ON THE PAST / PRESENT / FUTURE OF THE PAST by Mankun Guo

MODE 3

2022

MODE 2

@ RISD PROCESS BOOK

MODE 1

ON THE PAST PRESENT FUTURE OF THE PAST

DEGREE PROJECT BY MANKUN

RISD 2022 GRAPHIC DESIGN DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK BY MANKUN GUO ADVISED BY PAUL SOULELLIS

INDEX INTODUCTION PROPOSAL

MODE 1

ON THE OF THE PASTPAST

1.1 A MEMOIR 1.2 COMPLETE THE WINDOW MODE 2

ON THE OF THE PASTPRESENT

3 5

11 12 28

2.1 EVERYDAY 40 2.2 TRAVELING DIARY: THE BREAKERS 54 MODE 3

1 INDEX

ON THE OF THE PASTFUTURE

INTODUCTION On The Past / Present / Future Of The Past invites an improvisation of memory between humans and technology, It is a study of how we interact with mem-ories, and how the engagement is shifted in the digital universe. A set of iterative visual experiments anch-ored in critical investigations as well as personal experiences are expressed across three temporal contingencies: past, present, and future. The geography of the past serves as a repository for my personal experiences that aren't documented, revealing why we're so eager to generate memory exter-iorizations. The Present investigated the impact of various document formats on recall. The Future speculates on potential issues lurking behind the surface of a perfect vision, supporting the creation of new practice models that consciously move toward the future. The thesis is a window into revisiting the memory landscape by calling and res-ponding to what I experienced, observed, and pondered. Taking a somewhat semi-scientific approach to comprehending my subject matter and intended audiences, I sought to unfold a resonance space that enables a comprehension of memories, a listening of the self, and a negotiation of technologies under critical views. This, in turn, may shape our next engagement with the old days, the todays, and the tomorrows.

3 INTRODUCTION

PROPOSAL My father succumbed to illness in 2014. During his lifetime, he absolutely loathes having pictures taken. After his death, I went through all of the USB drives, CDs, printed photos, and journals he left behind. They were extremely rare. I've always regretted not having left any externalized recordings of our past. I feared that I would be unable to provide any proof of his existence. I'm afraid that one day, he'll fade from my memory, just like how the body is cremated, and the powdered substance is sealed in the chill box and then buried in the earth forever. I came across an interesting fact several years later. The lack of physical archiving did not erase my ecstatic memories about him. As soon as I close my eyes, the shared experiences wrapped with warmth are enough to end any of my anxiety. The touch of his fingerprints, the fine lines between his eyebrows, the warm embrace, the gentle words that lulled me to sleep, the smell of his fried rice. Perhaps it is the absence of records that makes my brain work so hard to remember all the details - the touch of his fingerprints, the fine lines between his eyebrows, the warm embrace, the gentle words that lulled me to sleep.It's as though the hairs of my sweat rise up just enough to allow warmth to penetrate my flesh from the memories. Perhaps memories about my father are becoming increasingly hazy and erratic as time passes, and I have no way of knowing whether these are shifted or modified. But I consider myself fortunate to have been present at the time of the occurrence and recollection. Because they are an integral part of who I am and they are solely mine. Even though I'm beginning to let go during this self-examination, I also know firsthand the dread of forgetting. This fear drives humans to externalize memories through diaries, photos, and films for centuries in order to seek a permanent proof of

5 PROPOSAL

the past and solidified representation of one's uniqueness. Yet the behavior has proliferated with digital development. Camera on every smartphone, 3D scanners, GPS Positioning recording, and photogrammetry all allow us to create elongations of experiences and compressing them into digestible forms.We build flat yet receding spaces and pray that they serve as a faithful representation of history. Yet I question, will we actually keep longstanding fantasies? In September 2018, I left my home country for the first time to start my college life in the faraway United States. I was enthralled by the freshness of everything and wished it could be preserved in a permanent manner, and I developed an addiction to digital recording. A phone with 512 GB of capacity allows me to snap an almost limitless number of photographs and movies. In the span of a month, I probably shot almost five hours of video and six thousand pictures.It's crazy, isn't it? My mother asked me one night if the sky in Providence was always blue.(China was covered with thick pollution at that time) I opened my phone album, looked through the pictures, and admitted to her that it was blue almost every day.As ludicrous as it sounded, I had recorded everything and yet I could recall nothing of it. Later I came across a book called Total Recall. High-tech leader Gordon Bell and Microsoft Senior Fellow Jim Gemmell demonstrate a real-life "record everything" by leveraging the possibilities of technology. They explored systems that could best store and access massive amounts of data by photos, computer activity, biometrics, etc. Similarly, For a period of two decades, Noah Kalina snapped a photo of himself every day; For 25 years, Robert Shields kept track of his life in 5-minute intervals, meticulously archiving every moment in his life. Basile Fournier created an imagined memory machine, allowing all past to be re-experienced endlessly… I was struck by these projects, which demonstrate an extreme act of documentation, but

