The installation will be live-streamed by Waag Society and can be accessed live 24/7 throughout the week. The public will be able to watch the installation being created and can check on the progress of the still life unfolding before them.
The web-link constructed for the project will include a message board
where you, the virtual spectator of the Vanitas event are invited to
post an electronic
memory of your own that has something to do with flowers or the garden. For
example, one of Ingham’s earliest memories is of her Grandmother smelling
of ‘Lilly of The Valley’ perfume. After she died Ingham inherited
her knitted quilt (blanket) which carried the aroma of the perfume- the smell
of Ingham’s Grandmother- rekindling her memory.
The messages can be shared and accessed by all of the virtual users of the
project, but at the end of the residency they will be saved and copied onto
a CD. Sealed into the other specimen jar, labelled ars memoriae, the electronic
memories become an allegory of the 21st century Vanitas where memories are
collected, classified, stored and retrieved not from a specimen jar but from
the computers ‘memory’.
The two specimen jars, with the preserved flowers petals and the ‘preserved’ memories, will be remain at the Waag as a memento of the project.
My grandmother's funeral last year: Psalm 103: 15-16: "As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. / For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more. A woman hard to love and even harder to lose".
- Louise Waterfield 19.04.05
Daffodils conjure memories of my childhood, my brother and where we lived,and one day a beautiful women in a sports car.
- Jamie Morgan 20.04.05
Wherever I live I plant a climbing rose in memory of my brother and I bury a letter for him at the roots. Now, inspired by this work, I shall photograph it in bloom.
- Angela Maddock 21.04.05
Last time I went home to Yorkshire my 6 year old son and I visited my grandfather's unmarked grave for which, with my father, we had brought a small engraved stone.The grave was about 30 metres from my grandmothers tended grave and whilst we were looking about we noticed my son walking from one grave to the other with a flower. He had decided that it would be nice for Grandma to give Grandad a flower to cheer up his grave.
- Paul Jeff 21.04.05
I remember the face of my father as he walked back home from the mine. He'd smile and he'd say "that's one more day - and it's good to see the sun shine".
- Howard Riley 21.04.05
I need to take a siesta most afternoons, my boyfriend says it's because I'm a delicate flower.
- John Paul Evans 21.04.05
