When I first had an understanding of the concept of memory as a child, I committed myself to the lifelong practice of filling one's days with the art of memory making…viewing the act as something one would have control over. The importance of an event to be "memorable" overtook its relative level of pleasure of pain. When I was a young teenager, I experienced my first act of a memory that's pain overtook my prior practice, and for the first time experienced the need to repress memory. Repression did not work, and so I attempted to re-construct the event in my head, to give myself a new memory. To this day, the events of that time are unclear to me under the terms false or true.
Our sense of identity, of who we are and what we have done, is tied to our life of memory. But a vivid and and detailed memory may be based upon inaccurate reconstruction of facts, or self-created impressions that appear to have actually occurred. My family teases me to this day for stating as I child I clearly remembered holding my older brother as a baby on my lap. What they don't know is, this memory is still real to me. Continuity or memory is no guarantee of truth; disruption of memory is no guarantee of falsity. Memory is believed to be a reconstructed phenomenon, and so can be strongly influenced by expectation, emotions, the implied beliefs of others, inappropriate interpretation, or desired outcome. Is the measure of a life well lived based on the quality of memories?
Then what of missing memory? Of a trauma that forces the memory into repression, or forces a disassociation, or a false memory…invented memories taken as true due to gaps in memory.
An example given to visualize how memory works is this…on a book cover, drop a single drop of water, tilt the book and let the drop flow a stream. Right the book, the drop another drop of water in the same place as the former. Tilt the book again in a different direction…the drop will still flow in the prior created stream.
Over The Eyes, inspired by the old saying…"to pull the wool over the eyes", is a multimedia installation proposed to be made in September for a residency through Binaural, an arts organization based in Nodar, Portugal.
My desire is to create an environment that, using all of the senses, provokes the viewer into thought and contemplation about the mystery of memory. One of Nodar's main industries is wool. I will talk with local farmers about the process of sheep shearing, recording the conversations. This will be incorporated into the sound design of the installation, an eight-channel surround system, along with field recordings of the area, and text on physiological, biological, and psychological aspects to memory creation and destruction in humans. For the environment, I plan to purchase 5 pounds of local wool in which I will weave and felt to create a structure of "gray matter", much like our minds. Within these passages will be projected images of found home movies, discarded recorded "memories" from thrift stores and junk yards, methodically being erased by a super-imposed act of sheep shearing.