Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

--- memory_code [2021-04-12 13:25] – theunkarelse
+++ memory_code [2023-02-10 10:34] – theunkarelse
@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-==== Memory Code ====
+==== Monster Code ====
-Title of the book by Lynne Kelley. Ways of encoding environmental, ethological and cultural knowledge directly into the environment (or objects). Oral cultures tap into two immensely powerful forms of human memory for storing knowledge:
+//Monster// refers to imagination. //Code// refers to encoding things geographically. The name is an adaptation of //Memory Code// the title of the book by Lynne Kelley, on ways of encoding environmental, ethological and cultural knowledge directly into the environment (or objects). Oral cultures tap into two immensely powerful forms of human memory for storing knowledge:
-  * **our memory for geography**: we may not be great at remembering list, but we are amazingly good at remembering places. Imagine your house. Almost nobody struggles to remember where the living room, bedroom, kitchen, toilet are, or even the furniture in those rooms. Modern memory champions still use this technique known as a memory-palace. Often the greek [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci|method of loci]] is pointed out as its origin, but that vastly underestimates how fundamental these principles were, stretching over tens of thousands of years of human history and across all continents.
+  * monster: **our memory of character**: you may forget someones name, but you never struggle to remember someones personality. More then “thinking stones and mountains are alive” oral cultures they give their landscape character.
-  * **our memory of character**: you may forget someones name, but you never struggle to remember someones personality. More then “thinking stones and mountains are alive” oral cultures they give their landscape character.
+  * code: **our memory for geography**: we may not be great at remembering list, but we are amazingly good at remembering places. Imagine your house. Almost nobody struggles to remember where the living room, bedroom, kitchen, toilet are, or even the furniture in those rooms. Modern memory champions still use this technique known as a memory-palace. Often the greek [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci|method of loci]] is pointed out as its origin, but that vastly underestimates how fundamental these principles were, stretching over tens of thousands of years of human history and across all continents.
-==== Hiking with Monsters at Amelisweerd 2021/2022 ====
+[[monstercode_intro]]
-Notes on a research program in collaboration with Sjef van Gaalen and Creative Coding Utrecht.
-=== Stage1: Landscape as Mindpalace ===
-=== Stage2: Hiking with Monsters ===
+==== Reading notes ====
-==== Hiking with Monsters at ArtEZ 2020/2021 ====
+=== Stephen Muecke on speaking with Paddy Roe ===
-Notes an a student program run by Theun.
-== Session1 Fieldwork ==
+//“Not only was his (Aboriginal elder Paddy) knowledge not reproduced in books like the ones he nevertheless wanted to write with me, but it had nothing to do with authorship. Knowledge didn’t originate with individuals, and the concept of mind was irrelevant. Knowledge was on the outside; it was held in ‘living Country’. And humans had to get together to animate this knowledge.\\
-  * Intro fieldwork practice
+\\
-  * Assignment: what place would you like to explore, how would you do it?
+As Paddy and I were walking the beautiful coastline north of Broome, he would point out things, tell stories, call out to ancestors, and sing songs that belonged to particular places. The songs were important because they were inspirational (in the original Latin sense of a truth being breathed into someone). Their significance was, and is, multiple: they are handed down from ancestors; they tie human and nonhuman worlds together and animate those connections; they are mnemonic and practical, reminding people, for instance, that this is the place of yarrinyarri, the bush onion.\\
-  * Assignment 4th year: How do you share that exploration with others?
+\\
+But how on Earth does knowledge transfer work without a concept of mind? Understanding, for Paddy, was ‘hearing’ and that was the word he used (as in, ‘that man can’t hear’), equivalent to the French entendre, which also embraces the meanings of hearing and understanding.”//
-== Session2 What lives here now. ==
-  * Intro Nederlands landscape.
-  * Set up whatsapp (or otherwise)
-  * Field assignment: find a creature that interests you, <del>how would you design a way to communicatie with it?</del>
-  * Or what qualities does it have? How do you think it finds its way in the world? Are there talents you share? <del>Name it based on those qualities.</del>
-== Session3 Regeneration ==
-  * Regenerative practices
-  * <del>What would your area need? How can habitat be reinvigorated, restored?</del>
-  * guest: Vasanth Bosco
-  * review assignment last week
-  * Field assignment: Take a 1 hour hike from the perspective of your animal. Try to experience the world through it’s eyes, ears, of antennae. Slow as snail, fast as a bird. Report your experience, what do you notice about the area through the animal perspective?
