All Water Has Perfect Memory

Word game

Author: Liam Carpenter-Urquhart


Abstract

"Our greatest creative moments erupt from what our body remembers."

— Toni Morrison, The Site of Memory (1995)

We can only access memories through the language we have at hand — and that language changes as the world, and our place in it, changes. This game asks players to transform written memories of a landscape based on changes in the words they're permitted to use. Changes in language will be determined by procedural rules and other players' decisions.

Landscape of fonts and letterforms

Sources

Essay

The Site of Memory (Morrison, 1995)

Toni Morrison on the writer's relationship to memory — how imagination is fed by what the body already knows, and how recovering suppressed or lost histories requires excavating the site where memory was made.

Read essay ↗