AutoTopography: what can physical mementos tell us about digital memories?
Open accessAbstract
Current technology makes it possible to capture huge amounts of information related to everyday experiences. Despite this, we know little about the processes by which people identify and manage mementos - objects which are directly meaningful to their memories. Among the millions of objects people encounter in a lifetime, few become such reminders of people, places or events. We report fieldwork where participants gave us a tour of their homes describing how and why particular objects become mementos. Our findings extend the existing digital memory literature; first our participants didn't view their activities as experiential 'capture', nor were mementos limited to pictorial representations of people and events; instead they included everyday objects. Furthermore, mementos were not only displayed and shared, but also integrated into everyday activities. Finally there were complex relations between house location and memento type. We discuss the theoretical and technical implications of our work.
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Everyday objects become mementos by virtue of what the owner has invested in them, be it time or emotion; it is not usually the physical characteristics of objects that make them biographical, but the meaning imputed to them as significant personal possessions.
“'Everyday objects become mementos by virtue of what the owner has invested in them, be it time or emotion. Thus, it is not usually the physical characteristics of the objects that make them biographical, but the meaning imputed to them as significant perso nal possessions' (Petrelli et al 2008: 56).”
From A New Historicist Perspective on the Transformation in Perception of Cultural Heritage in Alice Walker’s Everyday Use (2024) · cites this paper as Petrelli et al 2008: 56
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An Age-Old Problem: Examining the Discourses of Ageing in HCI and Strategies for Future Research
Vines, J., Pritchard, G., Wright, P., Olivier, P., & Brittain, K. (2015) · ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction · doi:10.1145/2696867 · Cited by 461 · see citing works
Ulucan, Ö. (2024) · İnsan ve Toplum Bilimleri Araştırmaları Dergisi · doi:10.15869/itobiad.1522013 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
- Authors
- Petrelli, D., Whittaker, S., & Brockmeier, J.
- Affiliations
- University of Sheffield (GB)
- Universität Innsbruck (AT)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2008-04-06
- Pages
- 53-62
- OpenAlex
- W2102452277
- Cited by
- 175
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 10 · 2016: 19 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 11 · 2013: 13 · 2012: 18
- FWCI
- 9.53
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Locations
- CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (publishedVersion)
- White Rose Research Online (University of Leeds, The University of Sheffield, University of York) (acceptedVersion)
- SHURA (Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive) (Sheffield Hallam University) (acceptedVersion)
- Virtual Community of Pathological Anatomy (University of Castilla La Mancha) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Innovative Human-Technology Interaction
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Nostalgia and Consumer Behavior
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration
- Keywords
- Memento, personal memories, everyday objects, family environment, digital memory, memory management, object memory, home tours
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