Something I missed in London on the 18/04/08 - 20/04/08 which I would have liked to have seen was the O2 Memory Project (image above), an outdoor installation created by Jason Bruges Studio. The work is a ploy to advertise the launch of O2’s new social networking initiative, Bluebook, however is an interesting (albeit simple) idea based around how people use picture messaging and what is supposedly networked collective mass memory. It’s interesting how photography, and here the works idea is based on this assumption, has begun to completely shape our idea of memories. A photograph is a memory and in turn our memories become photographic in nature. The work is:

designed to investigate how we capture and store digital memories. Reminiscent of Victorian cycloramas, the unit is a 4mhigh cylinder with 11 cameras placed around its perimeter which, Bruges says, ‘looks like a clock in plan’.

Here’s how it works:

Each camera takes a picture in sequence every five seconds, creating a 360-degree digital panorama of the outside location every minute. These images appear on giant screens in the structure’s interior…By standing in the centre of the installation, a person can view what is happening in the present, but by moving forward towards the screens he or she can choose to move back in time, and see what was happening in the morning.

The work will tour England and Scotland for the rest of the month and into May. Once finished it will return to London to the O2 venue in Greenwich, a fitting location seeing as if I remember correctly there is a small Victorian cyclorama close by. If you can’t get to any of the venues then the website (image above) is a pretty good substitute and a video explaining and demonstrating the work can be seen on the BBC News website.

Originally seen on Pixelsumo.