6 DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

may well be the norm in a technologically advanced future. We no longer "exist" in our bodies.We break off parts of our embodied senses and implant them in figurative proxies. The anchoring of history in a longstanding faspiration seems to be a new kind of fetishism in the digital era. Symbolic murder of individual consciou-sness, experience, and subjective cognition is perpetrated by the monumentalization of self-same individuals.Nothing escapes the solidified archives, which have turned time from a flowing stream into a stagnant pool where nothing is lost yet everything is lifeless.I tried to imagine what would have happened if I had spent all my time with my father recording. My emotions would have been left elsewhere by the objectification in the precise archive; My uniqueness would be undermined by the duplicated version of reality; My dreamt-of past would be shattered by the cold, meticulous encyclopedia. I'm coming to terms with the past, while at the same time I question the future of the digital age. What will happen to humanity if we entirely alienate ourselves by exteriority? For this reason, I've chosen the five questions below as the foundation for my future visual experiments.

What is the purpose of forgetting? What is the difference between the traditional way of recording and the stable form of memory? How is digital archiving changing our memory system and the way of living? How does a permanent, complete, and precise capture of one’s experiences leave the self elsewhere? Why are people supposed to rethink memory exteriority? What will the future be like if we are able to store personal memories accurately and absolutely?

7 PROPOSAL

MODE 1

ON THE OF THE PASTPAST

The first mode undertakes to analyze memory in its original form regardless of the influence of extern-alized recordings. Through a revision of my personal experience, lacking physical recordings, I utilized these visual experiments as intimate sources for exploring memorial qualities. The past continues to crmble and ressemble it self in the mind; the straight flow is transformed into a twisted paste; the clear outer border fades into a gradience in dispersion; the concrete central point decomposes and spreads all over places. the process of retrieval experiences progressive decays, combining with the injection of new emotions over and over again. The past exists in such a fragile form that we are commonly afraid of losing it. We might realize the reason why recording behavior emerges: we will hardly escape from the unstable nature of memory, and we have the universal fear of forgetting.

11 MODE 1

PAST

1.1

A MEMOIR

Why do people fear of forgetting? How is information decayed, added, and retained as we recollect memories again and again?

The first project is a memoir about my father. I traced our shared experiences during his lifetime and as an attempt at understanding how memory works. The very initial practice starts with writing. Yet the process is difficult for me as I found it hard to retrace the past in a linear order. While recalling one memory, some others could materialize out of nowhere and take up residence in my thoughts. After the struggling process, I presented those arbitrary intrusions as fragmented words and visual forms. They are printed in fabric, ready to be refolded and ravaged. Each fiddling with the cloth is deformation and reformation of prior orders. I must admit that these memories are constantly changing as I go back again and again, and even a few minutes apart, the words I wrote are DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

slightly different. They are not static, instead, they take on a fluid shape. Donna Bridge, a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University explains memory as the telephone game. In the game, one player gently whispers a message to the person next to them, who then relays it to the next person in line, and so on. Each time the message is repeated, portions of it may be misheard or misconstrued, while others may be inadvertently amended, improved, or forgotten.Messages can mutate over time, changing dramatically from their original form. "A memory is not simply an image produced by time traveling back to the original event -- it can be an image that is somewhat distorted because of the prior times you remembered it,” said Bridge.¹ In order to explore the progress in between backtracking， I collected 200 images that relate to our shared experiences, and generated an animation using Stylegen. Much like the memory transfer process, adding, subtraction, and retention of information created by GAN was represented through the smooth transition between source image and target image. The flow ends up creating a narrative that embraces progressive redundancy and reproduction in between memory retrieval. These bits of recollection are displayed together to describe a chaotic result of memory retrieval. Why do we fear forgetting? This project attempts to suggest a reason: we can always relieve the past , yet we can never repeat it.

