Dear Simon,
Thanks for the pointer to the 'Art of Memory'.
In searching for it on Abe I came across - 'The Art of Forgetting
(Materializing Culture - edited by Adrian Forty (Editor), Susanne
Kuchler (Editor)
Review
"This volume presents a new and intriguing perspective on the
relationship between the material and immaterial dimensions of culture,
suggesting that people's material technologies of memory are always also
their technologies of forgetting." --The Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute
Also
Lethe: The Art and Critique of Forgetting by Harold Weinrich
Book Description
Lethe is an exploration of the art of forgetting—as the counterpart of
the rhetorical art of memory—in Western culture from the Greeks to the
present. It offers penetrating analyses of works by, among others,
Augustine, Bellow, Borges, Casanova, Celan, Cervantes, Dante, Descartes,
Freud, Goethe, Homer, Kant, Kleist, Levi, Locke, Mallarmé, Montaigne,
Nietzsche, Ovid, Pirandello, Plato, Proust, Rabelais, Rousseau, Sartre,
and Wiesel. What emerges is a general view of forgetting that combines a
recognition of its necessity and inevitability with a critique of
forgetting (particularly in the case of the Holocaust) and the need to
combat it. Harald Weinrich’s epilogue considers forgetting in the
present age of information overflow, particularly in the area of the
natural sciences
Interesting stuff
Gavin
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathan Kepple" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2005 8:53 PM
Subject: [WDL] Cultural Memory
A couple of years ago there was an exhibition at The British Museum
called:
'The Museum of the Mind'. It was concerned with way in which cultures
record
in their traditions, values and beliefs in their artefacts - the way
they
are made and decorated and what they represent. The exhibit presented
the
museum as more than just a collection of historical objects. It was also
a
library of cultural memory.
The rise of digital technology is likely to increase, substantially, our
surrogate memory. We will find ourselves in the position to be
reacquainted
second hand,with experiences that have been forgotten.
In the past this would have been done through a diary, or perhaps a
piece of
art. When I was young, my parent's still camera, with a battery operated
flashbulb, took frozen snapshots of our lives.
However the camera only came out on special occasions - Birthdays or
Christmas. Film cost money. It had to be sent off to be developed and
turned
into slides. Watching these slides involved setting up the projector.
There
was a financial burden and a lot of ceremony involved.
The accessibility of digital technology - both the decreasing price, the
portability and the convenience of built-in hard drives as a storage
medium,
will lend itself to frequent, spontaneous use. Any footage can be
transferred to other mediums quickly and with very little fuss.
The less effort required to use a piece of technology, the more likely
it is
to be used. This generation may find their lives documented more than
any in
the past. As adults, they will have access to a cache of visual and
audio
data recording their early years. They will see themselves at the
beginning
of their lives - a period that most of us only have sketchy memories of.
Furthermore after they are gone, if the archive is maintained, future
generations will be able to look deep into their family history and see
people, who they never met, in their historical context.
Simon Biggs
[log in to unmask]
http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
Professor, Art and Design Research Centre
Sheffield Hallam University, UK
http://www.shu.ac.uk/schools/cs/cri/adrc/research2/
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