Museum of the personal: the souvenir and nostalgia

Museum of the personal: the souvenir and nostalgia

Essentially, I am interested in dealing with
photography's capacity to hold nostalgic significance for the possessor.

Souvenirs

Museum of the personal: the souvenir and nostalgia

 

Souvenirs generally fall into two distinct types: a souvenir of a place,
or a souvenir of an event. These types sometimes overlap, and once purchased
both aspects are considered intrinsic to the narrative of the object. For
instance, someone may say 'I bought this key ring at Stonehenge last summer'
or 'I bought this tee-shirt at Big Day Out last year.' As contended earlier,
it is obvious that a mass-produced kitsch materiality limited to the realm
of tourism does not bound the souvenir as an object. Souvenirs can also be
precious objects from the start¾for instance souvenir commodities from jewelry
factories and gem fields. Rather, the souvenir can take any material form
as long as the relationship with the possessor is intact. By this, I mean
that there is no separation or rupture of the narrative cast by the possessor
regarding the object. This relationship is at once fetishistic, nostalgic
and above all capable of generating a narrative or discourse with the aid
of the owner. Without the narrative, the objects meaning is invisible, not
able to be articulated without the possessor's input, its role as a stand
in or partial object is lost.

 

Perpetual Storytelling Apparatus

Perpetual Storytelling Apparatus by Julius von Bismarck & Benjamin Maus | CreativeApplications.Net

 

The “Perpetual Storytelling Apparatus” was designed by Julius von Bismarck & Benjamin Maus. It is a drawing machine that illustrates a never-ending story by translating words of text into patent drawings.

Seven million patents — linked by over 22 million references — form the vocabulary. By using references to earlier patents, it is possible to find paths between arbitrary patents. They form a kind of subtext.

The machine attempts to show how new visual connections and narrative layers emerge through the interweaving of the story with the depiction of technical developments.

Basic procedure

1. The program downloads and parses a part of the text of a recent best-selling book.

2. The algorithm eliminates all insignificant words like “I”, “and”, “to”, “for”, “the”, etc. The remaining words and their combinations are the keywords for the patent drawings.

3. Using the keywords in chronological order, it searches for the key-patents

4. The program now searches for a path connecting the found key patents. This is possible because every patent contains several references to older patents – the so-called “prior art”.

5. All key-patents and the patents connecting them semantically are arranged and printed.

6. Goto step 1.

 

 

Perpetual Storytelling Apparatus

 

Martin Wattenberg & Marek Walczak - Apartment

Database Aesthetics » Martin Wattenberg & Marek Walczak - Apartment

 

Saturday, 9 Feb 2008

Martin Wattenberg & Marek Walczak - Apartment

In Wattenberg and Marek’s Apartment, “viewers are confronted with a blinking cursor. As they type, rooms begin to take shape in the form of a two-dimensional plan, similar to a blueprint. The architecture is based on a semantic analysis of the viewer’s words, reorganizing them to reflect the underlying themes they express. The apartments are then clustered into buildings and cities according to their linguistic relationships.

Each apartment is translated into a navigable three-dimensional dwelling, so contrasting between abstract plans/texts and experiential images/sounds.

Apartment is inspired by the idea of the memory palace. In a mnemonic technique from a pre-Post-It era, Cicero imagined inscribing the themes of a speech on a suite of rooms in a villa, and then reciting that speech by mentally walking from space to space. Establishing an equivalence between language and space, Apartment connects the written word with different forms of spatial configurations.”

Experience the project here.

Martin Wattenberg: Apartment

Martin Wattenberg: Apartment

 

 

Viewers are confronted with a blinking cursor. As they type, rooms begin to take shape in the form of a two-dimensional plan, similar to a blueprint. The architecture is based on a semantic analysis of the viewer’s words, reorganizing them to reflect the underlying themes they express. The apartments are then clustered into buildings and cities according to their linguistic relationships.

