Architectural Space - Memory Space

Overview

Hypertext data storage systems and interface design is based in classic mnemonic method of loci et imagines, the invention which Cicero ascribed to the Greek poet Simonides of Keos, The Art of Memory was devised in the oral tradition where the topographical arrangements of mental images were used as clues that trigger recollection, The development of press and computing technologies remembers for us and can be viewed as a system of prosthetics. The unrelisable project of developing a total knowledge base as begun by Camellio in his conception of Memory Theatre, was revisited by Cyberspace. As the model of understanding the human memory shifted, a parallel shift took place in the way computers were viewed.   The function that the digital technology had to store & retrie has changed to that of performative actions of images in motion. The revival of interest in space as an organizing principle in computing brought the issue of presentation of knowledge on board and opened it up critisicm.   The Art of Memory or Memory Theatre offers a model for the non-text based organization of multimedia presentation. Computers as allegorical machines can provide semantic contexts within which communications are intelligible.

Bill Viola , Robert Edgar, Agnes Hegedus   & Jeffrey Shaw, Emil Hvratin , Mikael Thejll, Robert Edgar, Toni Dove , Judith Barry & Brad Miskell

Primary Reading

Bill Viola 1983 Will There be Condominiums in Data Space? in Violette, Robert 1995   Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House , MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., Thames and Hudson, London

Laurel, Brenda 1991 Computers as Theatre Reading, Mass.

The Renaissance of the Theatre of Memory

More

Peter Matussek The Computer as Theater of Memory Vortrag 27.11.1999, Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte Berlin.

McCullough, Malcolm 2004 Digital Ground :   Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing , MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, synopsis

A Computer, A Universe Mapping an Online Cosmology , Originally appeared in the Voice Literary Supplement, March 1993

Umberto Eco, MS-DOS ist calvinistisch: Über die Religion der Betriebssysteme, Spiegel-Spezial 3 (1995): 38.

Matussek, Peter Return of the Memory Theatres - Cure or Symptom of the Storage Culture?

Peter Matussek The End(s) of Intertextuality

Davis, Erik 1994 Techgnosis, Magic, Memory, and the Angels of Information

Yates, Frances 1966 The Art of Memory , The University of Chicago Press. Chicago

Bolzoni, Lina   The Play of Images. The Art of Memory from its Origins to the Seventeenth Century   in Corsi, Pietro (ed.) 1991 The Enchanted Loom. Chapters in the History of Neuroscience , New York/Oxford

A Computer, A Universe Mapping an Online Cosmology Originally appeared in the Voice Literary Supplement , March 1993

Dove, Toni 1994 Theater Without Actors: Immersion and Response in Installation , Leonardo, vol. 27, no. 4, p281-287

Method of loci

Engel, William, E 2001/2002 What's New in Mnemology , Connotations 11.2-3, p 241-61

Giuilo Camillo (1480 - 1544)

Maguire, Matthew 1986 The Memory Theatre of Giulio Camillo

Robert Fludd

Umberto Eco Recollecting The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana