I have been interested in memory and its relationship to place- how place affects our memories and how memory distorts our perceptions of place. During the fall of 1998, my mother suffered an aneurism near the base of her cortex at the relatively young age of fifty-seven. Following recovery and numerous months of rehabilitation, she is still disabled. Although you would have a hard time detecting its affects during light conversation, her experience has left her with multiple afflictions including a severely reduced short-term memory capacity. While this is simply a starting point, I wonder where I might look for inspiration and research. Please help me with some references that deal with these issues and also perhaps some artist's work that investigate issues of memory and space. Thank you for your response in advance.
memory is REALLY hard...there are hundreds of ideas on it out there.
you will need to spend some time in the library looking at the many takes on the subject to narrow your search. i made the mistake in grad school!! my term paper ended up just looking like an intro...never really digging deep into the subject!
sorry about your mom. but it would be interesting to think about a hospital or home for alzheimers or dementia... a growing problem in society as it grows older.
Steve Pile's book 'The Body and the City', on the psychoanalysis of place is a good read on this topic, if you're into cultural theory, as you seem to imply.
in some ways this is what my undergrad thesis was about - misremembering and the incomplete and sometimes outright untruthful way that things are remembered. but i was dealing with long-term memory, specifically nostalgia.
short-term memory is a different area than most of us think of when discussing memory and its architectural implications. reminds me more of the movie memento and some other story i've read of someone marking themselves and/or writing their lives as they happen so that they can continue to function in a continuum.
you might look at the 18th (?) century memory theater projects that a lot of gentleman architects and philosopher/scientists became fascinated with - places in which certain objects in certain places stood for things to remember, replacing a reliance on temporal memory with an object- and location-based memory (which works differently). actually i think this was already something being looked at during the renaissance, but i'm not sure.
Also Rossi's The Architecture of the City has some good points on memory, as does Anthony Vidler's piece on Blaise Pascal in Warped Space ... also, Luis Fernandez-Galliano has a book called Fire and Memory, but it may or may not be helpful. Kevin Lynch's work on cognitive mapping (The Image of The City) would also be on point.
I think there is something about working in drawing that is so conducive to lack of short term memory, it is always all there in front of you. You can work with it all at once. Switching from drawing to writing makes memory so much more important since writing is so linear.
The point being, maybe a more transparent architecture would be easier to navigate if you couldn't remember where you'd been. Like, I often leave things in strange places in my apartment as cues to myself later that I need to do something, or remember something or call someone. A way for past and future versions of myself to communicate, but through spatial cues. Why is that cereal box on my bed? I love that part in Memento where he looks at the liquor bottle and says, oh, but I don't feel drunk...
And there is that history of "memory palaces" used to train orators, you're supposed to picture rooms full of objects where each object represents part of the argument. Maybe not helpful but interesting.
kablakistan, you made me laugh. i drive my wife crazy leaving things in unlikely places so that i'll remember something. usually it's whatever comes to hand around my bed so that i'll remember something in the morning. she'll walk in the room, the trash can's on the nightstand (or a book is standing up on end, or a shoe is hanging off of the doorknob) and just shake her head...
Yes, kablakistan, I'm guilty of that, too. I tend to leave things between me and my snooze button that will alert me to the fact that the snooze is prohibited on a given day.
I find the topic of "cognitive maps" to be a good way to describe the success of a place's organization.
Often when unpacking groceries stuff that isn’t meant for the fridge ends up in the fridge, am I sending subliminal messages to myself? Boxes of pasta in the freezer, cans of chick peas in the fridge – what does it mean????
Do you remember; [another thesis thread]
I have been interested in memory and its relationship to place- how place affects our memories and how memory distorts our perceptions of place. During the fall of 1998, my mother suffered an aneurism near the base of her cortex at the relatively young age of fifty-seven. Following recovery and numerous months of rehabilitation, she is still disabled. Although you would have a hard time detecting its affects during light conversation, her experience has left her with multiple afflictions including a severely reduced short-term memory capacity. While this is simply a starting point, I wonder where I might look for inspiration and research. Please help me with some references that deal with these issues and also perhaps some artist's work that investigate issues of memory and space. Thank you for your response in advance.
memory is a lie...
memory is REALLY hard...there are hundreds of ideas on it out there.
you will need to spend some time in the library looking at the many takes on the subject to narrow your search. i made the mistake in grad school!! my term paper ended up just looking like an intro...never really digging deep into the subject!
sorry about your mom. but it would be interesting to think about a hospital or home for alzheimers or dementia... a growing problem in society as it grows older.
Vado - only trust your tatoos.
"...memory is a fluid encased in an event. We do not recall the event itself only the shape the fluid describes."
-tomato
Steve Pile's book 'The Body and the City', on the psychoanalysis of place is a good read on this topic, if you're into cultural theory, as you seem to imply.
.
in some ways this is what my undergrad thesis was about - misremembering and the incomplete and sometimes outright untruthful way that things are remembered. but i was dealing with long-term memory, specifically nostalgia.
short-term memory is a different area than most of us think of when discussing memory and its architectural implications. reminds me more of the movie memento and some other story i've read of someone marking themselves and/or writing their lives as they happen so that they can continue to function in a continuum.
you might look at the 18th (?) century memory theater projects that a lot of gentleman architects and philosopher/scientists became fascinated with - places in which certain objects in certain places stood for things to remember, replacing a reliance on temporal memory with an object- and location-based memory (which works differently). actually i think this was already something being looked at during the renaissance, but i'm not sure.
I took a course lots of years ago called 'social geography'.
It dealt with space and perception.
Not so much memory. Nevermind.
But a search on that term might reveal some direction.
surprised I'm the first to post that...
Also Rossi's The Architecture of the City has some good points on memory, as does Anthony Vidler's piece on Blaise Pascal in Warped Space ... also, Luis Fernandez-Galliano has a book called Fire and Memory, but it may or may not be helpful. Kevin Lynch's work on cognitive mapping (The Image of The City) would also be on point.
Good luck ...
Aldo, not Also, Rossi.
I think there is something about working in drawing that is so conducive to lack of short term memory, it is always all there in front of you. You can work with it all at once. Switching from drawing to writing makes memory so much more important since writing is so linear.
The point being, maybe a more transparent architecture would be easier to navigate if you couldn't remember where you'd been. Like, I often leave things in strange places in my apartment as cues to myself later that I need to do something, or remember something or call someone. A way for past and future versions of myself to communicate, but through spatial cues. Why is that cereal box on my bed? I love that part in Memento where he looks at the liquor bottle and says, oh, but I don't feel drunk...
And there is that history of "memory palaces" used to train orators, you're supposed to picture rooms full of objects where each object represents part of the argument. Maybe not helpful but interesting.
kablakistan, you made me laugh. i drive my wife crazy leaving things in unlikely places so that i'll remember something. usually it's whatever comes to hand around my bed so that i'll remember something in the morning. she'll walk in the room, the trash can's on the nightstand (or a book is standing up on end, or a shoe is hanging off of the doorknob) and just shake her head...
Yes, kablakistan, I'm guilty of that, too. I tend to leave things between me and my snooze button that will alert me to the fact that the snooze is prohibited on a given day.
I find the topic of "cognitive maps" to be a good way to describe the success of a place's organization.
Often when unpacking groceries stuff that isn’t meant for the fridge ends up in the fridge, am I sending subliminal messages to myself? Boxes of pasta in the freezer, cans of chick peas in the fridge – what does it mean????
don't you have people following behind you, queenie, undoing your absent-minded deeds?
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