About the Memory Palace: The memory palace technique, or “method of loci” (loci being Latin for “places”) traces back to 6th century Greece when the poet Simonides exited a banquet hall to greet two men who were waiting for him. The hall suddenly collapsed, kill-ing everyone inside. Simonides was able to iden-tify the unrecognizable bodies based upon their positions (loci) at the table. This led him to devel-op a “memory palace,” a system of mnemonics that would come to be widely used in societies that relied on oral scholarship. The memory palace is a device wherein the practitioner imagines a familiar interior or geo-graphical location. Imaginary objects are placed intentionally in arrangements so that when a certain path is followed, the objects, their place-ment, and the order in which they are seen aid in recalling specific information. The word mne-monic shares an etymology with Mnemosyne, the Greek Titan who represented memory. Mary Carruthers’ study of machina memorialis (mem-ory machine) in her book The Craft of Thought begins with the myth of Mnemosyne as the mother of memory; she suggests that memory marks the beginning of human making, arts, and invention––essentially, human creativity. Mnemo-syne gave birth to the nine muses; the word muse means “to think, remember” (PIE root *men-). Museums hold artifacts that help us remember. And while our group project is a memory palace, it can also be seen as a museum. In medieval times, the memory palace was a device used for rote memorization of rhetorical treatises, but the art of memory (mneme) was, for medieval monks, less about mimesis and more

an art of thought, meditation, and gathering. They used Biblical tropes and figures as tools in their memory work: “art of tropes and figures is an art of patterns and pattern-making, and thus an art of mneme or memoria, of cogitation, think-ing [...]Tropes and figures are the memory-resi-dent tools, the devices and machines of monastic reading craft [...]The tools of mnemotechnic...are like a chisel or a pen” (Carruthers 3). This relates to Lambros Malafouris’ theory that a “blind man’s stick” is an extension of his self. Memory tools serve as a powerful engaging metaphor, a mediator between our cognition and the world we are part of. “...The functional struc-ture and anatomy of the human brain is a dynam-ic construct remodelled in detail by behaviourally important experiences which are mediated, and often constituted, by the use of material objects and artefacts which for that reason should be seen as continuous integral parts of the human cognitive architecture” (Malafouris, 404). Mem-ory is a “matrix of a reminiscing cogitation, shuf-fling and collating “things” stored in a random-ac-cess memory scheme, or set of schemes - a memory architecture and a library built up during one’s lifetime with the express intention that it be used inventively” (Carruthers 4). Although we began this project with rote memorization in mind, it’s evolved into a de-vice for ongoing inventive thought. According to Carruthers, the machina memorialis of medi-eval monks was “the mill that ground the grain

Engraving from Ferrante Imperato, Dell’Historia Naturale (Naples 1599)

CHRISSY GILES LEWIS JOHN

SIDNEY SEKULA LINDSAY SCHIEF MARC RAMSEY

ELIZABETH HOPKINS

THE MEMORY PALACE

A COLLABORATION BY WHITNEY EVANSON

polaroids by Whitney Evanson. 2015.

“The Dance of Apollo with Nine Muses” oil painting by Baldassare Peruzzi

of one’s experiences” into a “mental flour with which one could make wholesome new bread.” We have taken the idea of the memory palace/memory machine into the physical realm by build-ing a tangible structure and decorating it with memory objects. We use ornament as a way to not only remember the things we learned, but to encourage a continual building of knowledge, an “architecture of thought.”

Why a Memory Palace?

In Bits of Life,”The Computer as Memory Machine,” José Van Dijck discusses the movement to digital storage of media (images, videos, audio files) that represents memory. These have be-come our “mediated memories.” We are moving the “shoebox full of artifacts” of the 1960s into machines that store and catalogue our memories as bits––immaterial, disembodied. Djick posits that this move into the highly structured method of organizing memories via machine, detaching them from the body, is “a masculine model for total recall and, at the same time, for total con-trol. The disembodied memory machine stands in unarticulated opposition to the “embodied” no-tion of remembering, according to which the use of memory devices is seen as one part of the very personal act of creating, storing, and retrieving memories. Not coincidentally, the activity of mak-ing family albums, sorting pictures, and updating the family’s records is typically a female activity that calls for a personalized, embodied take on our conceptualization of memory and memory machines” (Djick, 117). In a world overheating

with too much “stuff,” perhaps making objects as tokens of memory is a feminist act, and therefore a worthy activity to engage in? The act of making is synonymous to the act of remembering. The Memory Palace is a re-sponse to the encroaching invisibility and imma-teriality of digitized memory, and the removal of artifacts from the mix. Artifacts possess an auratic presence that is lost when digitized. Physical ob-jects act as a liaison between the present and the past, such as monuments, time capsules, photos, and even trinkets. This project addresses the hand/mind connection and associative properties that act as mediator between subject and mem-ory. Rather than keeping a digital catalogue of events, the Memory Palace keeps the imagination alive through a material experience. Handling or viewing a three dimensional object that reminds us of something is more powerful than looking at an exact representation -- it employs our minds, demanding more from the imagination to fill in gaps and engage meaningfully. We have discovered that through the act of making, we are also synthesizing and piecing together the information presented to us in this program. For example, each Tuesday afternoon we practiced making repeating patterns while listening to the all-program lecture. Doing this keeps the mind active and aware, and open to new information. We want to take this same approach with the audience during our presenta-tion. We invite the audience to engage in this ma-terial experience by making their own “thinking figure” with repeating patterns. The compilation of these patterns serve as the programs’ collec-tive memory, or even consciousness.

