✩ Album Amicorum

Instructions:

  • Ensure your default browser camera is turned on in settings
  • Scan the QR Code 
  • Tap: Open > Start AR > Allow camera access
  • A taskbar will indicate that the data is loading; when fully loaded, it will say “AR Ready.”
  • When AR is ready, hold your smartphone camera over the first image—a song will automatically start playing.
  • Each of the 17 images triggers a different song.
  • To stop the song from playing, a) choose a different image, or b) close the browser window.
  • If there is no sound, try copying and pasting https://belove.info into a new browser window, or use a differnt browser following the same steps. If still no sound try disabling your VPN.

Watch the Album Amicorum Demo:

Above: Various imprints of the pre-digital Artist’s Book ‘Sequence’ were collected by the British Library, Wellcome Library, Women’s Art Library, PAGES Travelling Collective and exhibited as a series of installations at the Camberwell Summer Show 2018, 2019; the MA Select Show at the Camberwell Space Gallery 2019; and Fragments of the Future at the RCA Hangar Gallery 2024.

My research journey began with a recto-verso Artist’s Book (above) that I created for my mother—using family photographs to support her post-stroke memory loss and sense of identity. The bookwork was influenced by the following artists:

  • Wade Guyton—layering digital photography and print.
  • Chandra Mohini—showing the backs of photographs as art.
  • Michael Snow—his book Cover to Cover with synchronised image sequences.

This led to the idea of layers—of time, image, memory, and identity—which then evolved into digital layers through AI, XR and VR.

My 2025 MRes thesis is now available as a full-colour hardback volume (A4 landscape). In addition, the 2025 thesis builds upon my former 2019 academic dissertation: ‘How does the Materiality of the Artist’s Book Help to Augment an Understanding With Respect to Creating a Narrative About Memory and Identity?‘ available as a free download from the Wellcome Collection website.

Etymology—The Album Amicorum, also known as the ‘Alba Amicorum’, was an early form of the poetry book, which translates to an ‘album of friends,’ which later evolved into the autograph book, friendship book and an album of souvenirs. The word ‘album’ originates from the word ‘alba’ meaning ‘white,’ as in the white or blank page, in use since the mid 1500’s and was intricately illustrated with hand-painted watercolours depicting people, places and scenes, serving as a study journal for the Dutch scholar, a travelogue of a soldier, or a visual diary, memoir, or keepsake of an aristocrat to preserve memories of foreign places and pleasant encounters, serving perhaps as an early precursor to the photograph album.

Music LP’s/EP’s/singles are available for download from Bandcamp

All the song lyrics originally began as poems which are now collated into one volume entitled “Noēma Poēma” available >>HERE<<