The Olive Project

early experimentation with video composing || read || interact

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78 years || 3 hours || 3 minutes

The Olive Project began as an exploratory sound project, layering audio recordings from a three-hour oral history interview that I conducted with my grandma in May 2009. By combining this material with old snapshots and segments of 8mm film shot by my family in the 1960s, I produced this video. Reflecting on the sense of absurdity and frustration that I experienced as I unsuccessfully tried to condense 78 years of life into a concise and coherent story, this video represents an initial struggle to compose digital oral history through more traditional documentary forms. What was lost in this process? How was I responsible for its erasure? And how might I imagine and design an alternative? For more on my approach to questions of method, mediation and control, read my theoretical reflection. To experience the result of this multilayered process, interact with the scrolling archive of my grandma's memories.