http://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/api.php?action=feedcontributions&user=Gillian+Young&feedformat=atomDead Media Archive - User contributions [en]2024-03-29T14:52:40ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.25.2http://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Nautical_Figureheads&diff=9861Nautical Figureheads2010-05-03T16:18:51Z<p>Gillian Young: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category:Proposed Dossier]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Nautical_Figureheads&diff=9860Nautical Figureheads2010-05-03T16:17:50Z<p>Gillian Young: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category: proposed dossiers]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Nautical_Figureheads&diff=9859Nautical Figureheads2010-05-03T16:17:05Z<p>Gillian Young: Created page with 'Category: Proposed Dossiers'</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category: Proposed Dossiers]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9858Ether2010-05-03T16:11:57Z<p>Gillian Young: </p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge 8). Signifying presence in the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image that can only indicate and sustain ontologies.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on an airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses signification and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether pertains to the “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265) outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and plane of pure immanence. On one level, ether has undergirded dualities that it mediates via transcendence, serving as a presence predicated on absence. On another, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the identification of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression, where Being refuses an appeal to transcendence or ontological hierarchy (McLean 232).<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: chainofbeing.jpg|200px|thumb|left|The Aristotelian universe remediated as the Great Chain of Being in 1579, depicting a divinely inspired universal hierarchy.]]<br />
The origins of ether in Western philosophy are typically traced to Aristotle, whose theory of the universal elements included “aither” as a ''quinta essentia'', or fifth essense (Cantor and Hodge 4). Aristotelian ether was a sempiternal substance that bathed and preserved the heavenly bodies in perpetual, circular motion (5). Though ether was confined to the divine sphere above the sky, it had an analogue on earth: pneuma, the breath and spirit that animated terrestrial life (5). Aristotle’s conception of ether thus both preserved the divine cosmos as incorruptible and absolute and, through pneuma, mediated between heaven and earth. Even though it was “a product of the pagan worship of sun and moon and planets” (Russell 199), the hierarchical structure of the universe and the possibility of transcendence signified by Aristotle’s conception of ether was co-opted by Christian theologians and held sway into the Renaissance. <br />
<br />
In the 1st century BCE, however, the Roman poet Lucretius integrated the idea of ether into very different, non-hierarchized ontology: the atomist tradition of Empedocles and Democritus. As Siegfried Zielinski writes, the atomists did “not think of the infinite multiplicity of things in terms of any hierarchical order. Nothing is above anything else; everything exists side-by-side, in motion, and with constant interpenetration” (Zielinski 47). Elaborating this philosophy which prefigures modern particle physics, “Lucretius’s cosmogony starts with the formation of the earth from a mindless rushing of atoms driven only by their weight and their collisions with others” (Cantor and Hodge 7). While the heavier atoms link up to make the earth, the lighter atoms are squeezed out as a fiery ether that, with air, both congeals into and surrounds the moon, sun, stars, and planets. In contrast to Aristotle’s idea of ether as a substance that preserved the heavenly bodies as absolute, in Lucretius’ theory ether “is not, ultimately, special at all” (8), but is comprised, like the rest of the universe, of a particular particle density that both sustains and is subject to constant flux. As Stuart McLean observes, “such a materialism, in focusing on the emergence and dissolution of apparently stable forms, refuses…any absolute distinction”: “[p]hysical bodies, sensations, and products of the imagination thus share the same origin and the same materiality” (McLean 225). In the atomist tradition, which holds that images and material bodies are continuous, ether is at once a simulacra (the product of sensation and imagination) ''and'' materiality (a physical body).<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
In the late 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell theorized ether as a substance present in empty space in order to explain how light waves propagate in a void. Just as sound waves travel through air, Maxwell hypothesized, light waves travel through and relative to the ether (Hawking 20). As John Durham Peters notes, Maxwell characterized the ether as a heavenly substance in the Aristotelian and Newtonian lineage, rich with the divine potential of communicability. As Maxwell writes,<br />
<br />
''The vast interplanetary and interstellar regions will no longer be regarded as waste places in the universe, which the Creator has not seen fit to fill with the symbols of the manifold order of His kingdom. We shall find them to be already full of this wonderful medium; so full, that no human power can remove it from the smallest portion of space, or produce the slightest flaw in its infinite continuity'' (qtd. in Peters 102).<br />
<br />
Despite this “infinite continuity” Maxwell understands to allow action at a distance, Peters observes that Maxwell’s conception of ether also signified modern problems of communication. In one experiment, for example, Maxwell presses two lenses together to depict the space that intervenes between bodies. Even when the lenses are visibly sealed together, when he shone a light through them, a visible ring indicated their separation: which Maxwell perceived as the negation of “absolute contact” (qtd. in Peters 178). Maxwell thus “states a major theme in modernist art and literature,” Peters writes, where “the problem of communication becomes not only one of getting messages across the waste expanses traversed by the telegraph wires or the interference-prone ‘ether’ of radio transmission, but one of making contact with the person sitting next to you” (Peters 178). While at this time ether was used to describe the propagation of radio waves and wireless broadcast (“the Ethernet”), the medium also allowed for the conception of the atomized ontological space that characterizes Modernity. <br />
<br />
Both Maxwell’s conception of a crystalline space that propagates light and the atomized notion of social space that Durham observes prefigure the idea of particle physics formulated by Albert Einstein in 1905. “Overthrowing the concept of a universal ‘now,’” (Wilczek 85) Einstein’s theory of special relativity debunked absolute space and Maxwell’s concept of the ether as a spatial constant. Though he is typically credited with laying ether to rest, in 1920, Einstein stated that “according to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable,” because “to deny ether is ultimately to assume that empty space has no physical qualities whatever” (qtd. in Cantor and Hodge 53-4). Einstein's recuperation of ether thus had a significant role in the dissolution of absolute ontological and physical categories into the immanent, atomic vision of the universe initially conceptualized by the atomists.<br />
<br />
== Where does the ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: large-hadron-collider.jpg|300px|thumb|The Large Hadron Collider, 2010.]]<br />
Despite Einstein’s redemption of the medium, as the physicist Frank Wilczek describes, even the modern iteration of ether “bears the stigma of dead ideas” (Wilczek 74). Nevertheless, Wilczek employs the term as a kind of placeholder to theorize the phenomenon of superconductivity: “where a space-filling material ether…does the conducting” (96). While “we don’t really know what this new material ether is,” we do “know it’s name: the Higgs condensate” (96). Ether may finally be put to rest 574 feet beneath the Franco-Swiss border. If the Large Hadron Collider succeeds in proving the existence of the Higgs boson through high-energy particle collisions, the role of ether as a representation and a potentiality could be ultimately rendered obsolete. Such a teleological plan(e), however, would obscure the immanent expression which characterizes ether as a medium.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
Bachelard, Gaston. ''The Poetics of Space''. Boston: Beacon Press, 1958.<br />
<br />
Cantor, G.N. and M.J.S. Hodge, eds. ''Conceptions of Ether: Studies in the history of ether theories, 1740-1900''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.<br />
<br />
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. ''A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.<br />
<br />
Hawking, Stephen. ''A Brief History of Time''. Rev. ed. New York: Bantam Books, 1996.<br />
<br />
McLean, Stuart. “Stories and Cosmogonies: Imagining Creativity Beyond ‘Nature’ and ‘Culture’.” ''Cultural Anthropology'', Vol. 2, Issue 2, pp. 213-245.<br />
<br />
Milutis, Joe. ''Ether: The Nothing That Connects Everything''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
Peters, John Durham. ''Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.<br />
<br />
Russell, Bertrand. ''History of Western Philosophy''. Rev. ed. London: Routledge Classics, 2004.<br />
<br />
Wilczek, Frank. ''The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces''. New York: Basic Books, 2008.<br />
<br />
Zielinski, Siegfried. ''Deep Time of the Media''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: representation]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9852Ether2010-05-03T15:51:21Z<p>Gillian Young: </p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge 8). Signifying presence in the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image that can only indicate and sustain ontologies.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on an airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses signification and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether pertains to the “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265) outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and plane of pure immanence. On one level, ether has undergirded dualities that it mediates via transcendence, serving as a presence predicated on absence. On another, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the identification of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression, where Being refuses an appeal to transcendence or ontological hierarchy (McLean 232).<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: chainofbeing.jpg|200px|thumb|left|The Aristotelian universe remediated as the Great Chain of Being in 1579, depicting a divinely inspired universal hierarchy.]]<br />
The origins of ether in Western philosophy are typically traced to Aristotle, whose theory of the universal elements included “aither” as a ''quinta essentia'', or fifth essense (Cantor and Hodge 4). Aristotelian ether was a sempiternal substance that bathed and preserved the heavenly bodies in perpetual, circular motion (5). Though ether was confined to the divine sphere above the sky, it had an analogue on earth: pneuma, the breath and spirit that animated terrestrial life (5). Aristotle’s conception of ether thus both preserved the divine cosmos as incorruptible and absolute and, with pneuma, mediated between heaven and earth. Even though it was “a product of the pagan worship of sun and moon and planets” (Russell 199), the hierarchical structure of the universe and the possibility of transcendence signified by Aristotle’s conception of ether was co-opted by Christian theologians and held sway into the Renaissance. <br />
<br />
In the 1st century BCE, however, the Roman poet Lucretius integrated the idea of ether into very different, non-hierarchized ontology: the atomist tradition of Empedocles and Democritus. As Siegfried Zielinski writes, the atomists did “not think of the infinite multiplicity of things in terms of any hierarchical order. Nothing is above anything else; everything exists side-by-side, in motion, and with constant interpenetration” (Zielinski 47). “Lucretius’s cosmogony starts with the formation of the earth from a mindless rushing of atoms driven only by their weight and their collisions with others” (Cantor and Hodge 7). While the heavier atoms link up to make the earth, the lighter atoms are squeezed out as a fiery ether that, with air, both congeals into and surrounds the moon, sun, stars, and planets. In contrast to Aristotle’s idea of ether as a substance that preserved the heavenly bodies as absolute, in Lucretius’ theory ether “is not, ultimately, special at all” (8), but is comprised, like the rest of the universe, of a particular particle density that both sustains and is subject to constant flux. As Stuart McLean observes, “such a materialism, in focusing on the emergence and dissolution of apparently stable forms, refuses…any absolute distinction”: “[p]hysical bodies, sensations, and products of the imagination thus share the same origin and the same materiality” (McLean 225). In the atomist tradition, which prefigures contemporary particle physics, ether is at once an image or simulacra (the product of sensation and imagination) ''and'' materiality (a physical body).<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
In the late 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell theorized ether as a substance present in empty space in order to explain how light waves propagate in a void. Just as sound waves travel through air, Maxwell hypothesized, light waves travel through and relative to the ether (Hawking 20). As John Durham Peters notes, Maxwell characterized the ether as a heavenly substance in the Aristotelian and Newtonian lineage, rich with the divine potential of communicability. As Maxwell writes,<br />
<br />
''The vast interplanetary and interstellar regions will no longer be regarded as waste places in the universe, which the Creator has not seen fit to fill with the symbols of the manifold order of His kingdom. We shall find them to be already full of this wonderful medium; so full, that no human power can remove it from the smallest portion of space, or produce the slightest flaw in its infinite continuity'' (qtd. in Peters 102).<br />
<br />
Despite this “infinite continuity” Maxwell understands to allow action at a distance, Peters observes that Maxwell’s conception of ether also signified modern problems of communication. In one experiment, for example, Maxwell presses two lenses together to depict the space that intervenes between bodies. Even when the lenses are visibly sealed together, when he shone a light through them, a visible ring signified their separation: which Maxwell perceived as the negation of “absolute contact” (qtd. in Peters 178). Maxwell thus “states a major theme in modernist art and literature,” Peters writes, where “the problem of communication becomes not only one of getting messages across the waste expanses traversed by the telegraph wires or the interference-prone ‘ether’ of radio transmission, but one of making contact with the person sitting next to you” (Peters 178). While at this time ether was used to describe the propagation of radio waves and wireless broadcast (“the Ethernet”), the medium also allowed for the conception of an atomized, ontological space. <br />
<br />
Both Maxwell’s conception of a crystalline space that propagates light and the atomized notion of social space that Durham observes prefigure the idea of particle physics formulated by Albert Einstein in 1905. “Overthrowing the concept of a universal ‘now,’” (Wilczek 85) Einstein’s theory of special relativity debunked absolute space and Maxwell’s concept of the ether as a spatial constant. Though he is typically credited with laying ether to rest, in 1920, Einstein stated that “according to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable,” because “to deny ether is ultimately to assume that empty space has no physical qualities whatever” (qtd. in Cantor and Hodge 53-4). Einstein's recuperation of ether thus allowed for the dissolution of absolute ontological categories in the immanent, atomic vision of the universe initially conceptualized by the atomists.<br />
<br />
== Where does the ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: large-hadron-collider.jpg|300px|thumb|The Large Hadron Collider, 2010.]]<br />
Despite Einstein’s redemption of ether, as the physicist Frank Wilczek describes, even the modern iteration of ether “bears the stigma of dead ideas” (Wilczek 74). Nevertheless, Wilczek employs the term as a kind of placeholder to theorize the phenomenon of superconductivity: “where a space-filling material ether…does the conducting” (96). While “we don’t really know what this new material ether is,” we do “know it’s name: the Higgs condensate” (96). Ether may finally be put to rest 574 feet beneath the Franco-Swiss border. If the Large Hadron Collider succeeds in proving the existence of the Higgs boson through high-energy particle collisions, the role of ether as a representation and a potentiality could be ultimately rendered obsolete. Such a teleological plan(e), however, would obscure the immanent expression which characterizes ether as a medium.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
Bachelard, Gaston. ''The Poetics of Space''. Boston: Beacon Press, 1958.<br />
<br />
Cantor, G.N. and M.J.S. Hodge, eds. ''Conceptions of Ether: Studies in the history of ether theories, 1740-1900''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.<br />
<br />
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. ''A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.<br />
<br />
Hawking, Stephen. ''A Brief History of Time''. Rev. ed. New York: Bantam Books, 1996.<br />
<br />
McLean, Stuart. “Stories and Cosmogonies: Imagining Creativity Beyond ‘Nature’ and ‘Culture’.” ''Cultural Anthropology'', Vol. 2, Issue 2, pp. 213-245.<br />
<br />
Milutis, Joe. ''Ether: The Nothing That Connects Everything''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
Peters, John Durham. ''Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.<br />
<br />
Russell, Bertrand. ''History of Western Philosophy''. Rev. ed. London: Routledge Classics, 2004.<br />
<br />
Wilczek, Frank. ''The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces''. New York: Basic Books, 2008.<br />
<br />
Zielinski, Siegfried. ''Deep Time of the Media''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: representation]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9726Ether2010-04-26T17:23:20Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane */</p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge, 8). Signifying presence in the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image that can only indicate and sustain ontologies.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on an airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses signification and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether pertains to the “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265) outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and plane of pure immanence. On one level, ether has undergirded dualities that it mediates via transcendence, serving as presence in relation to an absence. On another, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the instantiation of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression (McLean 232).<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: chainofbeing.jpg|200px|thumb|left|The Aristotelian universe remediated as the Great Chain of Being in 1579, depicting a divinely inspired universal hierarchy.]]<br />
The origins of ether in Western philosophy are typically traced to Aristotle, whose theory of the universal elements included “aither” as a ''quinta essentia'', or fifth essense (Cantor and Hodge 4). Aristotelian ether was a sempiternal substance that bathed and preserved the heavenly bodies in perpetual, circular motion (5). Though ether was confined to the divine sphere above the sky, it had an analogue on earth: pneuma, the breath and spirit that animated terrestrial life (5). Aristotle’s conception of ether thus both preserved the divine cosmos as incorruptible and absolute and, with pneuma, mediated between heaven and earth. Even though it was “a product of the pagan worship of sun and moon and planets” (Russell 199), the hierarchical structure of the universe and the possibility of transcendence signified by Aristotle’s conception of ether was co-opted by Christian theologians and held sway into the Renaissance. <br />
<br />
In the 1st century BCE, however, the Roman poet Lucretius integrated the idea of ether into very different, non-hierarchized ontology: the atomist tradition of Empedocles and Democritus. As Siegfried Zielinski writes, the atomists did “not think of the infinite multiplicity of things in terms of any hierarchical order. Nothing is above anything else; everything exists side-by-side, in motion, and with constant interpenetration” (Zielinski 47). “Lucretius’s cosmogony starts with the formation of the earth from a mindless rushing of atoms driven only by their weight and their collisions with others” (Cantor and Hodge 7). While the heavier atoms link up to make the earth, the lighter atoms are squeezed out as a fiery ether that, with air, both congeals into and surrounds the moon, sun, stars, and planets. In contrast to Aristotle’s idea of ether as a substance that preserved the heavenly bodies as absolute, in Lucretius’ theory ether “is not, ultimately, special at all” (8), but is comprised, like the rest of the universe, of a particular particle density that is both sustains and is subject to constant flux. As Stuart McLean observes, “such a materialism, in focusing on the emergence and dissolution of apparently stable forms, refuses…any absolute distinction”: “[p]hysical bodies, sensations, and products of the imagination thus share the same origin and the same materiality” (McLean 225). In the atomist tradition, which prefigures contemporary particle physics, ether is at once an image or simulacra (the product of sensation and imagination) ''and'' materiality (a physical body).<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
In the late 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell theorized ether as a substance present in empty space in order to explain how light waves propagate in a void. Just as sound waves travel through air, Maxwell hypothesized, light waves travel through and relative to the ether (Hawking 20). As John Durham Peters notes, Maxwell characterized the ether as a heavenly substance in the Aristotelian and Newtonian lineage, rich with the divine potential of communicability. As Maxwell writes,<br />
<br />
''The vast interplanetary and interstellar regions will no longer be regarded as waste places in the universe, which the Creator has not seen fit to fill with the symbols of the manifold order of His kingdom. We shall find them to be already full of this wonderful medium; so full, that no human power can remove it from the smallest portion of space, or produce the slightest flaw in its infinite continuity'' (qtd. in Peters 102).<br />
<br />
Despite this “infinite continuity” Maxwell understands to allow action at a distance, Peters observes that Maxwell’s conception of ether also signified modern problems of communication. In one experiment, for example, Maxwell presses two lenses together to depict the space that intervenes between bodies. Even when the lenses are visibly sealed together, when he shone a light through them, a visible ring signified their separation: which Maxwell perceived as the negation of “absolute contact” (qtd. in Peters 178). Maxwell thus “states a major theme in modernist art and literature,” Peters writes, where “the problem of communication becomes not only one of getting messages across the waste expanses traversed by the telegraph wires or the interference-prone ‘ether’ of radio transmission, but one of making contact with the person sitting next to you” (Peters 178). While at this time ether was used to describe the propagation of radio waves and wireless broadcast (“the Ethernet”), the medium also allowed for the conception of an atomized, ontological space. <br />
<br />
Both Maxwell’s conception of a crystalline space that propagates light and the atomized notion of social space that Durham observes prefigure the idea of particle physics formulated by Albert Einstein in 1905. “Overthrowing the concept of a universal ‘now,’” (Wilczek 85) Einstein’s theory of special relativity debunked absolute space and Maxwell’s concept of the ether as a spatial constant. Though he is typically credited with laying ether to rest, in 1920, Einstein stated that “according to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable,” because “to deny ether is ultimately to assume that empty space has no physical qualities whatever” (qtd. in Cantor and Hodge 53-4). Einstein's recuperation of ether thus allowed for the dissolution of absolute ontological categories in the immanent, atomic vision of the universe initially conceptualized by the atomists.<br />
<br />
== Where does the ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: large-hadron-collider.jpg|300px|thumb|The Large Hadron Collider, 2010.]]<br />
Despite Einstein’s redemption of ether, as the physicist Frank Wilczek describes, even the modern iteration of ether “bears the stigma of dead ideas” (Wilczek 74). Nevertheless, Wilczek employs the term as a kind of placeholder to theorize the phenomenon of superconductivity: “where a space-filling material ether…does the conducting” (96). While “we don’t really know what this new material ether is,” we do “know it’s name: the Higgs condensate” (96). Ether may finally be put to rest 574 feet beneath the Franco-Swiss border. If the Large Hadron Collider succeeds in proving the existence of the Higgs boson through high-energy particle collisions, the role of ether as a representation and a potentiality could be ultimately rendered obsolete. Such a teleological plan(e), however, would obscure the immanent expression which characterizes ether as a medium.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
Bachelard, Gaston. ''The Poetics of Space''. Boston: Beacon Press, 1958.<br />
<br />
Cantor, G.N. and M.J.S. Hodge, eds. ''Conceptions of Ether: Studies in the history of ether theories, 1740-1900''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.<br />
<br />
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. ''A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.<br />
<br />
Hawking, Stephen. ''A Brief History of Time''. Rev. ed. New York: Bantam Books, 1996.<br />
<br />
McLean, Stuart. “Stories and Cosmogonies: Imagining Creativity Beyond ‘Nature’ and ‘Culture’.” ''Cultural Anthropology'', Vol. 2, Issue 2, pp. 213-245.<br />
<br />
Milutis, Joe. ''Ether: The Nothing That Connects Everything''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
Peters, John Durham. ''Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.<br />
<br />
Russell, Bertrand. ''History of Western Philosophy''. Rev. ed. London: Routledge Classics, 2004.<br />
<br />
Wilczek, Frank. ''The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces''. New York: Basic Books, 2008.<br />
<br />
Zielinski, Siegfried. ''Deep Time of the Media''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: representation]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9723Ether2010-04-26T17:22:11Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane */</p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge, 8). Signifying presence in the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image that can only indicate and sustain ontologies.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on an airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses signification and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether pertains to the “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265) outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and plane of pure immanence. On one level, ether has undergirded dualities that it mediates via transcendence, serving as presence only in relation to the void. On another, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the instantiation of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression (McLean 232).<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: chainofbeing.jpg|200px|thumb|left|The Aristotelian universe remediated as the Great Chain of Being in 1579, depicting a divinely inspired universal hierarchy.]]<br />
The origins of ether in Western philosophy are typically traced to Aristotle, whose theory of the universal elements included “aither” as a ''quinta essentia'', or fifth essense (Cantor and Hodge 4). Aristotelian ether was a sempiternal substance that bathed and preserved the heavenly bodies in perpetual, circular motion (5). Though ether was confined to the divine sphere above the sky, it had an analogue on earth: pneuma, the breath and spirit that animated terrestrial life (5). Aristotle’s conception of ether thus both preserved the divine cosmos as incorruptible and absolute and, with pneuma, mediated between heaven and earth. Even though it was “a product of the pagan worship of sun and moon and planets” (Russell 199), the hierarchical structure of the universe and the possibility of transcendence signified by Aristotle’s conception of ether was co-opted by Christian theologians and held sway into the Renaissance. <br />
<br />
In the 1st century BCE, however, the Roman poet Lucretius integrated the idea of ether into very different, non-hierarchized ontology: the atomist tradition of Empedocles and Democritus. As Siegfried Zielinski writes, the atomists did “not think of the infinite multiplicity of things in terms of any hierarchical order. Nothing is above anything else; everything exists side-by-side, in motion, and with constant interpenetration” (Zielinski 47). “Lucretius’s cosmogony starts with the formation of the earth from a mindless rushing of atoms driven only by their weight and their collisions with others” (Cantor and Hodge 7). While the heavier atoms link up to make the earth, the lighter atoms are squeezed out as a fiery ether that, with air, both congeals into and surrounds the moon, sun, stars, and planets. In contrast to Aristotle’s idea of ether as a substance that preserved the heavenly bodies as absolute, in Lucretius’ theory ether “is not, ultimately, special at all” (8), but is comprised, like the rest of the universe, of a particular particle density that is both sustains and is subject to constant flux. As Stuart McLean observes, “such a materialism, in focusing on the emergence and dissolution of apparently stable forms, refuses…any absolute distinction”: “[p]hysical bodies, sensations, and products of the imagination thus share the same origin and the same materiality” (McLean 225). In the atomist tradition, which prefigures contemporary particle physics, ether is at once an image or simulacra (the product of sensation and imagination) ''and'' materiality (a physical body).<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
In the late 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell theorized ether as a substance present in empty space in order to explain how light waves propagate in a void. Just as sound waves travel through air, Maxwell hypothesized, light waves travel through and relative to the ether (Hawking 20). As John Durham Peters notes, Maxwell characterized the ether as a heavenly substance in the Aristotelian and Newtonian lineage, rich with the divine potential of communicability. As Maxwell writes,<br />
<br />
''The vast interplanetary and interstellar regions will no longer be regarded as waste places in the universe, which the Creator has not seen fit to fill with the symbols of the manifold order of His kingdom. We shall find them to be already full of this wonderful medium; so full, that no human power can remove it from the smallest portion of space, or produce the slightest flaw in its infinite continuity'' (qtd. in Peters 102).<br />
<br />
Despite this “infinite continuity” Maxwell understands to allow action at a distance, Peters observes that Maxwell’s conception of ether also signified modern problems of communication. In one experiment, for example, Maxwell presses two lenses together to depict the space that intervenes between bodies. Even when the lenses are visibly sealed together, when he shone a light through them, a visible ring signified their separation: which Maxwell perceived as the negation of “absolute contact” (qtd. in Peters 178). Maxwell thus “states a major theme in modernist art and literature,” Peters writes, where “the problem of communication becomes not only one of getting messages across the waste expanses traversed by the telegraph wires or the interference-prone ‘ether’ of radio transmission, but one of making contact with the person sitting next to you” (Peters 178). While at this time ether was used to describe the propagation of radio waves and wireless broadcast (“the Ethernet”), the medium also allowed for the conception of an atomized, ontological space. <br />
<br />
Both Maxwell’s conception of a crystalline space that propagates light and the atomized notion of social space that Durham observes prefigure the idea of particle physics formulated by Albert Einstein in 1905. “Overthrowing the concept of a universal ‘now,’” (Wilczek 85) Einstein’s theory of special relativity debunked absolute space and Maxwell’s concept of the ether as a spatial constant. Though he is typically credited with laying ether to rest, in 1920, Einstein stated that “according to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable,” because “to deny ether is ultimately to assume that empty space has no physical qualities whatever” (qtd. in Cantor and Hodge 53-4). Einstein's recuperation of ether thus allowed for the dissolution of absolute ontological categories in the immanent, atomic vision of the universe initially conceptualized by the atomists.<br />
<br />
== Where does the ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: large-hadron-collider.jpg|300px|thumb|The Large Hadron Collider, 2010.]]<br />
Despite Einstein’s redemption of ether, as the physicist Frank Wilczek describes, even the modern iteration of ether “bears the stigma of dead ideas” (Wilczek 74). Nevertheless, Wilczek employs the term as a kind of placeholder to theorize the phenomenon of superconductivity: “where a space-filling material ether…does the conducting” (96). While “we don’t really know what this new material ether is,” we do “know it’s name: the Higgs condensate” (96). Ether may finally be put to rest 574 feet beneath the Franco-Swiss border. If the Large Hadron Collider succeeds in proving the existence of the Higgs boson through high-energy particle collisions, the role of ether as a representation and a potentiality could be ultimately rendered obsolete. Such a teleological plan(e), however, would obscure the immanent expression which characterizes ether as a medium.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
Bachelard, Gaston. ''The Poetics of Space''. Boston: Beacon Press, 1958.<br />
<br />
Cantor, G.N. and M.J.S. Hodge, eds. ''Conceptions of Ether: Studies in the history of ether theories, 1740-1900''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.<br />
<br />
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. ''A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.<br />
<br />
Hawking, Stephen. ''A Brief History of Time''. Rev. ed. New York: Bantam Books, 1996.<br />
<br />
McLean, Stuart. “Stories and Cosmogonies: Imagining Creativity Beyond ‘Nature’ and ‘Culture’.” ''Cultural Anthropology'', Vol. 2, Issue 2, pp. 213-245.<br />
<br />
Milutis, Joe. ''Ether: The Nothing That Connects Everything''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
Peters, John Durham. ''Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.<br />
<br />
Russell, Bertrand. ''History of Western Philosophy''. Rev. ed. London: Routledge Classics, 2004.<br />
<br />
Wilczek, Frank. ''The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces''. New York: Basic Books, 2008.<br />
<br />
