Skip navigation.
Home
Writing Machines
 kathleen fitzpatrick | course sakai site | course wiki
Home » blogs » Oz's blog

Stop making sense?

Submitted by Oz on 5 December 2006 - 5:37pm. |

More than anything else, my final project seems to want to look like an exercise in form and structure built on a solid theoretical foundation. I've mentioned before on this blog that the theoretical and historical component is about memory in general, and a mnemonic practice known as "memory palaces" in particular. Looking at the site I've built, and the method of navigation, it seems pretty essential that I provide (as succinctly as possible) some explanation of what an memory palace is and what it means to this project. Below I'm including the summary I wrote up, and any feedback (e.g., "no, I still have no idea what you're talking about," or, "okay, I think I have some idea of what this palace thing-y might look like and why it could work as a hypertext") would be greatly appreciated.

A memory palace is an artificial memory system based on the method of loci, which was a mnemonic linking technique in common use between about 500 B.C. and the mid-1600s. Developed in ancient Greece, the Ars Memoria was central to the teaching of rhetoric. Traditionally, the memory palace was used as an aid to memorization of long speeches or blocks of text. To use this architectural mind-map, the first step would be to pick a structure with which one is personally familiar, e.g. a home, market, church, public building, etc. Then, one travels through the rooms or loci in a particular order, and in each space one imagines an object or symbol—ideally, a single, vivid image that can be taken in at one glance and holds significant affective associations—and attaches a chunk of the speech to this imagene. So when delivering the speech, one revisits each of the loci in order, views each of the symbolic images in order, and thus delivers one’s speech in this order.

Most interesting, perhaps, is that the loci are palimpestic—the images specific to each locus can be reimagined or reinscribed so that the same memory palace can be traversed in potentially infinite cases of remembrance—and furthermore, that the palace can be entered and navigated from any imaginable point, in any imaginable order. Under this sort of organization, memory takes the shape of a completely non-linear narrative that one can alter the order or chronology of at will. Thus, the memory palace is a structure mapped onto our thinking that, once there, permanently alters the landscape of the mind, and yet simultaneously replicates our existing thought processes.

This is a story about memory.

» Oz's blog | login to post comments

My feedback: the first

Submitted by silversprung on 5 December 2006 - 6:24pm.

My feedback: the first paragraph is very clear. You lose me in the second paragraph a little bit. I guess I still understand what you're explaining, but then I have trouble imagining what a hypertext-as-memory palace would look like? Would each "room"/locus change each time you read it? That's what the second paragraph seems to suggest (to me), and it sounds like it'd be impossible to produce a hypertext that would work like that-- totally different each time, and somehow intuiting the associations that each reader will have with each image. However, I imagine that it will become clear how you made this idea into a hypertext once I actually see your project. (But you asked for our thoughts before we'd seen the project, I assume...) I look forward to seeing this memory palace tomorrow!

» login to post comments

I agree with the previous

Submitted by Frabby on 5 December 2006 - 6:47pm.

I agree with the previous comment. The first paragraph is very clear. I also like the dramatic last line. However, the second paragraph doesn't make as much sense to me, but I suppose that's the point. Won't your hypertext be the example that the second paragraph discusses?

» login to post comments

Thanks to both of you for

Submitted by Oz on 5 December 2006 - 7:05pm.

Thanks to both of you for the quick feedback. Yes, the hypertext will be a working example of the structural properties described in the second paragraph, except for the whole palimpsest thing -- I had enough trouble getting the images set up on the Dreamweaver pages in the first place, no less figuring out how to make them reinscribe themselves. Ah! That's a feature of memory palace's that I'm not technologically able to reproduce (and not sure I want to...it sounds maddening!), but the second bit -- about the non-linear navigation -- is more what I'm trying to do with my hypertext. Maybe I ought to make that clear somehow...

» login to post comments

How to reinscribe

Submitted by magoo on 6 December 2006 - 12:01am.

There should be some way to get reinscription: text and pictures can come and go and superimpose.

How would a represention of reinscription look and act?

» login to post comments

same room, different purpose

Submitted by black lace on 5 December 2006 - 7:40pm.

I'm already familiar with the premise of the memory palace, so my comprehension of what you wrote is somewhat biased.

With the second paragraph, thoughts. What you're getting at is since it's mental architectural space, there's a lack of physical permanence, you can use the same familiar space to, for instance, remember 2 distict speeches, yes? They don't necessarily have to mesh together, they just can exist in the same mental imagination of a space.

If that's the case, might work better to indicate something more along the lines of multiple distinct hypertexts can exist in this same ephemeral framework, now we're going on a tour of a specific one.

» login to post comments

this sounds really awesome,

Submitted by marmalade on 5 December 2006 - 8:58pm.

this sounds really awesome, and I'm sorry that the palimpsest thing didn't work out--now that would just about blow my mind! ;)

One thing that I'm curious about (I should say that your explanation sounds pretty clear, by the way--or at least I think I understand it!) is your claim that memory is non-linear. I know that one of the premises around which silversprung based her hypertext was the idea that our thoughts are associative rather than linear ... that I buy--stream-of-consciousness, etc. ... but I'm curious about memory. Doesn't my remembrance of one event depend upon my rememberance of another? If I don't remember moving houses when I was six, how can I remember playing hide-and-go-seek in the backyard of my new house when I was eight? The second memory seems to rely on the first somehow... whether that's linear or not, I'm not positive.

Anyway, it sounds really cool. My interest is definitely piqued!

» login to post comments

cool

Submitted by tophat1 on 5 December 2006 - 9:38pm.

Like the others, I really think this is a very cool idea and I'm excited to see what you're going to do with it. I also agree that, while the first paragraph is quite clear, the second is slightly more confusing.

I'm not familiar with the memory palace idea so maybe I'm missing something but when you say that the same memory palace can be traversed as many times as one wants, I'm a little lost. Is the thing imagined in each room the same or do we imagine different things at different times?

At any rate, it sounds like a neat idea and overall, I think the idea/explanation is clear.

» login to post comments

Comprehension

Submitted by magoo on 6 December 2006 - 12:22am.

I think the sticking point in paragraph 2 may be the relation between palimpsest, reinscribe, and reimagine. As a reader, I think I would prefer to go straight into the demonstration rather than wait for more explanation.

I have a couple of questions.

If I reimagine a locus, do the other loci change in something like syntactic response? If so, does reimagination take place with reference to a relatively complete idea-complex. For instance, if one room were a writer, would each room be writers, so that one had, say, the collection of English Elizabethan poets, for example. Or would one room have a chemical and another a political party -- assuming one has no specific system that actively incorporates them both.

My son does something similar using RPG characters instead of geographic places. If he's given a problem of deduction, he assigns each entity attributes and then assigns each attribute a value. I suspect that the reasoning has an almost identical component, since when he assembles such a character, screen geography has consistent places where certain attributes are located, and these.

I suggested that certain problems must look like gnomes and others like elves, but he said it wasn't generally useful to be that specific about visualization.

But I imagine this process as being extremely detailed both visually and in some kinetic sense. Ideally, wouldn't one walk through the rooms and perform some kind of activities to grow into the connections?

» login to post comments