Part 1: Think of a way in which you could develop an experimental map using images, sounds and stories. Some ideas… What else would we use if we didn’t use maps to find our sense of place? How would you map the sounds you hear every day? How would you map emotions? How would you map the overlooked peoples or places of Singapore?
Maps changes through time and so does the people around it. Maps are often overlooked as a device for finding directions and bearings to our destination. Everyone has different stories to tell and experience to share in different spaces. However a common but varied experience most of us share would be food or public eating spaces. Examples would be the neighbor that sells homemade Popsicle or the ice cream man on his bike that rings his bell routinely. Familiarity but yet distinct experiences would occur thus the notion of ‘common nostalgia’.
These experiences phases out and gets replaced over time and would vary through generations. One way to preserve these experiences would be to compile and archive all these hidden experiences. A recipe book of memories (Memory Recipe) would be a way to look at it. The idea of looking through a recipe book with visuals of how it actually looked like, a brief and general description perhaps and even details of how to recreate the hidden neighborhood delicacy.
As we look through the recipe book, we could reminisce through the difficulties that we had to go through to get that particular DIY Milo popsicle and tell the tale to the next generation with recipes to allow them to experience its goodness. A common recipe with different individuals would map out different stories, locations and experiences as not every neighbourhood is the same.