Concept

Memolog is about global and personal mourning. It's a virtual quilt that invites people to express grief over terror victims in the form of an open database. It switches from personal expressions to the visualization of masses. It's unedited and uses a meaningful symbol system that generates navigable quilt-like patterns.

Memolog deals with communal ability/inability to identify with victims and their keens. Contrary to mass media that flattens individual stories into one endless story with identical features, the internet can encompass the highly personal and subjective views of both the individual and the whole. The internet may escape manipulation of communal expressions of grief by allowing full unedited participation and by crossing barriers of time and place.

Memolog was inspired by the Aids Quilt. It is based upon a set of trans-cultural symbols derived from the Phoenician culture. The incarnations of these symbols appear in nearly all religions throughout the times.

The visual change within Memolog bears meaning. It stands for the action of people who visited the site, their behavior and the amount of data accumulated on the site, It is based on the abilitiy of the medium to record the evolution of structures. The change is documented periodically and will be printed on cloth that will be preserved along current statistics. The printed cloths are actually memory blankets, quilted digitally by user's participation.

This work is completely open; it will hold the memory of anyone his keens wish to include, from any nation, since 1.1.2000 onward. Virtual wars that might occur on the site will be part of the big picture.

Memolog does not wish to portray an accurate list but a subjective flux of intentions, memories, and a flickering shift between the undefined masses and the very personal identity of any of the victims included in it. Page up

* Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, and Greek scripts are all descended from Phoenician.

Any user that chooses an entry changes its appearance by selecting it for the first time. (image 2) It will now portray the symbol of Ishtar:

• Ishtar, the love/war/fertility goddess, is a universal goddess. An 8 pointed star i.e. the planet Venus, often represented this goddess in the Near East way before the birth of Christ. Today, the star of Venus appears together with the moons' crescent on flags for most of the Islamic countries who used to worship Ishtar.
• A 5 pointed star is used as a symbol of war. These stars are found painted on the sides of tanks and fighter planes in the US, Russia, China, etc. It's a construction iconic symbol for the planet Venus. (image 3)

Any piece of memory or acknowledgement (image, text) added to an entry will color or add a leaf to the stars (image 4). Hence, the more entries are added, frequented or edited the more change is inflicted on the over whole pattern.
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Flash + Asp Database on an sql server
The project will be realized by my partners in Doflash, a web design studio that have already realized another flash/data-base net.art piece I made. The piece, Beadgee, was commissioned by Impakt.nl in 2003. Page up

1. finishing pattern and site design
2. building the data-base
3. image generator to document the visual change on the site over time
4. on-line and off-line publicity, opening the site for users participation
5. optional: uploading on-line lists of known terror victims since 1.1.2000
6. Printing periodical images from the site on cloth–according to rate of change on the site.
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