Book / Mapping a Journey to Past Lives / 2016

Book / Mapping a Journey to Past lives

2016. 12

Studio project: Map of a Journey.

This project asks students to map a speculative journey: develop a conceptual matrix of an attention field, then a fictional narrative in written form, later design and collect a set of objects to illustrate the narrative, and last develop a map that brings the story to life.

Step 1 Develop a conceptual matrix

I was asked to examine my daily routine, create a conceptual matrix analyzing my activities and experiences between two geographical points of everyday life, and enter words as coordinates. The first step was designed to re-examine and find unique qualities on my journey and include an atlas of words and other useful vocabulary organized into meaningful groupings.

I chose the path from my apartment to school. Since I'm living right next to my school, for me the path seems more of a three-dimensional space than a linear journey. My daily walk to school reminds me of an imperfect beauty with the unfinished graffitis on walls, discarded objects and fallen leaves on the ground, flying crows, the light of sun and shadows of buildings etc. Therefore I collect words that summarize this image: imperfect, impermanent, incomplete, indefinable and nature.

conceptual matrix

Step 2 Write a fictional narrative

Use elements of the matrix as conceptual constraints to think about the story of a journey in a symbolic way. My fiction is about a woman involved in a secret life extension program visiting her past lives. It stays true to historical and physical facts. The technology introduced changes from the ALCOR (frozen bodies) program to a possible clone technology in the future. I decided to choose a well-known and critical character like the actress Marilyn Monroe to talk about the story in a symbolic and political way.

Step 3 Collect and design artifacts

To illustrate the story in believable ways, I was asked to collect and create data, generate a variety of discrete but interrelated graphic artifacts, collect objects, create documents, fake proofs etc. Starting from the character Marilyn Monroe, I collected the actress's photos，videos and written pieces. Then I collected photos of actresses that looks like Monroe at different times as fake photos of hers in her different lives. I created a personal journal recording the process of her rebirth, and a fake membership application for the Alcor life extension program (frozen bodies).

photos, poems, fake application form

fake personal journal

Step 4 Create the "map"

The final step is to activate the journey by creating a map. The map is not strictly geographical. The medium is open.

My map is presented as a book organized in a chronicle way. The book illustrated a journey to past lives. Starting from the first natural life of Marilyn Monroe, and an extended lifetime after awakening from the frozen body, followed by the clone child of herself, the book presented an archive for the future "Marilyn Monroe" to look at. The map has created three imagined lives for the character Marilyn Monroe and placed her at different times and situations. It suggests various possibilities for one person/DNA, how the context can change the life of this same person/DNA. It makes us think about the technology and people's life in the future. The speculative mapping of past lives is therefore beyond a fictional journey. It raises philosophical questions towards us and the real world we are living in.