THE MOMENTS WHEN I REMEMBER – an interactive installation
Hetkinä joina muistan (The moments when I remember) is an interactive installation about the event of remembering at the time of love and separation. Gallery visitors can take part in the installation by creating their own experiences and stories with the help of a tablet computer. All works include four different sound that the viewers can listen to. Based on their experiences, the viewers can then choose the sound that is the most suitable for each work. The viewer can also name the works and tell what they smell like.
The installation has been exhibited in Rovaniemi, St. Petersburg and Saarijärvi. In all of these places, the gallery visitors have begun to build their own unique stories on the basis of the works. In Rovaniemi, a 30+ man named Work 1 (see below) “Risto left again” and said that it smells like “Midsummer Day”. Sasha, a little girl from St. Petersburg, named the same piece “темный”/”dark” and said that it smells like “лес мала дереврей”/”forest few trees”. When analyzing the data saved on the tablet computers we noticed that perception is partly subjective and that the viewers’ own experiences affect how they interpret the works.
The aim of our exhibition is to reflect on memory, its vagueness and the subjective nature of how people interpret their experiences. The installation includes the nostalgic moment of remembering after separation when the good and beautiful things related to the relationship feel the most painful. Our works deal with breaking identities when a person’s own, made-up love story meets reality and the person realizes that it was all made-up: the other person experienced the situation in an entirely different way. What was really true?
Our exhibition is interactive through personal participation but it is not a piece where people mechanically interact. Visitor get to create their own meanings with a technical device, associating the atmospheres of the works with their own memories.
Our group consists of experts from different fields. Maria Sipilä and Johanna Vanhala were in charge of planning the contents of the works and they also took care of the photographs, videos and the costume piece. Iiro Hokkanen was responsible for sound design, Juha-Matti Toppinen for set design, Ilkka Otsala for the PDA interface and Maria Gullsten for production. Matti Niinimäki and Janne Hast were in charge of the interactive works. We have developed the works based on the feedback we have received.
Contact information: Maria Gullsten, +358 40 595 8852, maria.gullsten(at)gmail.com Internet: momentsiremember.fi