Zielinski, Siegfried. ''Deep Time of the Media''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: representation]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9717Ether2010-04-26T17:19:51Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Bodies heavenly and atomic */</p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge, 8). Signifying presence in the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image that can only indicate and sustain ontologies.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on an airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses signification and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether pertains to the “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265) outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and immanent plane. On one level, ether has undergirded dualities it mediates via transcendence, serving as presence in relation to the void. On another, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the instantiation of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression (McLean 232).<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: chainofbeing.jpg|200px|thumb|left|The Aristotelian universe remediated as the Great Chain of Being in 1579, depicting a divinely inspired universal hierarchy.]]<br />
The origins of ether in Western philosophy are typically traced to Aristotle, whose theory of the universal elements included “aither” as a ''quinta essentia'', or fifth essense (Cantor and Hodge 4). Aristotelian ether was a sempiternal substance that bathed and preserved the heavenly bodies in perpetual, circular motion (5). Though ether was confined to the divine sphere above the sky, it had an analogue on earth: pneuma, the breath and spirit that animated terrestrial life (5). Aristotle’s conception of ether thus both preserved the divine cosmos as incorruptible and absolute and, with pneuma, mediated between heaven and earth. Even though it was “a product of the pagan worship of sun and moon and planets” (Russell 199), the hierarchical structure of the universe and the possibility of transcendence signified by Aristotle’s conception of ether was co-opted by Christian theologians and held sway into the Renaissance. <br />
<br />
In the 1st century BCE, however, the Roman poet Lucretius integrated the idea of ether into very different, non-hierarchized ontology: the atomist tradition of Empedocles and Democritus. As Siegfried Zielinski writes, the atomists did “not think of the infinite multiplicity of things in terms of any hierarchical order. Nothing is above anything else; everything exists side-by-side, in motion, and with constant interpenetration” (Zielinski 47). “Lucretius’s cosmogony starts with the formation of the earth from a mindless rushing of atoms driven only by their weight and their collisions with others” (Cantor and Hodge 7). While the heavier atoms link up to make the earth, the lighter atoms are squeezed out as a fiery ether that, with air, both congeals into and surrounds the moon, sun, stars, and planets. In contrast to Aristotle’s idea of ether as a substance that preserved the heavenly bodies as absolute, in Lucretius’ theory ether “is not, ultimately, special at all” (8), but is comprised, like the rest of the universe, of a particular particle density that is both sustains and is subject to constant flux. As Stuart McLean observes, “such a materialism, in focusing on the emergence and dissolution of apparently stable forms, refuses…any absolute distinction”: “[p]hysical bodies, sensations, and products of the imagination thus share the same origin and the same materiality” (McLean 225). In the atomist tradition, which prefigures contemporary particle physics, ether is at once an image or simulacra (the product of sensation and imagination) ''and'' materiality (a physical body).<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
In the late 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell theorized ether as a substance present in empty space in order to explain how light waves propagate in a void. Just as sound waves travel through air, Maxwell hypothesized, light waves travel through and relative to the ether (Hawking 20). As John Durham Peters notes, Maxwell characterized the ether as a heavenly substance in the Aristotelian and Newtonian lineage, rich with the divine potential of communicability. As Maxwell writes,<br />
<br />
''The vast interplanetary and interstellar regions will no longer be regarded as waste places in the universe, which the Creator has not seen fit to fill with the symbols of the manifold order of His kingdom. We shall find them to be already full of this wonderful medium; so full, that no human power can remove it from the smallest portion of space, or produce the slightest flaw in its infinite continuity'' (qtd. in Peters 102).<br />
<br />
Despite this “infinite continuity” Maxwell understands to allow action at a distance, Peters observes that Maxwell’s conception of ether also signified modern problems of communication. In one experiment, for example, Maxwell presses two lenses together to depict the space that intervenes between bodies. Even when the lenses are visibly sealed together, when he shone a light through them, a visible ring signified their separation: which Maxwell perceived as the negation of “absolute contact” (qtd. in Peters 178). Maxwell thus “states a major theme in modernist art and literature,” Peters writes, where “the problem of communication becomes not only one of getting messages across the waste expanses traversed by the telegraph wires or the interference-prone ‘ether’ of radio transmission, but one of making contact with the person sitting next to you” (Peters 178). While at this time ether was used to describe the propagation of radio waves and wireless broadcast (“the Ethernet”), the medium also allowed for the conception of an atomized, ontological space. <br />
<br />
Both Maxwell’s conception of a crystalline space that propagates light and the atomized notion of social space that Durham observes prefigure the idea of particle physics formulated by Albert Einstein in 1905. “Overthrowing the concept of a universal ‘now,’” (Wilczek 85) Einstein’s theory of special relativity debunked absolute space and Maxwell’s concept of the ether as a spatial constant. Though he is typically credited with laying ether to rest, in 1920, Einstein stated that “according to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable,” because “to deny ether is ultimately to assume that empty space has no physical qualities whatever” (qtd. in Cantor and Hodge 53-4). Einstein's recuperation of ether thus allowed for the dissolution of absolute ontological categories in the immanent, atomic vision of the universe initially conceptualized by the atomists.<br />
<br />
== Where does the ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: large-hadron-collider.jpg|300px|thumb|The Large Hadron Collider, 2010.]]<br />
Despite Einstein’s redemption of ether, as the physicist Frank Wilczek describes, even the modern iteration of ether “bears the stigma of dead ideas” (Wilczek 74). Nevertheless, Wilczek employs the term as a kind of placeholder to theorize the phenomenon of superconductivity: “where a space-filling material ether…does the conducting” (96). While “we don’t really know what this new material ether is,” we do “know it’s name: the Higgs condensate” (96). Ether may finally be put to rest 574 feet beneath the Franco-Swiss border. If the Large Hadron Collider succeeds in proving the existence of the Higgs boson through high-energy particle collisions, the role of ether as a representation and a potentiality could be ultimately rendered obsolete. Such a teleological plan(e), however, would obscure the immanent expression which characterizes ether as a medium.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
Bachelard, Gaston. ''The Poetics of Space''. Boston: Beacon Press, 1958.<br />
<br />
Cantor, G.N. and M.J.S. Hodge, eds. ''Conceptions of Ether: Studies in the history of ether theories, 1740-1900''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.<br />
<br />
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. ''A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.<br />
<br />
Hawking, Stephen. ''A Brief History of Time''. Rev. ed. New York: Bantam Books, 1996.<br />
<br />
McLean, Stuart. “Stories and Cosmogonies: Imagining Creativity Beyond ‘Nature’ and ‘Culture’.” ''Cultural Anthropology'', Vol. 2, Issue 2, pp. 213-245.<br />
<br />
Milutis, Joe. ''Ether: The Nothing That Connects Everything''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
Peters, John Durham. ''Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.<br />
<br />
Russell, Bertrand. ''History of Western Philosophy''. Rev. ed. London: Routledge Classics, 2004.<br />
<br />
Wilczek, Frank. ''The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces''. New York: Basic Books, 2008.<br />
<br />
Zielinski, Siegfried. ''Deep Time of the Media''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: representation]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9710Ether2010-04-26T17:17:55Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Insurmountable connectivity */</p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge, 8). Signifying presence in the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image that can only indicate and sustain ontologies.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on an airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses signification and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether pertains to the “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265) outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and immanent plane. On one level, ether has undergirded dualities it mediates via transcendence, serving as presence in relation to the void. On another, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the instantiation of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression (McLean 232).<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: chainofbeing.jpg|200px|thumb|left|The Aristotelian universe remediated as the Great Chain of Being in 1579, depicting a divinely inspired universal hierarchy.]]<br />
The origins of ether in Western philosophy are typically traced to Aristotle, whose theory of the universal elements included “aither” as a ''quinta essentia'', or fifth essense (Cantor and Hodge 4). Aristotelian ether was a sempiternal substance that bathed and preserved the heavenly bodies in perpetual, circular motion (5). Though ether was confined to the divine sphere above the sky, it had an analogue on earth: pneuma, the breath and spirit that animated terrestrial life (5). Aristotle’s conception of ether thus both preserved the divine cosmos as incorruptible and absolute and, with pneuma, mediated between heaven and earth. Even though it was “a product of the pagan worship of sun and moon and planets” (Russell 199), the hierarchical structure of the universe and the possibility of transcendence signified by Aristotle’s conception of ether was co-opted by Christian theologians and held sway into the Renaissance. <br />
<br />
In the 1st century BCE, however, the Roman poet Lucretius integrated the idea of ether into very different, non-hierarchized ontology: the atomist tradition of Empedocles and Democritus. As Siegfried Zielinski writes, the atomists did “not think of the infinite multiplicity of things in terms of any hierarchical order. Nothing is above anything else; everything exists side-by-side, in motion, and with constant interpenetration” (Zielinski 47). “Lucretius’s cosmogony starts with the formation of the earth from a mindless rushing of atoms driven only by their weight and their collisions with others” (Cantor and Hodge 7). While the heavier atoms link up to make the earth, the lighter atoms are squeezed out as a fiery ether that, with air, both congeals into and surrounds the moon, sun, stars, and planets. In contrast to Aristotle’s idea of ether as a substance that preserved the heavenly bodies as absolute, in Lucretius’ theory ether “is not, ultimately, special at all” (8), but is comprised, like the rest of the universe, of a particular particle density that is both sustains and is subject to constant flux. As Stuart McLean observes, “such a materialism, in focusing on the emergence and dissolution of apparently stable forms, refuses…any absolute distinction”: “[p]hysical bodies, sensations, and products of the imagination thus share the same origin and the same materiality” (McLean 225). In the atomist tradition, which prefigures contemporary particle physics, ether is at once ''simulacra'', or a product of sensation and imagination, and ''materiality'', a physical body.<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
In the late 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell theorized ether as a substance present in empty space in order to explain how light waves propagate in a void. Just as sound waves travel through air, Maxwell hypothesized, light waves travel through and relative to the ether (Hawking 20). As John Durham Peters notes, Maxwell characterized the ether as a heavenly substance in the Aristotelian and Newtonian lineage, rich with the divine potential of communicability. As Maxwell writes,<br />
<br />
''The vast interplanetary and interstellar regions will no longer be regarded as waste places in the universe, which the Creator has not seen fit to fill with the symbols of the manifold order of His kingdom. We shall find them to be already full of this wonderful medium; so full, that no human power can remove it from the smallest portion of space, or produce the slightest flaw in its infinite continuity'' (qtd. in Peters 102).<br />
<br />
Despite this “infinite continuity” Maxwell understands to allow action at a distance, Peters observes that Maxwell’s conception of ether also signified modern problems of communication. In one experiment, for example, Maxwell presses two lenses together to depict the space that intervenes between bodies. Even when the lenses are visibly sealed together, when he shone a light through them, a visible ring signified their separation: which Maxwell perceived as the negation of “absolute contact” (qtd. in Peters 178). Maxwell thus “states a major theme in modernist art and literature,” Peters writes, where “the problem of communication becomes not only one of getting messages across the waste expanses traversed by the telegraph wires or the interference-prone ‘ether’ of radio transmission, but one of making contact with the person sitting next to you” (Peters 178). While at this time ether was used to describe the propagation of radio waves and wireless broadcast (“the Ethernet”), the medium also allowed for the conception of an atomized, ontological space. <br />
<br />
Both Maxwell’s conception of a crystalline space that propagates light and the atomized notion of social space that Durham observes prefigure the idea of particle physics formulated by Albert Einstein in 1905. “Overthrowing the concept of a universal ‘now,’” (Wilczek 85) Einstein’s theory of special relativity debunked absolute space and Maxwell’s concept of the ether as a spatial constant. Though he is typically credited with laying ether to rest, in 1920, Einstein stated that “according to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable,” because “to deny ether is ultimately to assume that empty space has no physical qualities whatever” (qtd. in Cantor and Hodge 53-4). Einstein's recuperation of ether thus allowed for the dissolution of absolute ontological categories in the immanent, atomic vision of the universe initially conceptualized by the atomists.<br />
<br />
== Where does the ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: large-hadron-collider.jpg|300px|thumb|The Large Hadron Collider, 2010.]]<br />
Despite Einstein’s redemption of ether, as the physicist Frank Wilczek describes, even the modern iteration of ether “bears the stigma of dead ideas” (Wilczek 74). Nevertheless, Wilczek employs the term as a kind of placeholder to theorize the phenomenon of superconductivity: “where a space-filling material ether…does the conducting” (96). While “we don’t really know what this new material ether is,” we do “know it’s name: the Higgs condensate” (96). Ether may finally be put to rest 574 feet beneath the Franco-Swiss border. If the Large Hadron Collider succeeds in proving the existence of the Higgs boson through high-energy particle collisions, the role of ether as a representation and a potentiality could be ultimately rendered obsolete. Such a teleological plan(e), however, would obscure the immanent expression which characterizes ether as a medium.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
Bachelard, Gaston. ''The Poetics of Space''. Boston: Beacon Press, 1958.<br />
<br />
Cantor, G.N. and M.J.S. Hodge, eds. ''Conceptions of Ether: Studies in the history of ether theories, 1740-1900''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.<br />
<br />
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. ''A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.<br />
<br />
Hawking, Stephen. ''A Brief History of Time''. Rev. ed. New York: Bantam Books, 1996.<br />
<br />
McLean, Stuart. “Stories and Cosmogonies: Imagining Creativity Beyond ‘Nature’ and ‘Culture’.” ''Cultural Anthropology'', Vol. 2, Issue 2, pp. 213-245.<br />
<br />
Milutis, Joe. ''Ether: The Nothing That Connects Everything''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
Peters, John Durham. ''Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.<br />
<br />
Russell, Bertrand. ''History of Western Philosophy''. Rev. ed. London: Routledge Classics, 2004.<br />
<br />
Wilczek, Frank. ''The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces''. New York: Basic Books, 2008.<br />
<br />
Zielinski, Siegfried. ''Deep Time of the Media''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: representation]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9706Ether2010-04-26T17:16:53Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Where does the ether go to die? */</p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge, 8). Signifying presence in the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image that can only indicate and sustain ontologies.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on an airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses signification and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether pertains to the “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265) outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and immanent plane. On one level, ether has undergirded dualities it mediates via transcendence, serving as presence in relation to the void. On another, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the instantiation of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression (McLean 232).<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: chainofbeing.jpg|200px|thumb|left|The Aristotelian universe remediated as the Great Chain of Being in 1579, depicting a divinely inspired universal hierarchy.]]<br />
The origins of ether in Western philosophy are typically traced to Aristotle, whose theory of the universal elements included “aither” as a ''quinta essentia'', or fifth essense (Cantor and Hodge 4). Aristotelian ether was a sempiternal substance that bathed and preserved the heavenly bodies in perpetual, circular motion (5). Though ether was confined to the divine sphere above the sky, it had an analogue on earth: pneuma, the breath and spirit that animated terrestrial life (5). Aristotle’s conception of ether thus both preserved the divine cosmos as incorruptible and absolute and, with pneuma, mediated between heaven and earth. Even though it was “a product of the pagan worship of sun and moon and planets” (Russell 199), the hierarchical structure of the universe and the possibility of transcendence signified by Aristotle’s conception of ether was co-opted by Christian theologians and held sway into the Renaissance. <br />
<br />
In the 1st century BCE, however, the Roman poet Lucretius integrated the idea of ether into very different, non-hierarchized ontology: the atomist tradition of Empedocles and Democritus. As Siegfried Zielinski writes, the atomists did “not think of the infinite multiplicity of things in terms of any hierarchical order. Nothing is above anything else; everything exists side-by-side, in motion, and with constant interpenetration” (Zielinski 47). “Lucretius’s cosmogony starts with the formation of the earth from a mindless rushing of atoms driven only by their weight and their collisions with others” (Cantor and Hodge 7). While the heavier atoms link up to make the earth, the lighter atoms are squeezed out as a fiery ether that, with air, both congeals into and surrounds the moon, sun, stars, and planets. In contrast to Aristotle’s idea of ether as a substance that preserved the heavenly bodies as absolute, in Lucretius’ theory ether “is not, ultimately, special at all” (8), but is comprised, like the rest of the universe, of a particular particle density that is both sustains and is subject to constant flux. As Stuart McLean observes, “such a materialism, in focusing on the emergence and dissolution of apparently stable forms, refuses…any absolute distinction”: “[p]hysical bodies, sensations, and products of the imagination thus share the same origin and the same materiality” (McLean 225). In the atomist tradition, which prefigures contemporary particle physics, ether is at once ''simulacra'', or a product of sensation and imagination, and ''materiality'', a physical body.<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
In the late 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell theorized ether as a substance present in empty space in order to explain how light waves propagate in a void. Just as sound waves travel through air, Maxwell hypothesized, light waves travel through and relative to the ether (Hawking 20). As John Durham Peters notes, Maxwell characterized the ether as a heavenly substance in the Aristotelian and Newtonian lineage, rich with the divine potential of communicability. As Maxwell writes,<br />
<br />
''The vast interplanetary and interstellar regions will no longer be regarded as waste places in the universe, which the Creator has not seen fit to fill with the symbols of the manifold order of His kingdom. We shall find them to be already full of this wonderful medium; so full, that no human power can remove it from the smallest portion of space, or produce the slightest flaw in its infinite continuity'' (qtd. in Peters 102).<br />
<br />
Despite this “infinite continuity” Maxwell understands to allow action at a distance, Peters observes that Maxwell’s conception of ether also signified modern problems of communication. In one experiment, for example, Maxwell presses two lenses together to depict the space that intervenes between bodies. Even when the lenses are visibly sealed together, when he shone a light through them, a visible ring signified their separation: which Maxwell perceived as the negation of “absolute contact” (qtd. in Peters 178). Maxwell thus “states a major theme in modernist art and literature,” Peters writes, where “the problem of communication becomes not only one of getting messages across the waste expanses traversed by the telegraph wires or the interference-prone ‘ether’ of radio transmission, but one of making contact with the person sitting next to you” (Peters 178). While at this time ether was used to describe the propagation of radio waves and wireless broadcast (“the Ethernet”), the medium also allowed for the conception of an atomized, ontological space. <br />
<br />
Both Maxwell’s conception of a crystalline space that propagates light and the atomized notion of social space that Durham observes prefigure the idea of particle physics formulated by Albert Einstein in 1905. “Overthrowing the concept of a universal ‘now,’” (Wilczek 85) Einstein’s theory of special relativity debunked absolute space and Maxwell’s concept of the ether as a spatial constant. Though he is typically credited with laying ether to rest, in 1920, Einstein stated that “according to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable,” because “to deny ether is ultimately to assume that empty space has no physical qualities whatever” (qtd. in Cantor and Hodge 53-4). Einstein's recuperation of ether thus allowed for the dissolution of absolute ontological categories in the atomic vision of the universe initially conceptualized by the atomists.<br />
<br />
== Where does the ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: large-hadron-collider.jpg|300px|thumb|The Large Hadron Collider, 2010.]]<br />
Despite Einstein’s redemption of ether, as the physicist Frank Wilczek describes, even the modern iteration of ether “bears the stigma of dead ideas” (Wilczek 74). Nevertheless, Wilczek employs the term as a kind of placeholder to theorize the phenomenon of superconductivity: “where a space-filling material ether…does the conducting” (96). While “we don’t really know what this new material ether is,” we do “know it’s name: the Higgs condensate” (96). Ether may finally be put to rest 574 feet beneath the Franco-Swiss border. If the Large Hadron Collider succeeds in proving the existence of the Higgs boson through high-energy particle collisions, the role of ether as a representation and a potentiality could be ultimately rendered obsolete. Such a teleological plan(e), however, would obscure the immanent expression which characterizes ether as a medium.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
Bachelard, Gaston. ''The Poetics of Space''. Boston: Beacon Press, 1958.<br />
<br />
Cantor, G.N. and M.J.S. Hodge, eds. ''Conceptions of Ether: Studies in the history of ether theories, 1740-1900''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.<br />
<br />
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. ''A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.<br />
<br />
Hawking, Stephen. ''A Brief History of Time''. Rev. ed. New York: Bantam Books, 1996.<br />
<br />
McLean, Stuart. “Stories and Cosmogonies: Imagining Creativity Beyond ‘Nature’ and ‘Culture’.” ''Cultural Anthropology'', Vol. 2, Issue 2, pp. 213-245.<br />
<br />
Milutis, Joe. ''Ether: The Nothing That Connects Everything''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
Peters, John Durham. ''Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.<br />
<br />
Russell, Bertrand. ''History of Western Philosophy''. Rev. ed. London: Routledge Classics, 2004.<br />
<br />
Wilczek, Frank. ''The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces''. New York: Basic Books, 2008.<br />
<br />
Zielinski, Siegfried. ''Deep Time of the Media''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: representation]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9622Ether2010-04-26T16:23:06Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Insurmountable connectivity */</p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge, 8). Signifying presence in the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image that can only indicate and sustain ontologies.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on an airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses signification and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether pertains to the “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265) outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and immanent plane. On one level, ether has undergirded dualities it mediates via transcendence, serving as presence in relation to the void. On another, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the instantiation of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression (McLean 232).<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: chainofbeing.jpg|200px|thumb|left|The Aristotelian universe remediated as the Great Chain of Being in 1579, depicting a divinely inspired universal hierarchy.]]<br />
The origins of ether in Western philosophy are typically traced to Aristotle, whose theory of the universal elements included “aither” as a ''quinta essentia'', or fifth essense (Cantor and Hodge 4). Aristotelian ether was a sempiternal substance that bathed and preserved the heavenly bodies in perpetual, circular motion (5). Though ether was confined to the divine sphere above the sky, it had an analogue on earth: pneuma, the breath and spirit that animated terrestrial life (5). Aristotle’s conception of ether thus both preserved the divine cosmos as incorruptible and absolute and, with pneuma, mediated between heaven and earth. Even though it was “a product of the pagan worship of sun and moon and planets” (Russell 199), the hierarchical structure of the universe and the possibility of transcendence signified by Aristotle’s conception of ether was co-opted by Christian theologians and held sway into the Renaissance. <br />
<br />
In the 1st century BCE, however, the Roman poet Lucretius integrated the idea of ether into very different, non-hierarchized ontology: the atomist tradition of Empedocles and Democritus. As Siegfried Zielinski writes, the atomists did “not think of the infinite multiplicity of things in terms of any hierarchical order. Nothing is above anything else; everything exists side-by-side, in motion, and with constant interpenetration” (Zielinski 47). “Lucretius’s cosmogony starts with the formation of the earth from a mindless rushing of atoms driven only by their weight and their collisions with others” (Cantor and Hodge 7). While the heavier atoms link up to make the earth, the lighter atoms are squeezed out as a fiery ether that, with air, both congeals into and surrounds the moon, sun, stars, and planets. In contrast to Aristotle’s idea of ether as a substance that preserved the heavenly bodies as absolute, in Lucretius’ theory ether “is not, ultimately, special at all” (8), but is comprised, like the rest of the universe, of a particular particle density that is both sustains and is subject to constant flux. As Stuart McLean observes, “such a materialism, in focusing on the emergence and dissolution of apparently stable forms, refuses…any absolute distinction”: “[p]hysical bodies, sensations, and products of the imagination thus share the same origin and the same materiality” (McLean 225). In the atomist tradition, which prefigures contemporary particle physics, ether is at once ''simulacra'', or a product of sensation and imagination, and ''materiality'', a physical body.<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
In the late 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell theorized ether as a substance present in empty space in order to explain how light waves propagate in a void. Just as sound waves travel through air, Maxwell hypothesized, light waves travel through and relative to the ether (Hawking 20). As John Durham Peters notes, Maxwell characterized the ether as a heavenly substance in the Aristotelian and Newtonian lineage, rich with the divine potential of communicability. As Maxwell writes,<br />
<br />
''The vast interplanetary and interstellar regions will no longer be regarded as waste places in the universe, which the Creator has not seen fit to fill with the symbols of the manifold order of His kingdom. We shall find them to be already full of this wonderful medium; so full, that no human power can remove it from the smallest portion of space, or produce the slightest flaw in its infinite continuity'' (qtd. in Peters 102).<br />
<br />
Despite this “infinite continuity” Maxwell understands to allow action at a distance, Peters observes that Maxwell’s conception of ether also signified modern problems of communication. In one experiment, for example, Maxwell presses two lenses together to depict the space that intervenes between bodies. Even when the lenses are visibly sealed together, when he shone a light through them, a visible ring signified their separation: which Maxwell perceived as the negation of “absolute contact” (qtd. in Peters 178). Maxwell thus “states a major theme in modernist art and literature,” Peters writes, where “the problem of communication becomes not only one of getting messages across the waste expanses traversed by the telegraph wires or the interference-prone ‘ether’ of radio transmission, but one of making contact with the person sitting next to you” (Peters 178). While at this time ether was used to describe the propagation of radio waves and wireless broadcast (“the Ethernet”), the medium also allowed for the conception of an atomized, ontological space. <br />
<br />
Both Maxwell’s conception of a crystalline space that propagates light and the atomized notion of social space that Durham observes prefigure the idea of particle physics formulated by Albert Einstein in 1905. “Overthrowing the concept of a universal ‘now,’” (Wilczek 85) Einstein’s theory of special relativity debunked absolute space and Maxwell’s concept of the ether as a spatial constant. Though he is typically credited with laying ether to rest, in 1920, Einstein stated that “according to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable,” because “to deny ether is ultimately to assume that empty space has no physical qualities whatever” (qtd. in Cantor and Hodge 53-4). Einstein's recuperation of ether thus allowed for the dissolution of absolute ontological categories in the atomic vision of the universe initially conceptualized by the atomists.<br />
<br />
== Where does the ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: large-hadron-collider.jpg|300px|thumb|The Large Hadron Collider, 2010.]]<br />
Despite Einstein’s redemption of ether, as the physicist Frank Wilczek describes, even the modern iteration of ether “bears the stigma of dead ideas” (Wilczek 74). Nevertheless, Wilczek employs the term as a kind of placeholder to theorize the phenomenon of superconductivity: “where a space-filling material ether…does the conducting” (96). While “we don’t really know what this new material ether is,” we do “know it’s name: the Higgs condensate” (96). Ether may finally be put to rest 574 feet beneath the Franco-Swiss border. If the Large Hadron Collider succeeds in proving the existence of the Higgs boson through high-energy particle collisions, the role of ether as a representation and a potentiality could be ultimately rendered obsolete. Such a teleological narrative, however, would deny the possibility for immanent expression that characterizes the medium of ether.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
Bachelard, Gaston. ''The Poetics of Space''. Boston: Beacon Press, 1958.<br />
<br />
Cantor, G.N. and M.J.S. Hodge, eds. ''Conceptions of Ether: Studies in the history of ether theories, 1740-1900''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.<br />
<br />
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. ''A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.<br />
<br />
Hawking, Stephen. ''A Brief History of Time''. Rev. ed. New York: Bantam Books, 1996.<br />
<br />
McLean, Stuart. “Stories and Cosmogonies: Imagining Creativity Beyond ‘Nature’ and ‘Culture’.” ''Cultural Anthropology'', Vol. 2, Issue 2, pp. 213-245.<br />
<br />
Milutis, Joe. ''Ether: The Nothing That Connects Everything''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
Peters, John Durham. ''Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.<br />
<br />
Russell, Bertrand. ''History of Western Philosophy''. Rev. ed. London: Routledge Classics, 2004.<br />
<br />
Wilczek, Frank. ''The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces''. New York: Basic Books, 2008.<br />
<br />
Zielinski, Siegfried. ''Deep Time of the Media''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: representation]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9620Ether2010-04-26T16:19:32Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Insurmountable connectivity */</p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge, 8). Signifying presence in the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image that can only indicate and sustain ontologies.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on an airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses signification and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether pertains to the “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265) outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and immanent plane. On one level, ether has undergirded dualities it mediates via transcendence, serving as presence in relation to the void. On another, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the instantiation of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression (McLean 232).<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: chainofbeing.jpg|200px|thumb|left|The Aristotelian universe remediated as the Great Chain of Being in 1579, depicting a divinely inspired universal hierarchy.]]<br />
