RECOIL
Jun. 2025
Speculative Design
Recoil is a conceptual photography app that explores the relationship between memory and personal identity.
Unlike traditional cameras, Recoil does not save photos. Instead, each captured image is transformed into a set of descriptive prompts — such as “beach, child, running, sunset.” These prompts are stored in an “album,” where users can revisit, combine, and use them to recreate the original image or generate entirely new visual representations.
By shifting from seeing to describing, Recoil draws on John Locke’s theory in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding — that memory forms the basis of personal identity. It invites reflection on how identity is understood and constructed through the ongoing process of selecting and reshaping memories.
Recoil 是一款概念性拍照应用，探索记忆与个人身份的关系。
不同于传统相机，Recoil 不保存照片，而是将影像转化为一组提示词，如“沙滩、小孩、奔跑、日落”。用户可在“相册”中查看、组合这些文字，以此重现照片或生成新的视觉图像。
Recoil 将“观看”转化为“描述”，借鉴洛克在《人类理解论》中提出的理论——记忆构成个人身份。它试图探讨：当记忆成为选择与重构的过程，身份又是如何随之被理解与建构的。