Impermanence has been one of the essential doctrines in Buddhism.
The Tibetan Buddhist tradition of painstakingly laying millions of grains of sand into place on a flat platform to form a ‘sand mandala’, only to be deconstructed shortly after their completion illustrates this doctrinal belief in the transitory nature of material life. The creation and destruction of ‘sand mandalas’ is solely intended as a reminder of the impermanence of life.
Inspired by this powerful philosophy and using sand as a symbol of origins, we set upon crafting a project that critically examines the ideology, ‘nothing lasts forever’ in the context of modern society and specifically focused on London’s lost physical structures. It aims to initiate a debate on the subjectivity of this transience.
Written in Sand as an interactive installation, aims to demonstrate that nothing exists longer than an instant except the thing that we hold in memory. It creates several instances of this memory, archiving it in the form of sand drawing, a postcard as well as a digital feed and critically questions the permanency of these media. To generate a debate that challenges the current accepted immortality of digital archives when pitted against the perceived permanence of physical infrastructures.
London College of Communication / MA Interaction Design '14 / Final Major Project. In collaboration with Sayanee Halder, Jiaomin Ni & Xiaoyan Wang.
