Project by Yuhang Qiu
Memories Relive explores how physical traces on everyday objects—scratches, wear, and surface marks—encode lived experience and memory. Rather than treating memory as something preserved through written documentation or institutional archives, the project focuses on material wear as a form of embodied, nonverbal record.
Using photogrammetry, computer vision, and vision-language models, the project captures and interprets these traces, transforming them into immersive digital environments that allow memory to be experienced spatially. The workflow bridges physical sensing and semantic interpretation, enabling individuals to preserve personal micro-histories using accessible tools such as a phone camera.
Responding to increasingly mobile living conditions, especially among younger generations, Memories Relive proposes a participatory and accessible approach to memory preservation. By shifting archival practices from institutional systems to everyday users, the project reconsiders who has the means to preserve memory and how material traces can function as living cultural records.
