Sonic souvenirs: exploring the paradoxes of recorded sound for family remembering

We explore the role of sound as a medium for social reminiscing: 10 families were involved in recording ‘sonic souvenirs’ of their holidays. They shared and discussed their collections on their return. We compared these sounds with their photo taking activities and reminiscences. Both sounds and pictures triggered active collaborative reminiscing, and attempts to capture iconic representations of events. However sounds differed from photos in that they were more varied, familial and creative. Further, they often expressed the negative or mundane in order to be ‘true to life’, and were harder to interpret than photos. Finally we saw little use of pure explanatory narrative. We reflect on the relations between sound and family memory and propose new designs on the basis of our findings, to better support the sharing and manipulation of social sounds. Author Keywords Collective memory, sounds, photos, families, fieldwork. ACM Classification Keywords H.5.2. User Interfaces H.5.3 G...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: CSCW
• Authors: Lina Dib, Daniela Petrelli, Steve Whittaker
• Keywords: Active Collaborative Reminiscing, CSCW 2010, Keywords Collective Memory, Social Sciences, Social Sounds