ITP Thesis Archive 2025

Project Description

A Journey to Mnemonic Ruins is an interactive projection that recalls my personal journey to the Tikal Mayan ruins in Guatemala. The project has two main parts: a physical rock detection installation and a series of projected animations. Through the interaction of stacking stones, audiences engage in a sensory-driven experience that bridges reality and the projected virtual ruins. By selecting and placing each stone, arranged from large to small, audiences can trigger Virtual storytelling and different visual effects. The projected animation is based on my personal memory, unfolding as a linear narrative that reconstructs my journey to the Mayan ruins of Tikal, Guatemala, expressed in the form of my travel notes.Using techniques such as 3D scanning, particle effects, and layered visuals, the projections create ephemeral afterimages, evoking the boundaries between memory and forgetting. When completing the stacking, participants can choose to either topple or preserve their arrangement of stones, triggering the corresponding destruction or recreation of the virtual ruins within the projection. Through this installation, I aim to express the symbiotic relationship between human, nature and ruins. I also hope to show how virtual ruins, as sites where the past and future coexist, can evoke a form of reflective nostalgia, encouraging audiences to think deeply about their emotional connections to physical ruins.

Technical Details

I used TouchDesigner with Blob Tracking to detect different rocks. Each rock placement triggers a different part of the virtual narrative.

I also used MediaPipe Hand Tracking inside TouchDesigner to add and control different visual effects in real time.

The virtual storytelling scenes were created using Unreal Engine 5 Camera Sequences, and later edited together in Adobe Premiere.

For the projection, I used MadMapper to map the visuals onto soft fabric surfaces, creating an immersive environment.

Research/Context

While existing digital projects have explored ruins and nostalgia through digital and interactive ways, few have specifically examined the interplay between virtual ruins and the overlapping dimensions of time and space. My project seeks to investigate whether a digitally projected virtual ruin can serve as a medium for reconstructing and deconstructing memory, oscillating between remembrance and erasure, retrospection and reconstruction. How do collective and individual memories interact in a ruin? Is the act of building a virtual ruin inherently a form of reflective nostalgia, where mourning the past and envisioning the future exist in parallel? Through this exploration, I aim to create an immersive experience that prompts audiences to engage with the temporality of memory, contemplating how ruins, both real and virtual, can serve as a bridge between history, present consciousness, and speculative futures.