Cue – MFA Thesis Project

In all of us we have stored away memories and experiences that can be conjured up with the slightest trigger. A personal encounter of mine consists of frequent flashbacks to my native country, India. There are numerous occasions when I’ll hear a car with a bad engine drive by and immediately recall my days in Gujarat riding in a rickshaw, or more specifically, when I see a certain shade of red on a woman’s lips, I’m brought back to my cousin’s wedding day and the lipstick she wore that matched so perfectly with her sari. In cognitive psychology terms, this type of auditory and visual processing contributes to a type of memory called Episodic, the recollection of events that include time, place, and associated emotions.

Cue is a systems-based artwork representing the visual processing experienced during moments of recollection. By designing an algorithm to track color relationships between my database of video diaries from India and images captured real-time in the exhibition space, a unique perspective is created on visual stimuli that cue our past.