Gracing the front page of the Brink section of the Sydney Morning Herald this month is a feature on the work of Elise and some of her recent projects. Brink is a monthly section included with the Sydney Morning Herald with content from UTS research efforts. The article, titled ‘Image conscious,’ follows from an interview by Fiona McGill with Elise van den Hoven. It talks about the perils of capturing many items, the consequences for remembering, as well as the role of forgetting, all within the context of Elise’s research.

“A lot of people assume that human memory is just the same as computer memory, where everything is just stored the way it was … but that’s not what our human memory was designed for. It changes in the context, it changes in the situation, and it changes because your image of yourself changes, your identity changes. As you mature, you bring a different perspective to events.”

Read the full article over at the Sydney Morning Herald, or a have a look at the printed version (PDF file). The Brink section can also be picked up around UTS campus, even though we grabbed a few for our archives 😉

Past Saturday, the Sydney Morning Herald featured an article on the potential overload of photo material we collect and share nowadays. The text, which ran in last Saturday’s weekend special, includes the viewpoints of several people, including our project leader Elise van den Hoven. While some caution against collecting massive amounts, others perceive it as a boon; with such an expansive record, they’ll always know what they did at any earlier time. It’s just that they need some tool to retrieve the desired moment’s capture. The journalist, Evan Williams, also spoke with someone who deliberately cut back on her capturing and sharing habits after feeling overwhelmed. These differing viewpoints highlight the individual differences and challenges of digital media for remembering. We’ll certainly talk more about that in the future, but for now the Sydney Morning Herald has their article available online.

Last week Cursor, the newspaper for Eindhoven University of Technology, published its interview with project leader Elise van den Hoven, as part of their series on the person behind the researcher. The interview, originally conducted via Skype, discusses the Materialising Memories project and the things that make it unique and difficult when working from Sydney on a collaborative project like ours. The interview has only been published in the Dutch paper edition of Cursor, but we have a PDF spread for your reading pleasure.

Just yesterday Cathy Morris of mX Sydney, a free news paper available at most public transport hubs around Sydney, interviewed project leader Elise van den Hoven. The interview made it to the front page, vying for attention with Batman! In the interview Elise discussed the general problem area of our project, specifically the abundance of photos we collect but have difficulty retrieving at a later point in time. We made sure to grab a copy of the article for your reading pleasure.

Last week UTS News Room paid attention to the Materialising Memories project as well. The university’s journalists featured the project on the News Room website, including a discussion of the partnership between UTS and TU/e. Similar reports were published by Eindhoven University’s Cursor and Bits & Chips, a news source for the Dutch and Belgian high-tech industry. In the coming months one of UTS’ news channels will publish another interview with Elise, so more mentions in the media will surely follow.