House of Memory / بيت الذاكرة (WIP)
House of Memory / بيت الذاكرة has developed from Basil Al-Rawi’s practice-based PhD research at the Glasgow School of Art. The work derives from photographs and narratives contributed by Iraqi diaspora to the Iraq Photo Archive, an online platform created by the artist to gather vernacular archive photographs and associated memories. This crowd-sourced collection allows participants to describe the image as they see fit, and participants were invited to take part in a filmed conversation about their memory of the photographic moment, giving voice to the intangible and visually unrepresented elements. The recorded conversations, together with the original photograph, were remediated into a digitally constructed environment, where viewers can enter an expanded interactive photographic moment in Virtual Reality. This virtual memoryscape is called House of Memory / بيت الذاكرة
A digital reconstruction of a traditional Iraqi ‘Shanasheel’ house is the central virtual environment through which remediations of photographs and spoken memories are experienced. The digital reconstruction serves as a form of digital heritage visualisation but also as a figurative and virtual home for the memory material. When a user interacts with a photograph in the space, they are transported into a virtual reconstruction of a photograph together with audio narration from an individual in the photo.
The ongoing project is concerned with building collective community histories and counter narratives, forming wider understanding of Iraqi stories beyond one-dimensional media representations, and challenging the dominant representation of Iraqi environments and culture within simulated media such as video games.
Virtual Reality
Average Experience Duration: 10 minutes