Apartment is inspired by memory palaces. In a mnemonic technique from a pre-Post-It era, Cicero imagined inscribing the themes of a speech on a suite of rooms in a villa, and then reciting that speech by mentally walking from space to space. Establishing an equivalence between language and space, Apartment connects the written word with different forms of spatial configurations.

In some versions the computer constructs a 3D as well as 2D structure. In a few later installations, viewers can collaborate, with two people able to merge their apartments into
a combined structure.

Curiosity cabinets were history's first happenings,

Jonathan Salem Baskin's Dim Bulb: Two-Headed Babies

 

Curiosity cabinets were history's first happenings, or performance art pieces.

Over time, science got more rigorous, and education more common.  The scientific method robbed life of myths and superstitions, and replaced them with facts and repeatable processes.  We lost our experience of magic, only to have it replaced with steam engines. 

Serious museums emerged to educate people on this shift. 

 

curiosity cabinet painting

WELCOME TO THE DALI HOUSE (PLEASE MIND YOUR HEAD)

A bit more rooting around in other people’s boxes of stuff lately. Nothing to get alarmed about though. Specifically it’s the curiosity cabinets alluded to in previous posts on Mark Ryden

Studio Bility's Curiosity Cabinet

Studio Bility's Curiosity Cabinet | Apartment Therapy Los Angeles

We've always loved curiosity cabinets, and this one from the Icelandic husband and wife design team of Studio Bility is no exception. The unit opens from all four sides, offering a myriad of storage slots for all shapes and sizes of curiosities to artfully present when the opportunity arises..

projected onto the floor of the gallery that allows the visitor to walk ‘through’ it

Group exhibition, Ljubljana and Ribnica/Slovenia: You Own Me Now Until You Forget About Me. | CONT3XT.NET

 

Martin Wattenberg and Marek Walczak

(with additional programming by Jonathan Feinberg)

Apartment (2001-2004) | Website, projection

In Apartment Martin Wattenberg and Marek Walczak were inspired by Cicero’s mnemonic technique of a memory palace. The user establishes an equivalence between language and space by typing words and phrases into the computer. After being automatically processed, language takes the form of a two-dimensional blueprint projected onto the floor of the gallery that allows the visitor to walk ‘through’ it. The semantic relationships of the written words are connected to spatial and contextual configurations and at the same time cause their architectural re-organisation.

http://www.turbulence.org/Works/apartment/#

tiles on wall arrangement

y Giovanna Rinaldi and Misha Davidoff's Final Show

Senior Studio

Apr 30, '09, 6:59 AM

The Method of Loci - The Mental Walk

Method of loci - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

'the method of loci', an imaginal technique known to the ancient Greeks and Romans and described by Yates (1966) in her book The Art of Memory as well as by Luria (1969). In this technique the subject memorizes the layout of some building, or the arrangement of shops on a street, or any geographical entity which is composed of a number of discrete loci. When desiring to remember a set of items the subject literally 'walks' through these loci and commits an item to each one by forming an image between the item and any distinguishing feature of that locus. Retrieval of items is achieved by 'walking' through the loci, allowing the latter to activate the desired items.

The method of loci is also commonly called the mental walk.

In basic terms, it is a method of memory enhancement which uses visualization to organize and recall information. Many memory contest champions claim to use this technique in order to recall faces, digits, and lists of words.

more to do with their technique of using regions of their brain that have to do with spatial learning

 

It is generally applied to encoding the key ideas of a subject. Two approaches are:

1. Link the key ideas of a subject and then deep-learn those key ideas in relation to each other, and;

2. Think through the key ideas of a subject in depth, re-arrange the ideas in relation to an argument, then link the ideas to loci in good order.

It has been found that teaching such techniques as pure memorization methods often leads students towards surface learning only. Therefore, it has been recommended that the method of loci should be integrated thoroughly with deeper learning approaches.