The origins of ether in Western philosophy are typically traced to Aristotle, whose theory of the universal elements included “aither” as a ''quinta essentia'', or fifth essense (Cantor and Hodge 4). Aristotelian ether was a sempiternal substance that bathed and preserved the heavenly bodies in perpetual, circular motion (5). Though ether was confined to the divine sphere above the sky, it had an analogue on earth: pneuma, the breath and spirit that animated terrestrial life (5). Aristotle’s conception of ether thus both preserved the divine cosmos as incorruptible and absolute and, with pneuma, mediated between heaven and earth. Even though it was “a product of the pagan worship of sun and moon and planets” (Russell 199), the hierarchical structure of the universe and the possibility of transcendence signified by Aristotle’s conception of ether was co-opted by Christian theologians and held sway into the Renaissance. <br />
<br />
In the 1st century BCE, however, the Roman poet Lucretius integrated the idea of ether into very different, non-hierarchized ontology: the atomist tradition of Empedocles and Democritus. As Siegfried Zielinski writes, the atomists did “not think of the infinite multiplicity of things in terms of any hierarchical order. Nothing is above anything else; everything exists side-by-side, in motion, and with constant interpenetration” (Zielinski 47). “Lucretius’s cosmogony starts with the formation of the earth from a mindless rushing of atoms driven only by their weight and their collisions with others” (Cantor and Hodge 7). While the heavier atoms link up to make the earth, the lighter atoms are squeezed out as a fiery ether that, with air, both congeals into and surrounds the moon, sun, stars, and planets. In contrast to Aristotle’s idea of ether as a substance that preserved the heavenly bodies as absolute, in Lucretius’ theory ether “is not, ultimately, special at all” (8), but is comprised, like the rest of the universe, of a particular particle density that is both sustains and is subject to constant flux. As Stuart McLean observes, “such a materialism, in focusing on the emergence and dissolution of apparently stable forms, refuses…any absolute distinction”: “[p]hysical bodies, sensations, and products of the imagination thus share the same origin and the same materiality” (McLean 225). In the atomist tradition, which prefigures contemporary particle physics, ether is at once ''simulacra'', or a product of sensation and imagination, and ''materiality'', a physical body.<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
In the late 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell theorized ether as a substance present in empty space in order to explain how light waves propagate in a void. Just as sound waves travel through air, Maxwell hypothesized, light waves travel through and relative to the ether (Hawking 20). As John Durham Peters notes, Maxwell characterized the ether as a heavenly substance in the Aristotelian and Newtonian lineage, rich with the divine potential of communicability. As Maxwell writes,<br />
<br />
''The vast interplanetary and interstellar regions will no longer be regarded as waste places in the universe, which the Creator has not seen fit to fill with the symbols of the manifold order of His kingdom. We shall find them to be already full of this wonderful medium; so full, that no human power can remove it from the smallest portion of space, or produce the slightest flaw in its infinite continuity'' (qtd. in Peters 102).<br />
<br />
Despite this “infinite continuity” Maxwell understands to allow action at a distance, Peters observes that Maxwell’s conception of ether also signified modern problems of communication. In one experiment, for example, Maxwell presses two lenses together to depict the space that intervenes between bodies. Even when the lenses are visibly sealed together, when he shone a light through them, a visible ring signified their separation: which Maxwell perceived as the negation of “absolute contact” (qtd. in Peters 178). Maxwell thus “states a major theme in modernist art and literature,” Peters writes, where “the problem of communication becomes not only one of getting messages across the waste expanses traversed by the telegraph wires or the interference-prone ‘ether’ of radio transmission, but one of making contact with the person sitting next to you” (Peters 178). While at this time ether was used to describe the propagation of radio waves and wireless broadcast (“the Ethernet”), the medium also allowed for the conception of an atomized, ontological space. <br />
<br />
Both Maxwell’s conception of a crystalline space that propagates light and the atomized notion of social space that Durham observes prefigure the idea of particle physics formulated by Albert Einstein in 1905. “Overthrowing the concept of a universal ‘now,’” (Wilczek 85) Einstein’s theory of special relativity debunked absolute space and Maxwell’s concept of the ether as a spatial constant. Though he is typically credited with laying ether to rest, in 1920, Einstein stated that “according to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable,” because “to deny ether is ultimately to assume that empty space has no physical qualities whatever” (qtd. in Cantor and Hodge 53-4). Ether allowed for the explosion of absolute ontological categories, while ushering the atomic vision of the universe initially conceptualized by the atomists into the modern age.<br />
<br />
== Where does the ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: large-hadron-collider.jpg|300px|thumb|The Large Hadron Collider, 2010.]]<br />
Despite Einstein’s redemption of ether, as the physicist Frank Wilczek describes, even the modern iteration of ether “bears the stigma of dead ideas” (Wilczek 74). Nevertheless, Wilczek employs the term as a kind of placeholder to theorize the phenomenon of superconductivity: “where a space-filling material ether…does the conducting” (96). While “we don’t really know what this new material ether is,” we do “know it’s name: the Higgs condensate” (96). Ether may finally be put to rest 574 feet beneath the Franco-Swiss border. If the Large Hadron Collider succeeds in proving the existence of the Higgs boson through high-energy particle collisions, the role of ether as a representation and a potentiality could be ultimately rendered obsolete. Such a teleological narrative, however, would deny the possibility for immanent expression that characterizes the medium of ether.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
Bachelard, Gaston. ''The Poetics of Space''. Boston: Beacon Press, 1958.<br />
<br />
Cantor, G.N. and M.J.S. Hodge, eds. ''Conceptions of Ether: Studies in the history of ether theories, 1740-1900''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.<br />
<br />
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. ''A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.<br />
<br />
Hawking, Stephen. ''A Brief History of Time''. Rev. ed. New York: Bantam Books, 1996.<br />
<br />
McLean, Stuart. “Stories and Cosmogonies: Imagining Creativity Beyond ‘Nature’ and ‘Culture’.” ''Cultural Anthropology'', Vol. 2, Issue 2, pp. 213-245.<br />
<br />
Milutis, Joe. ''Ether: The Nothing That Connects Everything''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
Peters, John Durham. ''Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.<br />
<br />
Russell, Bertrand. ''History of Western Philosophy''. Rev. ed. London: Routledge Classics, 2004.<br />
<br />
Wilczek, Frank. ''The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces''. New York: Basic Books, 2008.<br />
<br />
Zielinski, Siegfried. ''Deep Time of the Media''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: representation]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9619Ether2010-04-26T16:18:42Z<p>Gillian Young: /* References */</p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge, 8). Signifying presence in the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image that can only indicate and sustain ontologies.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on an airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses signification and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether pertains to the “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265) outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and immanent plane. On one level, ether has undergirded dualities it mediates via transcendence, serving as presence in relation to the void. On another, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the instantiation of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression (McLean 232).<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: chainofbeing.jpg|200px|thumb|left|The Aristotelian universe remediated as the Great Chain of Being in 1579, depicting a divinely inspired universal hierarchy.]]<br />
The origins of ether in Western philosophy are typically traced to Aristotle, whose theory of the universal elements included “aither” as a ''quinta essentia'', or fifth essense (Cantor and Hodge 4). Aristotelian ether was a sempiternal substance that bathed and preserved the heavenly bodies in perpetual, circular motion (5). Though ether was confined to the divine sphere above the sky, it had an analogue on earth: pneuma, the breath and spirit that animated terrestrial life (5). Aristotle’s conception of ether thus both preserved the divine cosmos as incorruptible and absolute and, with pneuma, mediated between heaven and earth. Even though it was “a product of the pagan worship of sun and moon and planets” (Russell 199), the hierarchical structure of the universe and the possibility of transcendence signified by Aristotle’s conception of ether was co-opted by Christian theologians and held sway into the Renaissance. <br />
<br />
In the 1st century BCE, however, the Roman poet Lucretius integrated the idea of ether into very different, non-hierarchized ontology: the atomist tradition of Empedocles and Democritus. As Siegfried Zielinski writes, the atomists did “not think of the infinite multiplicity of things in terms of any hierarchical order. Nothing is above anything else; everything exists side-by-side, in motion, and with constant interpenetration” (Zielinski 47). “Lucretius’s cosmogony starts with the formation of the earth from a mindless rushing of atoms driven only by their weight and their collisions with others” (Cantor and Hodge 7). While the heavier atoms link up to make the earth, the lighter atoms are squeezed out as a fiery ether that, with air, both congeals into and surrounds the moon, sun, stars, and planets. In contrast to Aristotle’s idea of ether as a substance that preserved the heavenly bodies as absolute, in Lucretius’ theory ether “is not, ultimately, special at all” (8), but is comprised, like the rest of the universe, of a particular particle density that is both sustains and is subject to constant flux. As Stuart McLean observes, “such a materialism, in focusing on the emergence and dissolution of apparently stable forms, refuses…any absolute distinction”: “[p]hysical bodies, sensations, and products of the imagination thus share the same origin and the same materiality” (McLean 225). In the atomist tradition, which prefigures contemporary particle physics, ether is at once ''simulacra'', or a product of sensation and imagination, and ''materiality'', a physical body.<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
In the late 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell theorized ether as a substance present in empty space in order to explain how light waves propagate in a void. Just as sound waves travel through air, Maxwell hypothesized, light waves travel through and relative to the ether (Hawking 20). As John Durham Peters notes, Maxwell characterized the ether as a heavenly substance in the Aristotelian and Newtonian lineage, rich with the divine potential of communicability. As Maxwell writes,<br />
<br />
''The vast interplanetary and interstellar regions will no longer be regarded as waste places in the universe, which the Creator has not seen fit to fill with the symbols of the manifold order of His kingdom. We shall find them to be already full of this wonderful medium; so full, that no human power can remove it from the smallest portion of space, or produce the slightest flaw in its infinite continuity'' (qtd. in Peters 102).<br />
<br />
Despite this “infinite continuity” Maxwell understands to allow action at a distance, Peters observes that Maxwell’s conception of ether also signified modern problems of communication. In one experiment, for example, Maxwell presses two lenses together to depict the space that intervenes between bodies. Even when the lenses are visibly sealed together, when he shone a light through them, a visible ring signified their separation: which Maxwell perceived as the negation of “absolute contact” (qtd. in Peters 178). Maxwell thus “states a major theme in modernist art and literature,” Peters writes, where “the problem of communication becomes not only one of getting messages across the waste expanses traversed by the telegraph wires or the interference-prone ‘ether’ of radio transmission, but one of making contact with the person sitting next to you” (Peters 178). While at this time ether was used to describe the propagation of radio waves and wireless broadcast (“the Ethernet”), the medium also allowed for the conception of an atomized, ontological space. <br />
<br />
Both Maxwell’s conception of a crystalline that propagates light and the atomized notion of social space that Durham observes prefigure the idea of particle physics formulated by Albert Einstein in 1905. “Overthrowing the concept of a universal ‘now,’” (Wilczek 85) Einstein’s theory of special relativity debunked absolute space and Maxwell’s concept of the ether as a spatial constant. Though he is typically credited with laying ether to rest, in 1920, Einstein stated that “according to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable,” because “to deny ether is ultimately to assume that empty space has no physical qualities whatever” (qtd. in Cantor and Hodge 53-4). Ether allowed for the explosion of absolute ontological categories, while ushering the atomic vision of the universe initially conceptualized by the atomists into the modern age.<br />
<br />
== Where does the ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: large-hadron-collider.jpg|300px|thumb|The Large Hadron Collider, 2010.]]<br />
Despite Einstein’s redemption of ether, as the physicist Frank Wilczek describes, even the modern iteration of ether “bears the stigma of dead ideas” (Wilczek 74). Nevertheless, Wilczek employs the term as a kind of placeholder to theorize the phenomenon of superconductivity: “where a space-filling material ether…does the conducting” (96). While “we don’t really know what this new material ether is,” we do “know it’s name: the Higgs condensate” (96). Ether may finally be put to rest 574 feet beneath the Franco-Swiss border. If the Large Hadron Collider succeeds in proving the existence of the Higgs boson through high-energy particle collisions, the role of ether as a representation and a potentiality could be ultimately rendered obsolete. Such a teleological narrative, however, would deny the possibility for immanent expression that characterizes the medium of ether.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
Bachelard, Gaston. ''The Poetics of Space''. Boston: Beacon Press, 1958.<br />
<br />
Cantor, G.N. and M.J.S. Hodge, eds. ''Conceptions of Ether: Studies in the history of ether theories, 1740-1900''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.<br />
<br />
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. ''A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.<br />
<br />
Hawking, Stephen. ''A Brief History of Time''. Rev. ed. New York: Bantam Books, 1996.<br />
<br />
McLean, Stuart. “Stories and Cosmogonies: Imagining Creativity Beyond ‘Nature’ and ‘Culture’.” ''Cultural Anthropology'', Vol. 2, Issue 2, pp. 213-245.<br />
<br />
Milutis, Joe. ''Ether: The Nothing That Connects Everything''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
Peters, John Durham. ''Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.<br />
<br />
Russell, Bertrand. ''History of Western Philosophy''. Rev. ed. London: Routledge Classics, 2004.<br />
<br />
Wilczek, Frank. ''The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces''. New York: Basic Books, 2008.<br />
<br />
Zielinski, Siegfried. ''Deep Time of the Media''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: representation]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9617Ether2010-04-26T16:15:42Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Insurmountable connectivity */</p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge, 8). Signifying presence in the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image that can only indicate and sustain ontologies.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on an airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses signification and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether pertains to the “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265) outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and immanent plane. On one level, ether has undergirded dualities it mediates via transcendence, serving as presence in relation to the void. On another, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the instantiation of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression (McLean 232).<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: chainofbeing.jpg|200px|thumb|left|The Aristotelian universe remediated as the Great Chain of Being in 1579, depicting a divinely inspired universal hierarchy.]]<br />
The origins of ether in Western philosophy are typically traced to Aristotle, whose theory of the universal elements included “aither” as a ''quinta essentia'', or fifth essense (Cantor and Hodge 4). Aristotelian ether was a sempiternal substance that bathed and preserved the heavenly bodies in perpetual, circular motion (5). Though ether was confined to the divine sphere above the sky, it had an analogue on earth: pneuma, the breath and spirit that animated terrestrial life (5). Aristotle’s conception of ether thus both preserved the divine cosmos as incorruptible and absolute and, with pneuma, mediated between heaven and earth. Even though it was “a product of the pagan worship of sun and moon and planets” (Russell 199), the hierarchical structure of the universe and the possibility of transcendence signified by Aristotle’s conception of ether was co-opted by Christian theologians and held sway into the Renaissance. <br />
<br />
In the 1st century BCE, however, the Roman poet Lucretius integrated the idea of ether into very different, non-hierarchized ontology: the atomist tradition of Empedocles and Democritus. As Siegfried Zielinski writes, the atomists did “not think of the infinite multiplicity of things in terms of any hierarchical order. Nothing is above anything else; everything exists side-by-side, in motion, and with constant interpenetration” (Zielinski 47). “Lucretius’s cosmogony starts with the formation of the earth from a mindless rushing of atoms driven only by their weight and their collisions with others” (Cantor and Hodge 7). While the heavier atoms link up to make the earth, the lighter atoms are squeezed out as a fiery ether that, with air, both congeals into and surrounds the moon, sun, stars, and planets. In contrast to Aristotle’s idea of ether as a substance that preserved the heavenly bodies as absolute, in Lucretius’ theory ether “is not, ultimately, special at all” (8), but is comprised, like the rest of the universe, of a particular particle density that is both sustains and is subject to constant flux. As Stuart McLean observes, “such a materialism, in focusing on the emergence and dissolution of apparently stable forms, refuses…any absolute distinction”: “[p]hysical bodies, sensations, and products of the imagination thus share the same origin and the same materiality” (McLean 225). In the atomist tradition, which prefigures contemporary particle physics, ether is at once ''simulacra'', or a product of sensation and imagination, and ''materiality'', a physical body.<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
In the late 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell theorized ether as a substance present in empty space in order to explain how light waves propagate in a void. Just as sound waves travel through air, Maxwell hypothesized, light waves travel through and relative to the ether (Hawking 20). As John Durham Peters notes, Maxwell characterized the ether as a heavenly substance in the Aristotelian and Newtonian lineage, rich with the divine potential of communicability. As Maxwell writes,<br />
<br />
''The vast interplanetary and interstellar regions will no longer be regarded as waste places in the universe, which the Creator has not seen fit to fill with the symbols of the manifold order of His kingdom. We shall find them to be already full of this wonderful medium; so full, that no human power can remove it from the smallest portion of space, or produce the slightest flaw in its infinite continuity'' (qtd. in Peters 102).<br />
<br />
Despite this “infinite continuity” Maxwell understands to allow action at a distance, Peters observes that Maxwell’s conception of ether also signified modern problems of communication. In one experiment, for example, Maxwell presses two lenses together to depict the space that intervenes between bodies. Even when the lenses are visibly sealed together, when he shone a light through them, a visible ring signified their separation: which Maxwell perceived as the negation of “absolute contact” (qtd. in Peters 178). Maxwell thus “states a major theme in modernist art and literature,” Peters writes, where “the problem of communication becomes not only one of getting messages across the waste expanses traversed by the telegraph wires or the interference-prone ‘ether’ of radio transmission, but one of making contact with the person sitting next to you” (Peters 178). While at this time ether was used to describe the propagation of radio waves and wireless broadcast (“the Ethernet”), the medium also allowed for the conception of an atomized, ontological space. <br />
<br />
Both Maxwell’s conception of a crystalline that propagates light and the atomized notion of social space that Durham observes prefigure the idea of particle physics formulated by Albert Einstein in 1905. “Overthrowing the concept of a universal ‘now,’” (Wilczek 85) Einstein’s theory of special relativity debunked absolute space and Maxwell’s concept of the ether as a spatial constant. Though he is typically credited with laying ether to rest, in 1920, Einstein stated that “according to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable,” because “to deny ether is ultimately to assume that empty space has no physical qualities whatever” (qtd. in Cantor and Hodge 53-4). Ether allowed for the explosion of absolute ontological categories, while ushering the atomic vision of the universe initially conceptualized by the atomists into the modern age.<br />
<br />
== Where does the ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: large-hadron-collider.jpg|300px|thumb|The Large Hadron Collider, 2010.]]<br />
Despite Einstein’s redemption of ether, as the physicist Frank Wilczek describes, even the modern iteration of ether “bears the stigma of dead ideas” (Wilczek 74). Nevertheless, Wilczek employs the term as a kind of placeholder to theorize the phenomenon of superconductivity: “where a space-filling material ether…does the conducting” (96). While “we don’t really know what this new material ether is,” we do “know it’s name: the Higgs condensate” (96). Ether may finally be put to rest 574 feet beneath the Franco-Swiss border. If the Large Hadron Collider succeeds in proving the existence of the Higgs boson through high-energy particle collisions, the role of ether as a representation and a potentiality could be ultimately rendered obsolete. Such a teleological narrative, however, would deny the possibility for immanent expression that characterizes the medium of ether.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: representation]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9612Ether2010-04-26T16:11:49Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane */</p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge, 8). Signifying presence in the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image that can only indicate and sustain ontologies.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on an airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses signification and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether pertains to the “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265) outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and immanent plane. On one level, ether has undergirded dualities it mediates via transcendence, serving as presence in relation to the void. On another, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the instantiation of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression (McLean 232).<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: chainofbeing.jpg|200px|thumb|left|The Aristotelian universe remediated as the Great Chain of Being in 1579, depicting a divinely inspired universal hierarchy.]]<br />
The origins of ether in Western philosophy are typically traced to Aristotle, whose theory of the universal elements included “aither” as a ''quinta essentia'', or fifth essense (Cantor and Hodge 4). Aristotelian ether was a sempiternal substance that bathed and preserved the heavenly bodies in perpetual, circular motion (5). Though ether was confined to the divine sphere above the sky, it had an analogue on earth: pneuma, the breath and spirit that animated terrestrial life (5). Aristotle’s conception of ether thus both preserved the divine cosmos as incorruptible and absolute and, with pneuma, mediated between heaven and earth. Even though it was “a product of the pagan worship of sun and moon and planets” (Russell 199), the hierarchical structure of the universe and the possibility of transcendence signified by Aristotle’s conception of ether was co-opted by Christian theologians and held sway into the Renaissance. <br />
<br />
In the 1st century BCE, however, the Roman poet Lucretius integrated the idea of ether into very different, non-hierarchized ontology: the atomist tradition of Empedocles and Democritus. As Siegfried Zielinski writes, the atomists did “not think of the infinite multiplicity of things in terms of any hierarchical order. Nothing is above anything else; everything exists side-by-side, in motion, and with constant interpenetration” (Zielinski 47). “Lucretius’s cosmogony starts with the formation of the earth from a mindless rushing of atoms driven only by their weight and their collisions with others” (Cantor and Hodge 7). While the heavier atoms link up to make the earth, the lighter atoms are squeezed out as a fiery ether that, with air, both congeals into and surrounds the moon, sun, stars, and planets. In contrast to Aristotle’s idea of ether as a substance that preserved the heavenly bodies as absolute, in Lucretius’ theory ether “is not, ultimately, special at all” (8), but is comprised, like the rest of the universe, of a particular particle density that is both sustains and is subject to constant flux. As Stuart McLean observes, “such a materialism, in focusing on the emergence and dissolution of apparently stable forms, refuses…any absolute distinction”: “[p]hysical bodies, sensations, and products of the imagination thus share the same origin and the same materiality” (McLean 225). In the atomist tradition, which prefigures contemporary particle physics, ether is at once ''simulacra'', or a product of sensation and imagination, and ''materiality'', a physical body.<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
In the late 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell theorized ether as a substance present in empty space in order to explain how light waves propagate in a void. Just as sound waves travel through air, Maxwell hypothesized, light waves travel through and relative through the ether (Hawking 20). As John Durham Peters notes, Maxwell characterized the ether as a heavenly substance in the Aristotelian and Newtonian lineage, rich with the divine potential of communicability. As Maxwell writes,<br />
<br />
''The vast interplanetary and interstellar regions will no longer be regarded as waste places in the universe, which the Creator has not seen fit to fill with the symbols of the manifold order of His kingdom. We shall find them to be already full of this wonderful medium; so full, that no human power can remove it from the smallest portion of space, or produce the slightest flaw in its infinite continuity'' (qtd. in Peters 102).<br />
<br />
Despite this “infinite continuity” Maxwell understands to allow action at a distance, Peters observes that Maxwell’s conception of ether also signified modern problems of communication. In one experiment, for example, Maxwell presses two lenses together to depict the space that intervenes between bodies. Even when the lenses are visibly sealed together, when he shone a light through them, a visible ring signified their separation: which Maxwell perceived as the negation of “absolute contact” (qtd. in Peters 178). Maxwell thus “states a major theme in modernist art and literature,” Peters writes, where “the problem of communication becomes not only one of getting messages across the waste expanses traversed by the telegraph wires or the interference-prone ‘ether’ of radio transmission, but one of making contact with the person sitting next to you” (Peters 178). While at this time ether was used to describe the propagation of radio waves and wireless broadcast (“the Ethernet”), the medium also allowed for the conception of an atomized, ontological space. <br />
<br />
Both Maxwell’s conception of a crystalline that propagates light and the atomized notion of social space that Durham observes prefigure the idea of particle physics formulated by Albert Einstein in 1905. “Overthrowing the concept of a universal ‘now,’” (Wilczek 85) Einstein’s theory of special relativity debunked absolute space and Maxwell’s concept of the ether as a spatial constant. Though he is typically credited with laying ether to rest, in 1920, Einstein stated that “according to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable,” because “to deny ether is ultimately to assume that empty space has no physical qualities whatever” (qtd. in Cantor and Hodge 53-4). Ether allowed for the explosion of absolute ontological categories, while ushering the atomic vision of the universe initially conceptualized by the atomists into the modern age.<br />
<br />
== Where does the ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: large-hadron-collider.jpg|300px|thumb|The Large Hadron Collider, 2010.]]<br />
Despite Einstein’s redemption of ether, as the physicist Frank Wilczek describes, even the modern iteration of ether “bears the stigma of dead ideas” (Wilczek 74). Nevertheless, Wilczek employs the term as a kind of placeholder to theorize the phenomenon of superconductivity: “where a space-filling material ether…does the conducting” (96). While “we don’t really know what this new material ether is,” we do “know it’s name: the Higgs condensate” (96). Ether may finally be put to rest 574 feet beneath the Franco-Swiss border. If the Large Hadron Collider succeeds in proving the existence of the Higgs boson through high-energy particle collisions, the role of ether as a representation and a potentiality could be ultimately rendered obsolete. Such a teleological narrative, however, would deny the possibility for immanent expression that characterizes the medium of ether.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: representation]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9610Ether2010-04-26T16:10:00Z<p>Gillian Young: </p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge, 8). Signifying presence in the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image that can only indicate and sustain ontologies.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on an airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses signification and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether pertains to the “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265) outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and immanent plane, functioning analogically and digitally. On one hand, ether has undergirded dualities it mediates via transcendence, serving as presence in relation to the void. On the other, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the instantiation of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression (McLean 232).<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: chainofbeing.jpg|200px|thumb|left|The Aristotelian universe remediated as the Great Chain of Being in 1579, depicting a divinely inspired universal hierarchy.]]<br />
The origins of ether in Western philosophy are typically traced to Aristotle, whose theory of the universal elements included “aither” as a ''quinta essentia'', or fifth essense (Cantor and Hodge 4). Aristotelian ether was a sempiternal substance that bathed and preserved the heavenly bodies in perpetual, circular motion (5). Though ether was confined to the divine sphere above the sky, it had an analogue on earth: pneuma, the breath and spirit that animated terrestrial life (5). Aristotle’s conception of ether thus both preserved the divine cosmos as incorruptible and absolute and, with pneuma, mediated between heaven and earth. Even though it was “a product of the pagan worship of sun and moon and planets” (Russell 199), the hierarchical structure of the universe and the possibility of transcendence signified by Aristotle’s conception of ether was co-opted by Christian theologians and held sway into the Renaissance. <br />
<br />
In the 1st century BCE, however, the Roman poet Lucretius integrated the idea of ether into very different, non-hierarchized ontology: the atomist tradition of Empedocles and Democritus. As Siegfried Zielinski writes, the atomists did “not think of the infinite multiplicity of things in terms of any hierarchical order. Nothing is above anything else; everything exists side-by-side, in motion, and with constant interpenetration” (Zielinski 47). “Lucretius’s cosmogony starts with the formation of the earth from a mindless rushing of atoms driven only by their weight and their collisions with others” (Cantor and Hodge 7). While the heavier atoms link up to make the earth, the lighter atoms are squeezed out as a fiery ether that, with air, both congeals into and surrounds the moon, sun, stars, and planets. In contrast to Aristotle’s idea of ether as a substance that preserved the heavenly bodies as absolute, in Lucretius’ theory ether “is not, ultimately, special at all” (8), but is comprised, like the rest of the universe, of a particular particle density that is both sustains and is subject to constant flux. As Stuart McLean observes, “such a materialism, in focusing on the emergence and dissolution of apparently stable forms, refuses…any absolute distinction”: “[p]hysical bodies, sensations, and products of the imagination thus share the same origin and the same materiality” (McLean 225). In the atomist tradition, which prefigures contemporary particle physics, ether is at once ''simulacra'', or a product of sensation and imagination, and ''materiality'', a physical body.<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
In the late 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell theorized ether as a substance present in empty space in order to explain how light waves propagate in a void. Just as sound waves travel through air, Maxwell hypothesized, light waves travel through and relative through the ether (Hawking 20). As John Durham Peters notes, Maxwell characterized the ether as a heavenly substance in the Aristotelian and Newtonian lineage, rich with the divine potential of communicability. As Maxwell writes,<br />
<br />
''The vast interplanetary and interstellar regions will no longer be regarded as waste places in the universe, which the Creator has not seen fit to fill with the symbols of the manifold order of His kingdom. We shall find them to be already full of this wonderful medium; so full, that no human power can remove it from the smallest portion of space, or produce the slightest flaw in its infinite continuity'' (qtd. in Peters 102).<br />
<br />
Despite this “infinite continuity” Maxwell understands to allow action at a distance, Peters observes that Maxwell’s conception of ether also signified modern problems of communication. In one experiment, for example, Maxwell presses two lenses together to depict the space that intervenes between bodies. Even when the lenses are visibly sealed together, when he shone a light through them, a visible ring signified their separation: which Maxwell perceived as the negation of “absolute contact” (qtd. in Peters 178). Maxwell thus “states a major theme in modernist art and literature,” Peters writes, where “the problem of communication becomes not only one of getting messages across the waste expanses traversed by the telegraph wires or the interference-prone ‘ether’ of radio transmission, but one of making contact with the person sitting next to you” (Peters 178). While at this time ether was used to describe the propagation of radio waves and wireless broadcast (“the Ethernet”), the medium also allowed for the conception of an atomized, ontological space. <br />
