Memotions: Designing a participatory animated film with cherished objects

This paper presents a work-in-progress project detailing a participatory animated film titled Memotions, that integrates participatory animation with interactive film features. Addressing the destruction of cultural heritage in the disputed territory of Artsakh, the project invites participants to rethink the stories encapsulated in their own personal objects and create animations with them. Through the development and evaluation of Memotions, we learned that familiar objects facilitated overcoming the unfamiliarity of the participatory animated film, imperfections mediated participation, and animation making with cherished objects can evoke memories embodied in objects. Future work will involve refining the prototype, conducting further observational studies to explore the impact of Memotions on cultural reflection through objects, and producing the film.