a sentimental longing or wistful affection for a period in the past.
About Nostalgia
The word nostalgia is a learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of νόστος (nóstos), meaning “homecoming”, a Homeric word, and ἄλγος (álgos), meaning “sorrow” or “despair”, and it was coined by a 17th-century medical student to describe the anxieties shown by Swiss mercenaries fighting away from home. Described as a medical condition- a form of melancholy- in the Early Modern period, it became an important trope in Romanticism.
Most people would describe nostalgia as something that is comforting and familiar, however it can also be a deceiving illusion. I think this is because nostalgia and nostalgic feelings are based on memories rather than facts, and humans brains seem to erase past feeling of sadness and other negative emotions, therefore things that appear nostalgic may not be completely positive.
Nostalgia is mainly seen as a positive, nostalgic feelings being simply linked with pleasant memories of the past. There are many things that can trigger nostalgia, like music, movies, places, objects and people. I think nostalgia is typically quite a materialistic feeling, since it is typically triggered by solid things, however it also has spiritual aspects as it brings back positive feelings or a longing for the past. Nostalgia also links in with the idea of seeing the past as more positive than the future, so it could be argued to have negative effects since it can terminate the want to change and can even cause ideas of declinism.
Moodboard
A mixture of things that I find nostalgic- including sweets, toys, books, movies, games, food as well as aspects of polish culture that I experienced a lot during my young years.
Nostalgia – is a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. Wikipedia
It reminds ourselves of who we have been and what memories we have created compared to who we are today, i cant be triggered by simple things such as a familiar smell, sound, old photos or by just feeling lonely. Nostalgia is a powerful emotion which is mainly related to happy/positive memories and big life events, which many people use as a way of comforting themselves.
Nostalgia is associated with a longing for the past, its personalities, possibilities, and events, especially the “good ol’ days” or a “warm childhood”. There is a predisposition, caused by cognitive biases such as rosy retrospection, for people to view the past more favourably and future more negatively. http://encyclopedia.uia.org/en/problem/nostalgia
Mood Board:
This mood board is based around the theme of nostalgia and also film cameras. I have decided to add in film camera photos onto my mood board as it is something I am familiar with and use regularly. I believe that film cameras create a lot of nostalgia to many older people from an older generation as it was what they used to use when they were younger. It is also a nostalgic process as you take the photo and then you have to wait for the whole roll of film to be developed before you can see it, therefore you are living in the moment more than you would be with a digital camera. However, when I go through with the photo shoot I will probably use a digital camera and use photoshop and light room to look as if it was taken on a film camera. I would do this as it is a faster process and could get the images instantly.
these photo I found on google I choose these photos because they gave the aesthetic of nostalgia these photo kind of remind me of my child hood but not really but they give a sense of going back in time
The exhibition allows the viewer to explore and feel the theme of nostalgia by not only showing it in his work but by having different smells and experiences such as a plasma orb and Atari games set up in the exhibition.
His images were inspired by his memories of fort regent but he used ai to alter the images which represents how memories can skew your knowledge and how things truly were. he would first take a photo of fort regent in the present and alter it using ai to form images of his memories. overal i think the exhibition was a great experience and really allowed you to connect with Lakemans ideas and memories and for older generations may help bring back there own memories of fort regent.
I would definitely recommend this exhibition to friends or family since you don’t have to be a photographer or know much about ai to really enjoy and take in everything.
I recently visited the exhibition ‘Playtime’ by local photographer Will Lakeman at Capital House, St Helier to explore the theme of Nostalgia.
A little about the Exhibition
The exhibition focuses on Will’s personal fixation on Fort Regent, a now disused leisure and play centre in St Helier. During his childhood, Will visited the Fort, like most his age, almost daily alongside his brother Matthew (whose memory the exhibition is dedicated to). Since then, he often sees the old Fort in dreams and sometimes even in hallucinations, but never as it really was, due to the subverted nature of the brain’s subconscious. Therefore, the piece works to exaggerate and enhance the contrast between what he sees in memory and what was there in reality, and this is done through his combining of old archive photographs, his own images of the now abandoned site and the AI images he has made to recreate the subversion of his memory and dreams.
An AI image that recreates a vivid hallucination experienced by Lakeman as a child as he sat by the Fort Regent swimming pool, where he saw an inexplicable vision of gold and blue squares and the light from outside was almost blinding. Lakeman said that he chose to present his images on lightboxes because it allowed for them to ‘glow’ a little more, enhancing their colour beyond the capabilities of an unlit photo, which lends itself to the dreamlike quality they are imitating.
He has also incorporated aspects of sound and smell to the exhibition to attempt to evoke the universal memories in any visitor’s inner child; the sharp smell of chlorine that immediately invites rich memories of the warm haze that accompanied it, the sound of children screaming and laughing in delight, even the quintessentially comforting scent of buttered popcorn. As a very sensory-oriented person, Will feels that this was the best way to recreate his memories as an experience that could be relived by any visitor.
This is just one of many original artefacts Lakeman was given by the Fort to present alongside his work. It contributes not only a visual element to the exhibition but also sound effects that will be familiar to anyone who holds memories of playing on a machine like this, which certainly epitomises the core of nostalgia; a feeling that is triggered by multiple senses. Additionally, this adds a further interactive element to the show, allowing people to almost go back in time and play this game again with the same sounds and smells surrounding them.
The reason that this exhibition relates to my project of Nostalgia is because it invites the question of whether things are really as we remember or, as the term suggests, whether we cut out any negative aspects of the memory in lieu of a more rosy recollection. Additionally, the fragmented and distorted nature of the AI pieces relates to the same imagery of our memories and dreams, where everything is displaced and misshapen.
Here is Lakeman’s image of the swimming pool from the perspective of someone about to jump from the diving board. He said that this was a recurring dream he had, where he was faced with a diving board over 10ft high, although he said that when he revisited images he realised that it was no higher than 2 metres. To create this AI image, Lakeman admitted that he had visited the abandoned site of the pool to take an image that he could put into the AI engine and exaggerate. The beginning image was likely something like the one below.
As you can see, the AI image exaggerates the colours – ‘to create impossibly deep and blue water’ – as well as the space, which can both be attributed to Lakeman’s intentions to create dreamlike imagery.
My Opinions
I enjoyed the experience of visiting the exhibition because of its multi-dimensional nature and I found that the repurposing of spaces through AI to create a magical sort of parallel world really interested me as someone who visited Fort Regent a lot until it was shut down recently. It was so interesting to see the old and rather empty space be filled with impossibly magical landscapes and fantasy imaginings. I also enjoyed the incorporation of the multi-sensory experiences, and it was inspiring for me as it made me think about the wider possibilities of exhibiting because it can be a much more well-rounded experience than just a visual one. I think I would like to go back and experience it in a more calm and less rushed environment however as I felt that when visiting with school I did feel like I wasn’t there to really receive the art but just to find out information and take images.
” When you revisit an old memory it isn’t important for everything to make sense. Sometimes you just have to enjoy the ride. “
