CHENNAI: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras on Thursday launched the MovingMemory app, which simultaneously uses augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies to capture different moving models of memories through digital reconstruction.

MovingMemory offers unique qualities because it can be accessed through a mobile app (Android and iOS) or a browser-based platform. This is a spatial app developed with the potential to inhabit the Metaverse world.

The app’s functionality allows users to select any avatar and move through three-dimensional space.

It is embedded with additional layers of video, audio, 3D images and interactive elements and can be used as a model for sustainable and heritage-oriented teaching and research approaches.

‘MovingMemory’ was presented at the ongoing 2nd Annual International Conference of the Indian Memory Research Network and the Center for Memory Research at IIT Madras.

The conference aims to link rituals of remembering and experiencing the environment to systems of sustainability that envision material, cultural and technological aspects, through major events such as disasters and floods, and slow processes of change. The purpose is

“It is important to bring to the fore the urgent need to incorporate collective memory into our ability to understand and predict policies related to ecological issues such as climate change, the Spanish flu and the 2015 Chennai floods. Human as well as non-human memories (such as water memories and nature memories) have the potential to be studied in interdisciplinary and collaborative formats to further advance memory research as a discipline.” Professor V. Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, said at the conference.

–IANS