View source for In Search of Oldton

How does a town just disappear?

What does it feel like to be cut off from your roots in a digital age where people have so many tools for recording and documenting their lives?

How do those of us who grew up in a pre-digital age recover and maintain a sense of belonging that is becoming increasingly so hard to hold on to?

'In Search of Oldton' is an attempt to use other people's digital documentary in order to recapture and re-invent my own personal history.

Tim Wright will be touring the UK during 2004 in search of Oldton  his lost place of birth - and uncovering along the way the possible causes of its demise and the subsequent loss of his past.

Working with groups and individuals Wright wants to build up a substantial online archive showing people taking their leave of a place or a person - a range of personal stories about saying goodbye and moving on.

Through texts, pictures, videos and oral testimony, he will build up a digital archive of fictional remembrances, tributes to numerous places and situations left behind.

And ultimately (he hopes!) his own digital story of memory and loss will emerge.

(Source: Project description, Incubation3 site, trAce Archive)