<br />
Both Maxwell’s conception of a crystalline that propagates light and the atomized notion of social space that Durham observes prefigure the idea of particle physics formulated by Albert Einstein in 1905. “Overthrowing the concept of a universal ‘now,’” (Wilczek 85) Einstein’s theory of special relativity debunked absolute space and Maxwell’s concept of the ether as a spatial constant. Though he is typically credited with laying ether to rest, in 1920, Einstein stated that “according to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable,” because “to deny ether is ultimately to assume that empty space has no physical qualities whatever” (qtd. in Cantor and Hodge 53-4). Ether allowed for the explosion of absolute ontological categories, while ushering the atomic vision of the universe initially conceptualized by the atomists into the modern age.<br />
<br />
== Where does the ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: large-hadron-collider.jpg|300px|thumb|The Large Hadron Collider, 2010.]]<br />
Despite Einstein’s redemption of ether, as the physicist Frank Wilczek describes, even the modern iteration of ether “bears the stigma of dead ideas” (Wilczek 74). Nevertheless, Wilczek employs the term as a kind of placeholder to theorize the phenomenon of superconductivity: “where a space-filling material ether…does the conducting” (96). While “we don’t really know what this new material ether is,” we do “know it’s name: the Higgs condensate” (96). Ether may finally be put to rest 574 feet beneath the Franco-Swiss border. If the Large Hadron Collider succeeds in proving the existence of the Higgs boson through high-energy particle collisions, the role of ether as a representation and a potentiality could be ultimately rendered obsolete. Such a teleological narrative, however, would deny the possibility for immanent expression that characterizes the medium of ether.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: representation]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9606Ether2010-04-26T16:06:10Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Insurmountable connectivity */</p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge, 8). Signifying presence in the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image with a variable, ontological indexicality.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on an airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses signification and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether pertains to the “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265) outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and immanent plane, functioning analogically and digitally. On one hand, ether has undergirded dualities it mediates via transcendence, serving as presence in relation to the void. On the other, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the instantiation of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression (McLean 232).<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: chainofbeing.jpg|200px|thumb|left|The Aristotelian universe remediated as the Great Chain of Being in 1579, depicting a divinely inspired universal hierarchy.]]<br />
The origins of ether in Western philosophy are typically traced to Aristotle, whose theory of the universal elements included “aither” as a ''quinta essentia'', or fifth essense (Cantor and Hodge 4). Aristotelian ether was a sempiternal substance that bathed and preserved the heavenly bodies in perpetual, circular motion (5). Though ether was confined to the divine sphere above the sky, it had an analogue on earth: pneuma, the breath and spirit that animated terrestrial life (5). Aristotle’s conception of ether thus both preserved the divine cosmos as incorruptible and absolute and, with pneuma, mediated between heaven and earth. Even though it was “a product of the pagan worship of sun and moon and planets” (Russell 199), the hierarchical structure of the universe and the possibility of transcendence signified by Aristotle’s conception of ether was co-opted by Christian theologians and held sway into the Renaissance. <br />
<br />
In the 1st century BCE, however, the Roman poet Lucretius integrated the idea of ether into very different, non-hierarchized ontology: the atomist tradition of Empedocles and Democritus. As Siegfried Zielinski writes, the atomists did “not think of the infinite multiplicity of things in terms of any hierarchical order. Nothing is above anything else; everything exists side-by-side, in motion, and with constant interpenetration” (Zielinski 47). “Lucretius’s cosmogony starts with the formation of the earth from a mindless rushing of atoms driven only by their weight and their collisions with others” (Cantor and Hodge 7). While the heavier atoms link up to make the earth, the lighter atoms are squeezed out as a fiery ether that, with air, both congeals into and surrounds the moon, sun, stars, and planets. In contrast to Aristotle’s idea of ether as a substance that preserved the heavenly bodies as absolute, in Lucretius’ theory ether “is not, ultimately, special at all” (8), but is comprised, like the rest of the universe, of a particular particle density that is both sustains and is subject to constant flux. As Stuart McLean observes, “such a materialism, in focusing on the emergence and dissolution of apparently stable forms, refuses…any absolute distinction”: “[p]hysical bodies, sensations, and products of the imagination thus share the same origin and the same materiality” (McLean 225). In the atomist tradition, which prefigures contemporary particle physics, ether is at once ''simulacra'', or a product of sensation and imagination, and ''materiality'', a physical body.<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
In the late 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell theorized ether as a substance present in empty space in order to explain how light waves propagate in a void. Just as sound waves travel through air, Maxwell hypothesized, light waves travel through and relative through the ether (Hawking 20). As John Durham Peters notes, Maxwell characterized the ether as a heavenly substance in the Aristotelian and Newtonian lineage, rich with the divine potential of communicability. As Maxwell writes,<br />
<br />
''The vast interplanetary and interstellar regions will no longer be regarded as waste places in the universe, which the Creator has not seen fit to fill with the symbols of the manifold order of His kingdom. We shall find them to be already full of this wonderful medium; so full, that no human power can remove it from the smallest portion of space, or produce the slightest flaw in its infinite continuity'' (qtd. in Peters 102).<br />
<br />
Despite this “infinite continuity” Maxwell understands to allow action at a distance, Peters observes that Maxwell’s conception of ether also signified modern problems of communication. In one experiment, for example, Maxwell presses two lenses together to depict the space that intervenes between bodies. Even when the lenses are visibly sealed together, when he shone a light through them, a visible ring signified their separation: which Maxwell perceived as the negation of “absolute contact” (qtd. in Peters 178). Maxwell thus “states a major theme in modernist art and literature,” Peters writes, where “the problem of communication becomes not only one of getting messages across the waste expanses traversed by the telegraph wires or the interference-prone ‘ether’ of radio transmission, but one of making contact with the person sitting next to you” (Peters 178). While at this time ether was used to describe the propagation of radio waves and wireless broadcast (“the Ethernet”), the medium also allowed for the conception of an atomized, ontological space. <br />
<br />
Both Maxwell’s conception of a crystalline that propagates light and the atomized notion of social space that Durham observes prefigure the idea of particle physics formulated by Albert Einstein in 1905. “Overthrowing the concept of a universal ‘now,’” (Wilczek 85) Einstein’s theory of special relativity debunked absolute space and Maxwell’s concept of the ether as a spatial constant. Though he is typically credited with laying ether to rest, in 1920, Einstein stated that “according to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable,” because “to deny ether is ultimately to assume that empty space has no physical qualities whatever” (qtd. in Cantor and Hodge 53-4). Ether allowed for the explosion of absolute ontological categories, while ushering the atomic vision of the universe initially conceptualized by the atomists into the modern age.<br />
<br />
== Where does the ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: large-hadron-collider.jpg|300px|thumb|The Large Hadron Collider, 2010.]]<br />
Despite Einstein’s redemption of ether, as the physicist Frank Wilczek describes, even the modern iteration of ether “bears the stigma of dead ideas” (Wilczek 74). Nevertheless, Wilczek employs the term as a kind of placeholder to theorize the phenomenon of superconductivity: “where a space-filling material ether…does the conducting” (96). While “we don’t really know what this new material ether is,” we do “know it’s name: the Higgs condensate” (96). Ether may finally be put to rest 574 feet beneath the Franco-Swiss border. If the Large Hadron Collider succeeds in proving the existence of the Higgs boson through high-energy particle collisions, the role of ether as a representation and a potentiality could be ultimately rendered obsolete. Such a teleological narrative, however, would deny the possibility for immanent expression that characterizes the medium of ether.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: representation]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9567Ether2010-04-26T15:15:27Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Where does the ether go to die? */</p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge, 8). Signifying presence in the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image with a variable, ontological indexicality.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on an airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses signification and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether pertains to the “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265) outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and immanent plane, functioning analogically and digitally. On one hand, ether has undergirded dualities it mediates via transcendence, serving as presence in relation to the void. On the other, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the instantiation of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression (McLean 232).<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: chainofbeing.jpg|200px|thumb|left|The Aristotelian universe remediated as the Great Chain of Being in 1579, depicting a divinely inspired universal hierarchy.]]<br />
The origins of ether in Western philosophy are typically traced to Aristotle, whose theory of the universal elements included “aither” as a ''quinta essentia'', or fifth essense (Cantor and Hodge 4). Aristotelian ether was a sempiternal substance that bathed and preserved the heavenly bodies in perpetual, circular motion (5). Though ether was confined to the divine sphere above the sky, it had an analogue on earth: pneuma, the breath and spirit that animated terrestrial life (5). Aristotle’s conception of ether thus both preserved the divine cosmos as incorruptible and absolute and, with pneuma, mediated between heaven and earth. Even though it was “a product of the pagan worship of sun and moon and planets” (Russell 199), the hierarchical structure of the universe and the possibility of transcendence signified by Aristotle’s conception of ether was co-opted by Christian theologians and held sway into the Renaissance. <br />
<br />
In the 1st century BCE, however, the Roman poet Lucretius integrated the idea of ether into very different, non-hierarchized ontology: the atomist tradition of Empedocles and Democritus. As Siegfried Zielinski writes, the atomists did “not think of the infinite multiplicity of things in terms of any hierarchical order. Nothing is above anything else; everything exists side-by-side, in motion, and with constant interpenetration” (Zielinski 47). “Lucretius’s cosmogony starts with the formation of the earth from a mindless rushing of atoms driven only by their weight and their collisions with others” (Cantor and Hodge 7). While the heavier atoms link up to make the earth, the lighter atoms are squeezed out as a fiery ether that, with air, both congeals into and surrounds the moon, sun, stars, and planets. In contrast to Aristotle’s idea of ether as a substance that preserved the heavenly bodies as absolute, in Lucretius’ theory ether “is not, ultimately, special at all” (8), but is comprised, like the rest of the universe, of a particular particle density that is both sustains and is subject to constant flux. As Stuart McLean observes, “such a materialism, in focusing on the emergence and dissolution of apparently stable forms, refuses…any absolute distinction”: “[p]hysical bodies, sensations, and products of the imagination thus share the same origin and the same materiality” (McLean 225). In the atomist tradition, which prefigures contemporary particle physics, ether is at once ''simulacra'', or a product of sensation and imagination, and ''materiality'', a physical body.<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
== Where does the ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: large-hadron-collider.jpg|300px|thumb|The Large Hadron Collider, 2010.]]<br />
Despite Einstein’s redemption of ether, as the physicist Frank Wilczek describes, even the modern iteration of ether “bears the stigma of dead ideas” (Wilczek 74). Nevertheless, Wilczek employs the term as a kind of placeholder to theorize the phenomenon of superconductivity: “where a space-filling material ether…does the conducting” (96). While “we don’t really know what this new material ether is,” we do “know it’s name: the Higgs condensate” (96). Ether may finally be put to rest 574 feet beneath the Franco-Swiss border. If the Large Hadron Collider succeeds in proving the existence of the Higgs boson through high-energy particle collisions, the role of ether as a representation and a potentiality could be ultimately rendered obsolete. Such a teleological narrative, however, would deny the possibility for immanent expression that characterizes the medium of ether.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: representation]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9565Ether2010-04-26T15:13:01Z<p>Gillian Young: </p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge, 8). Signifying presence in the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image with a variable, ontological indexicality.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on an airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses signification and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether pertains to the “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265) outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and immanent plane, functioning analogically and digitally. On one hand, ether has undergirded dualities it mediates via transcendence, serving as presence in relation to the void. On the other, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the instantiation of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression (McLean 232).<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: chainofbeing.jpg|200px|thumb|left|The Aristotelian universe remediated as the Great Chain of Being in 1579, depicting a divinely inspired universal hierarchy.]]<br />
The origins of ether in Western philosophy are typically traced to Aristotle, whose theory of the universal elements included “aither” as a ''quinta essentia'', or fifth essense (Cantor and Hodge 4). Aristotelian ether was a sempiternal substance that bathed and preserved the heavenly bodies in perpetual, circular motion (5). Though ether was confined to the divine sphere above the sky, it had an analogue on earth: pneuma, the breath and spirit that animated terrestrial life (5). Aristotle’s conception of ether thus both preserved the divine cosmos as incorruptible and absolute and, with pneuma, mediated between heaven and earth. Even though it was “a product of the pagan worship of sun and moon and planets” (Russell 199), the hierarchical structure of the universe and the possibility of transcendence signified by Aristotle’s conception of ether was co-opted by Christian theologians and held sway into the Renaissance. <br />
<br />
In the 1st century BCE, however, the Roman poet Lucretius integrated the idea of ether into very different, non-hierarchized ontology: the atomist tradition of Empedocles and Democritus. As Siegfried Zielinski writes, the atomists did “not think of the infinite multiplicity of things in terms of any hierarchical order. Nothing is above anything else; everything exists side-by-side, in motion, and with constant interpenetration” (Zielinski 47). “Lucretius’s cosmogony starts with the formation of the earth from a mindless rushing of atoms driven only by their weight and their collisions with others” (Cantor and Hodge 7). While the heavier atoms link up to make the earth, the lighter atoms are squeezed out as a fiery ether that, with air, both congeals into and surrounds the moon, sun, stars, and planets. In contrast to Aristotle’s idea of ether as a substance that preserved the heavenly bodies as absolute, in Lucretius’ theory ether “is not, ultimately, special at all” (8), but is comprised, like the rest of the universe, of a particular particle density that is both sustains and is subject to constant flux. As Stuart McLean observes, “such a materialism, in focusing on the emergence and dissolution of apparently stable forms, refuses…any absolute distinction”: “[p]hysical bodies, sensations, and products of the imagination thus share the same origin and the same materiality” (McLean 225). In the atomist tradition, which prefigures contemporary particle physics, ether is at once ''simulacra'', or a product of sensation and imagination, and ''materiality'', a physical body.<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
== Where does the ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: large-hadron-collider.jpg|300px|thumb|The Large Hadron Collider, 2010.]]<br />
Despite Einstein’s redemption of ether, as the physicist Frank Wilczek describes, even the modern iteration of ether “bears the stigma of dead ideas” (Wilczek 74). Nevertheless, Wilczek employs the term as a kind of placeholder to theorize the phenomenon of superconductivity: “where a space-filling material ether…does the conducting” (96). While “we don’t really know what this new material ether is,” we do “know it’s name: the Higgs condensate” (96). Ether may finally be put to rest 574 feet beneath the Franco-Swiss border. If the Large Hadron Collider succeeds in proving the existence of the Higgs boson through high-energy particle collisions, the role of ether as a representation and a potentiality could be ultimately rendered obsolete. Such a teleological narrative, however, would deny the potential for immanent expression that characterizes the medium of ether.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: representation]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9544Ether2010-04-26T14:58:00Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Where does the ether go to die? */</p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge, 8). Signifying presence in the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image with a variable, ontological indexicality.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on a French airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses signification and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether pertains to the “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265) outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and immanent plane, functioning analogically and digitally. On one hand, ether has undergirded dualities it mediates via transcendence, serving as presence in relation to the void. On the other, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the instantiation of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression (McLean 232).<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: chainofbeing.jpg|200px|thumb|left|The Aristotelian universe remediated as the Great Chain of Being in 1579, depicting a divinely inspired universal hierarchy.]]<br />
The origins of ether in Western philosophy are typically traced to Aristotle, whose theory of the universal elements included “aither” as a ''quinta essentia'', or fifth essense (Cantor and Hodge 4). Aristotelian ether was a sempiternal substance that bathed and preserved the heavenly bodies in perpetual, circular motion (5). Though ether was confined to the divine sphere above the sky, it had an analogue on earth: pneuma, the breath and spirit that animated terrestrial life (5). Aristotle’s conception of ether thus both preserved the divine cosmos as incorruptible and absolute and, with pneuma, mediated between heaven and earth. Even though it was “a product of the pagan worship of sun and moon and planets” (Russell 199), the hierarchical structure of the universe and the possibility of transcendence signified by Aristotle’s conception of ether was co-opted by Christian theologians and held sway into the Renaissance. <br />
<br />
In the 1st century BCE, however, the Roman poet Lucretius integrated the idea of ether into very different, non-hierarchized ontology: the atomist tradition of Empedocles and Democritus. As Siegfried Zielinski writes, the atomists did “not think of the infinite multiplicity of things in terms of any hierarchical order. Nothing is above anything else; everything exists side-by-side, in motion, and with constant interpenetration” (Zielinski 47). “Lucretius’s cosmogony starts with the formation of the earth from a mindless rushing of atoms driven only by their weight and their collisions with others” (Cantor and Hodge 7). While the heavier atoms link up to make the earth, the lighter atoms are squeezed out as a fiery ether that, with air, both congeals into and surrounds the moon, sun, stars, and planets. In contrast to Aristotle’s idea of ether as a substance that preserved the heavenly bodies as absolute, in Lucretius’ theory ether “is not, ultimately, special at all” (8), but is comprised, like the rest of the universe, of a particular particle density that is both sustains and is subject to constant flux. As Stuart McLean observes, “such a materialism, in focusing on the emergence and dissolution of apparently stable forms, refuses…any absolute distinction”: “[p]hysical bodies, sensations, and products of the imagination thus share the same origin and the same materiality” (McLean 225). In the atomist tradition, which prefigures contemporary particle physics, ether is at once ''simulacra'', or a product of sensation and imagination, and ''materiality'', a physical body.<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
== Where does the ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: large-hadron-collider.jpg|300px|thumb|The Large Hadron Collider, 2010.]]<br />
Despite Einstein’s redemption of ether, as the physicist Frank Wilczek describes, even the modern iteration of ether “bears the stigma of dead ideas” (Wilczek 74). Nevertheless, Wilczek employs the term as a kind of placeholder to theorize the phenomenon of superconductivity: “where a space-filling material ether…does the conducting” (96). While “we don’t really know what this new material ether is,” we do “know it’s name: the Higgs condensate” (96). Ether may finally be put to rest 574 feet beneath the Franco-Swiss border. If the Large Hadron Collider succeeds in proving the existence of the Higgs boson through high-energy particle collisions, the role of ether as a representation and a potentiality could be ultimately rendered obsolete. Such a teleological narrative, however, would deny the potential for immanent expression that characterizes the medium of ether.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: representation]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9535Ether2010-04-26T14:50:33Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Where does the ether go to die? */</p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge, 8). Signifying presence in the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image with a variable, ontological indexicality.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on a French airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses signification and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether pertains to the “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265) outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and immanent plane, functioning analogically and digitally. On one hand, ether has undergirded dualities it mediates via transcendence, serving as presence in relation to the void. On the other, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the instantiation of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression (McLean 232).<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: chainofbeing.jpg|200px|thumb|left|The Aristotelian universe remediated as the Great Chain of Being in 1579, depicting a divinely inspired universal hierarchy.]]<br />
The origins of ether in Western philosophy are typically traced to Aristotle, whose theory of the universal elements included “aither” as a ''quinta essentia'', or fifth essense (Cantor and Hodge 4). Aristotelian ether was a sempiternal substance that bathed and preserved the heavenly bodies in perpetual, circular motion (5). Though ether was confined to the divine sphere above the sky, it had an analogue on earth: pneuma, the breath and spirit that animated terrestrial life (5). Aristotle’s conception of ether thus both preserved the divine cosmos as incorruptible and absolute and, with pneuma, mediated between heaven and earth. Even though it was “a product of the pagan worship of sun and moon and planets” (Russell 199), the hierarchical structure of the universe and the possibility of transcendence signified by Aristotle’s conception of ether was co-opted by Christian theologians and held sway into the Renaissance. <br />
<br />
In the 1st century BCE, however, the Roman poet Lucretius integrated the idea of ether into very different, non-hierarchized ontology: the atomist tradition of Empedocles and Democritus. As Siegfried Zielinski writes, the atomists did “not think of the infinite multiplicity of things in terms of any hierarchical order. Nothing is above anything else; everything exists side-by-side, in motion, and with constant interpenetration” (Zielinski 47). “Lucretius’s cosmogony starts with the formation of the earth from a mindless rushing of atoms driven only by their weight and their collisions with others” (Cantor and Hodge 7). While the heavier atoms link up to make the earth, the lighter atoms are squeezed out as a fiery ether that, with air, both congeals into and surrounds the moon, sun, stars, and planets. In contrast to Aristotle’s idea of ether as a substance that preserved the heavenly bodies as absolute, in Lucretius’ theory ether “is not, ultimately, special at all” (8), but is comprised, like the rest of the universe, of a particular particle density that is both sustains and is subject to constant flux. As Stuart McLean observes, “such a materialism, in focusing on the emergence and dissolution of apparently stable forms, refuses…any absolute distinction”: “[p]hysical bodies, sensations, and products of the imagination thus share the same origin and the same materiality” (McLean 225). In the atomist tradition, which prefigures contemporary particle physics, ether is at once ''simulacra'', or a product of sensation and imagination, and ''materiality'', a physical body.<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
== Where does the ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: large-hadron-collider.jpg|300px|thumb|The Large Hadron Collider, 2010.]]<br />
Despite Einstein’s redemption of ether, as the physicist Frank Wilczek describes, even the modern iteration of ether “bears the stigma of dead ideas” (Wilczek 74). Nevertheless, Wilczek employs the term as a kind of placeholder to theorize the phenomenon of superconductivity: “where a space-filling material ether…does the conducting” (96). While “we don’t really know what this new material ether is,” we do “know it’s name: the Higgs condensate” (96). Ether may finally be put to rest 574 feet beneath the Franco-Swiss border. If the Large Hadron Collider succeeds in proving the existence of the Higgs boson through high-energy particle collisions, the role of ether as a representation and a potentiality could be ultimately rendered obsolete. Such a teleological narrative, however, would deny the immanent expression that has persistently characterized the medium of ether.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: representation]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9534Ether2010-04-26T14:49:45Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane */</p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge, 8). Signifying presence in the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image with a variable, ontological indexicality.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on a French airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses signification and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether pertains to the “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265) outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and immanent plane, functioning analogically and digitally. On one hand, ether has undergirded dualities it mediates via transcendence, serving as presence in relation to the void. On the other, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the instantiation of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression (McLean 232).<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: chainofbeing.jpg|200px|thumb|left|The Aristotelian universe remediated as the Great Chain of Being in 1579, depicting a divinely inspired universal hierarchy.]]<br />
The origins of ether in Western philosophy are typically traced to Aristotle, whose theory of the universal elements included “aither” as a ''quinta essentia'', or fifth essense (Cantor and Hodge 4). Aristotelian ether was a sempiternal substance that bathed and preserved the heavenly bodies in perpetual, circular motion (5). Though ether was confined to the divine sphere above the sky, it had an analogue on earth: pneuma, the breath and spirit that animated terrestrial life (5). Aristotle’s conception of ether thus both preserved the divine cosmos as incorruptible and absolute and, with pneuma, mediated between heaven and earth. Even though it was “a product of the pagan worship of sun and moon and planets” (Russell 199), the hierarchical structure of the universe and the possibility of transcendence signified by Aristotle’s conception of ether was co-opted by Christian theologians and held sway into the Renaissance. <br />
<br />
In the 1st century BCE, however, the Roman poet Lucretius integrated the idea of ether into very different, non-hierarchized ontology: the atomist tradition of Empedocles and Democritus. As Siegfried Zielinski writes, the atomists did “not think of the infinite multiplicity of things in terms of any hierarchical order. Nothing is above anything else; everything exists side-by-side, in motion, and with constant interpenetration” (Zielinski 47). “Lucretius’s cosmogony starts with the formation of the earth from a mindless rushing of atoms driven only by their weight and their collisions with others” (Cantor and Hodge 7). While the heavier atoms link up to make the earth, the lighter atoms are squeezed out as a fiery ether that, with air, both congeals into and surrounds the moon, sun, stars, and planets. In contrast to Aristotle’s idea of ether as a substance that preserved the heavenly bodies as absolute, in Lucretius’ theory ether “is not, ultimately, special at all” (8), but is comprised, like the rest of the universe, of a particular particle density that is both sustains and is subject to constant flux. As Stuart McLean observes, “such a materialism, in focusing on the emergence and dissolution of apparently stable forms, refuses…any absolute distinction”: “[p]hysical bodies, sensations, and products of the imagination thus share the same origin and the same materiality” (McLean 225). In the atomist tradition, which prefigures contemporary particle physics, ether is at once ''simulacra'', or a product of sensation and imagination, and ''materiality'', a physical body.<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
== Where does the ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: large-hadron-collider.jpg|300px|thumb|The Large Hadron Collider, 2010.]]<br />
Despite Einstein’s redemption of ether, as the physicist Frank Wilczek describes, even the modern iteration of ether “bears the stigma of dead ideas” (Wilczek 74). Nevertheless, he employs the term as a kind of placeholder to theorize the phenomenon of superconductivity: “where a space-filling material ether…does the conducting” (96). While “we don’t really know what this new material ether is,” we do “know it’s name: the Higgs condensate” (96). Ether may finally be put to rest 574 feet beneath the Franco-Swiss border. If the Large Hadron Collider succeeds in proving the existence of the Higgs boson through high-energy particle collisions, the role of ether as a representation and a potentiality could be ultimately rendered obsolete. Such a teleological narrative, however, would deny the immanent expression that has persistently characterized the medium of ether.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: representation]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9532Ether2010-04-26T14:48:29Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Bodies heavenly and atomic */</p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge, 8). Signifying presence in the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image with a variable, ontological indexicality.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on a French airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses signification and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether pertains to the “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265) outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and immanent plane, functioning analogically and digitally. On one hand, ether has undergirded dualities it mediates via transcendence, serving as presence in relation to the void. On the other, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the instantiation of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression (McClean 232).<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: chainofbeing.jpg|200px|thumb|left|The Aristotelian universe remediated as the Great Chain of Being in 1579, depicting a divinely inspired universal hierarchy.]]<br />
The origins of ether in Western philosophy are typically traced to Aristotle, whose theory of the universal elements included “aither” as a ''quinta essentia'', or fifth essense (Cantor and Hodge 4). Aristotelian ether was a sempiternal substance that bathed and preserved the heavenly bodies in perpetual, circular motion (5). Though ether was confined to the divine sphere above the sky, it had an analogue on earth: pneuma, the breath and spirit that animated terrestrial life (5). Aristotle’s conception of ether thus both preserved the divine cosmos as incorruptible and absolute and, with pneuma, mediated between heaven and earth. Even though it was “a product of the pagan worship of sun and moon and planets” (Russell 199), the hierarchical structure of the universe and the possibility of transcendence signified by Aristotle’s conception of ether was co-opted by Christian theologians and held sway into the Renaissance. <br />
<br />
