Awards–Digital Humanities and New Media Writing Prizes

Memory Eternal | Вічная Пам’ять (2023), an interactive digital storyworld about remembering and mourning, received two international acknowledgements this week. The SSHRC-funded research creation work designed for Oculus Quest 2 was shortlisted for the Wonderbox Digital Opening Up Prize of the New Media Writing Prize (UK), and won the Digital Humanities Award.

English Department members Monique Tschofen, Kari Maaren, and the members of the Decameron Collective (Jolene Armstrong (Athabasca University), Kelly Egan (Trent), Lai-Tze Fan (Waterloo), Caitlin Fisher (York), Angela Joosse (Canadian Research Knowledge Network), Siobhan O’Flynn (University of Toronto), and Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof (TMU)), created the work in response to the truncated practices of mourning of the past pandemic years. Part elegy, part lieu de mémoire, part countermemorial, Memory Eternal harnesses VR’s capacities to generate immersive spaces and use directional sound and haptics to take interactants through the fundamentally different experiences that embody the paradoxes of the experience of grief itself. Investigating loss at personal, social, and planetary scales, the world is simultaneously subdued and clamorous, indignant and empathetic, grounding and disorienting. 

The work has been exhibited in Portugal and the UK, and will be next exhibited at the Interactive Film and Media Conference in Toronto in June 2024.