Simulating memory: a technique of memory and narrative in interactive digital media

Abstract

Using a self-made interactive multimedia project ‘The Shoebox’ as a case study, this article first outlines the ‘story’ content of the project and then explores the mechanisms of autobiographical memory and traumatic memory storage and retrieval. Finally, it examines how the interactive platform that underpins ‘The Shoebox’ was created to simulate our processes of autobiographical memory recall. Combining the modes of memory and narrative this media architecture is given the neologism of ‘memoradic narrative’.