Remember Me

Remember Me is an interactive installation and game about false memories and what they mean for who we are. It was built as a group project and shown at the LIVING Media Technology Exhibition at V2 Lab in Rotterdam.

Visitors stood in front of a large screen displaying an image, while four CRT TVs around them showed blurry, glitched versions of the same image. Using custom-built buttons we made ourselves, soldered and wired by hand, players had to pick which of the four they thought was the true memory.

At the end, a figure appeared on screen representing the player, shaped entirely by the choices they made. The message: your identity is built from your memories. And even if some of those memories are false, that doesn't make you any less you.

The question behind the project: what is a false memory, and does having one make you less yourself? How does that influence your identity?

Rather than answering it, Remember Me hands the question to the player. A large screen shows an image. Four CRT TVs show distorted versions of it. You pick the one that feels true. Your choices build up, and at the end a figure appears that represents you, assembled entirely from the memories you chose.

If you picked wrong answers, your figure becomes more glitched. Nevertheless, no matter how glitched, that figure is still you.

The hardware side was entirely handmade. We sourced CRT televisions and connected them to modern tech, doing all the soldering and wiring ourselves. The buttons players used to make their choices were custom-built where we cut all the wood for the installation structure ourselves.

With the use of Javascript and PHP, a custom-built online game was connected to this physical structure.

The project was shown at the LIVING Media Technology Exhibition at V2 Lab in Rotterdam, as part of the Science to Experience course of the Creative Intelligence and Technology master's programme at Leiden University.