The process:

In the early stages of this project, the group discussed using literal memories of Mak-ing to Ornament to tie into the Memory Palace, making one cohesive representation of our ac-ademic experience. We used Joe Brainard’s un-conventional biography “I remember” as a model for compiling our own memories. We wanted to experiment and see what collective memories emerge in a group with diverse learning perspec-tives. Could we express our individual memories, while still remaining scholarly? When we tried to do the “I remembers,” it became obvious that the events of the program were not as important as what we took away from them.The differences in our experiences became the turning point of how we viewed the Memory Palace. Rather than housing memories and keeping them static, we wanted to use the Palace as a way to keep remembering--- to keep the imagination alive. This allowed meaning to emerge from the Palace in ways that we couldn’t recognize before.

We decided to use “Thinking Figures” as an entry point to explore memories. Each group member chose a figure that illustrated a signifi-cant part of their own synthesis of this program. These figures are: the cyborg woman, the Greek figure Philomela, the dragonfly, the human hand,

the beehive, the rabbit, and the Egyptian deity Ra. These figures take precedent in the orna-mentation of the Memory Palace. The figures are woven into a repeating pattern for the floor, they adorn the lattice of the 3D printed doors, and they take a more physical form in the hand-made objects that live in the Palace. Initially, we wanted the palace to open up on hinges so that the viewer could see all of the interior. However, this would affect the presen-tation of the piece because wanted to showcase the permeability between inner and outer worlds. Inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s Étant donnés, we decided to make the palace only viewable from the outside, so that the viewer would have to peer inside. Étant donnés displays a large wood-en door with peepholes for viewing. Behind the door reveals a nude woman in a scene full of textures and various materials, combining organic and unnatural objects. Duchamp worked on this piece in secret for 20 years. It serves as a product of “thinking-hand” work, and urges the viewer to look inside. In our project, we also urge the view-er to become a voyeur--- not just to the interior of our palace, but to the interior of their own.

image of core rope memory, a form of read-only memory for computers (ROM). source: fooyoh.com

A box of old memories. source: Huffington Post

Marcel Duchamp’s Étant donnés. 1946-1966

Examples of “thinking figure” ornamentation in our palace

Context:

In 2013, Hari Kunzru, a British Indian nov-elist, wrote a novella called the Memory Palace. Set during the end of technology and information, the main character uses the ‘art of memory’ to try to memorize as much of the past as possible. “When Kunzru submitted the first draft of the text, it became apparent that he had interwoven the collaborative basis of the project into the overarching themes of the story – that memories change in the mouths of those who tell them” (Newell & Salazaar). After this realization, Kunzu employed 20 different graphic artists to interpret the text however they saw fit. “These commis-sions [went] beyond literal visualizations of the text and instead added new meaning and direc-tion to the story” (Newell & Salazaar). In the making of our own Memory Palace, we have also taken a collective approach. Drawing on our own individual memories of this program, we asked ourselves: What stands out? What are we going to take away from this program, and aca-demia in general?

On Collaboration:

In 1974, Edwin Land (founder of Polaroid cameras) wrote, “A new kind of relationship between people in groups is brought into being…when the members of a group are photographing and being photographed and sharing the photo-

graphs… It turns out that buried within us…there is latent interest in each other; there is tender-ness, curiosity, excitement, affection, compan-ionability and humor…. We have a yen for and a primordial competence for a quiet good-humored delight in each other: We have a prehistoric tribal competence…in being partners in the lonely exploration of a once-empty planet.” It’s a human quality to want to connect: with experiences, memories, and each other. Our Memory Palace is a collaborative effort to connect and share mem-ories and experiences with one another. In The Thinking Hand, Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture, Juhani Pallasmaa writes: “The artist’s exploration focuses on lived experiential essences, and this aim defines his/her approach and method. As Jean-Paul Sartre states: ‘Essenc-es and facts are incommensurable, and one who begins his inquiry with facts will never arrive at the essences [...] understanding is not a quality coming to human reality from the outside; it is its characteristic way of existing.’ All artistic works approach this natural mode of understanding en-twined with our own experience of being” (Pallas-maa ). The act of collaboratively creating--- with our hands, tools, and one another--- link together a state of being. This essence defines our collec-tive thinking and process for the Memory Palace project. It adorns the walls, the floors, the ob-jects, and doors. They are memories that were made to ornament.

References:

Carruthers, Mary J. The Craft of Thought: Medita-tion, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400-1200. New York: Cambridge UP, 1998. Print.

H.,Mike. “A Brief History of Photography: Part 9 - Polaroid & Instant Film.” Not Quite in Focus. N.p., 22 July 2014. Web.

Malafouris, Lambros. How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material Engagement. Cam-bridge: MIT, 2013. Print.

Newell, Laurie B., and Ligaya Salazar. “Making Memory Palace.” Victoria and Albert Museum, Digital Media Webmaster@vam.ac.uk. Sky Arts Ignition, n.d. Web.

Pallasmaa, J. The Thinking Hand. Chichester, U.K: Wiley, 2009. Print

Smelik, A., & Lykke, N. Bits of Life: Feminism at the Intersections of Media, Bioscience, and Tech-nology. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008.“Medicine Chariot” by Le Gun as part of the Memory Pal-

ace exhibition in London, 2013.

Interior of our Memory Palace, in progress. 2015.

“We live in worlds of the mind, in

which the material and the mental,

as well as the experienced, remem-

bered and imagined, completely fuse

into each other” - Juhani Pallasmaa Photo by Whitney Evanson