(01)

(01). Writing on notebook, WIP MODE 1

PAST

14 DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

(02)

(03)

(02). Writing layout, WIP (03). Writing & memory mapping, WIP MODE 1

PAST

(04)

(05)

(04) (05). Animation trained with StyleGan, selected frames DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

17 MODE 1

PAST

(06)

(07)

(08)

18 DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

(09)

(10)

(11)

(06) – (11). Animation trained with StyleGan, selected frames MODE 1

PAST

20 DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

21 MODE 1

PAST

(13)

(14)

(13) (14). Installation view,detail DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

23 MODE 1

PAST

(15)

(15). Installation view,detail DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

25 MODE 1

PAST

26 DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

I finally presented the iterative design practices as an installation. The visual rhythms and aesthetic conversations between pieces occupy the space and attempt to bring viewers into a poetic landscape that reveals the complexity of memory. The documentary video of the installation examines how a multi-dimensional combination of materials, space, photo-graphy, and music may elicit a more profound state of sensory recall and construct an immersive experience for non-present viewers. while connecting to my distorted memories, they might also be reminded of their own expanse of the past.

(16)

(16). Documentation video, selected frames MODE 1

PAST

1.2

COMPLETE THE WINDOW

How to construct a portal that invites viewers' associations and imaginations?

Recollection is a window that allows us to re-experience a completely different past. Colors are flowing; exaggerated forms are complemented with sharp edges. The brain is constantly adding layers to it, compensating for the details in pursuit of complete exper-iences of the past. As an exploratory extension of the previous project, I extracted the forms of memory from the prior practice, deconstructing and reconstructing them into abstracted forms with details filled in. They form a series of windows, which are portals of not only entering my personal memories but also inviting the viewers into the territory and establishing associations. Memory is no longer described in a literal and precise words, but becomes an abstract result that invites participation, interpretations, and imagination. DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

(01)

(01). Pattern composition sketch. WIP MODE 1

PAST

30 DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

(02)

(02). Pattern composition sketch. WIP MODE 1

PAST

(03)

32 DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

(04)

(03) (04). Final poster series MODE 1

PAST

(05)

34 DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

(06)

(05) (06). Final poster series MODE 1

PAST

(07)

(07). Final poster series DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

MODE 2

ON THE OF THE PASTPRESENT

In the previous mode, I examined the nature of memory and indicated the incentive for recording behaviors. While externalized archiving, such as sketching and writing, has emerged to confront the universal fear of forgeting several centuries ago, video recordings and photo-taking becomes common behaviors in the digital age. In this mode, I experimented with a variety of approaches for documenting my experiences and reflected on the impact of recording on my recollections. After the tracking of my daily experiences through traditional ways of recording, I conducted a com-parison experiment and a reflective essay to further explore the shift of recording method in present days.

39 MODE 2

PRESENT

2.1

EVERYDAY

How does traditional recording method impact one's engagement with memory?

(01) It was a month-long journaling practice. Following the activity, I attempted to reflect on it and uncover a semblance of memory unity that existed in everyday life. Interestingly, I discovered that I frequently had a vivid remembrance of a daytime occurrence, and the linkage consumed a considerable portion of the review. Both sketching and writing are typically devoid of realistic representation, favoring imagination and concept dissemination. This brings to mind electronic records. Is fascinating imagination a thing of the past in the modern era? (01). Daily drawing and writing, Intallation view DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

41 MODE 2

PRESENT

(02)

MAR 3 "When you keep staring at a word, you eventually don't recognize it. The strokes become a bunch of shapes. I 've been staring at my laptop a whole day long, and it becomes strange, distorted, nugged forms."

(02) (03). Daily drawing and writing, selected pieces DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

(03)

MAR 9 "I discovered an earphone I hadn't used in a long time." It took me a half-hour to disentangle it. I'm intrigued; I didn't move it, so how did it wrap itself around? Did we place so much emphasis on humans that we lost sight of the soul that exists in everyday objects?