In the 1st century BCE, however, the Roman poet Lucretius integrated the idea of ether into very different, non-hierarchized ontology: the atomist tradition of Empedocles and Democritus. As Siegfried Zielinski writes, the atomists did “not think of the infinite multiplicity of things in terms of any hierarchical order. Nothing is above anything else; everything exists side-by-side, in motion, and with constant interpenetration” (Zielinski 47). “Lucretius’s cosmogony starts with the formation of the earth from a mindless rushing of atoms driven only by their weight and their collisions with others” (Cantor and Hodge 7). While the heavier atoms link up to make the earth, the lighter atoms are squeezed out as a fiery ether that, with air, both congeals into and surrounds the moon, sun, stars, and planets. In contrast to Aristotle’s idea of ether as a substance that preserved the heavenly bodies as absolute, in Lucretius’ theory ether “is not, ultimately, special at all” (8), but is comprised, like the rest of the universe, of a particular particle density that is both sustains and is subject to constant flux. As Stuart McLean observes, “such a materialism, in focusing on the emergence and dissolution of apparently stable forms, refuses…any absolute distinction”: “[p]hysical bodies, sensations, and products of the imagination thus share the same origin and the same materiality” (McLean 225). In the atomist tradition, which prefigures contemporary particle physics, ether is at once ''simulacra'', or a product of sensation and imagination, and ''materiality'', a physical body.<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
== Where does the ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: large-hadron-collider.jpg|300px|thumb|The Large Hadron Collider, 2010.]]<br />
Despite Einstein’s redemption of ether, as the physicist Frank Wilczek describes, even the modern iteration of ether “bears the stigma of dead ideas” (Wilczek 74). Nevertheless, he employs the term as a kind of placeholder to theorize the phenomenon of superconductivity: “where a space-filling material ether…does the conducting” (96). While “we don’t really know what this new material ether is,” we do “know it’s name: the Higgs condensate” (96). Ether may finally be put to rest 574 feet beneath the Franco-Swiss border. If the Large Hadron Collider succeeds in proving the existence of the Higgs boson through high-energy particle collisions, the role of ether as a representation and a potentiality could be ultimately rendered obsolete. Such a teleological narrative, however, would deny the immanent expression that has persistently characterized the medium of ether.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: representation]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9530Ether2010-04-26T14:47:58Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Where does the ether go to die? */</p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge, 8). Signifying presence in the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image with a variable, ontological indexicality.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on a French airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses signification and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether pertains to the “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265) outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and immanent plane, functioning analogically and digitally. On one hand, ether has undergirded dualities it mediates via transcendence, serving as presence in relation to the void. On the other, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the instantiation of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression (McClean 232).<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: chainofbeing.jpg|300px|thumb|left|The Aristotelian universe remediated as the Great Chain of Being in 1579, depicting a divinely inspired universal hierarchy.]]<br />
The origins of ether in Western philosophy are typically traced to Aristotle, whose theory of the universal elements included “aither” as a ''quinta essentia'', or fifth essense (Cantor and Hodge 4). Aristotelian ether was a sempiternal substance that bathed and preserved the heavenly bodies in perpetual, circular motion (5). Though ether was confined to the divine sphere above the sky, it had an analogue on earth: pneuma, the breath and spirit that animated terrestrial life (5). Aristotle’s conception of ether thus both preserved the divine cosmos as incorruptible and absolute and, with pneuma, mediated between heaven and earth. Even though it was “a product of the pagan worship of sun and moon and planets” (Russell 199), the hierarchical structure of the universe and the possibility of transcendence signified by Aristotle’s conception of ether was co-opted by Christian theologians and held sway into the Renaissance. <br />
<br />
In the 1st century BCE, however, the Roman poet Lucretius integrated the idea of ether into very different, non-hierarchized ontology: the atomist tradition of Empedocles and Democritus. As Siegfried Zielinski writes, the atomists did “not think of the infinite multiplicity of things in terms of any hierarchical order. Nothing is above anything else; everything exists side-by-side, in motion, and with constant interpenetration” (Zielinski 47). “Lucretius’s cosmogony starts with the formation of the earth from a mindless rushing of atoms driven only by their weight and their collisions with others” (Cantor and Hodge 7). While the heavier atoms link up to make the earth, the lighter atoms are squeezed out as a fiery ether that, with air, both congeals into and surrounds the moon, sun, stars, and planets. In contrast to Aristotle’s idea of ether as a substance that preserved the heavenly bodies as absolute, in Lucretius’ theory ether “is not, ultimately, special at all” (8), but is comprised, like the rest of the universe, of a particular particle density that is both sustains and is subject to constant flux. As Stuart McLean observes, “such a materialism, in focusing on the emergence and dissolution of apparently stable forms, refuses…any absolute distinction”: “[p]hysical bodies, sensations, and products of the imagination thus share the same origin and the same materiality” (McLean 225). In the atomist tradition, which prefigures contemporary particle physics, ether is at once ''simulacra'', or a product of sensation and imagination, and ''materiality'', a physical body.<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
== Where does the ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: large-hadron-collider.jpg|300px|thumb|The Large Hadron Collider, 2010.]]<br />
Despite Einstein’s redemption of ether, as the physicist Frank Wilczek describes, even the modern iteration of ether “bears the stigma of dead ideas” (Wilczek 74). Nevertheless, he employs the term as a kind of placeholder to theorize the phenomenon of superconductivity: “where a space-filling material ether…does the conducting” (96). While “we don’t really know what this new material ether is,” we do “know it’s name: the Higgs condensate” (96). Ether may finally be put to rest 574 feet beneath the Franco-Swiss border. If the Large Hadron Collider succeeds in proving the existence of the Higgs boson through high-energy particle collisions, the role of ether as a representation and a potentiality could be ultimately rendered obsolete. Such a teleological narrative, however, would deny the immanent expression that has persistently characterized the medium of ether.<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: representation]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9527Ether2010-04-26T14:46:58Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Bodies heavenly and atomic */</p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge, 8). Signifying presence in the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image with a variable, ontological indexicality.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on a French airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses signification and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether pertains to the “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265) outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and immanent plane, functioning analogically and digitally. On one hand, ether has undergirded dualities it mediates via transcendence, serving as presence in relation to the void. On the other, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the instantiation of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression (McClean 232).<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: chainofbeing.jpg|300px|thumb|left|The Aristotelian universe remediated as the Great Chain of Being in 1579, depicting a divinely inspired universal hierarchy.]]<br />
The origins of ether in Western philosophy are typically traced to Aristotle, whose theory of the universal elements included “aither” as a ''quinta essentia'', or fifth essense (Cantor and Hodge 4). Aristotelian ether was a sempiternal substance that bathed and preserved the heavenly bodies in perpetual, circular motion (5). Though ether was confined to the divine sphere above the sky, it had an analogue on earth: pneuma, the breath and spirit that animated terrestrial life (5). Aristotle’s conception of ether thus both preserved the divine cosmos as incorruptible and absolute and, with pneuma, mediated between heaven and earth. Even though it was “a product of the pagan worship of sun and moon and planets” (Russell 199), the hierarchical structure of the universe and the possibility of transcendence signified by Aristotle’s conception of ether was co-opted by Christian theologians and held sway into the Renaissance. <br />
<br />
In the 1st century BCE, however, the Roman poet Lucretius integrated the idea of ether into very different, non-hierarchized ontology: the atomist tradition of Empedocles and Democritus. As Siegfried Zielinski writes, the atomists did “not think of the infinite multiplicity of things in terms of any hierarchical order. Nothing is above anything else; everything exists side-by-side, in motion, and with constant interpenetration” (Zielinski 47). “Lucretius’s cosmogony starts with the formation of the earth from a mindless rushing of atoms driven only by their weight and their collisions with others” (Cantor and Hodge 7). While the heavier atoms link up to make the earth, the lighter atoms are squeezed out as a fiery ether that, with air, both congeals into and surrounds the moon, sun, stars, and planets. In contrast to Aristotle’s idea of ether as a substance that preserved the heavenly bodies as absolute, in Lucretius’ theory ether “is not, ultimately, special at all” (8), but is comprised, like the rest of the universe, of a particular particle density that is both sustains and is subject to constant flux. As Stuart McLean observes, “such a materialism, in focusing on the emergence and dissolution of apparently stable forms, refuses…any absolute distinction”: “[p]hysical bodies, sensations, and products of the imagination thus share the same origin and the same materiality” (McLean 225). In the atomist tradition, which prefigures contemporary particle physics, ether is at once ''simulacra'', or a product of sensation and imagination, and ''materiality'', a physical body.<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
== Where does the ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: large-hadron-collider.jpg|300px|thumb|The Large Hadron Collider, 2010.]]<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: representation]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9462Ether2010-04-26T13:15:08Z<p>Gillian Young: </p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge, 8). Signifying presence in the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image with a variable, ontological indexicality.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on a French airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses signification and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether pertains to the “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265) outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and immanent plane, functioning analogically and digitally. On one hand, ether has undergirded dualities it mediates via transcendence, serving as presence in relation to the void. On the other, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the instantiation of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression (McClean 232).<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: chainofbeing.jpg|300px|thumb|left|The Aristotelian universe remediated as the Great Chain of Being in 1579, depicting a divinely inspired universal hierarchy.]]<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
== Where does the ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: large-hadron-collider.jpg|300px|thumb|The Large Hadron Collider, 2010.]]<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: representation]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9460Ether2010-04-26T13:10:51Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane */</p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge, 8). In the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image with a variable, ontological indexicality. As a sign of presence whose referent is at once absence and absent, ether challenges the logic of representation.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on a French airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses signification and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether pertains to the “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265) outlined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and immanent plane, functioning analogically and digitally. On one hand, ether has undergirded dualities it mediates via transcendence, serving as presence in relation to the void. On the other, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the instantiation of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression (McClean 232).<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: chainofbeing.jpg|300px|thumb|left|The Aristotelian universe remediated as the Great Chain of Being in 1579, depicting a divinely inspired universal hierarchy.]]<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
== Where does the ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: large-hadron-collider.jpg|300px|thumb|The Large Hadron Collider, 2010.]]<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: representation]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9453Ether2010-04-26T12:59:28Z<p>Gillian Young: </p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge, 8). In the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image with a variable, ontological indexicality. As a sign of presence whose referent is at once absence and absent, ether challenges the logic of representation.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on a French airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses signification and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether connects Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265). On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and immanent plane, functioning analogically and digitally. On one hand, ether has undergirded dualities it mediates via transcendence, serving as presence in relation to the void. On the other, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the instantiation of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression (McClean 232).<br />
<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: chainofbeing.jpg|300px|thumb|left|The Aristotelian universe remediated as the Great Chain of Being in 1579, depicting a divinely inspired universal hierarchy.]]<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
== Where does the ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: large-hadron-collider.jpg|300px|thumb|The Large Hadron Collider, 2010.]]<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: representation]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9451Ether2010-04-26T12:57:57Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Where does ether go to die? */</p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge, 8). In the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image with a variable, ontological indexicality. As a sign of presence whose referent is at once absence and absent, ether challenges the logic of representation.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on a French airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses representation and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether connects Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265). On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and immanent plane, functioning analogically and digitally. On one hand, ether has undergirded dualities it mediates via transcendence, serving as presence in relation to the void. On the other, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the instantiation of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression (McClean 232).<br />
<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: chainofbeing.jpg|300px|thumb|left|The Aristotelian universe remediated as the Great Chain of Being in 1579, depicting a divinely inspired universal hierarchy.]]<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
== Where does the ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: large-hadron-collider.jpg|300px|thumb|The Large Hadron Collider, 2010.]]<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9447Ether2010-04-26T12:54:25Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Bodies heavenly and atomic */</p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge, 8). In the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image with a variable, ontological indexicality. As a sign of presence whose referent is at once absence and absent, ether challenges the logic of representation.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on a French airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses representation and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether connects Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265). On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and immanent plane, functioning analogically and digitally. On one hand, ether has undergirded dualities it mediates via transcendence, serving as presence in relation to the void. On the other, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the instantiation of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression (McClean 232).<br />
<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
[[Image: chainofbeing.jpg|300px|thumb|left|The Aristotelian universe remediated as the Great Chain of Being in 1579, depicting a divinely inspired universal hierarchy.]]<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
== Where does ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=File:Chainofbeing.jpg&diff=9446File:Chainofbeing.jpg2010-04-26T12:50:19Z<p>Gillian Young: </p>
<hr />
<div></div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=File:Large-hadron-collider.jpg&diff=9445File:Large-hadron-collider.jpg2010-04-26T12:50:01Z<p>Gillian Young: </p>
<hr />
<div></div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9444Ether2010-04-26T12:49:28Z<p>Gillian Young: </p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge, 8). In the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image with a variable, ontological indexicality. As a sign of presence whose referent is at once absence and absent, ether challenges the logic of representation.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on a French airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses representation and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
== Symbolic materiality: plan(e) and plane ==<br />
<br />
As a conceptual physical field, ether connects Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s “two ways of conceptualizing the plane” (Deleuze and Guattari 265). On the one hand, Deleuze and Guattari describe “a teleological plan(e), a design, a mental principle...a plan(e) of transcendence” that, “even if it is said to be immanent, it is so only by absence, analogically (metaphorically, metonymically, etc.)” (265-6). On the other hand is the plane of pure immanence, where “the plane itself is perceived at the same time as it allows us to perceive the imperceptible […] relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds” (266-7). Historically, ether has been both teleological plan[e] and immanent plane, functioning analogically and digitally. On one hand, ether has undergirded dualities it mediates via transcendence, serving as presence in relation to the void. On the other, ether has structured the void on an invisible, atomic level, negating absolutes through the instantiation of continuous, volatile activity. The medium has performed according to the logic of representation, but it also embodies the potential for Deleuze’s idea of immanent expression (McClean 232).<br />
<br />
<br />
== Bodies heavenly and atomic ==<br />
<br />
== Insurmountable connectivity ==<br />
<br />
== Where does ether go to die? ==<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=9443Ether2010-04-26T12:44:05Z<p>Gillian Young: </p>
<hr />
<div>''Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.'' (Bachelard, xxxvi).<br />
<br />
Ether is a space of speculation. Historically, the medium has been dually seized upon by poetic imagination and subjected to scientific measurement and experiment. From the Aristotelian physics of heavenly bodies to a 19th century notion of an expansive aerial phonograph (Milutis 37), speculations about the ether are necessarily partial: subjective because premised on a negative—a presence envisioned for the void. As the physicists G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge write, “the conceptions of aither often depend directly on ontologies, on theories of being and substance” (Cantor and Hodge, 8). In the absence of a perceptible referent, ether is an image with a variable, ontological indexicality. As a sign of presence whose referent is at once absence and absent, ether challenges the logic of representation.<br />
[[Image: iris_airmail_stamp.jpg|300px|thumb|Iris depicted on a French airmail stamp, 1946.]]<br />
As a mode of mediation, ether collapses representation and materiality. Ether is thus akin to Iris, the Greek goddess of communication who imminently embodies the message given to her. Despite its etymological tie to our concept of the “ethereal” (otherworldly, immaterial) in mediating unknowable, imperceptible space, ether was necessarily material: a rigorously tested and constructed presence to stand in for the void. Like Iris, the symbolic content of ether was indistinct from its material substrate. Never indifferent, the materiality of ether could potentially bridge lived experience and the absolute (as measurement) or explode this duality (as atomic imagination). <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: spatiality]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=File:Iris_airmail_stamp.jpg&diff=9441File:Iris airmail stamp.jpg2010-04-26T12:17:54Z<p>Gillian Young: </p>
<hr />
<div></div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Mnemonics&diff=8762Mnemonics2010-04-19T13:12:16Z<p>Gillian Young: </p>
<hr />
<div><div style="text-align:center;">"'''M'''nemonics '''N'''eatly '''E'''liminate '''M'''an's '''O'''nly '''N'''emesis ('''I'''nsufficient '''C'''erebral '''S'''torage)"</div><br />
<br />
Mnemonics, or the art of memory, is today regarded as an arcane intellectual interest. It functions on the periphery of popular culture, largely through a literature of self-help designed to bolster the confidence of those insecure about their powers of recollection. If it is a useful skill, it is not an essential one in a civilization whose collective memory is securely stored in the printed word and, more recently, in digital media. Today’s archive exists in the library or the personal computer, not in the depths of a well-ordered mind. <br />
<br />
Most of the mnemonic devices and techniques that remain today are simple and standardized. They are tools for remembering sequences of information, especially for recall in testing situations. Rather than learning general mnemonic tricks, students are left with specific rhymes or sentences to remember, for example: "Roy G. Biv" to remember the colors of the rainbow; "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally" for the algebraic order of operations; and "lefty, loosey; righty, tighty" for mechanics. Despite the longevity of some of these specific mnemonics, however, they are but a mere suggestion of the much more complex and widespread mnemonic strategies of yesteryear: from the wandering rhapsody of ancient Greece who enthralled listeners with the epic tales of Homer to the philosophers of the Renaissance who constructed imaginary memory palaces to present their intricate designs of the cosmos. This dossier will explore mnemonics as a mode of mediation that stored knowledge in a world invested in the authority of the spoken word, and strove to represent and control the historically black-boxed functioning of human memory.<br />
<br />
[[File:Erinnern.jpg|right|]]<br />
<br />
==Historical Sketch of Old Works on Mnemonics==<br />
[[File:10133 vico dipintura.gif|400px|thumb|left|Cover image from Giambattista Vico's book ''The New Science''. Each symbol was mean to help the reader recall all of the ideas in the book.]]<br />
<br />
“A memory consists in the awareness, first, of the diminished intensity of an impression, second, of its increased ease, and third, of the connections it entertains with other impressions” (Kittler 1999, 31).<br />
<br />
Long before transcription existed, there have been oral records of events in history: genealogies. In medieval Iceland, administrators of the law had to commit their entire juridical system to memory (Fentress and Wickham, 1992). In Ireland, bards would study for twelve years in order to memorize over 500 stories, as well as genealogies of all the leading Irish families (MacManus, 1967).<br />
<br />
Reflecting back on this mnemonic oral tradition, the 18th century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico contends that key to understanding of the nature of memory is derived from the direct correspondence between image and idea in primitive poetic language. In the beginnings of civilization, image and idea were one. Primitive peoples possessed robust memories because of the inseparable association they made between images and ideas in their comprehension of the world. They thought metaphorically, and the metaphors that they uttered were easily mimicked and remembered because they were richly expressive, grandiose, and full of wonder at the world. Vico revealed that the link between human imagination and the universe that the Renaissance Neoplatonists had sought to discover magically was in fact born historically in the development of human consciousness (Verene, 101). <br />
<br />
The source of mnemonist’s method is visible in the poetic logic of Vico’s theory of the emergence of human consciousness. That theory, too, involves the relationship between places and images, which Vico labels ''topics'' and ''tropes''. Topics were the poetic of formulae through which primitive people identified the phenomena of the world. As imaginative representations of particular aspects of realty, they provided common places or fixed points of reference amidst the flux of sense experience (Yates, 31). Considered in this context, Vico’s new art of memory becomes a retrospective search for connection between our present conceptions and the lost poetic images out of which they were born. In the logic of Vichian poetics, the new art of memory is a reconstruction of the imaginative process by which the poets of antiquity gave shape to their perception of the world. Therein the imaginative sources of our present ideas are to be found. The original topic might be linked to a palimpsest, repeatedly covered over with more abstract imagery as the human mind historically ascended the tropological gradient of linguistic expression. Vico’s art of memory was to decipher each tropological layer along the way until the original metaphorical topic, long forgotten, was recalled to mind (Hutton, 379).<br />
<br />
=== Freud's theory as a reverse mnemonics ===<br />
<br />
If mnemonics lay at the source of Romantic soul-searching (both personal and collective), the techniques themselves were only rarely the subject of introspective comment. It was left to Sigmund Freud at the turn of the 20th century to explain the role of memory in introspection in terms of a mnemonic code (Hutton, 386). In his theory of screen memories, Freud posits the constructive power of the unconscious mind to shape recollection. Forgetting rather than remembering is what we wish to do, he argues, because it is easier to live with a screen of fantasies rather than face the reality of our past. To use his terminology, memory is tendentious in that it reflects unconscious psychic intent. In this respect the Unconscious is the guardian of memory, legislating the selection of what is remembered, and what is repressed or hidden away. As an art of memory, therefore, psychoanalysis is a technique for deciphering the psychic intent encoded in screen memories (Hutton, 388). As we elaborate below, Freud's theory of the Unconscious, and of the forces of repression and trauma that affect the psyche, is incompatible with the classical lineage of mnemonics that assumes the individual's conscious control over his or her memory.<br />
<br />
==The Technology of Memory==<br />
[[File:Room 07 Fludd0002.jpg|thumb|computerized memory theater]]<br />
===How Mnemonics Work===<br />
<br />
Mnemonics may be viewed as storage devices for information in the human mind. The brain, however, is like a black box, and has been throughout human history: many of its operations are a mystery, and we are still just uncovering how it accomplishes many of the tasks we take for granted. Memory is one such process that captured the imaginations of pre-modern thinkers, and that contemporary scientists are still trying to understand. However, there are a few things that have been discovered over the years about how mnemonics function. The process of remembering is split up into different steps: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Mnemonics are involved with encoding. The best way to learn things, or encode them, is to associate them with other things. In people's mind, "apple" will often be associated with "red" and "round." By retrieving the concept of "red," the memory of "apple" will also be triggered. Mnemonics capitalize on this principle by creating more entry points to different pieces of information.<br />
<br />
At first glance, mnemonics may seem rather counter-intuitive because they require one to remember more information in order to solve the problem of remembering something else entirely. Rather than simply remembering one date, 1492 for example, mnemonics ask that you remember a poem: "In 1492 / Columbus sailed the ocean blue." More information is required in an attempt to lodge an initial piece of information in one's mind. While this technique seems rather contradictory, it works because it creates associations, or configurations of information more likely to stick in one's memory. A useful metaphor may be that a memory is a series of files. Mnemonics store bits of information in a number of different files through which to access the information.<br />
<br />
===Arbitrariness and the Cake-Mix Effect===<br />
<br />
In many mnemonic systems, the specifics of the "extra" information one learns to create associations is often entirely arbitrary and can be adapted for each individual. Much like pre-packaged cake mix, mnemonic techniques offer a basic structure, but the particular words and connections that will best work for an individual mind must be added to the formula for it to function. For example, a common strategy for remembering an ordered list is to remember the first letter of each item and put together a new sentence in which each of the words starts with one of the letters needing to be remembered, in the proper order. So if one wanted to remember biological taxonomic classifications from broadest to most specific ('''K'''ingdom, '''P'''hylum, '''C'''lass, '''O'''rder, '''F'''amily, '''G'''enus, '''S'''pecies, '''V'''ariety), one need construct a new sentence in which each subsequent word starts with the next letter in order (K,P,C,O,F,G,S,V). Each individual might have a different sentence that works best for him or her, however. So while one student might find it most advantageous to remember "'''K'''ing '''P'''hilip's '''C'''lassic '''O'''rder: '''F'''amily '''G'''enius - '''S'''pecial '''V'''alue'" another might find it easier to remember "'''K'''indly '''P'''lace '''C'''over '''O'''n '''F'''resh '''G'''reen '''S'''pring '''V'''egetables." This flexibility makes mnemonics a useful set of strategies, and the failure of these techniques is often dependent on the arbitrary information filled into the system. If someone fails to remember the order of the taxonomical classes it is usually because the sentence used is not the best for the user. Many mnemonic systems work in this manner, tailored to the individual mind. One prime historical example of this is the memory palace.<br />
<br />
==Method of Loci==<br />
<br />
A poetic, time-honored example of the method of loci may be found in the cosmology of Australian aborigines, whose ancestors are said to have sung the world into existence (Cambor, 2001). Every rock and crevice of the outback has a song associated with it, and the traveler knows their location exactly by their place in the song, the words of which corresponds to their physical surroundings. These songs have been transcribed to aid in the understanding of the geology of the continent. Across the globe, in Ancient Rome, mnemonics were used by lawyers to remember the points they wanted to make in a lawsuit. The method of loci was first formally described by Quitilian, a first century Roman rhetorician. As the historian Frances Yates describes in her book ''The Art of Memory'', the most common forms of the method of loci are memory palaces, memory theaters, and memory gardens. <br />
<br />
===Case Study or Trace Study of the Memory Palace===<br />
[[File:Fludd-the-art-of-memory-89.jpg|thumb|right|Engraving by Robert Fludd revealing memory attached to images]]<br />
<br />
Memory Palaces are methods of loci which use an imagined architecture to structure a speech based on associations of symbols. They are a spatialized remediation of association. Before memory palaces were implemented, hieroglyphs and other forms of picture writing were already using symbols to stand in for words and ideas. Memory palaces abstract this notion of association and complicate it in order to allow one to remember hundreds of ideas. While mnemonics can be written down, the memory palace is completely imagined, and therefore the process and the media is black boxed within the mind of the subject, and like Iris, the message or information is internalized. The memory palace is evoked, in the same way the muse used to be evoked, in order to help the speaker remember his or her message. This method was developed out of a human lack, and the need to remember large amounts of information. When using the memory palace, one needs only to remember the symbols, after which the encoded information becomes unlocked like the chirograph which connects to its counterpart. Memory palaces were constructed out of an anxiety for memory being lost, but in reality it is always already lost. <br />
<br />
This mode of mediation is based on location, but it itself has no location and exists as a non-space that stores imagined data. The subject that uses the memory palace becomes split and is forced to inhabit two realities as one must imagine walking through the memory palace and picking up each predetermined object while simultaneously being rooted in a physical space and delivering a live speech to an audience. The subject must navigate the memory palace like an automaton on automatic pilot but cannot get fully immersed or lost in it. Discipline of the mind and the body is necessary since the subject cannot think, but must become a machine and instrument for the reading of memory. <br />
<br />
====The Mechanization of Memory====<br />
<br />
