A Jesuit's use of a Chinese memory palace? Sounds like my type of thing.
I guess a very well known example of spatialised and architecturally based
mnemonic systems in fiction is Calvino's Invisible Cities...where all
memories lead to Venice.
The use of spatialised memory is something I have employed a number of times
in my work (not VR, but interactive environments). Even an online piece like
Babel evoked these ideas directly. Currently I am working with a
choreographer where we are using motion capture data to animate other visual
material concerned with visual memory aids of the "self" (pictures,
biometrics and other datasets). We are using motion capture like Beckett
used tape in Krapp's Last tape. Instead of speech you have imagery grafted
onto recorded motion capture data and then non-linearly accessed during
performance through motion sensing. The ideas underlying Greek spatialised
Mnenomics, and those also used by Fludd and others, are references in this
work.
Best
Simon
On 09.09.05 00:01, George Landow wrote:
> Date: Thu, 8 Sep 2005 17:30:54 -0400
> From: "George P. Landow" <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Life Caching - remembering everything you ever did
>
> On Sep 8, 2005, at 11:39 AM, Sue Thomas wrote:
>
>> On the email list Simon Biggs wrote:
>>
>> "Frances Yates wrote a wonderful book titled The Art of Memory, which I
>> would recommend to anybody interested in the history, culture and
>> practice
>> of mnemonics.
>
> 1. great book -- there's a novel aboout a Jesuit's use of the Memory
> Palace in China . . .
> Some people, I believe, have thought about using the old spatial art of
> memory for VR etc.
>
>> However, it was written before the impact of computing was
>> felt upon our culture. I think now somebody needs to write a book
>> titled The
>> Art of Forgetting, in order that we can find elegant and effective
>> ways of
>> avoiding information overload."
> I read somewhere that forgetting and not noticing is a survival
> technique; otherwise the mind would get clogged up.
>
> g
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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