IIT Madras’ Centre for Memory Studies launches ‘MovingMemory’ app

NEW DELHI: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras Centre for Memory Studies has launched a ‘MovingMemory’ app that uses the technology of augmented reality and virtual reality simultaneously. It captures various moving models of memory through digital reconstruction.

The app was launched during the second annual Indian Network for Memory Studies conference titled ‘Memory, Ecology, and Sustainability’, an international conference being conducted by the Indian Network for Memory Studies and the Centre for Memory Studies at IIT Madras from September 20 to 22, 2023.

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As per the institute, the ‘MovingMemory’ can be accessed either through mobile apps android and iOS or through browser-based platforms and is a spatial app, developed to inhabit the metaverse world.

The IIT Madras stated that the functions of the app will enable the user to select any desired avatar and navigate through three-dimensional spaces. “ It is embedded with additional layers of video, audio, 3D images, and interactive elements which may be used as models for sustainable and heritage-oriented pedagogic and research approaches” the institute stated further.

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The conference was inaugurated on September 20 by V Kamakoti, director, IIT Madras, in the presence of Seema Massot, director of American Centre, US Consulate General, Chennai; Jyotirmaya Tripathy, head, department of humanities and social sciences, IIT Madras and the faculty coordinators Avishek Parui and Merin Simi Raj.

This conference was attended by around 100 presenting and over 500 non-presenting participants from all across India as well as from the USA, UK, Germany, New Zealand, Morocco, Canada, Sweden, and Bangladesh, among others.

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Addressing the inaugural session, V Kamakoti, director, IIT Madras, said, “It is crucial that we foreground the urgent need to incorporate collective memory in our understanding and ability to anticipate policies related to ecological issues such as climate change. Human as well as non-human forms of memory (such as the memory of water and the memory of nature) such as the Spanish Flu and the 2015 Chennai floods may be studied through interdisciplinary and collaborative formats in order to further memory studies as a discipline.”

The Conference aims to examine the various human-centric technologies. Addressing the inaugural session, conference coordinator Avishek Parui, associate professor English, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras, said, “This conference, like all other research activities at the Centre for Memory Studies at IIT Madras, seeks to uniquely bridge technology studies and humanities in order to offer a more complex model of engaging with memory, ecology, and sustainability, while also connecting to issues such as disaster studies, anticipatory governance, and durability.”