Hegel discusses memory in two terms: “Erinnerung” and “Gedächtnis.” Erinnerung for Hegel is recollection, memory based on learning and internalization. It therefore has a relationship to the past and to a missing Other. Gedächtnis is the forgetting of meaning in favor of memorization and technologized memory, just as the technologization of speech through the act of writing represents the erasure of speech and the marking of its becoming forgotten. Gedächtnis acts as the simulacrum and mechanical reproduction of memory but empties it of its original meaning (Ronell, 2010). Memory palaces fall under Gedächtnis, as they are a phantom crutch or prosthetic for remembering which can be easily dismantled and forgotten. The technique does reflect Erinnerung in that it calls to its missing Other which is the real house, but, because reality of the memory palace is artificially constructed, it has no relationship to the past. The associations within the memory palace are also artificial, revealing the manipulation of memory which becomes something external that can be altered and changed. Derrida writes, “What Plato is attacking in sophistics, therefore, is not simply recourse to memory but, within such recourse, the substitution of the mnemonic device for live memory, of the prosthesis for the organ; the perversion that consists of replacing a limb by a thing, here, substituting the passive, mechanical ‘by-heart’ for the active reanimation of knowledge, for its reproduction in the present. The boundary (between inside and outside, living and nonliving) separates not only speech from writing but also memory as an unveiling (re-)producing a presence from re-memoration as the mere repetition of a monument…(Derrida 109).” Paul de Man elaborates on the contradictory nature of Gedächtnis and Erinnerung, “Memory effaces remembrance (or recollection) just as the I effaces itself. The faculty that enables thought to exist also makes its preservation impossible. The art, the ''techné'', of writing which cannot be separated from thought and from memorization can only be preserved in the figural mode of the symbol, the very mode it has to do away with if it is to occur at all (de Man 102).” Here, Gedächtnis effaces Erinnerung, like mechanical reproduction effaces the original, and writing effaces speech.<br />
<br />
====Memory Palace as Afterimage and Trace====<br />
[[File:Afterimage1.JPG|thumb|left|Purkyně's "artery figure" taken from Zielinksi's ''Deep Time of the Media'']]<br />
The effacing of Erinnerung caused by Gedächtnis also speaks to the idea of an afterimage which effaces the original image. The memory palace is an afterimage and faint impression of one’s home which it replaces. Jonathan Crary writes that the afterimage “…allowed one to conceive of sensory perception as cut from any necessary link with an external referent. The afterimage – the presence of sensation in the absence of a stimulus – and its subsequent modulations posed a theoretical and empirical demonstration of autonomous vision, of an optical experience that was produced by and within the subject (Crary 98).” The afterimage of the memory palace is detachable, once it is created the originary house isn’t necessary to evoke it, rather it can be evoked independently by the subject. Derrida’s concept of the “trace” is essentially the afterimage of a sign. While memory palaces are the navigation of symbols within a space, where space itself is also a symbol, the nature of these symbols are imagined and therefore nonpresent. Derrida saw signs as related to living memory, and the “trace” as having to do with dead memory Derrida writes, “The trace is not a presence but is rather the simulacrum of a presence that dislocates, displaces, and refers beyond itself. The trace has, properly speaking, no place, for effacement belongs to the very structure of the trace. Effacement must always be able to overtake the trace; otherwise it would not be a trace but an indestructible and monumental substance (Derrida 156).” The trace refers to that which is no longer present, leaving only the relics and remains to be read.<br />
<br />
<br />
====Memory as Archive and Crypt====<br />
[[File:044MemoryBook200.jpg|thumb|right|human brain as memory archive]]<br />
Memory palaces are a static archive of files. Cornelia Vismann links the structure of fixed archives to tombs which seal and bury files. Vismann writes, “The immobile tomes are their own tombs...The immobilization amounts to a musealization, creating a work of art out of files (Vismann 161-162).” The memory palace echoes this sentiment and acts more as a mausoleum than a museum. The frozen architecture of the memory palace is doubled by the frozen images within it, turning the palace into a crypt. The shaping of the memory palace into a petrified and dead picture reveals the artifice of constructed memory. Its static and spectral quality lends it to the space of the crypt and removes it from the space of the living. It is the dead memory that must be summoned by the speaker, called to as the missing Other, and resurrected into the present.<br />
<br />
====Forgetting====<br />
Memory Palaces must be practiced, otherwise they are prone to being forgotten. Practice and performance keeps artificial memory alive, otherwise it returns to the crypt. They are meant to be remembered for a specific event, such as a specific speech, but once the event has passed, the memory palace recedes, shatters, and erases itself into the depths of the mystic writing pad’s unconscious. The memory palace, then, is made to be forgotten. Vismann writes, “With one sharp and one blunt end, the stylus unites writing and erasing, those two fundamental chancery operations, in one instrument. Herein lies an analogy to the workings of memory: just as the Greek verb hypomnematizesthai equates filing and remembering, its opposite, exaleiphein, combines a practical act and a function of memory by referring both to forgetting and wiping off (Vismann 55).” In this sense the memory palace is obliterated and becomes buried as a trace and remnant. Memory and forgetting work as though in a circuit, the production of one is almost always the production of the other, to remember one thing often causes one to forget another less relevant thing. Vismann also discusses forgetting as enabling memory, just as the afterimage or trace enables the original image, or the second gives birth to the first. Mechanical reproduction also enables the original, revealing the necessity of the copy and the negation in order to preserve the referent. There is only so much space in the human brain, therefore acquiring new information or new memories must also imply a certain amount of forgetting.<br />
<br />
==Mnemonic Expression: Writing Secrets and Speaking the Mind==<br />
<br />
''The art of memory is like an inner writing'' - Frances Yates.<br />
<br />
While mnemonic techniques were designed for oral performance without visible written aid, they were, from a Derridean perspective, systems of representation organized by writing. Rather than utilizing writing to externalize memory, mnemonics structured texts to correlate with the (variously imagined) inner mechanisms of the psyche. Mnemonics shaped poetics via rhyme and meter, for instance, rendering the text structurally uniform so that it might be more easily remembered and spoken. Mnemonic technique thus interfaced between speech and writing, presence and trace. In the same vein, mnemonics mediated between the interior mind and the external world, articulating both. Mnemonics are thus not simply storage techniques but expression: a form of writing (or ''art'' of memory) that reveals historically deviant memories and, in attempting to control its input and output, represents the persistently black-boxed functioning of the human mind.<br />
<br />
===Mnemonics as cryptography===<br />
<br />
As a mode of mediation, mnemonics represent a curious combination of semiotics and functional nonsense. Mnemonic signs (images, places, phrases) must be nearly evacuated of meaning in order to cue—but not replace—the desired information actively attached to (or associated with) them. From this perspective, articulated above [http://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php/Mnemonics#Arbitrariness_and_the_Cake-Mix_Effect], mnemonics functioned as a storage technique comprised of arbitrary signifiers (like Roy G. Biv) rather than a communicative semantic system. The seemingly nonsensical functioning of mnemonics, however, leaves open the opportunity for obfuscation. If mnemonics could be 'objectively' coded for memory, then they could also perform as encrypted transmission.<br />
<br />
====Giordano Bruno's magic mnemonics====<br />
<br />
Giordano Bruno, a Dominican friar and peripatetic philosopher famous for his “amazing powers of recollection” (Zielinski 72) provides a historical example of the cryptographic, communicative potential of mnemonics in the late 16th century. Bruno was eventually burned at the stake during the Inquisition for his use of magic and allegiance to hermeticism: a philosophy named for Hermes and Thoth and based in Egyptian astrology, which, needless to say, clashed with Christian doctrine. In ''Deep Time of The Media'', Siegfried Zielinski links hermetic tradition (which persisted into the Renaissance but had to be promulgated secretly) to the “subhistory” stemming from “the passion for encrypting and deciphering texts runs through the sciences” since the 13th century (Zielinski 73). He also notes that cryptography made particular demands on memory and was thus bound to mnemonic ability (83). Bruno took this relationship one step further. In his writings and teachings, Bruno endeavored to both transmit and internalize hermetic secrets through mnemonic technique. <br />
[[Image: bruno_memory_wheel.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|Frances Yates' rendition of Giordano Bruno's mnemonic wheel described in ''Shadows'' (1582).]] “The secret was the combination of the Hermetic beliefs with the techniques of the art of memory” (Yates 305) writes Frances Yates, so that these “memory systems” became “a mode of transmitting a religion, or an ethic, or some message of universal import” (387). <br />
<br />
Bruno’s system of “magic mnemonics” (Yates 223) hinged on his belief that the memorization of significant images enabled the "harnessing of the inner world of the imagination to the stars, or reproducing the the celestial world within" (215). Memory, for Bruno, was thus a dioptric medium, allowing the passage of the sublime order of the heavens into the individual psyche, "arriving at the vision within of the One light diffused through all" (230). This divine lumen, however, was guarded by catoptric technique. Bruno's mnemonic system was based the arrangement of intricate wheels of astral symbols and magic images. Bruno's first book on the art of memory is aptly titled ''Shadows'': as Yates observes, there is “Circaean mystification at the heart of this memory treatise” (247). Bruno’s mnemonic code thus had a dual function to reveal and conceal. He sought to at once unify the human imagination and the celestial order through memory, and to keep this mnemonic recipe secret, decipherable only by those who understood hermetic principles and believed in magic.<br />
<br />
===Written in wax===<br />
<br />
Wax—the inscription media associated with classical rhetoric and art of memory—was remediated in recording technology and psychoanalytic discourse at the turn of the 20th century. Through a brief comparison of modern and antique articulations of wax as the material substrate of memory, we may glimpse how the rise and fall of mnemonics is subject to the imagined materiality—and malleability—of the mind.<br />
<br />
====Antique imaginary: the obvious====<br />
<br />
Cicero’s ''De oratore'' (finished in 55 B.C.E.) is among the earliest treatises describing mnemonics as a rhetorical art (Yates 17). Cicero credits Simonides with the invention of the art of memory, when, with “with almost divine powers of memory,” he “wrote down what he wanted to remember in certain places in his possession by means of images, just as if he were describing letters on wax” (qtd. in Yates 19). Yates interprets Cicero’s portrayal of the origin of mnemonics as “an inner writing on wax” (19): Simonides internalizes the wax tablet, the medium for recording speech that Phaedrus famously concealed under his cloak in Plato’s dialogue. Cornelia Vismann identifies wax as the key medium in the shift from oral to written legal and administrative culture in the West. “To synchronize speech and writing,” Vismann describes, “the speedwriters or exceptores responsible for files and protocols drew their letters in wax, which, in Quintilian’s words, puts up as little resistance to inscribing as it does to erasing” (Vismann 55). These speedwriters were also employed to take down the senate minutes, which “in search for the aura of the authentic,” “aim[ed] for [a] presentist effect” (54). Mnemonic systems were likewise designed to uphold these cultural values of presence and authenticity, and were analogous to wax in their ability to suture oral performance and written record.<br />
[[Image: waxtablet.jpg|left|300px|thumb|A Grecian wax tablet.]]<br />
Wax was thus the obvious material through (and on) which to describe mnemonics, which interfaced between speech and writing. The metaphor has an additional layer: as a malleable, hand-held medium, the wax tablet suggests that the memory is also easily manipulable by an autonomous author. Cicero renders Simonides as the authorial agent of his inner wax tablet, and thus in control of his memory. Nearly two millennia later, during the modern turn, the idea that one could rely on—let alone control—one’s memory was undercut by the development of recording technologies and the rise of psychoanalytic theories of trauma and repression. Curiously, at this historical moment, the connection between wax and memory that once portrayed both mnemonics and the inner-workings of the classical mind is again applied to mental faculties. This later incarnation of inner wax, however, is not subject to authorial intent, but inscribed upon by machines and the Unconscious.<br />
<br />
====Modern memory: the return of the repressed?====<br />
<br />
Two notable depictions of wax as the material substrate of memory bracket Kittler’s year 1900: Jean-Marie Guyau’s Memory and Phonograph (1880) and Sigmund Freud’s Note Upon the ‘Mystic-Writing Pad’ (1925). “What good are the poetic mnemonic techniques of rhyme and meter when wax rolls can store not only substance and tone but real sounds?” (Kittler 1992, 236), Kittler asks in ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Guyau addressed this anxiety of the inferiority of human memory and the limits of language early on by claiming the phonograph as the most exact metaphor for man’s ability to record and recite—to read, write, and speak. Notions of manipulating the memory with images, places, and signs is replaced with a techno-scientific inscription in Guyau’s comparison: “Upon speaking into a phonograph, the vibrations of one’s voice are transferred into a point that engraves lines on a metal plate…in analogous ways, invisible lines are incessantly carved into the brain cells” (qtd. in Kittler 1999, 30-31). In Guyau's view, the materiality of the modern mind must be akin to the phonograph's metal plate and wax rolls, because, unlike the wax tablet which can only record spoke words, these mechanisms can fix unwritable data flows and capture the noise of modern life.<br />
<br />
Freud’s use of the [[mystic-writing pad]] as an analogy for the psyche also revises the idea of memory and inscription. Freud dismisses mnemonics right off the bat: “If I distrust my memory,” he begins, “I am able to supplement and guarantee its working by making a note in writing” (Freud 227). External “devices to aid memory” (228) are imperfect compared to our own sensory apparatus, however, which “has an unlimited receptive capacity for new perceptions and nevertheless lays down permanent—even though not unalterable—memory-traces of them” (228). Though he distrusts his memory, Freud echoes the ancient Greeks in imagining the psychic apparatus as a remediation of the wax tablet: the mystic-writing pad. Unlike the imagined mnemonic tablet, however, Freud’s pad is not consciously inscribed, but “receives perceptions (which are accompanied by consciousness)and passes the excitation on to the unconscious mnemic systems” (231). In Freud's illustration of the psyche, it is not the individual who consciously writes upon his or her memory, but the semi-conscious (and potentially traumatic) perceptions that exceed language which mark the material substrate of the mind.<br />
<br />
Though these modern articulations of the mind destabilize the ability of human memory (assumed by mnemonics) and man’s conscious, literate power over it (and symbolized by wax), they are haunted by the idea of control and power that they repress. Guyau and Freud participate in the same endeavor to represent the black box of the mind, reiterating the art of memory via technological and psycho-scientific metaphor.<br />
<br />
==Obsolescence and the Changing Thinker==<br />
<br />
<br />
According to Yates, the quest for improved memory through artificial mnemonic systems emerges as a critical part of our attempt to organize knowledge and impose a comprehensible order on our chaotic world. Perhaps the decline of these time-honored techniques is simply due to the fact that it is decreasingly relevant or important to remember things. The way we interact with information has changed drastically since a time before writing, thus changing the way we think. As Nietzsche observed, "our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts" ([http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ Carr]). When the printing press was invented by Johann Gutenberg in the early 1450s, memory techniques started to lose their prominence. People were suddenly able to record history, genealogies, law codes and stories without committing them to memory. <br />
<br />
With easy access to computer databases and the Internet, the need for mnemonic devices is has faded even further. This shift in thinking was pointed out in a recent article published in the New York Times: "Why bother remembering the clever poem that tells the value of pi to 21 places (3.141592653589793238462) when you can look it up online and get a virtual googol of places? Why is it necessary in this information age to remember most thing, except maybe your user name and password(s)?" ([http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html Rosenthal]). Clive Thompson summed up the change in thinking even more succinctly in [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson ''Wired''] magazine: "Almost without noticing it, we've outsourced important peripheral brain functions to the silicon around us." In a time when memory was the only storage device or at least one of the most efficient, mnemonics were an obvious form of mediation, but as new technologies have become available making it simple to find almost any fact in a few quick keystrokes and a quick skimming of a web page, those old strategies have become less necessary. As Crary observes, audiences must be trained to use new mediums and technologies (Crary 6), and through our re-training, it is not surprising mnemonics have largely disappeared. We have been schooled in new ways of solving the problem of retaining important details, with external resources in hand. Perhaps this modern resistance to memorization masks an anxiety caused by a diminished sense of our own mnemonic capabilities (Cambor 2001) due to developments in technology and the emergence of psychoanalysis at the turn of the modern era, or perhaps memory itself is a dying medium.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
* Carr, Nicholas. [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"] ''The Atlantic''. The Atlantic Monthly Group, July-Aug. 2008. Web. 10 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Crary, Jonathan. ''Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century''. Boston: MIT Press, 1992.<br />
* de Man, Paul. ''Aesthetic Ideology''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Dissemination''. New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 2004.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Speech and phenomena: and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs''. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. <br />
* Donald Phillip Verene, Vico’s Science of Imagination (Ithaca, 1981), 96-126<br />
* Fentress, James and Chris Wickham (1992) Social Memory. Oxford: Blackwell. <br />
* Freud, Sigmund. ''The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud''. Ed. James Strachey. London: The Hogarth Press, 1961.<br />
* Kittler, Friedrich A. ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.<br />
* --. ''Gramophone, Film, Typewriter''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton. ''The Art of Memory Reconceived: From Rhetoric to Psychoanalysis''. Journal of the History of Ideas, 48(3), 371-392<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton, "The new science of giambattista Vico: Historicism in its Relation to Poetics" ''Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism'', 30 (1972), 362-64<br />
* Rosenthal, Jack. [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html "Mnemonics."] ''New York Times''. New York Times Company, 17 July 2005. Web. 11 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Ronell, Avital. "Scoring Literature: The Drug Culture". (Lecture, NYU, 4/8/10).<br />
* Thompson, Clive. [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson "Your Outboard Brain Knows All"] ''Wired''. Conde Nast Digital, 25 Sept. 2007. Web. 11. Apr. 2010.<br />
* Vismann, Cornelia. ''Files: Law and Media Technology''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008.<br />
* Yates, Frances A. ''The Art of Memory''. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966.<br />
* Zielinski, Siegfried. ''Deep Time of the Media''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
==External Links==<br />
* [http://www.eudesign.com/mnems/_mnframe.htm Mnemonics] - a list of a number of standardized mnemonic devices<br />
* [http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-memory.htm How Human Memory Works] - a simple overview of the mental process<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: Memory]]<br />
<br />
[[Category: Representation]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Ether&diff=8736Ether2010-04-13T01:22:21Z<p>Gillian Young: Created page with 'under construction! Category:Dossier Category:Spring 2010'</p>
<hr />
<div>under construction!<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]] <br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Mnemonics&diff=8668Mnemonics2010-04-12T16:50:32Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Modern memory: the return of the repressed? */</p>
<hr />
<div><div style="text-align:center;">"'''M'''nemonics '''N'''eatly '''E'''liminate '''M'''an's '''O'''nly '''N'''emesis ('''I'''nsufficient '''C'''erebral '''S'''torage)"</div><br />
<br />
Mnemonics, or the art of memory, is today regarded as an arcane intellectual interest. It functions on the periphery of popular culture, largely through a literature of self-help designed to bolster the confidence of those insecure about their powers of recollection. If it is a useful skill, it is not an essential one in a civilization whose collective memory is securely stored in the printed word and, more recently, in digital media. Today’s archive exists in the library or the personal computer, not in the depths of a well-ordered mind. <br />
<br />
Most of the mnemonic devices and techniques that remain today are simple and standardized. They are tools for remembering sequences of information, especially for recall in testing situations. Rather than learning general mnemonic tricks, students are left with specific rhymes or sentences to remember, for example: "Roy G. Biv" to remember the colors of the rainbow; "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally" for the algebraic order of operations; and "lefty, loosey; righty, tighty" for mechanics. Despite the longevity of some of these specific mnemonics, however, they are but a mere suggestion of the much more complex and widespread mnemonic strategies of yesteryear: from the wandering rhapsody of ancient Greece who enthralled listeners with the epic tales of Homer to the philosophers of the Renaissance who constructed imaginary memory palaces to present their intricate designs of the cosmos. This dossier will explore mnemonics as a mode of mediation that stored knowledge in a world invested in the authority of the spoken word, and strove to represent and control the historically black-boxed functioning of human memory.<br />
<br />
[[File:Erinnern.jpg|right|]]<br />
<br />
==Historical Sketch of Old Works on Mnemonics==<br />
[[File:10133 vico dipintura.gif|400px|thumb|left|Cover image from Giambattista Vico's book ''The New Science''. Each symbol was mean to help the reader recall all of the ideas in the book.]]<br />
<br />
“A memory consists in the awareness, first, of the diminished intensity of an impression, second, of its increased ease, and third, of the connections it entertains with other impressions” (Kittler 1999, 31).<br />
<br />
Long before transcription existed, there have been oral records of events in history: genealogies. In medieval Iceland, administrators of the law had to commit their entire juridical system to memory (Fentress and Wickham, 1992). In Ireland, bards would study for twelve years in order to memorize over 500 stories, as well as genealogies of all the leading Irish families (MacManus, 1967).<br />
<br />
Reflecting back on this mnemonic oral tradition, the 18th century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico contends that key to understanding of the nature of memory is derived from the direct correspondence between image and idea in primitive poetic language. In the beginnings of civilization, image and idea were one. Primitive peoples possessed robust memories because of the inseparable association they made between images and ideas in their comprehension of the world. They thought metaphorically, and the metaphors that they uttered were easily mimicked and remembered because they were richly expressive, grandiose, and full of wonder at the world. Vico revealed that the link between human imagination and the universe that the Renaissance Neoplatonists had sought to discover magically was in fact born historically in the development of human consciousness (Verene, 101). <br />
<br />
The source of mnemonist’s method is visible in the poetic logic of Vico’s theory of the emergence of human consciousness. That theory, too, involves the relationship between places and images, which Vico labels ''topics'' and ''tropes''. Topics were the poetic of formulae through which primitive people identified the phenomena of the world. As imaginative representations of particular aspects of realty, they provided common places or fixed points of reference amidst the flux of sense experience (Yates, 31). Considered in this context, Vico’s new art of memory becomes a retrospective search for connection between our present conceptions and the lost poetic images out of which they were born. In the logic of Vichian poetics, the new art of memory is a reconstruction of the imaginative process by which the poets of antiquity gave shape to their perception of the world. Therein the imaginative sources of our present ideas are to be found. The original topic might be linked to a palimpsest, repeatedly covered over with more abstract imagery as the human mind historically ascended the tropological gradient of linguistic expression. Vico’s art of memory was to decipher each tropological layer along the way until the original metaphorical topic, long forgotten, was recalled to mind (Hutton, 379).<br />
<br />
=== Freud's theory as a reverse mnemonics ===<br />
<br />
If mnemonics lay at the source of Romantic soul-searching (both personal and collective), the techniques themselves were only rarely the subject of introspective comment. It was left to Sigmund Freud at the turn of the 20th century to explain the role of memory in introspection in terms of a mnemonic code (Hutton, 386). In his theory of screen memories, Freud posits the constructive power of the unconscious mind to shape recollection. Forgetting rather than remembering is what we wish to do, he argues, because it is easier to live with a screen of fantasies rather than face the reality of our past. To use his terminology, memory is tendentious in that it reflects unconscious psychic intent. In this respect the Unconscious is the guardian of memory, legislating the selection of what is remembered, and what is repressed or hidden away. As an art of memory, therefore, psychoanalysis is a technique for deciphering the psychic intent encoded in screen memories (Hutton, 388). As we elaborate below, Freud's theory of the Unconscious, and of the forces of repression and trauma that affect the psyche, is incompatible with the classical lineage of mnemonics that assumes the individual's conscious control over his or her memory.<br />
<br />
==The Technology of Memory==<br />
[[File:Room 07 Fludd0002.jpg|thumb|computerized memory theater]]<br />
===How Mnemonics Work===<br />
<br />
Mnemonics may be viewed as storage devices for information in the human mind. The brain, however, is like a black box, and has been throughout human history: many of its operations are a mystery, and we are still just uncovering how it accomplishes many of the tasks we take for granted. Memory is one such process that captured the imaginations of pre-modern thinkers, and that contemporary scientists are still trying to understand. However, there are a few things that have been discovered over the years about how mnemonics function. The process of remembering is split up into different steps: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Mnemonics are involved with encoding. The best way to learn things, or encode them, is to associate them with other things. In people's mind, "apple" will often be associated with "red" and "round." By retrieving the concept of "red," the memory of "apple" will also be triggered. Mnemonics capitalize on this principle by creating more entry points to different pieces of information.<br />
<br />
At first glance, mnemonics may seem rather counter-intuitive because they require one to remember more information in order to solve the problem of remembering something else entirely. Rather than simply remembering one date, 1492 for example, mnemonics ask that you remember a poem: "In 1492 / Columbus sailed the ocean blue." More information is required in an attempt to lodge an initial piece of information in one's mind. While this technique seems rather contradictory, it works because it creates associations, or configurations of information more likely to stick in one's memory. A useful metaphor may be that a memory is a series of files. Mnemonics store bits of information in a number of different files through which to access the information.<br />
<br />
===Arbitrariness and the Cake-Mix Effect===<br />
<br />
In many mnemonic systems, the specifics of the "extra" information one learns to create associations is often entirely arbitrary and can be adapted for each individual. Much like pre-packaged cake mix, mnemonic techniques offer a basic structure, but the particular words and connections that will best work for an individual mind must be added to the formula for it to function. For example, a common strategy for remembering an ordered list is to remember the first letter of each item and put together a new sentence in which each of the words starts with one of the letters needing to be remembered, in the proper order. So if one wanted to remember biological taxonomic classifications from broadest to most specific ('''K'''ingdom, '''P'''hylum, '''C'''lass, '''O'''rder, '''F'''amily, '''G'''enus, '''S'''pecies, '''V'''ariety), one need construct a new sentence in which each subsequent word starts with the next letter in order (K,P,C,O,F,G,S,V). Each individual might have a different sentence that works best for him or her, however. So while one student might find it most advantageous to remember "'''K'''ing '''P'''hilip's '''C'''lassic '''O'''rder: '''F'''amily '''G'''enius - '''S'''pecial '''V'''alue'" another might find it easier to remember "'''K'''indly '''P'''lace '''C'''over '''O'''n '''F'''resh '''G'''reen '''S'''pring '''V'''egetables." This flexibility makes mnemonics a useful set of strategies, and the failure of these techniques is often dependent on the arbitrary information filled into the system. If someone fails to remember the order of the taxonomical classes it is usually because the sentence used is not the best for the user. Many mnemonic systems work in this manner, tailored to the individual mind. One prime historical example of this is the memory palace.<br />
<br />
==Method of Loci==<br />
<br />
A poetic, time-honored example of the method of loci may be found in the cosmology of Australian aborigines, whose ancestors are said to have sung the world into existence (Cambor, 2001). Every rock and crevice of the outback has a song associated with it, and the traveler knows their location exactly by their place in the song, the words of which corresponds to their physical surroundings. These songs have been transcribed to aid in the understanding of the geology of the continent. Across the globe, in Ancient Rome, mnemonics were used by lawyers to remember the points they wanted to make in a lawsuit. The method of loci was first formally described by Quitilian, a first century Roman rhetorician. As the historian Frances Yates describes in her book ''The Art of Memory'', the most common forms of the method of loci are memory palaces, memory theaters, and memory gardens. <br />
<br />
===Case Study or Trace Study of the Memory Palace===<br />
[[File:Fludd-the-art-of-memory-89.jpg|thumb|right|Engraving by Robert Fludd revealing memory attached to images]]<br />
<br />
Memory Palaces are methods of loci which use an imagined architecture to structure a speech based on associations of symbols. They are a spatialized remediation of association. Before memory palaces were implemented, hieroglyphs and other forms of picture writing were already using symbols to stand in for words and ideas. Memory palaces abstract this notion of association and complicate it in order to allow one to remember hundreds of ideas. While mnemonics can be written down, the memory palace is completely imagined, and therefore the process and the media is black boxed within the mind of the subject, and like Iris, the message or information is internalized. The memory palace is evoked, in the same way the muse used to be evoked, in order to help the speaker remember his or her message. This method was developed out of a human lack, and the need to remember large amounts of information. When using the memory palace, one needs only to remember the symbols, after which the encoded information becomes unlocked like the chirograph which connects to its counterpart. Memory palaces were constructed out of an anxiety for memory being lost, but in reality it is always already lost. <br />
<br />
This mode of mediation is based on location, but it itself has no location and exists as a non-space that stores imagined data. The subject that uses the memory palace becomes split and is forced to inhabit two realities as one must imagine walking through the memory palace and picking up each predetermined object while simultaneously being rooted in a physical space and delivering a live speech to an audience. The subject must navigate the memory palace like an automaton on automatic pilot but cannot get fully immersed or lost in it. Discipline of the mind and the body is necessary since the subject cannot think, but must become a machine and instrument for the reading of memory. <br />
<br />
====The Mechanization of Memory====<br />
<br />
Hegel discusses memory in two terms: “Erinnerung” and “Gedächtnis.” Erinnerung for Hegel is recollection, memory based on learning and internalization. It therefore has a relationship to the past and to a missing Other. Gedächtnis is the forgetting of meaning in favor of memorization and technologized memory, just as the technologization of speech through the act of writing represents the erasure of speech and the marking of its becoming forgotten. Gedächtnis acts as the simulacrum and mechanical reproduction of memory but empties it of its original meaning (Ronell, 2010). Memory palaces fall under Gedächtnis, as they are a phantom crutch or prosthetic for remembering which can be easily dismantled and forgotten. The technique does reflect Erinnerung in that it calls to its missing Other which is the real house, but, because reality of the memory palace is artificially constructed, it has no relationship to the past. The associations within the memory palace are also artificial, revealing the manipulation of memory which becomes something external that can be altered and changed. Derrida writes, “What Plato is attacking in sophistics, therefore, is not simply recourse to memory but, within such recourse, the substitution of the mnemonic device for live memory, of the prosthesis for the organ; the perversion that consists of replacing a limb by a thing, here, substituting the passive, mechanical ‘by-heart’ for the active reanimation of knowledge, for its reproduction in the present. The boundary (between inside and outside, living and nonliving) separates not only speech from writing but also memory as an unveiling (re-)producing a presence from re-memoration as the mere repetition of a monument…(Derrida 109).” Paul de Man elaborates on the contradictory nature of Gedächtnis and Erinnerung, “Memory effaces remembrance (or recollection) just as the I effaces itself. The faculty that enables thought to exist also makes its preservation impossible. The art, the ''techné'', of writing which cannot be separated from thought and from memorization can only be preserved in the figural mode of the symbol, the very mode it has to do away with if it is to occur at all (de Man 102).” Here, Gedächtnis effaces Erinnerung, like mechanical reproduction effaces the original, and writing effaces speech.<br />
