Memories of the Future
Memories of the Future is a research tool to mark and annotate geographical features with images, sounds and text.
The reconstruction of past experiences always conveys present perspectives, ideologies, tendencies and expectations. What does it mean to deal with the past, the present and the future? How can we sharpen the awareness of the interrelations between those layers, and how do memories and their traces shape our ways to envision future situations?
By reading the narratives of the past, we are able to develop strategies to envision the future, to imagine intercultural spaces in a highly diverse setup. We have the capacities to connect, on a local as well as global scale, initiatives that embrace the hidden memories of a place and translate them into a better understanding of the specific dynamics. Those dynamics determine and regulate present as well as future interactions.
In the conference track “Memories of the Future” we have worked on how to collect and represent the personal stories of residents in Ajami/Jaffa, gather insights into personal as well as collective experiences in a diverse society and build up on it for future perspectives. The track addressed the value of storytelling for understanding current societal issues and anticipate future relations and meaningful encounters in public space.







Technology Stack
The frontend is developed in React, leveraging the power of ImageMagick and FFmpeg within the audio processing pipeline. It captures live audio streams from the user's microphone, processes them in-browser or via streaming, and continuously sends recordings to the backend for persistence.
The backend is built as a Node.js application using the Express framework. It handles incoming audio data and stores metadata or recordings using Lowdb, a lightweight, file-based JSON storage solution.
Created in collaboration with Bianca Herlo and Tomma Suki Hinrichsen at Design Research Lab.
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