43 MODE 2

PRESENT

(04)

MAR 11 "Printed my memoir today. These fragments of memories that are already messy were even more twisted and chaotic on the surface of the cloth."

(04) (05). Daily drawing and writing, selected pieces DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

(05)

45 MODE 2

PRESENT

(06)

MAR 4 "When you want to break something huge and hard, the best way is not to use brute force, but start from a point with something tiny and sharp. Same with emotions."

(06) (07). Daily drawing and writing, selected pieces DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

(07)

MAR 5 "Found a thick pile of type proofs from the last semester. “Z”always appears by the end, like giving grades to the students. It is so innocent, Ah. Why do people always tank things from “good” to “bad”?"

(07). Daily drawing and writing on March 3, 2022 MODE 2

PRESENT

(06)

FEB 25 "Woke up in the morning and found out is was snowing outside. The snowflakes meet on the window, turning into streams flowing down. The world turned white, only the roads were in pitch black."

(08) (09). Daily drawing and writing, selected pieces DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

(07)

FEB 26 "I was cooking at home today and put on too much chili. the room was enveloped in grease. Everything was twisted and wandering in the smoke, like ghosts.”

49 MODE 2

PRESENT

(07)

50 DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

A month later, I revisited these memories as if they were layers of distant mountains in a painting. Mountain summits that vanish into the distance are among the more distant memories. With the addition of words, there was more room for imagination, allowing thoughts to freely move among the mountains.

(08)

(08). A review of the daily drawings and writings MODE 2

PRESENT

52 DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

(08). A review of the daily drawings and writings, details MODE 2

PRESENT

2.2

TRAVELING DIARY: THE BREAKERS

What is the differ-ence between traditional recording methods and digital archiving?

I employed a semi-scientific experimental technique in this experiment to assess differences in recording behaviors and their effect on individual memory. I invited my friend, Zhaochong, to be involved in this experiment. We traveled to The Breakers which is the grandest of summer "cottages" in Newport, RI, and a symbol of the Vanderbilt family's social and financial dominance in the region. During the trip, I asked Zhaochong to consistently take video recordings while I documented my experiences by hand-drawings. I ended up tying the recording results chronologically as two archive books in order to compare and contrast the two types of documentation. A week after the trip, my friend, Daisy, interviewed each of us independently regarding our travel memories. (I refrained from interviewing myself to eliminate subjective influences) The questions centered on objective facts and subjective feelings about the trip. (01). Traveling diary: The Breakers, book covers DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

(01)

55 MODE 2

PRESENT

56 DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

(01). Traveling diary: The Breakers, video by Zhaochong book covers MODE 2

PRESENT

(03)

(04)

(05)

58 DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

(06)

(07)

(01)–(07). Traveling diary: The Breakers, video by Zhazohong, book spreads MODE 2

PRESENT

60 DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

(08). Traveling diary: The Breakers, video by Zhazohong, book details MODE 2

PRESENT

62 DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

(08). Traveling diary: The Breakers, drawings by Mankun, book cover MODE 2

PRESENT

(08)

(09)

64 DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

(10)

(11)

(12)

(08)–(12). Traveling diary: The Breakers, drawings by Mankun, book spreads MODE 2

PRESENT

66 DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

(13). Traveling diary: The Breakers, drawings by Mankun, book details MODE 2

PRESENT

INTERVIEW WITH ZHAOCHONG & MANKUN

D: Daisy Jin z: Zhaochong Han M: Mankun Guo

D: How long did you spend in the breakers? Z: I was there for an hour and forty minutes, as I recall. When I pressed the end of recording button, I observed the length of the video. M: It was around an hour or so, but I wasn't paying attention. D: Can you describe how you and your friend chronicled the trip in detail? and your friend chronicled the trip in detail? Z: Sure. I used my phone to record video from the time I entered The Breaker's courtyard to the finish of the trip. Long hours of video shooting can be exhausting. Mankun was dra-wing patterns. She was fascinated by visual forms obviously. M: Zhaochong is the one who has been filming the video. At first, he appeared to be concerned about the video's quality, but soon he gave up. Maybe it's dull to continually stare at the view-finder's restricted area. I've been sketching wall patterns, odd bottles, and furniture all around places. The predominant color of the interior design is gold, but I'm not drawn to the dazzling effect; instead, I appreciate the curved and coiled reliefs on the surface of objects and some furniture with unique shapes. The natural nature offers much of their inspiration source, yet they are exhibited as skill-fully carved antiques. I was ecstatic to discover the evidence of

