Projects

Museum of Material Connections

“How would you tell your life story in three objects?”

During the pandemic, assisted living communities have been sharply isolated from the rest of the world. This project applies theories of distributed and situated cognition and socially constructed memory to co-generate an art project created in partnership with assisted living and memory care communities. Partner sites throughout Wisconsin received art/science activity boxes in April, with prompts to guide object-based storytelling. The project team is now collecting these materials from our artist/scientist-partners, and will generate a collection of physical books to be both given back to our partner communities and displayed in public spaces throughout Madison. The project will also exist as a digital archive/website of the project, to enable wider access and ongoing contribution. Project team: Matthew Vivirito (MFA, Sculpture) and Katherine E. Norman (PhD candidate, Educational Psychology).