<br />
====Memory Palace as Afterimage and Trace====<br />
[[File:Afterimage1.JPG|thumb|left|Purkyně's "artery figure" taken from Zielinksi's ''Deep Time of the Media'']]<br />
The effacing of Erinnerung caused by Gedächtnis also speaks to the idea of an afterimage which effaces the original image. The memory palace is an afterimage and faint impression of one’s home which it replaces. Jonathan Crary writes that the afterimage “…allowed one to conceive of sensory perception as cut from any necessary link with an external referent. The afterimage – the presence of sensation in the absence of a stimulus – and its subsequent modulations posed a theoretical and empirical demonstration of autonomous vision, of an optical experience that was produced by and within the subject (Crary 98).” The afterimage of the memory palace is detachable, once it is created the originary house isn’t necessary to evoke it, rather it can be evoked independently by the subject. Derrida’s concept of the “trace” is essentially the afterimage of a sign. While memory palaces are the navigation of symbols within a space, where space itself is also a symbol, the nature of these symbols are imagined and therefore nonpresent. Derrida saw signs as related to living memory, and the “trace” as having to do with dead memory Derrida writes, “The trace is not a presence but is rather the simulacrum of a presence that dislocates, displaces, and refers beyond itself. The trace has, properly speaking, no place, for effacement belongs to the very structure of the trace. Effacement must always be able to overtake the trace; otherwise it would not be a trace but an indestructible and monumental substance (Derrida 156).” The trace refers to that which is no longer present, leaving only the relics and remains to be read.<br />
<br />
<br />
====Memory as Archive and Crypt====<br />
[[File:044MemoryBook200.jpg|thumb|right|human brain as memory archive]]<br />
Memory palaces are a static archive of files. Cornelia Vismann links the structure of fixed archives to tombs which seal and bury files. Vismann writes, “The immobile tomes are their own tombs...The immobilization amounts to a musealization, creating a work of art out of files (Vismann 161-162).” The memory palace echoes this sentiment and acts more as a mausoleum than a museum. The frozen architecture of the memory palace is doubled by the frozen images within it, turning the palace into a crypt. The shaping of the memory palace into a petrified and dead picture reveals the artifice of constructed memory. Its static and spectral quality lends it to the space of the crypt and removes it from the space of the living. It is the dead memory that must be summoned by the speaker, called to as the missing Other, and resurrected into the present.<br />
<br />
====Forgetting====<br />
Memory Palaces must be practiced, otherwise they are prone to being forgotten. Practice and performance keeps artificial memory alive, otherwise it returns to the crypt. They are meant to be remembered for a specific event, such as a specific speech, but once the event has passed, the memory palace recedes, shatters, and erases itself into the depths of the mystic writing pad’s unconscious. The memory palace, then, is made to be forgotten. Vismann writes, “With one sharp and one blunt end, the stylus unites writing and erasing, those two fundamental chancery operations, in one instrument. Herein lies an analogy to the workings of memory: just as the Greek verb hypomnematizesthai equates filing and remembering, its opposite, exaleiphein, combines a practical act and a function of memory by referring both to forgetting and wiping off (Vismann 55).” In this sense the memory palace is obliterated and becomes buried as a trace and remnant. Memory and forgetting work as though in a circuit, the production of one is almost always the production of the other, to remember one thing often causes one to forget another less relevant thing. Vismann also discusses forgetting as enabling memory, just as the afterimage or trace enables the original image, or the second gives birth to the first. Mechanical reproduction also enables the original, revealing the necessity of the copy and the negation in order to preserve the referent. There is only so much space in the human brain, therefore acquiring new information or new memories must also imply a certain amount of forgetting.<br />
<br />
==Mnemonic Expression: Writing Secrets and Speaking the Mind==<br />
<br />
''The art of memory is like an inner writing'' - Frances Yates.<br />
<br />
While mnemonic techniques were designed for oral performance without visible written aid, they were, from a Derridean perspective, systems of representation organized by writing. Rather than utilizing writing to externalize memory, mnemonics structured texts to correlate with the (variously imagined) inner mechanisms of the psyche. Mnemonics shaped poetics via rhyme and meter, for instance, rendering the text structurally uniform so that it might be more easily remembered and spoken. Mnemonic technique thus interfaced between speech and writing, presence and trace. In the same vein, mnemonics mediated between the interior mind and the external world, articulating both. Mnemonics are thus not simply storage techniques but expression: a form of writing (or ''art'' of memory) that reveals historically deviant memories and, in attempting to control its input and output, represents the persistently black-boxed functioning of the human mind.<br />
<br />
===Mnemonics as cryptography===<br />
<br />
As a mode of mediation, mnemonics represent a curious combination of semiotics and functional nonsense. Mnemonic signs (images, places, phrases) must be nearly evacuated of meaning in order to cue—but not replace—the desired information actively attached to (or associated with) them. From this perspective, articulated above [http://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php/Mnemonics#Arbitrariness_and_the_Cake-Mix_Effect], mnemonics functioned as a storage technique comprised of arbitrary signifiers (like Roy G. Biv) rather than a communicative semantic system. The seemingly nonsensical functioning of mnemonics, however, leaves open the opportunity for obfuscation. If mnemonics could be 'objectively' coded for memory, then they could also perform as encrypted transmission.<br />
<br />
====Giordano Bruno's magic mnemonics====<br />
<br />
Giordano Bruno, a Dominican friar and peripatetic philosopher famous for his “amazing powers of recollection” (Zielinski 72) provides a historical example of the cryptographic, communicative potential of mnemonics in the late 16th century. Bruno was eventually burned at the stake during the Inquisition for his use of magic and allegiance to hermeticism: a philosophy named for Hermes and Thoth and based in Egyptian astrology, which, needless to say, clashed with Christian doctrine. In ''Deep Time of The Media'', Siegfried Zielinski links hermetic tradition (which persisted into the Renaissance but had to be promulgated secretly) to the “subhistory” stemming from “the passion for encrypting and deciphering texts runs through the sciences” since the 13th century (Zielinski 73). He also notes that cryptography made particular demands on memory and was thus bound to mnemonic ability (83). Bruno took this relationship one step further. In his writings and teachings, Bruno endeavored to both transmit and internalize hermetic secrets through mnemonic technique. <br />
[[Image: bruno_memory_wheel.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|Frances Yates' rendition of Giordano Bruno's mnemonic wheel described in ''Shadows'' (1582).]] “The secret was the combination of the Hermetic beliefs with the techniques of the art of memory” (Yates 305) writes Frances Yates, so that these “memory systems” became “a mode of transmitting a religion, or an ethic, or some message of universal import” (387). <br />
<br />
Bruno’s system of “magic mnemonics” (Yates 223) hinged on his belief that the memorization of significant images enabled the "harnessing of the inner world of the imagination to the stars, or reproducing the the celestial world within" (215). Memory, for Bruno, was thus a dioptric medium, allowing the passage of the sublime order of the heavens into the individual psyche, "arriving at the vision within of the One light diffused through all" (230). This divine lumen, however, was guarded by catoptric technique. Bruno's mnemonic system was based the arrangement of intricate wheels of astral symbols and magic images. Bruno's first book on the art of memory is aptly titled ''Shadows'': as Yates observes, there is “Circaean mystification at the heart of this memory treatise” (247). Bruno’s mnemonic code thus had a dual function to reveal and conceal. He sought to at once unify the human imagination and the celestial order through memory, and to keep this mnemonic recipe secret, decipherable only by those who understood hermetic principles and believed in magic.<br />
<br />
===Written in wax===<br />
<br />
Wax—the inscription media associated with classical rhetoric and art of memory—was remediated in recording technology and psychoanalytic discourse at the turn of the 20th century. Through a brief comparison of modern and antique articulations of wax as the material substrate of memory, we may glimpse how the rise and fall of mnemonics is subject to the imagined materiality—and malleability—of the mind.<br />
<br />
====Antique imaginary: the obvious====<br />
<br />
Cicero’s ''De oratore'' (finished in 55 B.C.E.) is among the earliest treatises describing mnemonics as a rhetorical art (Yates 17). Cicero credits Simonides with the invention of the art of memory, when, with “with almost divine powers of memory,” he “wrote down what he wanted to remember in certain places in his possession by means of images, just as if he were describing letters on wax” (qtd. in Yates 19). Yates interprets Cicero’s portrayal of the origin of mnemonics as “an inner writing on wax” (19): Simonides internalizes the wax tablet, the medium for recording speech that Phaedrus famously concealed under his cloak in Plato’s dialogue. Cornelia Vismann identifies wax as the key medium in the shift from oral to written legal and administrative culture in the West. “To synchronize speech and writing,” Vismann describes, “the speedwriters or exceptores responsible for files and protocols drew their letters in wax, which, in Quintilian’s words, puts up as little resistance to inscribing as it does to erasing” (Vismann 55). These speedwriters were also employed to take down the senate minutes, which “in search for the aura of the authentic,” “aim[ed] for [a] presentist effect” (54). Mnemonic systems were likewise designed to uphold these cultural values of presence and authenticity, and were analogous to wax in their ability to suture oral performance and written record.<br />
[[Image: waxtablet.jpg|left|300px|thumb|A Grecian wax tablet.]]<br />
Wax was thus the obvious material through (and on) which to describe mnemonics, which interfaced between speech and writing. The metaphor has an additional layer: as a malleable, hand-held medium, the wax tablet suggests that the memory is also easily manipulable by an autonomous author. Cicero renders Simonides as the authorial agent of his inner wax tablet, and thus in control of his memory. Nearly two millennia later, during the modern turn, the idea that one could rely on—let alone control—one’s memory was undercut by the development of recording technologies and the rise of psychoanalytic theories of trauma and repression. Curiously, at this historical moment, the connection between wax and memory that once portrayed both mnemonics and the inner-workings of the classical mind is again applied to mental faculties. This later incarnation of inner wax, however, is not subject to authorial intent, but inscribed upon by machines and the Unconscious.<br />
<br />
====Modern memory: the return of the repressed?====<br />
<br />
Two notable depictions of wax as the material substrate of memory bracket Kittler’s year 1900: Jean-Marie Guyau’s Memory and Phonograph (1880) and Sigmund Freud’s Note Upon the ‘Mystic-Writing Pad’ (1925). “What good are the poetic mnemonic techniques of rhyme and meter when wax rolls can store not only substance and tone but real sounds?” (Kittler 1992, 236), Kittler asks in ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Guyau addressed this anxiety of the inferiority of human memory and the limits of language early on by claiming the phonograph as the most exact metaphor for man’s ability to record and recite—to read, write, and speak. Notions of manipulating the memory with images, places, and signs is replaced with a techno-scientific inscription in Guyau’s comparison: “Upon speaking into a phonograph, the vibrations of one’s voice are transferred into a point that engraves lines on a metal plate…in analogous ways, invisible lines are incessantly carved into the brain cells” (qtd. in Kittler 1999, 30-31). In Guyau's view, the materiality of the modern mind must be akin to the phonograph's metal plate and wax rolls, because, unlike the wax tablet which can only record spoke words, these mechanisms can fix unwritable data flows and capture the noise of modern life.<br />
<br />
Freud’s use of the [[mystic-writing pad]] as an analogy for the psyche also revises the idea of memory and inscription. Freud dismisses mnemonics right off the bat: “If I distrust my memory,” he begins, “I am able to supplement and guarantee its working by making a note in writing” (Freud 227). External “devices to aid memory” (228) are imperfect compared to our own sensory apparatus, however, which “has an unlimited receptive capacity for new perceptions and nevertheless lays down permanent—even though not unalterable—memory-traces of them” (228). Though he distrusts his memory, Freud echoes the ancient Greeks in imagining the psychic apparatus as a remediation of the wax tablet: the mystic-writing pad. Unlike the imagined mnemonic tablet, however, Freud’s pad is not consciously inscribed, but “receives perceptions (which are accompanied by consciousness)and passes the excitation on to the unconscious mnemic systems” (231). In Freud's illustration of the psyche, it is not the individual who consciously writes upon his or her memory, but the semi-conscious (and potentially traumatic) perceptions that exceed language which mark the material substrate of the mind.<br />
<br />
Though these modern articulations of the mind destabilize the ability of human memory (assumed by mnemonics) and man’s conscious, literate power over it (and symbolized by wax), they are haunted by the idea of control and power that they repress. Guyau and Freud participate in the same endeavor to represent the black box of the mind, reiterating the art of memory via technological and psycho-scientific metaphor.<br />
<br />
==Obsolescence and the Changing Thinker==<br />
<br />
<br />
According to Yates, the quest for improved memory through artificial mnemonic systems emerges as a critical part of our attempt to organize knowledge and impose a comprehensible order on our chaotic world. Perhaps the decline of these time-honored techniques is simply due to the fact that it is decreasingly relevant or important to remember things. The way we interact with information has changed drastically since a time before writing, thus changing the way we think. As Nietzsche observed, "our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts" ([http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ Carr]). When the printing press was invented by Johann Gutenberg in the early 1450s, memory techniques started to lose their prominence. People were suddenly able to record history, genealogies, law codes and stories without committing them to memory. <br />
<br />
With easy access to computer databases and the Internet, the need for mnemonic devices is has faded even further. This shift in thinking was pointed out in a recent article published in the New York Times: "Why bother remembering the clever poem that tells the value of pi to 21 places (3.141592653589793238462) when you can look it up online and get a virtual googol of places? Why is it necessary in this information age to remember most thing, except maybe your user name and password(s)?" ([http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html Rosenthal]). Clive Thompson summed up the change in thinking even more succinctly in [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson ''Wired''] magazine: "Almost without noticing it, we've outsourced important peripheral brain functions to the silicon around us." In a time when memory was the only storage device or at least one of the most efficient, mnemonics were an obvious form of mediation, but as new technologies have become available making it simple to find almost any fact in a few quick keystrokes and a quick skimming of a web page, those old strategies have become less necessary. As Crary observes, audiences must be trained to use new mediums and technologies (Crary 6), and through our re-training, it is not surprising mnemonics have largely disappeared. We have been schooled in new ways of solving the problem of retaining important details, with external resources in hand. Perhaps this modern resistance to memorization masks an anxiety caused by a diminished sense of our own mnemonic capabilities (Cambor 2001) due to developments in technology and the emergence of psychoanalysis at the turn of the modern era, or perhaps memory itself is a dying medium.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
* Carr, Nicholas. [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"] ''The Atlantic''. The Atlantic Monthly Group, July-Aug. 2008. Web. 10 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Crary, Jonathan. ''Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century''. Boston: MIT Press, 1992.<br />
* de Man, Paul. ''Aesthetic Ideology''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Dissemination''. New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 2004.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Speech and phenomena: and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs''. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. <br />
* Donald Phillip Verene, Vico’s Science of Imagination (Ithaca, 1981), 96-126<br />
* Fentress, James and Chris Wickham (1992) Social Memory. Oxford: Blackwell. <br />
* Freud, Sigmund. ''The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud''. Ed. James Strachey. London: The Hogarth Press, 1961.<br />
* Kittler, Friedrich A. ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.<br />
* --. ''Gramophone, Film, Typewriter''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton. ''The Art of Memory Reconceived: From Rhetoric to Psychoanalysis''. Journal of the History of Ideas, 48(3), 371-392<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton, "The new science of giambattista Vico: Historicism in its Relation to Poetics" ''Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism'', 30 (1972), 362-64<br />
* Rosenthal, Jack. [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html "Mnemonics."] ''New York Times''. New York Times Company, 17 July 2005. Web. 11 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Ronell, Avital. "Scoring Literature: The Drug Culture". (Lecture, NYU, 4/8/10).<br />
* Thompson, Clive. [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson "Your Outboard Brain Knows All"] ''Wired''. Conde Nast Digital, 25 Sept. 2007. Web. 11. Apr. 2010.<br />
* Vismann, Cornelia. ''Files: Law and Media Technology''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008.<br />
* Yates, Frances A. ''The Art of Memory''. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966.<br />
* Zielinski, Siegfried. ''Deep Time of the Media''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
==External Links==<br />
* [http://www.eudesign.com/mnems/_mnframe.htm Mnemonics] - a list of a number of standardized mnemonic devices<br />
* [http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-memory.htm How Human Memory Works] - a simple overview of the mental process<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Mnemonics&diff=8666Mnemonics2010-04-12T16:41:44Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Modern memory: the return of the repressed? */</p>
<hr />
<div><div style="text-align:center;">"'''M'''nemonics '''N'''eatly '''E'''liminate '''M'''an's '''O'''nly '''N'''emesis ('''I'''nsufficient '''C'''erebral '''S'''torage)"</div><br />
<br />
Mnemonics, or the art of memory, is today regarded as an arcane intellectual interest. It functions on the periphery of popular culture, largely through a literature of self-help designed to bolster the confidence of those insecure about their powers of recollection. If it is a useful skill, it is not an essential one in a civilization whose collective memory is securely stored in the printed word and, more recently, in digital media. Today’s archive exists in the library or the personal computer, not in the depths of a well-ordered mind. <br />
<br />
Most of the mnemonic devices and techniques that remain today are simple and standardized. They are tools for remembering sequences of information, especially for recall in testing situations. Rather than learning general mnemonic tricks, students are left with specific rhymes or sentences to remember, for example: "Roy G. Biv" to remember the colors of the rainbow; "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally" for the algebraic order of operations; and "lefty, loosey; righty, tighty" for mechanics. Despite the longevity of some of these specific mnemonics, however, they are but a mere suggestion of the much more complex and widespread mnemonic strategies of yesteryear: from the wandering rhapsody of ancient Greece who enthralled listeners with the epic tales of Homer to the philosophers of the Renaissance who constructed imaginary memory palaces to present their intricate designs of the cosmos. This dossier will explore mnemonics as a mode of mediation that stored knowledge in a world invested in the authority of the spoken word, and strove to represent and control the historically black-boxed functioning of human memory.<br />
<br />
[[File:Erinnern.jpg|right|]]<br />
<br />
==Historical Sketch of Old Works on Mnemonics==<br />
[[File:10133 vico dipintura.gif|400px|thumb|left|Cover image from Giambattista Vico's book ''The New Science''. Each symbol was mean to help the reader recall all of the ideas in the book.]]<br />
<br />
“A memory consists in the awareness, first, of the diminished intensity of an impression, second, of its increased ease, and third, of the connections it entertains with other impressions” (Kittler 1999, 31).<br />
<br />
Long before transcription existed, there have been oral records of events in history: genealogies. In medieval Iceland, administrators of the law had to commit their entire juridical system to memory (Fentress and Wickham, 1992). In Ireland, bards would study for twelve years in order to memorize over 500 stories, as well as genealogies of all the leading Irish families (MacManus, 1967).<br />
<br />
Reflecting back on this mnemonic oral tradition, the 18th century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico contends that key to understanding of the nature of memory is derived from the direct correspondence between image and idea in primitive poetic language. In the beginnings of civilization, image and idea were one. Primitive peoples possessed robust memories because of the inseparable association they made between images and ideas in their comprehension of the world. They thought metaphorically, and the metaphors that they uttered were easily mimicked and remembered because they were richly expressive, grandiose, and full of wonder at the world. Vico revealed that the link between human imagination and the universe that the Renaissance Neoplatonists had sought to discover magically was in fact born historically in the development of human consciousness (Verene, 101). <br />
<br />
The source of mnemonist’s method is visible in the poetic logic of Vico’s theory of the emergence of human consciousness. That theory, too, involves the relationship between places and images, which Vico labels ''topics'' and ''tropes''. Topics were the poetic of formulae through which primitive people identified the phenomena of the world. As imaginative representations of particular aspects of realty, they provided common places or fixed points of reference amidst the flux of sense experience (Yates, 31). Considered in this context, Vico’s new art of memory becomes a retrospective search for connection between our present conceptions and the lost poetic images out of which they were born. In the logic of Vichian poetics, the new art of memory is a reconstruction of the imaginative process by which the poets of antiquity gave shape to their perception of the world. Therein the imaginative sources of our present ideas are to be found. The original topic might be linked to a palimpsest, repeatedly covered over with more abstract imagery as the human mind historically ascended the tropological gradient of linguistic expression. Vico’s art of memory was to decipher each tropological layer along the way until the original metaphorical topic, long forgotten, was recalled to mind (Hutton, 379).<br />
<br />
=== Freud's theory as a reverse mnemonics ===<br />
<br />
If mnemonics lay at the source of Romantic soul-searching (both personal and collective), the techniques themselves were only rarely the subject of introspective comment. It was left to Sigmund Freud at the turn of the 20th century to explain the role of memory in introspection in terms of a mnemonic code (Hutton, 386). In his theory of screen memories, Freud posits the constructive power of the unconscious mind to shape recollection. Forgetting rather than remembering is what we wish to do, he argues, because it is easier to live with a screen of fantasies rather than face the reality of our past. To use his terminology, memory is tendentious in that it reflects unconscious psychic intent. In this respect the Unconscious is the guardian of memory, legislating the selection of what is remembered, and what is repressed or hidden away. As an art of memory, therefore, psychoanalysis is a technique for deciphering the psychic intent encoded in screen memories (Hutton, 388). As we elaborate below, Freud's theory of the Unconscious, and of the forces of repression and trauma that affect the psyche, is incompatible with the classical lineage of mnemonics that assumes the individual's conscious control over his or her memory.<br />
<br />
==The Technology of Memory==<br />
[[File:Room 07 Fludd0002.jpg|thumb|computerized memory theater]]<br />
===How Mnemonics Work===<br />
<br />
Mnemonics may be viewed as storage devices for information in the human mind. The brain, however, is like a black box, and has been throughout human history: many of its operations are a mystery, and we are still just uncovering how it accomplishes many of the tasks we take for granted. Memory is one such process that captured the imaginations of pre-modern thinkers, and that contemporary scientists are still trying to understand. However, there are a few things that have been discovered over the years about how mnemonics function. The process of remembering is split up into different steps: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Mnemonics are involved with encoding. The best way to learn things, or encode them, is to associate them with other things. In people's mind, "apple" will often be associated with "red" and "round." By retrieving the concept of "red," the memory of "apple" will also be triggered. Mnemonics capitalize on this principle by creating more entry points to different pieces of information.<br />
<br />
At first glance, mnemonics may seem rather counter-intuitive because they require one to remember more information in order to solve the problem of remembering something else entirely. Rather than simply remembering one date, 1492 for example, mnemonics ask that you remember a poem: "In 1492 / Columbus sailed the ocean blue." More information is required in an attempt to lodge an initial piece of information in one's mind. While this technique seems rather contradictory, it works because it creates associations, or configurations of information more likely to stick in one's memory. A useful metaphor may be that a memory is a series of files. Mnemonics store bits of information in a number of different files through which to access the information.<br />
<br />
===Arbitrariness and the Cake-Mix Effect===<br />
<br />
In many mnemonic systems, the specifics of the "extra" information one learns to create associations is often entirely arbitrary and can be adapted for each individual. Much like pre-packaged cake mix, mnemonic techniques offer a basic structure, but the particular words and connections that will best work for an individual mind must be added to the formula for it to function. For example, a common strategy for remembering an ordered list is to remember the first letter of each item and put together a new sentence in which each of the words starts with one of the letters needing to be remembered, in the proper order. So if one wanted to remember biological taxonomic classifications from broadest to most specific ('''K'''ingdom, '''P'''hylum, '''C'''lass, '''O'''rder, '''F'''amily, '''G'''enus, '''S'''pecies, '''V'''ariety), one need construct a new sentence in which each subsequent word starts with the next letter in order (K,P,C,O,F,G,S,V). Each individual might have a different sentence that works best for him or her, however. So while one student might find it most advantageous to remember "'''K'''ing '''P'''hilip's '''C'''lassic '''O'''rder: '''F'''amily '''G'''enius - '''S'''pecial '''V'''alue'" another might find it easier to remember "'''K'''indly '''P'''lace '''C'''over '''O'''n '''F'''resh '''G'''reen '''S'''pring '''V'''egetables." This flexibility makes mnemonics a useful set of strategies, and the failure of these techniques is often dependent on the arbitrary information filled into the system. If someone fails to remember the order of the taxonomical classes it is usually because the sentence used is not the best for the user. Many mnemonic systems work in this manner, tailored to the individual mind. One prime historical example of this is the memory palace.<br />
<br />
==Method of Loci==<br />
<br />
A poetic, time-honored example of the method of loci may be found in the cosmology of Australian aborigines, whose ancestors are said to have sung the world into existence (Cambor, 2001). Every rock and crevice of the outback has a song associated with it, and the traveler knows their location exactly by their place in the song, the words of which corresponds to their physical surroundings. These songs have been transcribed to aid in the understanding of the geology of the continent. Across the globe, in Ancient Rome, mnemonics were used by lawyers to remember the points they wanted to make in a lawsuit. The method of loci was first formally described by Quitilian, a first century Roman rhetorician. As the historian Frances Yates describes in her book ''The Art of Memory'', the most common forms of the method of loci are memory palaces, memory theaters, and memory gardens. <br />
<br />
===Case Study or Trace Study of the Memory Palace===<br />
[[File:Fludd-the-art-of-memory-89.jpg|thumb|right|Engraving by Robert Fludd revealing memory attached to images]]<br />
<br />
Memory Palaces are methods of loci which use an imagined architecture to structure a speech based on associations of symbols. They are a spatialized remediation of association. Before memory palaces were implemented, hieroglyphs and other forms of picture writing were already using symbols to stand in for words and ideas. Memory palaces abstract this notion of association and complicate it in order to allow one to remember hundreds of ideas. While mnemonics can be written down, the memory palace is completely imagined, and therefore the process and the media is black boxed within the mind of the subject, and like Iris, the message or information is internalized. The memory palace is evoked, in the same way the muse used to be evoked, in order to help the speaker remember his or her message. This method was developed out of a human lack, and the need to remember large amounts of information. When using the memory palace, one needs only to remember the symbols, after which the encoded information becomes unlocked like the chirograph which connects to its counterpart. Memory palaces were constructed out of an anxiety for memory being lost, but in reality it is always already lost. <br />
<br />
This mode of mediation is based on location, but it itself has no location and exists as a non-space that stores imagined data. The subject that uses the memory palace becomes split and is forced to inhabit two realities as one must imagine walking through the memory palace and picking up each predetermined object while simultaneously being rooted in a physical space and delivering a live speech to an audience. The subject must navigate the memory palace like an automaton on automatic pilot but cannot get fully immersed or lost in it. Discipline of the mind and the body is necessary since the subject cannot think, but must become a machine and instrument for the reading of memory. <br />
<br />
====The Mechanization of Memory====<br />
<br />
Hegel discusses memory in two terms: “Erinnerung” and “Gedächtnis.” Erinnerung for Hegel is recollection, memory based on learning and internalization. It therefore has a relationship to the past and to a missing Other. Gedächtnis is the forgetting of meaning in favor of memorization and technologized memory, just as the technologization of speech through the act of writing represents the erasure of speech and the marking of its becoming forgotten. Gedächtnis acts as the simulacrum and mechanical reproduction of memory but empties it of its original meaning (Ronell, 2010). Memory palaces fall under Gedächtnis, as they are a phantom crutch or prosthetic for remembering which can be easily dismantled and forgotten. The technique does reflect Erinnerung in that it calls to its missing Other which is the real house, but, because reality of the memory palace is artificially constructed, it has no relationship to the past. The associations within the memory palace are also artificial, revealing the manipulation of memory which becomes something external that can be altered and changed. Derrida writes, “What Plato is attacking in sophistics, therefore, is not simply recourse to memory but, within such recourse, the substitution of the mnemonic device for live memory, of the prosthesis for the organ; the perversion that consists of replacing a limb by a thing, here, substituting the passive, mechanical ‘by-heart’ for the active reanimation of knowledge, for its reproduction in the present. The boundary (between inside and outside, living and nonliving) separates not only speech from writing but also memory as an unveiling (re-)producing a presence from re-memoration as the mere repetition of a monument…(Derrida 109).” Paul de Man elaborates on the contradictory nature of Gedächtnis and Erinnerung, “Memory effaces remembrance (or recollection) just as the I effaces itself. The faculty that enables thought to exist also makes its preservation impossible. The art, the ''techné'', of writing which cannot be separated from thought and from memorization can only be preserved in the figural mode of the symbol, the very mode it has to do away with if it is to occur at all (de Man 102).” Here, Gedächtnis effaces Erinnerung, like mechanical reproduction effaces the original, and writing effaces speech.<br />
<br />
====Memory Palace as Afterimage and Trace====<br />
[[File:Afterimage1.JPG|thumb|left|Purkyně's "artery figure" taken from Zielinksi's ''Deep Time of the Media'']]<br />
