a layering experiment, part two

a layering experiment, part one

memories are made of this

Memories Are Made of This: How Memory Works in Humans and Animals

Rusiko Bourtchouladze

New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.

Cornish Library

QP 406 B675 2002

Memory: Retention or recall of learned information (8).

Every instant we are remembering something.  But how are memories formed?  And why, if remembering is so ordinary, do our memories fail so often?  What is happening in the brain when we remember a face, reconstruct an image of a place we have visited, or search for an answer that we think we know?  Does memory storage imply the fixing of memories in particular chunks of the brain tissue, or is it a dynamic, biologically creative process which involves many different sites in the brain?  How long do different memories last?  What do genes have to do with memory?  And finally, what do the memories of different species have in common? (13).

Hermann Ebbinghaus' 'Curve of Forgetting:'

The letter T in the Curve of Forgetting represents training, or the introduction of information to a subject.  The Curve charts the retention of this information up until about one month after introduction.

Most memory loss occurs within a short time after training; once the memory has survived that barrier it is much more stable (9).

Repetition gives longer-lasting memories (9).

Spaced training - repeated training sessions with a rest period in between each one - produce longer-lasting memories than do massed training (9).

In describing those who have experienced amnesia as a result of serious head trauma, Bourtchouladze writes, It may sound strange, but the recovery of memory depends not so much on the relative importance of the events forgotten as on the time before the injury that the events occurred.  Although memories often return in an irregular, hit-or-miss order, the older memories typically come back first (24).

All memories start as episodic, but only unique experiences survive as time goes by.  Those that do not have freshness and characteristic flavour tend to go downhill with time. ... Sameness leads to forgetfulness, as seen through the eyes of the writer John McPhee in the novel Silk Parachute: "When your mother is ninety-nine years old, you have so many memories of her that they tend to overlap, intermingle, and blur.  It is extremely difficult to single out one or two, impossible to remember any that exemplify the whole" (28).

Much of what we retrieve from memory may be hidden from our conscious awareness.  The central question is therefore: are we always aware that we are remembering? (36).

Here [H.M.] is, as seen through the eyes of Milner and colleagues, fourteen years after the operation:

H.M.'s severe anterograde amnesia persists... During three of the nights at the Clinical Research Center, the patient rang for the night nurse, asking, with many apologies, if she would tell him where he was and how he came to be there.  He clearly realized that he was in a hospital but seemed unable to reconstruct any of the events of the previous day.  On another occasion he remarked, 'Every day is alone in itself, whatever enjoyment I've had, and whatever sorrow I've had' (46).

beginning research, again

The greater the span of time between the historian and his subject, the greater the loss of factual evidence and the greater the imagination required to reweave the broken threads.

Robert Edwards

Sources:

Memories Are Made of This

Rusiko Bourtchouladze

Cornish Library

 Memory: A Very Short Introduction

Jonathan K. Foster

Seattle Public Library

Memory

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Memory: Remembering and Forgetting in Everyday Life

Barry Gordon

Seattle Public Library

Human Memory

Roberta L. Klatzky 
 

Memory: History, Culture and the Mind

Edited by Thomas Butler

Seattle Public Library

Memory and Attention

Donald A. Norman

Cornish Library (BF 371 N6)

Funes, El Memorioso

Jorge Luis Borges

Seattle Public Library

Opening Skinner's Box

Lauren Slater

Cornish Library (BF 198.7 S57 2004)

The Mind

Richard M. Restak

Cornish Library (QP 356 R47)

time passes, the second installation

Time passes and I am still sitting here, pen in hand, unable to speak.  If only I could find a way to write about the things I don't remember.

2010

Installation

The second incarnation of Time Passes was installed in the Alumni Gallery at Cornish College of the Arts (Seattle, Washington).  For this installation, the text-covered quilt blocks were pieced and draped over the table, with the pen placed on top and the inkwell nearby.  The blocks recall a human presence, and, at the same time, suggest the possibility of additions to the unfinished letter.

time passes, the first installation and performance

Time passes and I am still sitting here, pen in hand, unable to speak.  If only I could find a way to write about the things I don't remember.

2010

Installation and performance

The first incarnation of Time Passes was installed in the student-run By Us, For Us Gallery at Cornish College of the Arts (Seattle, Washington).  The installation included several performances where I, the artist, sat in the Gallery and hand-wrote memories on unpieced quilt blocks.  A few samples of the text follow.

Dear Martha,

I am having trouble beginning, as always.  This is not as easy as I thought it would be, taking the time to sit and remember. ...

... I suppose my writing betrays a certain acute sense of loss.  It is an idea that I am constantly fighting with - it is  deep, dark hole, but it is also a very beautiful and poignant feeling (and, however strange this may sound, it is also somewhat sustaining).

I have felt this way for a while now - more precisely, for about the past six years.  Since Carl lost half of his leg as a result of complications from a stroke, you have been much different too.  Your lucidity has gradually declined to the point where now, you hear an imaginary radio station that only plays good music and has good news.  At least this seems better that your mental state four years ago, when you were much more lucid but much more depressed.  You also seem convinced that I am married and am carrying a child.  That, at least, is not so arbitrary - I am practically married, and I have carried a child that is no longer with me.

Forgive me if I seem scattered.  Memory can be an evasive beast.  Forcing it is nearly impossible.  If only I could find a way to write about all of the things I don't remember - not to bring them back, but to realize why I commit to memory the things I do. ...

... It seems inevitable for me to bring up the concept of sadness in this letter.  It is, without question, the one feeling that drives me.  Like the feeling of loss or longing, it is somewhat sustaining.  Sadness is inescapable for everyone, but in my life it has been a pervasive theme.

What is sadness?  For me, it is an evasive and deceptive beast, much like memory.  Often when I feel sadness it seems to have no particular cause.  At other times everything around me makes me sad - my body, the rain, the passing of time, a certain kind of light... the causes are innumerable.  Where does this feeling come from, and where does it go once it leaves me?

In many ways I have the same relationship with beauty.  It is transient, impossible to catch and hold, like sadness.  Maybe they are actually the same feeling, just wearing different masks. ...