Memory Feast

Memory Feast was built in 2012 in two parts: an app that gathered people’s photographs, and a figure that fed on them.

The hydra

It started as a drawing. A small figure stands at the bottom of the page, and from its upper body a knot of necks rises and coils like a hydra. The drawing became the image of the project online in May 2012.

An ink drawing on paper of a small figure whose upper body becomes a dense knot of thick, coiling serpent necks spreading across the page. — The hydra drawing, 2012.

The app

The first part was a Facebook app. Its button read “share your facebook photos”, and it sent people to the project site to join the feast. Once someone signed in, the app copied the photographs from their albums onto its server.

The figure

The second part was the image itself. A plain white silhouette of a standing person grows heads that branch and coil above it, over slow clouds of violet, teal and yellow. Photographs drift through the scene in small round frames. The files show the heads working in late August and the whole scene running from 8 to 12 September 2012.

The white silhouette with branching necks over a field of saturated, glitching colour: blue, green, yellow and magenta blocks. — An earlier render, 4 September 2012.

Frames and studies, August and September 2012

White hydra heads over the silhouette in a teal and magenta field.

A leaping silhouette sprouting tangled necks in yellow light.

The silhouette with branching heads over a magenta field.

The silhouette lifting a glowing orb under one neck.

The silhouette with knotted arms in a cream and magenta haze.

A later frame of the knot in a yellow and violet field.

An outlined figure with raised arms in a yellow swirl.

Coils looping around cyan rings above the silhouette.

Colour study: white strands sweeping across a teal gradient.

Colour study: knotted heads on a violet gradient.

White tentacle lines over a dense scribbled texture.

Outlined necks above the silhouette in soft colour.

Pure flowing colour, teal, magenta and yellow.

An upper-body silhouette with one neck overhead.

Colour study: orange segmented chains on black.