Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) Centre for Memory Studies recently launched a ‘MovingMemory’ app that uses the technology of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality simultaneously. It captures various moving models of memory through digital reconstruction.
‘MovingMemory’ can be accessed either through mobile apps (Android and iOS) or through browser-based platforms, making it uniquely inclusive in quality. It is a spatial app, developed with the potential to inhabit the metaverse world.
The functions of the app enable the user to select any desired avatar and navigate through three-dimensional spaces. It is embedded with additional layers of video, audio, 3D images, and interactive elements which may be used as models for sustainable and heritage-oriented pedagogic and research approaches.
The ‘MovingMemory’ was launched during the second annual Indian Network for Memory Studies conference titled ‘Memory, Ecology, and Sustainability’, an international conference being conducted by the Indian Network for Memory Studies and the Centre for Memory Studies at IIT Madras from 20th to 22nd September 2023.
Prof. V. Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, said, “It is crucial that we foreground the urgent need to incorporate collective memory in our understanding and ability to anticipate policies related to ecological issues such as climate change. Human as well as non-human forms of memory (such as the memory of water and the memory of nature) such as the Spanish Flu and the 2015 Chennai floods may be studied through interdisciplinary and collaborative formats in order to further memory studies as a discipline.”
