Spill My Guts
Vivian Lee
Shell of Memories Series
“Spill My Guts” is a sculptural piece and the second addition to my Shell of Memories project series. This work explores vulnerability and the feeling of not having much left to give by combining mixed materials and media with personal digital archives. The piece incorporates photographs from my childhood taken on an early digital camera alongside more recent images captured on a smartphone. By presenting these images together, the project highlights both technological shifts in photography and the evolving emotional weight of memory over time.
While digital images can feel permanent, they still undergo subtle changes through compression, storage, built in and ingrained presets, and context. Regardless of whether they originate from analog or digital processes, photographs ultimately function as fragments of time, showing how memories can be preserved, but never entirely unchanged.
Concept & Functionality
This project explores the tension between permanence and fragility in digital memory. Modern technology often promises infinite storage and preservation, yet personal memories remain emotionally unstable, and is often revisited, reinterpreted, and sometimes lost. I wanted the robotic form to embody this contradiction: something that appears durable and mechanical, yet also beat up and reveals intimate and vulnerable content that I don't necessarily put on display for the world to see on the daily.
The restrained motion of the sculpture is intentional. Memory is not continuously accessible; it appears briefly, often triggered by proximity or circumstance, before receding again. By limiting the viewer’s access to the images, the work mirrors the fleeting nature of recollection. The distressed exterior further contrasts with the advanced internal technology, suggesting that even damaged or worn structures can contain meaningful histories.
Viewers are invited to confront their own relationships with stored memories, particularly how technology mediates nostalgia, identity, and emotional exposure. The title "Spill My Guts" reflects both a literal mechanical opening and the metaphorical act of revealing something deeply personal.
The sculptural “head” of the robot contains a display screen concealed behind a moving front panel. When a viewer approaches and triggers the proximity sensor, the panel rotates upward to reveal a digital “memory” displayed on the screen. After several seconds, the panel closes again, returning the sculpture to its resting state until the next interaction.
Images on the screen change approximately every five seconds. Once activated, the panel remains open for about eight seconds before automatically closing. This cyclical interaction creates a rhythm of concealment and revelation that reinforces the conceptual focus on temporary access to what feels like my vulnerable memories.
Project Build Process
The piece was constructed using an Arduino microcontroller, a servo motor, a proximity sensor, and a digital display screen integrated into a hand-built sculptural shell. Wood framing and acrylic panels, cut to exact dimensions with a laser cutter, form the structure of the robot, while adhesives and hardware secure the internal components.
To achieve the distressed, partially destroyed aesthetic, I manipulated the exterior materials using tools such as carving equipment and controlled heat. This intentional damage contrasts with the functioning electronics inside, visually reinforcing the theme of fragile memory housed within a mechanical "human-like" body. The combination of handcrafted construction and programmed behavior reflects the intersection of human experience and technological mediation that defines the project.
"Shell of Our Analog Memories"
Previous Work
“Shell of Our Analog Memories” is the first project in the Shell of Memories series, which explores the tension between human memory, vulnerability, and its inevitable decay. Built as a mixed-material robot shell, the sculpture serves as a surrogate body for memories that are fighting to live in our lives. This piece focuses specifically on analog memory with physical 35mm film negatives being illuminated and projected as a physical attempt to preserve what the mind has already begun to forget.
The work highlights the intimacy and fragility of physical media. Unlike digital files, analog memories exist as singular objects that can fade, tear, or deteriorate over time. This material mirrors emotional vulnerability, emphasizing how memories are both precious and unstable. By merging human nostalgia with mechanical structure, the project reflects on the limits of preservation. It asks what remains when both our minds and our analog artifacts surrender to time, and whether memory can ever truly be captured before it vanishes.
Within the broader series, "Shell of Our Analog Memories" establishes the conceptual foundation for later works like "Spill My Guts," which transition into digital memory and technological mediation. Together, the projects investigate how the methods we use to store memories influence how we experience identity, nostalgia, and personal history.
