The Pacific Northwest is a region known for its distinct eerie, uncomfortable, yet cozy and familiar emotional quality, made visible through nostalgic media touchstones like Twin Peaks and The Twilight Saga and more recently as a major focus in nostalgia aesthetics and subcultures on the internet. While these depictions of the PNW capture its unique feeling, they don’t help us understand the complex emotional mechanics of the place-induced nostalgic response, particularly across different generations. How do different age groups experience nostalgia for a rural town in Washington, a coastal forest, or a coffee kiosk on I-5? How does nostalgia come up in everyday life, what constellations of emotions make up the experience, and how does that nostalgia shape or reflect identity tied to the PNW? 

This project investigates how visualization might capture the emotional complexity and simultaneity of place-based nostalgia, how two different generations view and remember the same region, and how the connections between nostalgia, place, and identity might be illuminated. Referencing Göran Bolin’s framework of “media generations” and drawing on the sensory mapping and emotional cartography techniques of Kate McLean and Christian Nold, this project translates collected emotional and memory data from two generations of PNW residents into an immersive “emotional landscape” map. Rather than mapping based on true coordinates and geographic markers, this digital visualization uses information-driven color, texture, movement, and abstract form to chart the Pacific Northwest as it exists in nostalgic memory, serving as an archival piece of a special place that used to exist or never really existed at all.

1 Experimental stage [8.25-11.25]

2 Proposal refinement [11.25-12.25]

2 Research stage [12.25-2.26]

3 Design stage [1.26-4.26]

4 Synthesis [4.26-5.26]