Our sense of the past is created in the present. Memory is not an archive to be searched but a process of connection and reconstruction based on subconscious rules. Extracted from Super8 film reels purchased at a street market, The Shape of Memory (2006) is a collection of frames removed from their original timeline and reconnected by visual rules. As a surrogate memory process, computer software was created that searches every frame of film to find formal, compositional matches (such as color and mass). Each image in The Shape of Memory connects to the previous one through the strict rules of this 'memory' algorithm while breaking its previous contextual connections to place and time.

The Shape of Memory was created by Zach Poff and me for the Optica 2006 festival.