Example:

During the mental walk, people remember lists of words by mentally walking a familiar route and associating these objects with specific landmarks on their route. An example of this would be to remember your grocery shopping list in a mental walk from your bedroom to kitchen in your house. Let's say the first item on your list was bread; then mentally you can place a loaf of bread on your bed. As you continue mentally walking you can place the next item, assume it is eggs, on your dresser. The mental walk continues like this as you place consecutive items along a familiar route that you walk. So when you are at the grocery store, you can then think about this walk and “see” what you placed at each location. In your head you will remember bread being on your bed, and eggs being on the dresser. This can continue for as many items as you want to place on your path as long as the route continues. The more dramatic the images, the more vivid the memory. For instance: instead of "bread", try to visualize a giant loaf of bread; instead of "eggs", imagine broken eggs all over the place.

Memory - linking landmarks -the roman path

Academictips.org - Memory Techniques, Memorization Tips - The Roman Room Technique

The Roman Room technique is an ancient and effective way of remembering
unstructured information where the relationship of items of information to
other items of information is not important.

It functions by imagining a room (e.g. your sitting room or bedroom). Within that room are objects. The technique works by associating images with those objects.

To recall information,
simply take a tour around the room in your mind, visualising the known objects and their associated images.

Expanding the Roman Room System

The technique can be expanded in one way, by going into more detail, and
keying images to smaller objects. Alternatively you can open doors from the
room you are using into other rooms, and use their objects to expand the
volume of information stored. When you have more experience you may find
that you can build extensions to your rooms in your imagination, and populate
them with objects that would logically be there.

Other rooms can be used to store other categories of information.

Moreover, there is no need to restrict this information to rooms: you could
use a view or a town you know well, and populate it with memory images.

Summary

The Roman Room technique is similar to the Journey method, in that it works
by pegging images coding for information to known images, in this case to
objects in a room or several rooms.

The Roman Room technique is most effective for storing lists of unlinked
information, whereas the journey method is most effective for storing lists
of related items.

Curiosity Cabnet, Cabinet of Wonder, Wonder-room

Cabinet of curiosities - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A cabinet of curiosities was an encyclopedic collection in Renaissance Europe of types of objects whose categorical boundaries were yet to be defined. They were also known by various names such as Cabinet of Wonder, and in German Kunstkammer or Wunderkammer (wonder-room).

File:Berlin Naturkundemuseum Korallen.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Modern terminology would categorize the objects included as belonging to natural history (sometimes faked), geology, ethnography,archaeology, religious or historical relics, works of art (including cabinet paintings) and antiquities. "The Kunstkammer was regarded as a microcosm or theater of the world, and a memory theater. The Kunstkammer conveyed symbolically the patron's control of the world through its indoor, microscopic reproduction."^[1] Of Charles I of England's collection, Peter Thomas has succinctly stated, "TheKunstkabinett itself was a form of propaganda".^[2] Besides the most famous and best documented cabinets of rulers and aristocrats, members of the merchant class and early practitioners of science in Europe also formed collections that were precursors to museums.

Several internet bloggers describe their sites as a wunderkammer, either because they are primarily made up of links to things that are interesting, or because they inspire wonder in a similar manner to the original wunderkammer (see External Links, below). Robert Gehl describes internet video sites like YouTube as modern-day Wunderkammern, although in danger of being refined into capitalist institutions, "just as professionalized curators refined Wunderkammers into the modern museum in the 18th century."^[19] Playwright Jordan Harrison's Museum Play is structurally based around the cabinets, habitats and hallways of a natural history museum.

Content is Queen - composite collage

today and tomorrow

 

“Content is Queen” is a new project by Sergio Albiac, it is a generative video painting that comments on democracy and power.

At the same time, is a paradoxical dialogue and strange marriage between the banal and utterly majestic: to create the series, the most popular (in a truly democratic sense) internet videos of a given moment are used as the input of a generative process that “paints” with action the image of a contemporary Queen.

You might also want to check out a more static version by Sergio called “Divided Experiences“.

 

NONOBJECT - THE CHARGED SPACE BETWEEN THE USER AND THE PRODUC

 

ESSENCE | NONOBJECT

We look beyond the object itself, Inside and out // We focus on the ethos that defines the meaning of a product and its function and purpose. Using our unique approach, we are able to create products that move you, that challenge conventional wisdom, that embrace positive and meaningful experiences.