68 DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

extraction and transformation. Since I didn't mean to spend an entire day investigating the area, my paintings are primarily based on my initial impressions of the forms. D: Did you revisit your recordings after the trip? How does it feel? Z: I attempted to play the lengthy film, but I cut it off after a few seconds. I didn't have the patience to watch them all, and the video was generally dull. Some of the conversations I had with Mankun were interesting. Both of us remarked we couldn't compreh-end what a wealthy person's daily life was like. But I'm not sure where they occured in the video. So I eventually stopped viewing my recording. M:Yes. I went through my sketches before putting them together for DP. Interestingly, they not only brought my mind to some of the journey's phases but also produced a new narrative that was both unfamiliar and familiar, which transcended what was actually happening. I say this because, while I recall experiences through some of the drawings, I was astonished to discover that others were new to me. I wasn't sure if they came from a set of wallpapers or some furniture patterns. My wild guesses based on personal drawing habits gained me some clues. I had no means of knowing whether the answer was correct, but I did notice that I was significantly drawn to the Squiggly shapes and abstract imagery. D: What struck you most about the trip? Did your documentation method help you remember things important to you? Z: The lavish and ornate interior design is definitely impressive to me. I couldn't stop myself from imagining what the real life of the rich was like. Do they get lost in their homes? How many kinds of dishes do they have to eat at each meal? And I remembered that the central area of the hall was very empty and not utilized at all, which is a total waste to me, but this is probably just a drop in the bucket compared to their wealth. Regarding the recording method, I am not good at image remembering personally. The fact that shooting video allows me to rewatch the past at any time gives me peace of mind. However, I don't like to shoot videos for long periods. The phone's battery drains very quickly and gets progressively hotter. I had to divert some of my attention to the phone. You know, the brain capacity is limited. In every second, 100,000

69 MODE 2

PRESENT

different chemical reactions are taking place in the human brain. Of the information constantly received by the body's five sensory organs, only 1% is processed by the brain, and the remaining 99% is sieved away. So focusing on something means you lose others. I might miss some odd piece of furniture while fiddling with my phone. Maybe I'll just have to find some clues by watching them again. M: As I mentioned before, I am enthu-siastic about decorative forms. probably because they share some similarities with traditional Chinese ornamentations which also contain symmetrical and squiggly elements. I was even more impressed by the variety of decorative applications. So my sketches mainly lie on the observations of these ornam-entations. This practice offered me a deeper understanding of Gilded Age house decoration - an ode to nobility, elegance and timelessness. While my drawings are relatively crude, my aim is to deepen my impressions by obser-ving, absorbing, and outputting, instead of depicting the precise appearance. In other words, recording is not an end in itself, but serves the assimilation. Sketching is a straightforward way for me that filters out disturbing information like what other tourists are wearing. D: Can you describe some memories about smells, sounds, or touch? Z: I'm not sure I noticed any of these. There were a lot of visitors inside The Breakers, but it wasn't too loud and people mostly spoke in whispers. I don't remember anything special about the smell. M: I recall smelling a mild sea scent around the breaks. I believe this was owing to the house's location on the beach. The stench was difficult to detect in the rooms and became noticeable only on the balcony. I also felt a relief-carved marble wall, and its surface was chilly and smooth. It didn't feel like a hard material; instead, it had an ice cream-like touch.

70 DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

ESSAY: MEMORY IN WORLD, MEMORY IN HEAD

We are presently on the cusp of a vast digital universe in which memories are encoded in ultra-compact bits and bytes. Portable digital archiving is taking over the conventional method of recording from papyrus scrolls and printing, to drawing and writing. While this is an inevitable tendency in today's technologically advanced world, it also enacts the vision of fighting over the fear of forgetting and proliferating self-representation. The past is folded into the present, waiting to be called upon at any moment. Although the enormous increase in our storage capacity is welcome, it seems prudent to pause a second and reconsider the shift from a critical standpoint.How has the usage of new technologies changed the way people engage with memory? I devised the semiscientific experiment in search of a possible answer, and the essay serves as an additional analysis and explanation of my experiment. I suggested two models of one’s engagement with autobiographical memories.While the digital recording enact a parallel relationship betw-een one and his or her memory, archiving practices that implicate subjectivity facilitate the relation of possession between the two. Let’s start from the recording process. Zhaochong used his phone camera to record the whole journey. His progressive loss of patience witnessed the decrease of control over the camera . The fact of holding the device in his hands does not offset the minimal control over recording results. The device's default application instead took over the dominant place. It seemingly takes up a human in an inhuman manner standing next to him. It's not possible for

