While we're busy refining the Flash skin for the XML export and working on the mechanisms to share stories, the burning question on everyone's lips is ... what's being done with MemoryMiner? What kind of projects are people doing with the software? What inspired them, and how are they going about it? Here are a few live examples:
San Francisco Art & Film For Teenagers
Founded in 1990 by Filmmaker Ronald Chase, Art & Film for Teenagers provides Bay Area Middle and High School students with the opportunity to learn about and cultivate their skills in the classic and cinematic arts. Its variety of programs, both educational and artistic, give students who are otherwise deprived of a formal arts education the chance to explore their interest in such topics as art, art history and criticism, cinema, and film production.
As federal and state funding for the arts in public schools continue to disappear, programs such as Art & Film become increasingly important in the lives of young people who, without them, would have no environment in which to both learn about art and explore their own creative impetus.
Longtime friends and program participants, Assistant Art & Film Director Isaiah Dufort and MemoryMiner Intern Ellen Cronin collaborated to bring together images, web links, text, video, and (coming soon!) sound attachments of the students at work in order to share their experiences with the MemoryMIner Community.
Click here to see more of what Art & Film is all about.
After a turbulent 41-hour labor, Annabelle Iona Laraine Aarts Coley burst into the world on the 25th February, 2004 in San Francisco. Little did she know that before she was six months old she would have visited one of the most holy cities in the whole world ... a place where three major religions meet and intersect.
Because of Cherie's New Zealand heritage, she figured it was only right to bury Annabelle's placenta in her back yard, Maori style. She had long had a fascination with the world's various spiritual traditions and when she and Oscar met, they discovered theat they had a common interest in religion. It was an interest that was somewhat academic, and somewhat spiritual. When Oscar changed jobs several months after Annabelle was born and took a month off, they decided it was the perfect opportunity to fulfill a lifetime dream: a pilgrimage to the holy city of Jerusalem.
Click here to see the travelogue of their Jerusalem pilgrimmage.
Danish MemoryMiner user Preben Nielsen has begun building a site in
the hopes of gathering information about family, friends, and the
locations of their shared history so that he can bring their
experiences to light by giving people from around the world a chance
to take a look at his collection. Preben's project is a rich
collection of photographs and family history. Even if you can't read
Danish, this project is a must see! Have fun!
Click here to check out Preben's Family History.
The Gestation Project is a collaboration between photographer Cara Judea Alhadeff, composer Ben Bolter and designer Cherie Aarts Coley, which features photography, sound and film, as well as a collection of people, place and descriptive data based on a photography project in 2004 of pregnant women throughout various locations in San Francisco.
Cherie Aarts Coley was inspired by the photographs (shot by Alhadeff )when she participated as a model before her daughter was born in February 2004. She pulled the images into MemoryMiner and sat down with Alhadeff (who had collated names and birthdates for each of the models) to name all of the women in the images. The photographic series was shot at 12 different locations throughout San Francisco, and each of these was created as a place object in MemoryMiner. Now the images could be sorted by place and person. Descriptions of the experience written by many of the women who modeled were also added, along with short films based on each location.
The interactive Flash-XML export of the project can be found here N.B. This presentation does contain nude photos of pregnant women.
You can find out more about the Gestation project (including shows) here.
Seeking Family & Social History Connections
Sasha Mitchell has been researching a diverse family history, archiving an ever-growing collection of precious photos and historical documents for many years. Now she uses MemoryMiner to map the movement of her families through time and across the country, hoping to connect with others who share that love of storytelling as it evolves with technology.
Kearny, NJ is just one focal point - maternal ancestors from England by way of Barbados who purchased the land from New Jersey Native Americans in the late 1600's and lived there for generations, others who came from the textile industries of England in the late 1800's to establish mills in NJ, and paternal ancestors who were among the first black families to live in Kearny in the 1920's. Linking the images to online social histories and a many-limbed family tree presents a richly textured and evolving family portrait.
Check out Sasha's family history here.
Ted Todorov grew up in Sofia, Bulgaria until the late seventies, when he moved to Princeton, New Jersey at the age of 13. Ted has combined images from his time in Sofia as a child during the Communist regime through to his return just after the fall of Todor Zhivkov in 1992, and another visit in 2004, with an oral commentary. The political changes in Sofia during this time were reflected on the streets by the quality of the roads and the changing car models and styles.
You can see the same street change from being an orderly and simple cobblestone street lined with Soviet-era Trabants (a brand of car) turn into a potholed mess with the same cars, only in worse condition just after the fall. Then, miraculously, by 2004 fancy cafes, neater streets, and BMWs (and just a few Trabants) fill the picture of Ted's old stomping ground.
See (and hear) Ted's Bulgarian Car story here.
[Ted has also loaded family photos going back to the 1890's and is eagerly awaiting his mom's anecdotes so that he can learn about his family story and save it for posterity ... c'mon mom!].