-  * Design an exercise for others so they can experience the perspective of your animal. How can someone experience the world from that perspective?
-  * <del>Assignment 4th year: How can local people become active participants in that reconnection?</del>
-  * Research assignment: What lived in your area before? What traces are left, if any? What do you think is missing now? What qualities does your environment lack? Choose one quality and propose a way it can be regenerated.
-== Session4 ===
-  * take 4 characteristics or qualities from your animal and give them to a class mate. He/she designs a character based on the qualities and gives you back the 'monster'.
-  * take a 1 hour hike with your monster.
-== Session4 Rewilding ==
-  * <del>What would your area need? Which organisms can regenerate it?</del>
-  * <del>Make groups: if you look at your animals, where are opportunities for coexistence? How could this animal live there? What would be needed? Rewilding.</del>
-  * In groups: what do each of your animals need? Where do their interests match or clash? How could such different needs be brought together? (Multispecies design) (Afterwards give example of  Aboriginal totems).
-  * What timescale do you design for?
-  * Field assignment: what natural cycles are missing, disrupted? How to reconnect. (Any size, tiny ant tunnel)
-== Session5 Team work ==
-  * <del>Based on previous lesson, work in groups on one organism. Who are the experts?</del>
-  * <del>assignment: Design a research team: what kinds of expertise are needed? (What is in it for them?)</del>
-  * <del>assignment 4th year: Design a research week. Location. Team. Question.</del>
-  * <del>(Don’t design the team sitting in your classroom. Do it on location!)</del>
-  * <del>What does your area need? What natural cycles are missing, disrupted? How to reconnect. What qualities are lacking in your area?</del>
-  * Group: Choose one of your animals. Make a list of the qualities of your animal. Give them to an other group and they will design a creature (character design, mythological being) based on those. <del>At the end of the class we see if those Monsters fit their purpose.</del>
-  * field assignment: hike with your Monster through your area: what do you notice from the monsters perspective?
-  * Assignment 4th year: How can the monster / creature activate local people? Or more formally: how can locals people become active participants in reconnecting environmental processes?
-== Session6 Animals as guides ==
-  * <del>What qualities do animals need to thrive? (Elephants memory, bioindicators, animals/plants as messengers)</del>
-  * <del>Ecologist can see this area needs… wolves. (Trophic cascades)</del>
-  * <del>Assignment: (I give 5 animals and plants) in groups: what are the qualities of those animals?</del>
-  * <del>Assignment after class: translate those qualities into a human being a character.</del>
-  * <del>(In what ways does that help to think about the role of animals, in what ways does it hinder?)</del>
-  * Choose an environmental process in your neighbourhood. Translate its properties into a being. Assignment: ask someone else to hike with that Monster.
-== Session7 ==
-  * Qualities of animals and plants in the long now.
-  * Australia and aboriginals. Tending the wild.
-  * Assignment: memory walk
-== Session8 ==
-  * Memory walk field test together.
-  * Assignment: design a multi generational knowledge system. How can our understanding and experience of the environment be shared across time?
-  * (Floppy disc vs. songline)
-== Session10 ==
-  * Discuss the multigenerational knowledge systems.
-==== Reding notes ====
 === Biggest Estate ===
 Bill Gamage, //Biggest Estate on Earth//:
@@ Line 90: / Line 28: @@
   * pg 127 shape signifies life, in death they loose shape, so all things with shape have soul  / Julian Barbour geometry is fundamental to the universe
   * pg 127 the soul passes from one chariot to another and this gives creation order, it moves through a particular set of things created by the same ancestor in the Dreaming.
-  *
-=== Memory Craft ===
-Theun:
+==== Hiking with Monsters at Amelisweerd 2021/2022 ====
-  * The first step is looking at what structure / order makes sense for your 'data': ordered by alphabet, history, habitat, species, colour, etc.
+Notes on a research program in collaboration with Sjef van Gaalen and Creative Coding Utrecht.
-  * Do I store it linearly in geography? (for example a timeline)
-  * Or grouped in a mind palace?(for example species)
+=== Stage1: Monster Code, Landscape as Mindpalace ===
-  * I go through a process of a few days figuring out what the most useful ordering might be and small tests with 5 or so elements trying out ways of storing.
