood (with the daily questions like "tell your grandma about your