 OUR FOCUS IS NOT JUST THE PERFECT DESIGN SOLUTION BUT THE CHARGED SPACE BETWEEN THE USER AND THE PRODUCT. THE INTANGIBLE SPACE THAT DEFINES THE EXPERIENCE AND ENABLES DEEPER CONNECTIONS

 

Forgetting to Remember/ Remembering to Forget

Cultural Memory: Forgetting to Remember/ Remembering to Forget | Réseau européen d'études littéraires comparées / European Network for Comparative Literary Studies

Cultural Memory: Forgetting to Remember/ Remembering to Forget

memory is not just an individual, private experience but is also part of the collective domai

Cultural memory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Because memory is not just an individual, private experience but is also part of the collective domain, cultural memory has become a topic in both historiography (Pierre Nora, Richard Terdiman) and cultural studies (e.g., Susan Stewart). These emphasize cultural memory’s process (historiography) and its implications and objects (cultural studies), respectively. Memory is a phenomenon that is directly related to the present; our perception of the past is always influenced by the present, which means that it is always changing.

lieux de mémoire - The memorial site / remember in terms of the photograph – or they can serve as a reminder of our propensity to forget

Stewart, for example, claims that our culture has changed from a culture of production to a culture of consumption.

These specific objects can refer to either a distant time (an antique) or a distant (exotic) place. Stewart explains how our souvenirs authenticate our experiences and how they are a survival sign of events that exist only through the invention of narrative.

Catherine Keenan explains how the act of taking a picture can underline the importance of remembering, both individually and collectively. Also she states that pictures cannot only stimulate or help memory, but can rather eclipse the actual memory – when we remember in terms of the photograph – or they can serve as a reminder of our propensity to forget. Others have argued that photographs can be incorporated in memory and therefore supplement it.

Nora pioneered connecting memory to physical, tangible locations, nowadays globally known and incorporated as lieux de mémoire

lieux de mémoire - The memorial site is a historical concept put forward by the book Places of Memory, published under the direction of Pierre Nora between 1984 and 1992. Nora is equally well known for having directed Les Lieux de Mémoire, three volumes which gave as their point the work of enumerating the places and the objects in which are the incarnate national memory of the French.  According to Pierre Nora , "a place of memory in every sense of the word is going to be the most tangible and concrete, possibly geographically located at the object more abstract and intellectually constructed. " It may therefore be a monument , a prominent figure, a museum , the archives , as well as a symbol of a currency , an event orinstitution .

"An object becomes a place of memory when he escaped oblivion, for example with the display of commemorative plaques, and when a community reinvestment of its emotionand its emotions . "

Individuals remember events and experiences some of which they share with a collective. Through mutual reconstruction and recounting collective memory is reconstructed. Individuals are born into familial discourse which already provides a backdrop of communal memories against which individual memories are shaped.A group's communal memory becomes its common knowledge which creates a social bond, a sense of belonging and identity. Memory work - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

it is perception driven by a longing for authenticity that colors memory, which is made clear by a desire to experience the real (Susan Stewart)

Memory work - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

group's

Robert Gober Nursery wallpapers

Why Not... A Robert Gober Nursery? - Daddy Types

 

I've always loved the cute-but-unsettling evocations of vestigial childhood memories that adhere to the incredible, hand-made sculptures of Robert Gober. And it continues to surprise me that no one has ever licensed Gober baby furniture--actually, that doesn't surprise me at all. But at least, why has no one created a Gober-inspired nursery?

I mean, the actual crib and playpen sculptures are problematic because a) they're sculptures, not functional objects, so b) they're often distorted or incomplete, c) they probably run about a million dollars apiece if they ever came to market at all, d) if you did manage to get one of the rare, 4-sided, right-angled works, the conservation risks of having a teething kid gnaw on the rail might keep you up at night, and the real dealbreaker, d) the spindles are spaced more than the CPSC-mandated 2 3/8 inches apart, which could pose a strangulation or entrapment hazard.