Anatomy of a Memory is the title of a digital media installation. In this work, images are projected down onto a bed of broken mirrors. The fragmented results are reflected around the room. Within those projected fragments one can see b/w photographic images in round vignetted shapes. The projection is slightly animated so that the aged photos seem to float around the space.

Near the centre of this darkened room there is a microscope on a stand. Under the microscope there is a photographic slide. Touching the microscope or moving the slide produces a change in the animation. It fades away and one round image, like that seen under a microscope, dissolves up clearly on the wall directly in front of the microscope. By moving the slide one can explore the content of the image.

The sound of the space is a fairly pleasant humming sound. When the visual space switches from animated fragmented photos to one photo, the sound simultaneously receeds to foreground a clear-speaking voice. The voices are from recordings with people who are speaking about trauma, memory, healing, and the processes in the brain and the body that facilitate remembering and healing.

In this installation I use images, lights, sounds, and meaning in ways that create pattern and express fundamental energies. I interview people sitting in thier own homes after showing them the projections from the piece. I make inquiries as to their relationship with trauma, hear their version of memory retrieval, ask them if they see patterns and energy as factors in the context of their study or in their struggle.

As an exhibition, this work will not have sufficient information to indicate a specific memory, but through its a/v construction will call on some common feelings around the strain to remember something past and meaningful. I anticipate there will be various interpretations of the ‘representational aspects’ of the piece – informed by each visitor’s memories or existing knowledge of memory retrieval.