Audio Visual : Preserving Identity through Digital Archive

“ How come the biggest changes of the last few decades, a completely invisible. ” — James Bridle

My family is a big collector. Since I remembered, every room in my house are always full of stuff cluttered and we won’t discard any of them. But when the digital age came in, there are less physical things to keep. We also can transfer some of them into digital, and soon, the nature of our attachment to possessions has changed, we’re more likely to discard our stuff easier.

I started by researching how the attachment between human and object begins. The researches say that they are mostly from one’s childhood. The experts refer to children’s attachment objects as transitional objects because it is believed they aid the transition to independence. The examples are like when parents use objects involving co-sleeping and feeding. This also called attachment parenting.

Then I questioned why are we attached to possession. Possession is like the extension of self, our possession expresses our identity. How it has changed in the digital age is the rise of digital technologies gives us various alternative ways to express our identity apart from possessing. However, the sense of holding an object in our hands and calling it our own will be something uniquely pleasant.

While I was researching about attachment to objects, I found that I’m interested in the feeling of how disposing things can be implied to key juncture such as moving home, leaving the past behind or a new fresh start. I found an article about someone who disposes 9 things from their house every week according to Feng shui, the art of organising. When I think of organising I think of The KonMari Method.

KonMari is another method of organising and dispose of what doesn’t spark joy. The method was created by Marie Kondo a Japanese tidying expert and bestselling author. In her reality show, there is one part she said “What I really want you to ask yourself if is it’s something you really want to take into your future” while I found an artist named Kija Lucas who uses photography to explore ideas of home, heritage. One of her collection called “Objects to remember by You” mentioned that “what we decide to keep will remind us of what matter from our past”

Marie Kondo categorised stuff into 5 types: clothing, books, paper, komono (miscellaneous) and sentimental items. The sentimental items such as photographs, letters, souvenirs and whatever else may have reminded you of once important people, places and events. These are the hardest items for people to discard because they have mental value. Then I surveyed to ask people’s opinion.

It came to my question “How digital technology helps people to keep sentimental items?” The benefit of digital storage is that it doesn’t cause a mess physically and can keep more long-lasting than physical objects that will deteriorate with time. So I make my statement as “Digital archiving is the more sustainable way to keep sentimental items”

From the quote of Marie Kondo and Kija Lucas, inspired me to use the benefit of digital archiving to create some kind of digital platform to preserve one’s memories and identity before they are gone through their possession, so it won’t be encumbered in physical.