71 MODE 2

PRESENT

Zhaochong to dispute what has been recorded, just like one cannot dictate someone else. Yet, drawing as another recording method involves a completely different procedure. Within my sketching journey, observation on certain artifacts embodied personal preference of what is important. I suggested in the interview that symmetrical and curvy shapes had always grabbed my attention more than gilded colors. My drawings are thus lying on the capture of forms over colors. An avid lover of gold may opt to focus on something divergent from my interest point. Selection, as an integral part of recording, reveals where one’s attention lies and might be seen as a continuation by other means of transcribing memory. Opinions, ideology, experiences, and subjective approach generate deviations in the progress, which are even more amplified in the recreated output such as drawing and writing. The formation of difference might well demonstrate the engagement of subjectivity. I possess my memory because I injected a part of me into its content. The concrete result of non-digital documentation resembles an elongated arm growing from body. We run to another issue at the time of reviewing recordings.When confronted with such a big amount of data later management of what was recorded seems to be an over-idealized task that can be hardly accomplished. Zhaozhong said he couldn't sit through an hour-and-a-half-long video without getting impatient. Memory exists somewhere that is so close to us, but the cost of recovering it is rather expensive, to the point where we can hardly afford to review what we have stored. Our capacity to digest information is falling dramatically behind the pace of technological advancement. While we are eager to accumulate more and more, we also feel increasingly overwhelmed. The inflated information is engulfing us like a raging flood. It resembles a never-ending list of items that give up any emphasis. Without filtering away insignificant elements, the seemingly available recording will end up being just part of the landfill. Knowledge with externalization without interiorization is a dead body. In a sense, it is a stranger standing beside that keeps out the intersection with self, and it is a parallel copy that leaves the self elsewhere. As opposed to digital archiving, subjective output and, more importantly, return embodied in noun-digital recording reinforces the subordination of self and memory. I talked about the experience of gaining new ideas from reviewing my drawings. While some memories are blurred after a week, sketches bring my mind back to bits and parts of the trip. subjective imagination facilitates as

72 DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

the main medium of connecting drawing recordings and the past. It resembles a constant addition of chemical reagents, reacting with the substances in the cup and recombining new molecules; it revitalizes old narratives with new content beyond what was objectively experienced. The consistent generation of new rendering allows memories being an integral part of me, and therefore more engagement between the self and past. The act of recording is not inherently good or bad, however, my experiments and writing attempt to present an inevitable contradiction existing between the engagement with memory and electronic recording. While subjective representation of self used to be an indispensable part of traditional ways of recording, digital documentation almost negates its existence. An endless recording without decision making re-intervention exile the self from experience. It acquires a life of its own and stands side by side with the self. This ends up forming a complete departure from the original intent of "remembering". How, in the digital universe, can we ever possess our past when personal identity is removed from experiences? And how can we define memory as part of ourselves when we no longer inject subjective thought into it?

73 MODE 2

PRESENT

(14)

(14). Printed essay DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

MODE 3

ON THE OF THE PASTFUTURE

In the last chapter, we take a look at some of the problems that electronic records have the potential to cause in the near and far futures. It's possible that having too much information in our memories will work against us, rather than for us, by making it more difficult to recollect what we did in the past. The combination of dark, disordered pieces, and complex textures is meant to depict the overwhelming sense that one is being bombarded with an excessive amount of information. I have high hopes that the viewer will experience a sense of confusion as a result of this visual language and that it will lead them to think about the shifting nature of the way we interact with technology and our memories.

