Theoretical Research

Articles I’ve read:

8 Video Artists Tackle Collective Memory and Hidden Truth

• Collective memory and personal experience are the inspiration for a new video art exhibition curated by Seoyoung Kim at DNA Berlin. Evidence was inspired partly by Paul Valéry’s assertion that “an image is more than an image and sometimes shows more than the object of which it is an image.”
• The exhibition consists of videos from eight artists who were invited to rethink “the stories that have been overshadowed by social histories” by presenting their own historical and political heritages and understandings through an artistic lens. Each video explores a unique topic and together they bring a sense of unity and universality in their depictions of traumatic periods and the roles of individuals in the tide of world history.

The forgotten part of memory

• To understand how we remember, we must also understand how, and why, we forget.
• Much is still unknown about how memories are created and accessed, and addressing such mysteries has consumed a lot of memory researchers’ time. How the brain forgets, by comparison, has been largely overlooked. It’s a remarkable oversight, says Michael Anderson, who studies cognitive neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, UK. “Every species that has a memory forgets. Full stop, without exception. It doesn’t matter how simple the organism is: if they can acquire lessons of experience, the lessons can be lost,” he says. “In light of that, I find it absolutely stunning that neurobiology has treated forgetting as an afterthought.”
•  “Our ability to generalize new experiences is, at least in part, due to the fact that our brains engage in controlled forgetting,” says Blake Richards, who studies neural circuits and machine learning at the University of Toronto Scarborough. 
• In the past decade, researchers have begun to view forgetting as an important part of a whole. “Why do we have memory at all? As humans, we entertain this fantasy that it’s important to have autobiographical details,” Hardt says. “And that’s probably completely wrong. Memory, first and foremost, is there to serve an adaptive purpose. It endows us with knowledge about the world, and then updates that knowledge.” Forgetting enables us as individuals, and as a species, to move forwards.

Exploring the Faulty Nature of Memory in Video Art and Clay

• Artist and composer Alexis Gideon synesthetically examines the nebulous line between memory and truth in “The Comet and the Glacier”
• In 2014, Nancy Shute at NPR wrote in regard to a Northwestern University study, “The brain edits memories relentlessly, updating the past with new information … to make them more relevant and useful now — even if they’re not a true representation of the past.”
• The faulty nature of memory renders a red couch blue, the end of a relationship far rougher or sweeter than its reality, a left turn a right turn — it’s a constant, callous editor. 

Theme – Memory https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-memory-2795006

• the processes that are used to acquire, store, retain, and later retrieve information
• three major processes involved in memory: encoding, storage, and retrieval
• Human memory involves the ability to both preserve and recover information we have learned or experienced

one of the major topics of interest within cognitive psychology

How Memories Are Formed

• In order to form new memories, information must be changed into a usable form, which occurs through the process known as encoding
• stored in memory for later use
• The retrieval process allows us to bring stored memories into conscious awareness

How Long Do Memories Last?

• Some memories are very brief, just seconds long, and allow us to take in sensory information about the world around us.
• Short-term memories are a bit longer and last about 20 to 30 seconds. These memories mostly consist of the information we are currently focusing on and thinking about.
• Finally, some memories are capable of enduring much longer, lasting days, weeks, months, or even decades. Most of these long-term memories lie outside of our immediate awareness, but we can draw them into consciousness when they are needed.

Using Memory

• There are many factors that can influence how memories are retrieved such as the type of information being used and the retrieval cues that are present
• a perplexing memory retrieval problem known as lethologica or the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon

Organizing Memory

One way of thinking about memory organization is known as the semantic network model. This model suggests that certain triggers activate associated memories. A memory of a specific place might activate memories about related things that have occurred in that location. 

Types of Memory

Losing Memory

Forgetting is a surprisingly common event. Just consider how often you forget someone’s name or overlooked an important appointment. Why do we forget information we have learned in the past? There are four basic explanations for why forgetting occurs:

• Failure to store
• Interference
• Motivated forgetting
• Retrieval failure

Lethologica – the inability to remember a particular word or name