“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.

One of the first images of humans, recently discovered

I saw this article on yahoo and thought it was pretty cool:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20101027/od_yblog_upshot/very-early-photographic-images-of-humans-discovered
This image has been recently discovered and is believed to be one of the the first photographic images of humans. This photo is called a daguerreotype - "an image developed via an early photographic process developed in France" - and was taken on Sunday, September 24th, 1848 by Charles Fontayne and William Porter.

A close up of the photo, showing humans

In case you're wondering, below is currently the record holder for oldest photograph of humans - it is a daguerreotype taken by the inventor of the process, Louis Daguerre, in 1838 (says another article attached to this yahoo article).

Artist Book: Mind Games

For my artist's book, I decided after talking with Dawn to do a complete 360 from my original idea. I will now be focusing more on the science of memory - brain and microscopic imagery that is literally a photograph of memory itself, working in a definitive manner. As I said in class, I plan to use various MRI and PET scan images of the brain of patients asked to remember or think about certain things and compare these images to those in a relaxed state of mind. I also intend to compare images of people with Alzheimer's and people on drugs and how those conditions effect their state of memory. I plan to put my book in a doctor's "chart" (if anyone has any suggestions as to how I should keep all the pages together in the chart, please let me know - usually the pages in a chart are just shoved in a manila folder in chronological order). I also plan to use transparencies and print the MRI and PET scan images onto these transparencies (only some images, many overlaying actual images or representations of what the person was supposed to be thinking about since we can't include captions and you wouldn't be able to tell what people were thinking about without some form of explanation), giving them the appearance of x-rays.

I also would like to post the link to the website that I use to get a lot of nice pictures:
http://www.deviantart.com/
Some of my favorite pictures have come from this website, where various artists post their works:

Thoughts on Monday's class

I had a really fun time with the mini-essay exercise that we did in class on Monday. I loved the stream-of-consciousness style and found it fascinating the different kind of answers Melissa and I came up with when we compared them. There were definitely prompts where I wanted to write more, but couldn't; I think that's the fun in it, though - you kind of have to screen your thoughts and come up with something to write about that really makes you think.

Microscopes

I was looking through articles tonight and found this really cool one. As part of the annual Small World Photomicrogaphy Competition sponsored by Nikon, people around the world take pictures of things underneath light microscopes. This is a spin on traditional photography that seems really awesome to me - we can't see the beautiful things that these photographs showcase with the naked eye! You wouldn't think that these photos are what they actually are (especially the soy sauce one). Below are some of the winning photographs from the 2010 competition (top 10), but you can look at more here: http://www.nikonsmallworld.com/gallery/year/2010/1

Mosquito Heart

Living specimen of red seaweed (40x)

Bird of paradise seed (10x)

Crystallized Soy Sauce (note the smiley face)

Ctenocephalides canis

Endothelial cell attached to synthetic microfibers

5-day old zebrafish head

Cacoxenite - a mineral

Zebrafish olfactory bulbs

Wasp nest (10x)

Some others that I thought were cool:

Soap film

Wasp eye

Baby mollusc

Memory

I love being home and spending time with my Mom and Dad. They are the best ever and are so awesome and I love them so much. I am the luckiest daughter on the planet. When my Mom was talking with my Uncle during fall break, she started telling the story of how my cousins were adopted. My Aunt adopted 4 children, 3 of which are biological sisters (adopted at the same time). I remembered this, of course - but what I had forgotten was that I was friends with my cousin before she came my cousin. Once my Mom started talking about it, I remembered being in first grade with her, and she would come over and have sleep overs at my house all the time, joking that my parents should adopt her, not really understanding what was going on at the time. Then, my Aunt decided to adopt her and make her part of our family, not knowing that I knew her beforehand. Small world, right?

I thought it this instance was notable because this detail is one that I forgot about my cousin, it has been a while since I told the story of how they were adopted. I had forgotten a most important detail until now, and I hopefully won't forget it again. My life would definitely not be the same without my cousins and I love them so much, and will never forget the memories we have together!

One of my favorite pictures of them :)

P.S. I didn't include names because I was not sure whether or not my family would be ok with me including their names.

Beach

During fall break, I decided to go home on Saturday and Sunday to spend some time with my family. On Saturday, my Mom and I decided to stop by the beach on our way home from my Dad's work and walk along the beach. I haven't been to the beach since the summer, and I miss it a lot and feel land-locked at Rollins now that I'm not sailing. The smell of the salty air brings back so many memories - I swear, our beaches have a specific smell to them, one that I love, one that I have not beheld anywhere else. That smell itself brings back so many happy times for me with my family and friends, lying in the sun or playing in the water.