Istanbul inspires a sense of reverence in us that we were not sure we are still capable of feeling. Another word for all of these perceptions is “awe.” Before our trip, each and every student in Lapsus Imaginus Studio 2.0 anticipated and dreamed what Istanbul was going to be like. This is the story of our trip and the steps I took to get to the final pieces: a box, a movie, a product and an experiment that in the end is our collective memory. 

A watercolor painting made while on a cruise over the Bosphorus. 

As I traveled around Istanbul, I gathered items, trinkets and papers to bring home with me. I decided to design and build a box that would hold these memories and show the box full of items so that a narrative started to build. 

I also kept track of of my classmate's impressions of the trip in personal interviews and social media tracking. 

I made a test to see what my classmates remembered from the trip after we arrived home. My goal was to see if their memories were fallible or infallible. The results illustrated that my classmates had started building their own narratives for what happened during the trip.  

Next, I decided to buy a suitcase from a vintage shop and implant my memories into it. When I got the suitcase home, I realized there were some items left behind by an E.Q. Barbey. It only seemed appropriate to continue Elizabeth Quinn's story: Barbey bought this suitcase in 1932 to use for her world travels. Barbey was a kind women that had many friends and loved to dress up and look nice. She left hair pins, a sewing needle, hair clips, and a safety pin in her suitcase. Her favorite perfume was orange blossoms and her suitcase had a stain from her last bottle leaving the entire case smelling of oranges.    

With some patience and elbow grease, I refinished the inside of the suitcase with white paint and laser cut baltic birch wood. 

To help continue the narrative more, I had a dear friend of mine gather items like I did while he was on a trip. The third set of memories were added to an already rich story. 

The case became known as EQ: belief case, continue the narrative. Being sold in airports across the world, the suitcase comes with ready to fill shelves and slots ready for you to fill with your own memories. Once you are finished, give it to a friend. In this day and age, we spend too much time working on relationships with people we never see over the internet. We use our short-term memories to get instant gratification of "liking" and playing games online. EQ, named after Elizabeth Quinn and emotional intelligence, encourages people to get back to reality and use their longterm memories for something good! 

Once my project was finished, my book: baltic birch wood, stained, laser cut, and coptic stitched was displayed with my other classmates projects at the Arizona State University's Herberger College of Art & Design.