+Monster Code explores techniques for encoding environmental knowledge directly into the environment itself. Imagination (monsters) and geographic memory are key pillars this builds on. Basically associating knowledge to features and hooks in the landscape, by the power of imagination and story. That power is considerable, as evidenced by the practices of oral cultures around the world, showing knowledge remaining intact over thousands of years and spanning thousands of km. People who have started practicing it report their world is filled with new layers of liveliness: you are not just walking to the bakery or office, you are walking through the history of early humans, all indigenous dragonfly species (or whatever you happen to have encoded locally). But we will start at the beginning.
-  * I make small sketches to settle the narrative, otherwise variants keep coming up.
+This first phase of the research is about rapid prototyping, taking subjects and encoding them in different ways into the environment.
-  * Sketching also helps to figure out how much character I need to generate to capture details.
+\\
-  * If characters are needed, what action and prop can I give them?
+Prototyping phase:\\
+  * timeline of presidents encoded into shopping street
+  * timeline of hominids encoded into opposite side of shopping street (each block 1 million years)
+  * mindpalace of damselflies
+==== Memory Craft, hands-on: ====
+=== Theun: ===
+  * The first step is looking at what structure / order makes sense for your 'data': which way of ordering gives you the richest data
+  * Do I store it linearly? (for example a timeline)
+  * Or grouped in a mind palace?(for example animal species)
+  * A mindpalace is more limited to memorising and doesn't engage with the environment at all really
+  * linear / narrative models have a much wider impact than retention of memory, because they help see relationships and patterns
+  * usually there is a process of a few days figuring out what the most useful ordering might be and small tests with 5 or so elements trying out ways of encoding.
+  * You may know an area from memory, but going there physically always gives much more lively associations and surprising "hooks" (things in the environment tat trigger associations).
+  * I make very basic sketches as a shorthand to settle the hooks, associations, narrative, otherwise new variants keep coming up every time I walk through the street. Which is confusing. The sketches help me solidify the most effective associations: like George Washington washing his hair in the beautysalon
+  * This sketching also helps to figure out how much character I need to generate to capture details.
+  * What you are aiming for basically is little "scenes" that just instantly pop up like a flash when you pass the location
+  * If characters are needed, what activity and prop can I give them? (these really help to enliven and thus make stronger the "picture" or little narrative for your data)
   * Later in the process I can see if I need extra emphasis using the physicality of make visible or tangible artefacts to endorse the memories?
-  * Lynne says that once established you will be inclined to do additional research on your subjects, I can confirm that. Making a mind-palace or walk, does trigger curiosity and you start to add more and more details into your subects, hooks, nodes.. (I observe this even after only two or three weeks of full-on experience.)
+  * Lynne says that once established you will be inclined to do additional research on your subjects, I can confirm that. Making a mind-palace or walk, does trigger curiosity and you start to add more and more details into your subjects, hooks, nodes.. (I observe this even after only two or three weeks of full-on engagement.)
-Lynne Kelly, //Memory Craft//:
+=== Lynne Kelly's tips: ===
+From Lynne Kelly, //Memory Craft//
 === First order your data: ===
 No matter what topic you choose, as soon as you have your information structured into some sort of order, you are ready to go.
 === Repeat: ===
 I make new associations at a rate of perhaps a few a day, and revise them later that day, the next day, in a week, and again in a month if I need to.
+  * First review: Immediately
+  * Second review: 24 hours later
+  * Third review: One week later
+  * Fourth review: One month later
+  * Fifth review:Three months later
+(Theun: I do at least 5 to 10 reviews the first days for longer sequences, before it really starts to settle, but apparently with practice this becomes quicker.)
 === Don’t worry there is enough detail: ===
@@ Line 154: / Line 116: @@
   * It may be that the original Neolithic balls were painted to make each knob different. I haven’t found this necessary. With use, I found that each knob is uniquely identifiable. This might be due to its position in my hand as I hold the ball or the slightly different feel as I touch it. I use a ball for short songs from many of my memory experiments. And on another ball half is for my language songs (French, Chinese). The other half is for world geography, where I use a knob for each verse. For example, my Africa song has four verses that are encoded to four sequential knobs. In the verses I move clockwise around the continent, occasionally jumping inward.
-  * I work around each carved ball over a week or so, singing each song in the sequence defined by the wooden balls. I sing in the shower, when cooking or gardening, or while walking in the bush. Every few months at least, each song will be sung. It is my ceremonial cycle.
+  * I work around each carved ball over a week or so, singing each song in the sequence defined by the wooden balls. I sing in the shower, when cooking or gardening, or while walking in the bush. Every few months at least, each song will be sung. It is my '**ceremonial cycle**'.
 === Greek mythology, objects on a tiny stage: ===