The Art of Memory

This past week I have started to put together the artwork for the ‘Poetry Seen’ banners that will be installed along the course of a short woodland walk - close to the playing field where the Lambley Cowslip Sunday ‘spring pantomime’ takes place. You should be able to see some ‘work-in-progress’ versions above and below.

Building on last years project (which created three single-sided banners, using lines from ‘The Fairy Song’ from Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’) this year will see eight double-sided banners set along the course of the path - with people able to read and (hopefully) enjoy the poetry from whichever direction they are taking on their walk. These banners will feature poetry written by people from the village of Lambley, as well as some more well-known pieces. The idea is to install the work the weekend before Cowslip Sunday - as both an added attraction and as a means of promoting the forthcoming event.

I’m really pleased with the idea - the banners don’t intrude on the walk in any way and hopefully will enhance it slightly. I particularly like the way in which the poetry might conceivably act to heighten people’s senses - to put them in a ‘poetic frame of mind’ and as such be more aware of the ‘natural poetry’ around them.

Another aspect of this particular ‘Poetry Seen’ project that I think is interesting is the way in which it might take advantage of one of the fundamental aspects of the way human memory works. In the book ‘Moonwalking with Einstein - The Art and Science of Remembering Everything’ the author Joshua Foer looks at the way our memory skills, just like our cravings for fat and sugar, were better suited to our days as hunter gatherers. Back then, what our ancestors needed to remember was: where to find food; which plants were edible and which were poisonous; and how to find their way home. 

“Those are the sorts of vital memory skills that they depended on every single day, and it was – at least in part – in order to meet those demands that human memory evolved as it did.” Moonwalking with Einstein - page 91

The legacy of these original memory skills means that we are far better at remembering visual imagery, rather than remembering the multiple passwords, numerous phone numbers or detailed verbal instructions that we tend to increasingly need to recall in the world in which most of us now exist.

This aspect gave rise to what became known as the ancient ‘art of memory’:

The Art of Memory or Ars Memorativa (“art of memory” in Latin) is a general term used to designate a loosely associated group of mnemonic principles and techniques used to organize memory impressions, improve recall, and assist in the combination and ‘invention’ of ideas.

It is an ‘art’ in the Aristotelian sense, which is to say a method or set of prescriptions that adds order and discipline to the pragmatic, natural activities of human beings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_memory

For my purposes the most interesting aspect of the art of memory is the following (which comes from the same wikipedia site as the above quotes):

Perhaps the most important principle of the art is the dominance of the visual sense in combination with the orientation of ‘seen’ objects within space. 

Put simply this method consisted of assigning clear visual images (of the information needing to be remembered) along the route of a geographic location that was familiar to the individual wishing to retain and recall the information at a later date. Subsequent recall would consist of 'mentally' recreating and retracing the steps of the journey along the chosen geographic route – retrieving the memories as the individual went along.

Most typically this method would be achieved by using what became known as 'Memory Palaces' – i.e. buildings with a clear and memorable layout that an individual could use for the purpose of depositing their visual images. The same basic principle is employed by the 'mental athletes' and 'mnemonists' who take part in the kind of memory championships that are at the heart of Foer's book.

But the same 'mnemonic principle' of a memory palace could equally apply to a walk through a landscape – and I think the way in which this 'Poetry Seen' project utilises "the visual sense in combination with the orientation of ‘seen’ objects within space…" becomes another interesting aspect of the work.

Ironically, according to Foer, for many of the ‘mental athletes’ who take part in ‘memory championships’ the remembering of a poem is perhaps the hardest and least enjoyable part of the competition – and if the poem is remembered at all there is little chance that any of its possible meaning is retained (for further rumination) which kind of defeats the object of remembering poetry. 

I intend to look a little more at another aspect of 'The Art of Memory' and Foer's book in my next post.