Rendezvous: A Collaboration Between Art, Research and Communities

Through the evolution of digital technology, social networks and Internet, cultural memory has been transformed, both in relation to how memories are represented, and how they may be engaged with or re-experienced. Exploring these transformations, this paper will introduce Rendezvous, a practice-based research project developed in collaboration with communities of individuals aged over 65 – communities for whom reminiscence has become central; here, achieved through art as a social practice in contributing to their quality of life. I will consider how digitally materialised micro-narratives in media art practice transition between one medium to another and locate within the field of cultural memory. This will question how the narrated self is materialised and mediated as a renewed experience in digital media art practice. I will also ask how digital media art can be a transitional location experience for collective remembering and, ultimately, how digital media art can intervene in the changing practice of memory. Digital interactive installations can offer possibilities for physical engagement that might be used by artists to create distinctive prosthetic environments for reminiscence, re-sensitising and debate within culture memory as a social practice.