The short film "We are Made of What we Forgot" documents a day of using the camera function on a phone to store digital memories from a third-person perspective. Throughout this day, the protagonist repeatedly holds up his phone to capture fleeting moments of food eaten, sights seen, his own appearance, and more, in order to digitally preserve these transient moments in a visible form. This behavior pattern is common among contemporary youth: according to our survey, 95% of participants admitted to relying on their phones to store memories. In a sequence of connected shots, these photos traverse the protagonist's body, crossing different sensory areas, ultimately dissipating into body parts like the back and neck that we ourselves cannot see. Through this abstract approach, we attempt to metaphorically depict these blind spots on human bodies as the hiding places of our memories. These memories once genuinely occurred to us but remain invisible and intangible nowadays. In contrast, memories presented on the front of the protagonist's body, after thousands of reviews or repeated experiences, even without digitalization, can become unforgettable long-term memories.
In 2014, Dr. Linda Henkel introduced the concept of the "photo-taking impairment effect," suggesting that frequent photo-taking does not help strengthen memory in the human brain. So, do these memories really enter our minds through digitalization? Or are we relying on external digital platforms to help us remember? If, one day, these digital memories stored on our phones are accidentally destroyed, where can we find them? To explore these questions, we continuously experiment during the production of the short film.
In the short film, we do not aim to encourage or criticize the behavior of relying on digital platforms to store memories but rather to emphasize the present experiences behind these digital memories. The title "We are Made of What we Forget" hints: although forgetting often occurs, the present us, including our identities, possessions, experiences, and wisdom, are still made up of those memories and experiences that once happened. Therefore, forgetting and the fading of memories are not horrible, as those memories have shaped who we are today. At the same time, we also want to raise relevant questions about digital memories, such as: when we depart the world, where will these digital memories, also known as digital legacies, go?
