Midterm Project: The Beverage Diary

Something needs to be traced back and connected with its peculiar links so that our past is called back to the present. The Beverage Diary consists of some old pictures of the drinks ranging from the early 1990s to the 2010’s, the nutrition facts fundamentally translated based on the original versions, advertisements of these drinks in the old days and some diaries with a short introduction of the beverages. The volume intends to be something like an electronic journal intersecting with pictures and words. Some audio and video files will be inserted into the collection, for example, the short video of the ads in the past. One thing I like best for the collection is that it is primarily in the format of a diary, which means that it is carried out through an intimate conversation from the present to the immediate past. This does not intend to be something like an official record stating out a host of facts which stand apart from us with some distance in thoughts and feelings.

This is basically a digital archive, which means that some useful means of technique could be employed hopefully. I have inserted some flash into the collection to make it more pleasing to the eyes. I think this could be a creative attempt to combine archives and technologies all together. The digital archive, as it appears to me, can make its good use of all sorts of resources available at hand to make a more vivid description of what we, as the record-keepers of the old times, aspire to convey. By inserting some of the models of displaying the pictures, the space of the collection will be used more effectively, which seems to be hardly imagined in the physical archives. Four or five pictures or even more, whatever the number should be, could be presented in a consecutive order by using the space of only one. This could be something really amazing about the digital archive, which is being made full use of in this collection.

Also what I am thinking about is that how an archive could stand out less as an archive. It appears to me that sometimes, the official one used to intimidate some of its readers with its thick volume filled with cold facts of a distant past and its reserved manners devoid of some proper dynamic powers. What I intend to make would be something more like the engagement of a conversation between the past and the present with some nostalgic emotions. This is more like some family archive, or a personal everyday collection. Thus the format of a diary suits this purpose best. Some of the attachment to the beverages in the old days, some short descriptions of the drinks in particular and some of the interesting events connected with the specific beverages will be poured out in the diaries. This would be something like a person in her twenties addressing to the very same person in her childhood and teenage years. This could be like the most intriguing part of this collection to observe the development of the years progressed.