77 MODE 3

FUTURE

ESSAY: ON THE FUTURE OF THE PAST

The strategy of digital memories can be various, while they will all return to an inevitable problem 一 information inflation. Overindulgence is just as bad as underindulgence. Despite the fact that new duties and abilities have been created by technology innovation, we find it difficult to employ, much less control them. I was reminded of my grandmother’s recent move. As some one who is obsessed with accumulating stuffs, she turns the storage room into a giant depository of ephemera. the iron pot from more than fifty years ago remained tucked away in a corner of the shelf, covered with dust. Picking up something important and discarding the rest was a hard process for me and my mom. The vast amount of things are intrinsically unmanageable and categorizable, especially when there was full of unknown. We had to, by the end, surrender to the limitation of our brain一we missed a precious photo album and grandpa's manuscript. I felt like I was immersed in a library archived huge amount of data . I could have spent decades reading all of the books and unavoidably left out some significant information. Despite having only a few square meters of floor area, a data center's digital memory was growing at an exponential rate. I'm already unable to breathe and immediately filter out certain information, like a pedestrian on the road with

78 DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

earplugs to restore control in a noisy environment. similar to the musty relics of grandma's basement, discarded data forms a massive landfill. There is no purpose or value to whatever informations that are discounted and dismissed. The coolness of the spring, as I try to recall my past, always directs me to my hometown.。It is Jinan, known as the city of springs in China. Due to its unique geographic configuration, underground water has become the lifeblood of the place. Simply turning over a stone brick on your way to the heart of the old city causes the spring water to gush out. The beautiful was where I lived for eighteen years and where my entire family has spent their lifetime. It grows, blossoms, and gives me the sense of belonging, just as the presence of the springs keeps the city alive. Qushuiting Street was the place where I spent the happiest times of my life. My grandfather and I would go to a mysterious spring well in the alley to obtain water even though no one in my family lived there. What I don't understand is why Grandpa thought that well's water was the best. My grandfather and I walked to Qushuiting Street early in the morning with two enormous buckets of water. After traveling approximately 100 meters along the lane, we could see the large well. The early birds always sang loudly as though to welcome us. Clear as glass, the well's spring water erupts from the well's bottom in pearly white bubbles that float to the surface. This demonstrates that new water is constantly gushing out. I'd dash over, grab some water, and down it in a single swallow. In an instant, the humid air around me cooled down and left me with a pleasant aftertaste in my mouth. The water level in the well was always the same. As soon as Grandpa lowered the bucket into the well and raised the water, the spring water quickly overflowed the well's rim. From past experience, I know that I must remain far away in order to avoid getting my shoes and socks wet. So I always kept my distance to a minimum of one meter from the well. Residents in the lane had begun to leave one after the other by that point. I'm well familiar with the people here. When they noticed me, they'd kneel down and fill my pockets so full of candy that only one could fit in my pocket before giving up and saying good-bye. You might be curious as to why no one from the alley comes to get water. A big basin-like spring well may be seen in the courtyard of every home in Meijia. In order for others who don't live here to also enjoy this treasure, they erected this massive spring well in the midst of the street. When I think about it, I get a nice,

79 MODE 3

FUTURE

fuzzy sensation within. Sometimes we were invited to a resident's home for summer watermelon.You can't stop eating watermelons in the crazy hot summer since it is the best remedy to summer heat, especially when it is frozen in the spring. Some Qushuiting homeowners built a stone pond in their backyard to cool produce during the summer. There is no need for refrigerators because food that has been chilled in spring water always has a lovely aroma to it. While the parents talked in the yard's shade, I chased and played with the neighborhood kids. After hearing the crisp sound of a watermelon being cut open, I raced up to the table like a maniac and grabbed a huge chunk of the watermelon. Adults always laughed at me. But I don’t really care. Qushuiting is just as much fun in the cold. Because the Wangfuchizi is located at the end of Qushuiting Street. There are several springs around here, and it's where they all join together. Since the springs lie underground year-round, the temperature is a consistent twenty degrees C in both the summer and winter. Even in the dead of winter, swimmers continue to plunge into the lake bare-backed. To keep the cold wind at bay, I swim with my head submerged as much as possible. The warm spring water acts as a shield, keeping out the cold and all of your worries. The moment when my entire body came in contact with the spring is still fresh in my mind, and it feels like a method to reconnect with one's true self . Let's go back to grandma's basement. Why did my mom and I lose that precious book of getting along and grandma's manuscript? The overload of information processing and organization is indeed a slow and laborious process. But essentially, we cannot find resonance in these objects. For me, the story of any item took place before I was born, and for Mom, she lacked emotion as retrieval information - she forgot. If it had been Grandma instead who was sorting through these items, the missing things would be a pipe dream, and the memories would depend on the connections between memories scattered in a distant network of stored information. When we search for a particular memory, we are like fishermen casting a net in a bottomless ocean. We are not picking up any one name, place or event, but a vast network of disparate but closely linked facts and figures, the contents from the depths of our past mingled with the flotsam and jetsam of yesterday's news. We don't notice all this detritus because we are looking for one thing and ignoring the rest. Objects are given the function of symbolic memory content, and places are designated as navigation points on the retrieval route. You could design a building filled with long corridors with doors leading to rooms where specific

