“Exploring Our Potential: Remembering Not to Forget” Summary Statement

The theme of my final studio project is a scientific and natural journey through the world of memory by viewing photographs of our brain, parts of our brain activated in memory usage, and relating these parts to the natural world. The mind and how memory can be viewed through photographs of the mind is the subject of my artist’s book because the brain is relatively unexplored, yet it is so essential to our memory and to our survival. Most of the images included in my artist’s book are normally used for scientific and medical reasons, so the book rests within a medical chart. Blender-pen technique was used on the cover to integrate the photograph used with the cover of the book, as well as to give it a faded appearance. Scrapbooking letters were used on the cover, as well as toward the end of the book, to give the text a raised appearance as well as to set the text apart from the rest of the page. Several magnetic resonance images (MRIs) were used, which are photographs of the brain. Different MRI’s highlight the parts of the brain that are being used during memory tasks, and my project showcases these parts through the use of transparencies as well as through various photographs. The images are grouped together to showcase the deterioration of memory. The progression of the photographs and my book moves first from photographs of the healthy adult brain, and how it processes memory, to (with the transition made by the 6-part sequential faded photograph to show how our memories of certain events fade over time) photographs of an unhealthy adult brain. Patient A has Alzheimer’s disease, and Patient B has Korsakoff’s syndrome (the syndrome that Jimmy had in “The Lost Mariner”). The photographs then shift focus from photographs of the microscopic workings of the mind, to city lights, and to an image of space. This progression of similar-looking photographs is important to showcase how, like the system of space, the specific processes by which the system of memory functions remain a mystery to us.

Photograph-Induced Memory Errors

I found this article while I was doing research for my artist's book.
It is very interesting and relevant to what we are learning in class. It talks about how photographs can influence our memory - like that movie we watched where they influenced someones memory of a picnic with pictures of the picnic that did or did not happen. However similar, this article gives us another view on this topic.
Photograph-Induced Memory Errors
http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/lhenkel/Henkel%20ACP%20in%20press%202009%20CORRECTED%20PROOFS%20pix%20&%20memory.pdf

The End?

I found this picture in an article about Global Warming, and how numbers are showing that more people are saying that they do not believe in global warming. Regardless of what you believe, I thought that this picture was kind of cool. I have no idea why it spoke to me, it just did.

Microscopic

As a spin off of one of my other blog posts, this week I was looking at photographs from Olympus' BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition in which photographers and scientists focus on microscopic images. I found this one:

of a rat hippocampus, which was stained to reveal the distribution of glia, neurofilaments, and cell nuclei.
I thought this picture was awesome and particularly pertained to my artist's book, for which I also found this photograph:

which is also a picture of stained rat neurons and brain cells.

And with our minds, we have created our cities and dwellings:

Yet we have so much yet to explore and create.
 I plan to relate all of this to the limitless nature of our own minds, which are relatively unexplored spaces with momentous potential.

Intuition

While I was sitting at dinner with Drew and Melissa, Drew mentioned that there was a concert in the area yesterday given by a classic 90s band (whose name I can't remember, and I can't remember the song either, which is kind of ironic). When Drew mentioned the name of the band, I swore that I had never heard of them, but a song popped into my head. Still swearing I had never heard of them, Drew started singing the song - and it was the same song I that popped into my head.
I was wondering how this concept (even though I can't remember the names of the band or song) applies to memory - what kind of memory is this? Was it lying dormant, in a sense, until Drew saying something about it triggered the memory of the song?
Also, how does the concept of deja vu come into play?

Pictures of the Week

Every once and a while, I find the time to look through Time Magazine's pictures of the week and I thought I would share a few with you - from this weeks pictures back to October 19th. These pictures, to me, capture the essence of what is occurring all around the world. It amazes me the depth of emotion these photographs display, from joy to terror, from sorrow to humor.

Readings

As I was reading through "Matter and Memory," I was very frustrated and confounded by the assertions Bergson used (he used various shaky claims, beliefs, and ruled many claims to be universal without proof to prove his points correct, which bothers me... and I think Russell has a problem with this too). However, I found myself liking a theory that Bergson came up with and didn't want to post it on Bb because it's not a question, so I decided to write it on here. I broke it down into this summary:

Present perception = one link on a totality of objects "chain"

Our memories form a similar chain

Our character = synthesis of all our past states

I really like this theory that he has asserted due to the fact that I believe that all of our past experiences and what we have learned as people throughout our lives lend to our development as a person. We existed in many different forms of ourselves and have morphed as we have grown through the years. All of these states are "synthesized" into our character and contribute to it.