Metaphoric Optical Viewers

A famous psychologist said: we are our memories, so I ask myself: if I can visualize the memories or human’s mental images, maybe I could “see” who I am. Further, if cultural hybridity is a result of the mixture of memories in the past and the living experience of the current resident place, maybe I could find a way to visualize it and see the happening, and forming process of cultural hybridity. Yet memory is elusive and difficult to define. Throughout the ages, philosophers and psychologists have used metaphors as a way of understanding it. Many metaphors were derived from techniques and instruments developed to store information or imitate the visualization of the human mind, such as photography computers, and optical-mechanical devices. By this research project, I want to examine the history of these metaphoric devices, dive into the mechanisms of them and integrate art into these applications. I aim to rethink the design, the look, the limitations of the original optical devices by experimenting on different materials and sizes by my artistic language and the help of new technology. In the end, I wish to create my metaphoric mechanisms for th cultural hybridity of transcultural people.