Simulacrum : situated memory for architectural space

The immediacy and transportability of digital images has changed the spatial and temporal relationship between the viewer and the image. The malleability and large volume of these images affords us the ability to set up new such relationships. This thesis introduces a system that creates an asynchronous channel of connection and interaction by allowing two people or two groups of people to simultaneously inhabit a temporally neutral space. Construed as an elastic collective memory, the system intelligently documents audio and visual activities in a social space. This data is dynamically recomposed and manifested in the present as an interactive display environment that composites the past with the present, collapsing the temporal gap between them. Thesis Advisor: V. Michael Bove, Jr. Title: Principal Research Scientist, MIT Media Laboratory This work was supported by the Digital Life Consortium