80 DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

memories are stored, and these rooms appear in a designated form. A crow could represent a vision you had in a dream. An armchair may evoke the contents of a book you have read. A cannon in the middle of the room may evoke a summer visit to Gettysburg that reminded So does the complete electronic record contain all this richness of emotion? I can't answer that question, but I remain skeptical about the answer. There is a threshold for one's emotions, just as when the coolness of the spring floods my memories of home, other emotions are correspondingly weakened. I cannot treat everything equally. Electronic records emphasize everything even more, putting all the past on an equal footing. Losing individual emotions about information is like trying to google something without knowing the keywords. In the digital realm, it is difficult to understand the full risks and benefits of relying on ever-growing storage devices. Change happens so quickly that we rarely have time to slow down and understand the true cost of new services freeing up so much time and mental space. Instead, we learn through trial and error. When we hold something in our heads, we absorb it, metabolize it, and incorporate it into our mental models of the world. Memory was the basis for the rhetorical performance skills that the Greeks cherished. But rote memorization and repetition were not what they had in mind. The basis of memory itself was understood to be emergent and performative - not fixed and permanent, but generated in specific situations, such as moments of emotional clarity. Expanding the scope of knowledge beyond a certain scale makes it impossible to achieve the one thing we consider most important in life: knowing yourself. The amount and scope of our knowledge can expand faster than our ability to understand ourselves. The real ethical risk of outsourcing is that we exceed our ability to predict the consequences of our actions and refuse to take responsibility for the way in which knowledge is used. Yet an overabundance of information is not without solutions. Just as we treat books today as a fact of nature, they are also, to some extent, a copy of the past. They circulate in all parts of the world. Over time, we have learned how to sort, manage, and share them. We archive them and place them neatly on library shelves; we use technology to create more accessible retrieval systems that allow people to find targeted information in a quick way; we cross language boundaries to ensure that these conversations from the past are carried into the future. Similarly, digital memory may be some advanced form of the

81 MODE 2

PRESENT

book, sharing some similarities in terms of archiving. It is just that it is inevitably given more complexity. We need to rethink the constant iteration between problems and solutions, ideas and technologies, in the midst of tight processes and complex information. Of course, this requires us to stop running and try to digest the sudden, intense impact of technology. Obviously, this project recounts my excitement, fear, and concern about the shift from the lack of physical memory to the externalization of all experience. So I presented them with the purpose of happening and finding similar perspectives. The road ahead requires a concerted effort. Whether we decide to confront these issues and complete the reinvention of digital technology will be entirely up to us, and entirely in our hands.

82 DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

83 MODE 2

PRESENT

(01). Sculpture pieces, WIP DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

85 MODE 3

FUTURE

(02)

(03)

(02) (03). Sculpture pieces, WIP DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

87 MODE 3

FUTURE

88 DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

(04)

(05)

(04), Final sculpture documentation (05). Final sculpture detail MODE 3

FUTURE

90 DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

(06)

(06). Texture experimentation MODE 3

FUTURE

92 DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

(07). Texture experimentation MODE 3

FUTURE

(08)

(09)

(08). Final poster, WIP (09). FInal poster, writing layout DEGREE PROJECT PROCESS BOOK

@RISD 2022

On the Past, Present, Future, of the Past BFA Degree Project in Graphic Design Rhode Island School of Design Copyright ©2022 Mankun Guo mankunguo.com Designed, typeset, text written, edited by Mankun Guo Advised by Paul Soulellis Typeset in Swear Display Sharp Grotesk Book 19