Ephemeral Memories is a luminous, suspended installation featuring intricately etched acrylic panels depicting stylized photographs from across Canada and Toronto. The illuminated images create shifting patterns of light and shadow projected on surrounding surfaces. The installation encourages viewers to notice how environmental conditions move the panels, affecting their clarity. This is symbolic of how external forces, such as time and circumstance, can reshape memories over years or even moments.
By observing this interplay of light and movement, visitors are invited to reflect on their own recollections, contemplating how once-vivid moments can lose sharpness or take on new significance with age. This gentle dance of acrylic and illumination offers a pause to consider the complexity of memory—how it can feel both intensely real and strangely fragile.
Inspired by Lumière’s “Neon Dream: Light and Colour,” Ephemeral Memories uses vibrant acrylic hues and LEDs to lend each panel a dreaming, electric quality. Their shifting clarity echoes how dreams – so vivid in the moment – often fade upon waking. With each rotation, etched images drift between sharp focus and soft blur, reflecting memory’s ever-changing landscape. Standing beneath Ephemeral Memories, viewers witness how a gentle breeze alters perception – mirroring how life events can shape our histories. This perpetual motion suggests the past may not be entirely fixed. How might these shifting reflections invite us to revisit the memories we carry?
Artists
Jordan Shaw
Jordan Shaw is an artist and creative technologist based in Toronto, Canada. He completed his undergraduate studies at Carleton University and Algonquin College and later received his MFA from OCAD University's Digital Futures program. His artwork focuses on the interplay between technology and the natural environment, revealing the often-invisible relationships within our hybrid digital-physical world. His work explores the hidden interactions between people, technology, the physical world, and the digital systems around us. Through his interactive and immersive experiences, he encourages active exploration and discovery among viewers, aiming to highlight how technologies may influence our interactions with each other and our natural spaces. Through participation in his work, he invites visitors to reassess technology's role and influence in how it shapes our environmental perception and relationships. Through his creations, he hopes to facilitate connection, collaboration and discussion about the artwork, its location and surroundings and the role we play within that system. Jordan has exhibited internationally in Australia, Canada, Germany, Spain, and the United States of America, as well as several online exhibitions.
