Exploring Welsh heritage and online archives through VR film
Pathways Through The Memory Archive is a reflective short film that seeks to observe how much we leave behind in the digital world and how this shapes our legacy as people. The film is set from the perspective of someone walking through a rural landscape before their stream of subconscious thoughts take over, which takes them from reality into an archival landscape with likeness to a digital space.
Timeline: 3 months.
Role: Design research, scriptwriting, sound production, environment design, 3D LiDAR scanning.
Tools: Unreal Engine, Agisoft LiDAR, Blender, Ableton
Exhibited at Outernet London, September 2024.
Project Intention:
The project was initially sparked by something I observed during the COVID pandemic: the way people turned to technology as a space for memorial and comfort. Digital platforms became intimate places for tribute, remembrance, and connection in times of isolation and grief. I became fascinated by this shift—how digital spaces could hold emotional weight and serve as vessels for memory. From this emerged my interest in the concept of digital legacy: what we leave behind online, how it's preserved, and how it continues to speak for us after we're gone.
I intended to explore how digital environments can be designed or repurposed to hold memory in meaningful, emotionally resonant ways. Recognising a lack of structured approaches to handling digital memory and posthumous data, I investigated how emerging technologies could support digital legacy and remembrance with care and respect.
Brief: Creating an immersive experience, exploring digital legacy and memory, focusing on the connection between personal identity and the traces we leave behind in the digital world.
A Estyn 2021 report on the Welsh education system found that young Welsh students had "little knowledge" of Welsh history.
However, upon further investigation, I became inspired by the unearthing of online community forums that were organically posting community history through pictures and written accounts. I wanted to convey these memories, thoughts and what is essentially a digital oral history in an interactive, personal narrative that reflected community memories and consciousness.
Oral vs. recorded history recordings
Context & Research
Development
3D Scanned and Edited Digital Artefacts
Utilising 3D photogrammetry and modelling, I aimed to bring the artefacts and locations of this evolving "digital archive" into a shared VR space. The project incorporates a spoken word narrative, combining community accounts from interviews, surveys, and research into a unified voice, enhanced by sound data and voice manipulation. The result is a memoryscape that reflects conscious thoughts navigating memories within a digital environment.
Exploring the phenomenology of online spaces, where the content we upload, the artefacts/locations we connect with, and our digital actions collectively form a secondary identity and narrative that shapes who we are.
The project intended to 'archive' these memories through an interactive experience, where technologies such as VR could collect artefacts and memories to be delivered back to the community. The archival nature of the internet can feel organic, as we collect, weave, and connect history, heritage, and memory. This film particularly observes Welsh heritage, inspired by the community archives discovered growing in online groups and forums – a growing and evolving virtual archaeology.
The final product!
