The Artificial Memory Palace - Social Media Made Tangible

Having a smart phone in our pockets has fundamentally changed the way we perceive, interact with, and remember the world and each other. The swipe of a finger unlocks limitless potential within the digital world, providing opportunity for new knowledge, connection to others, self-expression and escape. And yet, paradoxically, we are seeing increasing consumption of meaningless content; heightened feelings of loneliness and lack of connection; curation that can mask authentic experiences; algorithms that create a sea of sameness; and intense escapism that potentially draws us too far from the real world. We spend so much of our time in this digital world, social media specifically, that our engagement with the tangible world is shifting. Our buildings used to be “memory palaces” carrying tangible traces of life, snippets of stories embedded in the world around us. Now our phones carry these fragments of our lives, the digital world has become our memory palaces, social media the archive of our experiences. The built environment is no longer a reminder of who we are, but rather, is comprised of predominantly uninspiring straight, grey lines designed for efficiency over humanity. This thesis discovered how we can merge the benefits of the digital and physical world, bringing the virtual, transient dynamism of the digital into the real world where we truly connect to each other and our surroundings. This concept was explored through an urban intervention that provides a place of community and speculates on the idea of creating a tangible space that provides what we seek from social media. What would happen if we created a living, breathing social media, an artificial memory palace?