The effacing of Erinnerung caused by Gedächtnis also speaks to the idea of an afterimage which effaces the original image. The memory palace is an afterimage and faint impression of one’s home which it replaces. Jonathan Crary writes that the afterimage “…allowed one to conceive of sensory perception as cut from any necessary link with an external referent. The afterimage – the presence of sensation in the absence of a stimulus – and its subsequent modulations posed a theoretical and empirical demonstration of autonomous vision, of an optical experience that was produced by and within the subject (Crary 98).” The afterimage of the memory palace is detachable, once it is created the originary house isn’t necessary to evoke it, rather it can be evoked independently by the subject. Derrida’s concept of the “trace” is essentially the afterimage of a sign. While memory palaces are the navigation of symbols within a space, where space itself is also a symbol, the nature of these symbols are imagined and therefore nonpresent. Derrida saw signs as related to living memory, and the “trace” as having to do with dead memory Derrida writes, “The trace is not a presence but is rather the simulacrum of a presence that dislocates, displaces, and refers beyond itself. The trace has, properly speaking, no place, for effacement belongs to the very structure of the trace. Effacement must always be able to overtake the trace; otherwise it would not be a trace but an indestructible and monumental substance (Derrida 156).” The trace refers to that which is no longer present, leaving only the relics and remains to be read.<br />
<br />
<br />
====Memory as Archive and Crypt====<br />
[[File:044MemoryBook200.jpg|thumb|right|human brain as memory archive]]<br />
Memory palaces are a static archive of files. Cornelia Vismann links the structure of fixed archives to tombs which seal and bury files. Vismann writes, “The immobile tomes are their own tombs...The immobilization amounts to a musealization, creating a work of art out of files (Vismann 161-162).” The memory palace echoes this sentiment and acts more as a mausoleum than a museum. The frozen architecture of the memory palace is doubled by the frozen images within it, turning the palace into a crypt. The shaping of the memory palace into a petrified and dead picture reveals the artifice of constructed memory. Its static and spectral quality lends it to the space of the crypt and removes it from the space of the living. It is the dead memory that must be summoned by the speaker, called to as the missing Other, and resurrected into the present.<br />
<br />
====Forgetting====<br />
Memory Palaces must be practiced, otherwise they are prone to being forgotten. Practice and performance keeps artificial memory alive, otherwise it returns to the crypt. They are meant to be remembered for a specific event, such as a specific speech, but once the event has passed, the memory palace recedes, shatters, and erases itself into the depths of the mystic writing pad’s unconscious. The memory palace, then, is made to be forgotten. Vismann writes, “With one sharp and one blunt end, the stylus unites writing and erasing, those two fundamental chancery operations, in one instrument. Herein lies an analogy to the workings of memory: just as the Greek verb hypomnematizesthai equates filing and remembering, its opposite, exaleiphein, combines a practical act and a function of memory by referring both to forgetting and wiping off (Vismann 55).” In this sense the memory palace is obliterated and becomes buried as a trace and remnant. Memory and forgetting work as though in a circuit, the production of one is almost always the production of the other, to remember one thing often causes one to forget another less relevant thing. Vismann also discusses forgetting as enabling memory, just as the afterimage or trace enables the original image, or the second gives birth to the first. Mechanical reproduction also enables the original, revealing the necessity of the copy and the negation in order to preserve the referent. There is only so much space in the human brain, therefore acquiring new information or new memories must also imply a certain amount of forgetting.<br />
<br />
==Mnemonic Expression: Writing Secrets and Speaking the Mind==<br />
<br />
''The art of memory is like an inner writing'' - Frances Yates.<br />
<br />
While mnemonic techniques were designed for oral performance without visible written aid, they were, from a Derridean perspective, systems of representation organized by writing. Rather than utilizing writing to externalize memory, mnemonics structured texts to correlate with the (variously imagined) inner mechanisms of the psyche. Mnemonics shaped poetics via rhyme and meter, for instance, rendering the text structurally uniform so that it might be more easily remembered and spoken. Mnemonic technique thus interfaced between speech and writing, presence and trace. In the same vein, mnemonics mediated between the interior mind and the external world, articulating both. Mnemonics are thus not simply storage techniques but expression: a form of writing (or ''art'' of memory) that reveals historically deviant memories and, in attempting to control its input and output, represents the persistently black-boxed functioning of the human mind.<br />
<br />
===Mnemonics as cryptography===<br />
<br />
As a mode of mediation, mnemonics represent a curious combination of semiotics and functional nonsense. Mnemonic signs (images, places, phrases) must be nearly evacuated of meaning in order to cue—but not replace—the desired information actively attached to (or associated with) them. From this perspective, articulated above [http://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php/Mnemonics#Arbitrariness_and_the_Cake-Mix_Effect], mnemonics functioned as a storage technique comprised of arbitrary signifiers (like Roy G. Biv) rather than a communicative semantic system. The seemingly nonsensical functioning of mnemonics, however, leaves open the opportunity for obfuscation. If mnemonics could be 'objectively' coded for memory, then they could also perform as encrypted transmission.<br />
<br />
====Giordano Bruno's magic mnemonics====<br />
<br />
Giordano Bruno, a Dominican friar and peripatetic philosopher famous for his “amazing powers of recollection” (Zielinski 72) provides a historical example of the cryptographic, communicative potential of mnemonics in the late 16th century. Bruno was eventually burned at the stake during the Inquisition for his use of magic and allegiance to hermeticism: a philosophy named for Hermes and Thoth and based in Egyptian astrology, which, needless to say, clashed with Christian doctrine. In ''Deep Time of The Media'', Siegfried Zielinski links hermetic tradition (which persisted into the Renaissance but had to be promulgated secretly) to the “subhistory” stemming from “the passion for encrypting and deciphering texts runs through the sciences” since the 13th century (Zielinski 73). He also notes that cryptography made particular demands on memory and was thus bound to mnemonic ability (83). Bruno took this relationship one step further. In his writings and teachings, Bruno endeavored to both transmit and internalize hermetic secrets through mnemonic technique. <br />
[[Image: bruno_memory_wheel.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|Frances Yates' rendition of Giordano Bruno's mnemonic wheel described in ''Shadows'' (1582).]] “The secret was the combination of the Hermetic beliefs with the techniques of the art of memory” (Yates 305) writes Frances Yates, so that these “memory systems” became “a mode of transmitting a religion, or an ethic, or some message of universal import” (387). <br />
<br />
Bruno’s system of “magic mnemonics” (Yates 223) hinged on his belief that the memorization of significant images enabled the "harnessing of the inner world of the imagination to the stars, or reproducing the the celestial world within" (215). Memory, for Bruno, was thus a dioptric medium, allowing the passage of the sublime order of the heavens into the individual psyche, "arriving at the vision within of the One light diffused through all" (230). This divine lumen, however, was guarded by catoptric technique. Bruno's mnemonic system was based the arrangement of intricate wheels of astral symbols and magic images. Bruno's first book on the art of memory is aptly titled ''Shadows'': as Yates observes, there is “Circaean mystification at the heart of this memory treatise” (247). Bruno’s mnemonic code thus had a dual function to reveal and conceal. He sought to at once unify the human imagination and the celestial order through memory, and to keep this mnemonic recipe secret, decipherable only by those who understood hermetic principles and believed in magic.<br />
<br />
===Written in wax===<br />
<br />
Wax—the inscription media associated with classical rhetoric and art of memory—was remediated in recording technology and psychoanalytic discourse at the turn of the 20th century. Through a brief comparison of modern and antique articulations of wax as the material substrate of memory, we may glimpse how the rise and fall of mnemonics is subject to the imagined materiality—and malleability—of the mind.<br />
<br />
====Antique imaginary: the obvious====<br />
<br />
Cicero’s ''De oratore'' (finished in 55 B.C.E.) is among the earliest treatises describing mnemonics as a rhetorical art (Yates 17). Cicero credits Simonides with the invention of the art of memory, when, with “with almost divine powers of memory,” he “wrote down what he wanted to remember in certain places in his possession by means of images, just as if he were describing letters on wax” (qtd. in Yates 19). Yates interprets Cicero’s portrayal of the origin of mnemonics as “an inner writing on wax” (19): Simonides internalizes the wax tablet, the medium for recording speech that Phaedrus famously concealed under his cloak in Plato’s dialogue. Cornelia Vismann identifies wax as the key medium in the shift from oral to written legal and administrative culture in the West. “To synchronize speech and writing,” Vismann describes, “the speedwriters or exceptores responsible for files and protocols drew their letters in wax, which, in Quintilian’s words, puts up as little resistance to inscribing as it does to erasing” (Vismann 55). These speedwriters were also employed to take down the senate minutes, which “in search for the aura of the authentic,” “aim[ed] for [a] presentist effect” (54). Mnemonic systems were likewise designed to uphold these cultural values of presence and authenticity, and were analogous to wax in their ability to suture oral performance and written record.<br />
[[Image: waxtablet.jpg|left|300px|thumb|A Grecian wax tablet.]]<br />
Wax was thus the obvious material through (and on) which to describe mnemonics, which interfaced between speech and writing. The metaphor has an additional layer: as a malleable, hand-held medium, the wax tablet suggests that the memory is also easily manipulable by an autonomous author. Cicero renders Simonides as the authorial agent of his inner wax tablet, and thus in control of his memory. Nearly two millennia later, during the modern turn, the idea that one could rely on—let alone control—one’s memory was undercut by the development of recording technologies and the rise of psychoanalytic theories of trauma and repression. Curiously, at this historical moment, the connection between wax and memory that once portrayed both mnemonics and the inner-workings of the classical mind is again applied to mental faculties. This later incarnation of inner wax, however, is not subject to authorial intent, but inscribed upon by machines and the Unconscious.<br />
<br />
====Modern memory: the return of the repressed?====<br />
<br />
Two notable depictions of wax as the material substrate of memory bracket Kittler’s year 1900: Jean-Marie Guyau’s Memory and Phonograph (1880) and Sigmund Freud’s Note Upon the ‘Mystic-Writing Pad’ (1925). “What good are the poetic mnemonic techniques of rhyme and meter when wax rolls can store not only substance and tone but real sounds?” (Kittler 1992, 236), Kittler asks in ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Guyau addressed this anxiety of the inferiority of human memory and the limits of language early on by claiming the phonograph as the most exact metaphor for man’s ability to record and recite—to read, write, and speak. Notions of manipulating the memory with images, places, and signs is replaced with a techno-scientific inscription in Guyau’s comparison: “Upon speaking into a phonograph, the vibrations of one’s voice are transferred into a point that engraves lines on a metal plate…in analogous ways, invisible lines are incessantly carved into the brain cells” (qtd. in Kittler 1999, 30-31). In Guyau's view, the materiality of the modern mind must be akin to the phonograph's metal plate and wax rolls, because, unlike the wax tablet which can only record spoke words, these mechanisms can fix unwritable data flows and capture the noise of modern life.<br />
<br />
Freud’s use of the [[mystic-writing pad]] as an analogy for the psyche also revises the idea of memory and inscription. Freud dismisses mnemonics right off the bat: “If I distrust my memory,” he begins, “I am able to supplement and guarantee its working by making a note in writing” (Freud 227). External “devices to aid memory” (228) are imperfect compared to our own sensory apparatus, however, which “has an unlimited receptive capacity for new perceptions and nevertheless lays down permanent—even though not unalterable—memory-traces of them” (228). Though he distrusts his memory, Freud echoes the ancient Greeks in imagining the psychic apparatus as a remediation of the wax tablet: the mystic-writing pad. Unlike the imagined mnemonic tablet, however, Freud’s pad is not consciously inscribed, but “receives perceptions (which are accompanied—but are not consciously manipulated—"by consciousness)and passes the excitation on to the unconscious mnemic systems” (231).<br />
<br />
Though these modern articulations of the mind destabilize the ability of human memory (assumed by mnemonics) and man’s conscious power over it (and symbolized by wax), they are haunted by the idea of control and power that they repress. Guyau and Freud participate in the same endeavor to represent the black box of the mind, reiterating the art of memory via technological and psycho-scientific metaphor.<br />
<br />
==Obsolescence and the Changing Thinker==<br />
<br />
<br />
According to Yates, the quest for improved memory through artificial mnemonic systems emerges as a critical part of our attempt to organize knowledge and impose a comprehensible order on our chaotic world. Perhaps the decline of these time-honored techniques is simply due to the fact that it is decreasingly relevant or important to remember things. The way we interact with information has changed drastically since a time before writing, thus changing the way we think. As Nietzsche observed, "our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts" ([http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ Carr]). When the printing press was invented by Johann Gutenberg in the early 1450s, memory techniques started to lose their prominence. People were suddenly able to record history, genealogies, law codes and stories without committing them to memory. <br />
<br />
With easy access to computer databases and the Internet, the need for mnemonic devices is has faded even further. This shift in thinking was pointed out in a recent article published in the New York Times: "Why bother remembering the clever poem that tells the value of pi to 21 places (3.141592653589793238462) when you can look it up online and get a virtual googol of places? Why is it necessary in this information age to remember most thing, except maybe your user name and password(s)?" ([http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html Rosenthal]). Clive Thompson summed up the change in thinking even more succinctly in [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson ''Wired''] magazine: "Almost without noticing it, we've outsourced important peripheral brain functions to the silicon around us." In a time when memory was the only storage device or at least one of the most efficient, mnemonics were an obvious form of mediation, but as new technologies have become available making it simple to find almost any fact in a few quick keystrokes and a quick skimming of a web page, those old strategies have become less necessary. As Crary observes, audiences must be trained to use new mediums and technologies (Crary 6), and through our re-training, it is not surprising mnemonics have largely disappeared. We have been schooled in new ways of solving the problem of retaining important details, with external resources in hand. Perhaps this modern resistance to memorization masks an anxiety caused by a diminished sense of our own mnemonic capabilities (Cambor 2001) due to developments in technology and the emergence of psychoanalysis at the turn of the modern era, or perhaps memory itself is a dying medium.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
* Carr, Nicholas. [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"] ''The Atlantic''. The Atlantic Monthly Group, July-Aug. 2008. Web. 10 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Crary, Jonathan. ''Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century''. Boston: MIT Press, 1992.<br />
* de Man, Paul. ''Aesthetic Ideology''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Dissemination''. New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 2004.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Speech and phenomena: and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs''. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. <br />
* Donald Phillip Verene, Vico’s Science of Imagination (Ithaca, 1981), 96-126<br />
* Fentress, James and Chris Wickham (1992) Social Memory. Oxford: Blackwell. <br />
* Freud, Sigmund. ''The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud''. Ed. James Strachey. London: The Hogarth Press, 1961.<br />
* Kittler, Friedrich A. ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.<br />
* --. ''Gramophone, Film, Typewriter''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton. ''The Art of Memory Reconceived: From Rhetoric to Psychoanalysis''. Journal of the History of Ideas, 48(3), 371-392<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton, "The new science of giambattista Vico: Historicism in its Relation to Poetics" ''Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism'', 30 (1972), 362-64<br />
* Rosenthal, Jack. [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html "Mnemonics."] ''New York Times''. New York Times Company, 17 July 2005. Web. 11 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Ronell, Avital. "Scoring Literature: The Drug Culture". (Lecture, NYU, 4/8/10).<br />
* Thompson, Clive. [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson "Your Outboard Brain Knows All"] ''Wired''. Conde Nast Digital, 25 Sept. 2007. Web. 11. Apr. 2010.<br />
* Vismann, Cornelia. ''Files: Law and Media Technology''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008.<br />
* Yates, Frances A. ''The Art of Memory''. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966.<br />
* Zielinski, Siegfried. ''Deep Time of the Media''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
==External Links==<br />
* [http://www.eudesign.com/mnems/_mnframe.htm Mnemonics] - a list of a number of standardized mnemonic devices<br />
* [http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-memory.htm How Human Memory Works] - a simple overview of the mental process<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Mnemonics&diff=8651Mnemonics2010-04-12T16:26:57Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Antique imaginary: the obvious */</p>
<hr />
<div><div style="text-align:center;">"'''M'''nemonics '''N'''eatly '''E'''liminate '''M'''an's '''O'''nly '''N'''emesis ('''I'''nsufficient '''C'''erebral '''S'''torage)"</div><br />
<br />
Mnemonics, or the art of memory, is today regarded as an arcane intellectual interest. It functions on the periphery of popular culture, largely through a literature of self-help designed to bolster the confidence of those insecure about their powers of recollection. If it is a useful skill, it is not an essential one in a civilization whose collective memory is securely stored in the printed word and, more recently, in digital media. Today’s archive exists in the library or the personal computer, not in the depths of a well-ordered mind. <br />
<br />
Most of the mnemonic devices and techniques that remain today are simple and standardized. They are tools for remembering sequences of information, especially for recall in testing situations. Rather than learning general mnemonic tricks, students are left with specific rhymes or sentences to remember, for example: "Roy G. Biv" to remember the colors of the rainbow; "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally" for the algebraic order of operations; and "lefty, loosey; righty, tighty" for mechanics. Despite the longevity of some of these specific mnemonics, however, they are but a mere suggestion of the much more complex and widespread mnemonic strategies of yesteryear: from the wandering rhapsody of ancient Greece who enthralled listeners with the epic tales of Homer to the philosophers of the Renaissance who constructed imaginary memory palaces to present their intricate designs of the cosmos. This dossier will explore mnemonics as a mode of mediation that stored knowledge in a world invested in the authority of the spoken word, and strove to represent and control the historically black-boxed functioning of human memory.<br />
<br />
[[File:Erinnern.jpg|right|]]<br />
<br />
==Historical Sketch of Old Works on Mnemonics==<br />
[[File:10133 vico dipintura.gif|400px|thumb|left|Cover image from Giambattista Vico's book ''The New Science''. Each symbol was mean to help the reader recall all of the ideas in the book.]]<br />
<br />
“A memory consists in the awareness, first, of the diminished intensity of an impression, second, of its increased ease, and third, of the connections it entertains with other impressions” (Kittler 1999, 31).<br />
<br />
Long before transcription existed, there have been oral records of events in history: genealogies. In medieval Iceland, administrators of the law had to commit their entire juridical system to memory (Fentress and Wickham, 1992). In Ireland, bards would study for twelve years in order to memorize over 500 stories, as well as genealogies of all the leading Irish families (MacManus, 1967).<br />
<br />
Reflecting back on this mnemonic oral tradition, the 18th century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico contends that key to understanding of the nature of memory is derived from the direct correspondence between image and idea in primitive poetic language. In the beginnings of civilization, image and idea were one. Primitive peoples possessed robust memories because of the inseparable association they made between images and ideas in their comprehension of the world. They thought metaphorically, and the metaphors that they uttered were easily mimicked and remembered because they were richly expressive, grandiose, and full of wonder at the world. Vico revealed that the link between human imagination and the universe that the Renaissance Neoplatonists had sought to discover magically was in fact born historically in the development of human consciousness (Verene, 101). <br />
<br />
The source of mnemonist’s method is visible in the poetic logic of Vico’s theory of the emergence of human consciousness. That theory, too, involves the relationship between places and images, which Vico labels ''topics'' and ''tropes''. Topics were the poetic of formulae through which primitive people identified the phenomena of the world. As imaginative representations of particular aspects of realty, they provided common places or fixed points of reference amidst the flux of sense experience (Yates, 31). Considered in this context, Vico’s new art of memory becomes a retrospective search for connection between our present conceptions and the lost poetic images out of which they were born. In the logic of Vichian poetics, the new art of memory is a reconstruction of the imaginative process by which the poets of antiquity gave shape to their perception of the world. Therein the imaginative sources of our present ideas are to be found. The original topic might be linked to a palimpsest, repeatedly covered over with more abstract imagery as the human mind historically ascended the tropological gradient of linguistic expression. Vico’s art of memory was to decipher each tropological layer along the way until the original metaphorical topic, long forgotten, was recalled to mind (Hutton, 379).<br />
<br />
=== Freud's theory as a reverse mnemonics ===<br />
<br />
If mnemonics lay at the source of Romantic soul-searching (both personal and collective), the techniques themselves were only rarely the subject of introspective comment. It was left to Sigmund Freud at the turn of the 20th century to explain the role of memory in introspection in terms of a mnemonic code (Hutton, 386). In his theory of screen memories, Freud posits the constructive power of the unconscious mind to shape recollection. Forgetting rather than remembering is what we wish to do, he argues, because it is easier to live with a screen of fantasies rather than face the reality of our past. To use his terminology, memory is tendentious in that it reflects unconscious psychic intent. In this respect the Unconscious is the guardian of memory, legislating the selection of what is remembered, and what is repressed or hidden away. As an art of memory, therefore, psychoanalysis is a technique for deciphering the psychic intent encoded in screen memories (Hutton, 388). As we elaborate below, Freud's theory of the Unconscious, and of the forces of repression and trauma that affect the psyche, is incompatible with the classical lineage of mnemonics that assumes the individual's conscious control over his or her memory.<br />
<br />
==The Technology of Memory==<br />
[[File:Room 07 Fludd0002.jpg|thumb|computerized memory theater]]<br />
===How Mnemonics Work===<br />
<br />
Mnemonics may be viewed as storage devices for information in the human mind. The brain, however, is like a black box, and has been throughout human history: many of its operations are a mystery, and we are still just uncovering how it accomplishes many of the tasks we take for granted. Memory is one such process that captured the imaginations of pre-modern thinkers, and that contemporary scientists are still trying to understand. However, there are a few things that have been discovered over the years about how mnemonics function. The process of remembering is split up into different steps: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Mnemonics are involved with encoding. The best way to learn things, or encode them, is to associate them with other things. In people's mind, "apple" will often be associated with "red" and "round." By retrieving the concept of "red," the memory of "apple" will also be triggered. Mnemonics capitalize on this principle by creating more entry points to different pieces of information.<br />
<br />
At first glance, mnemonics may seem rather counter-intuitive because they require one to remember more information in order to solve the problem of remembering something else entirely. Rather than simply remembering one date, 1492 for example, mnemonics ask that you remember a poem: "In 1492 / Columbus sailed the ocean blue." More information is required in an attempt to lodge an initial piece of information in one's mind. While this technique seems rather contradictory, it works because it creates associations, or configurations of information more likely to stick in one's memory. A useful metaphor may be that a memory is a series of files. Mnemonics store bits of information in a number of different files through which to access the information.<br />
<br />
===Arbitrariness and the Cake-Mix Effect===<br />
<br />
In many mnemonic systems, the specifics of the "extra" information one learns to create associations is often entirely arbitrary and can be adapted for each individual. Much like pre-packaged cake mix, mnemonic techniques offer a basic structure, but the particular words and connections that will best work for an individual mind must be added to the formula for it to function. For example, a common strategy for remembering an ordered list is to remember the first letter of each item and put together a new sentence in which each of the words starts with one of the letters needing to be remembered, in the proper order. So if one wanted to remember biological taxonomic classifications from broadest to most specific ('''K'''ingdom, '''P'''hylum, '''C'''lass, '''O'''rder, '''F'''amily, '''G'''enus, '''S'''pecies, '''V'''ariety), one need construct a new sentence in which each subsequent word starts with the next letter in order (K,P,C,O,F,G,S,V). Each individual might have a different sentence that works best for him or her, however. So while one student might find it most advantageous to remember "'''K'''ing '''P'''hilip's '''C'''lassic '''O'''rder: '''F'''amily '''G'''enius - '''S'''pecial '''V'''alue'" another might find it easier to remember "'''K'''indly '''P'''lace '''C'''over '''O'''n '''F'''resh '''G'''reen '''S'''pring '''V'''egetables." This flexibility makes mnemonics a useful set of strategies, and the failure of these techniques is often dependent on the arbitrary information filled into the system. If someone fails to remember the order of the taxonomical classes it is usually because the sentence used is not the best for the user. Many mnemonic systems work in this manner, tailored to the individual mind. One prime historical example of this is the memory palace.<br />
<br />
==Method of Loci==<br />
<br />
A poetic, time-honored example of the method of loci may be found in the cosmology of Australian aborigines, whose ancestors are said to have sung the world into existence (Cambor, 2001). Every rock and crevice of the outback has a song associated with it, and the traveler knows their location exactly by their place in the song, the words of which corresponds to their physical surroundings. These songs have been transcribed to aid in the understanding of the geology of the continent. Across the globe, in Ancient Rome, mnemonics were used by lawyers to remember the points they wanted to make in a lawsuit. The method of loci was first formally described by Quitilian, a first century Roman rhetorician. As the historian Frances Yates describes in her book ''The Art of Memory'', the most common forms of the method of loci are memory palaces, memory theaters, and memory gardens. <br />
<br />
===Case Study or Trace Study of the Memory Palace===<br />
[[File:Fludd-the-art-of-memory-89.jpg|thumb|right|Engraving by Robert Fludd revealing memory attached to images]]<br />
<br />
Memory Palaces are methods of loci which use an imagined architecture to structure a speech based on associations of symbols. They are a spatialized remediation of association. Before memory palaces were implemented, hieroglyphs and other forms of picture writing were already using symbols to stand in for words and ideas. Memory palaces abstract this notion of association and complicate in order to allow one to remember hundreds of ideas. While mnemonics can be written down, the memory palace is completely imagined, and therefore the process and the media is black boxed within the mind of the subject, and like Iris, the message or information is internalized. This method was developed out of a human lack, and the need to remember large amounts of information. When using the memory palace, one needs only to remember the symbols, after which the encoded information becomes unlocked like the chirograph which connects to its counterpart. Memory palaces were constructed out of an anxiety for memory being lost, but in reality it is always already lost. <br />
<br />
This mode of mediation is based on location, but it itself has no location and exists as a non-space that stores imagined data. The subject that uses the memory palace becomes split and is forced to inhabit two realities as one must imagine walking through the memory palace and picking up each predetermined object while simultaneously being rooted in a physical space and delivering a live speech to an audience. The subject must navigate the memory palace like an automaton on automatic pilot but cannot get fully immersed or lost in it. Discipline of the mind and the body is necessary since the subject cannot think, but must become a machine and instrument for the reading of memory. <br />
<br />
====The Mechanization of Memory====<br />
<br />
Hegel discusses memory in two terms: “Erinnerung” and “Gedächtnis.” Erinnerung for Hegel is recollection, memory based on learning and internalization. It therefore has a relationship to the past and to a missing Other. Gedächtnis is the forgetting of meaning in favor of memorization and technologized memory, just as the technologization of speech through the act of writing represents the erasure of speech and the marking of its becoming forgotten. Gedächtnis acts as the simulacrum and mechanical reproduction of memory but empties it of its original meaning (Ronell, 2010). Memory palaces fall under Gedächtnis, as they are a phantom crutch or prosthetic for remembering which can be easily dismantled and forgotten. The technique does reflect Erinnerung in that it calls to its missing Other which is the real house, but, because reality of the memory palace is artificially constructed, it has no relationship to the past. The associations within the memory palace are also artificial, revealing the manipulation of memory which becomes something external that can be altered and changed. Derrida writes, “What Plato is attacking in sophistics, therefore, is not simply recourse to memory but, within such recourse, the substitution of the mnemonic device for live memory, of the prosthesis for the organ; the perversion that consists of replacing a limb by a thing, here, substituting the passive, mechanical ‘by-heart’ for the active reanimation of knowledge, for its reproduction in the present. The boundary (between inside and outside, living and nonliving) separates not only speech from writing but also memory as an unveiling (re-)producing a presence from re-memoration as the mere repetition of a monument…(Derrida 109).” Paul de Man elaborates on the contradictory nature of Gedächtnis and Erinnerung, “Memory effaces remembrance (or recollection) just as the I effaces itself. The faculty that enables thought to exist also makes its preservation impossible. The art, the ''techné'', of writing which cannot be separated from thought and from memorization can only be preserved in the figural mode of the symbol, the very mode it has to do away with if it is to occur at all (de Man 102).” Here, Gedächtnis effaces Erinnerung, like mechanical reproduction effaces the original, and writing effaces speech.<br />
<br />
====Memory Palace as Afterimage and Trace====<br />
[[File:Afterimage1.JPG|thumb|left|Purkyně's "artery figure" taken from Zielinksi's ''Deep Time of the Media'']]<br />
The effacing of Erinnerung caused by Gedächtnis also speaks to the idea of an afterimage which effaces the original image. The memory palace is an afterimage and faint impression of one’s home which it replaces. Jonathan Crary writes that the afterimage “…allowed one to conceive of sensory perception as cut from any necessary link with an external referent. The afterimage – the presence of sensation in the absence of a stimulus – and its subsequent modulations posed a theoretical and empirical demonstration of autonomous vision, of an optical experience that was produced by and within the subject (Crary 98).” The afterimage of the memory palace is detachable, once it is created the originary house isn’t necessary to evoke it, rather it can be evoked independently by the subject. Derrida’s concept of the “trace” is essentially the afterimage of a sign. While memory palaces are the navigation of symbols within a space, where space itself is also a symbol, the nature of these symbols are imagined and therefore nonpresent. Derrida saw signs as related to living memory, and the “trace” as having to do with dead memory Derrida writes, “The trace is not a presence but is rather the simulacrum of a presence that dislocates, displaces, and refers beyond itself. The trace has, properly speaking, no place, for effacement belongs to the very structure of the trace. Effacement must always be able to overtake the trace; otherwise it would not be a trace but an indestructible and monumental substance (Derrida 156).” The trace refers to that which is no longer present, leaving only the relics and remains to be read.<br />
<br />
====Memory as Archive and Crypt====<br />
[[File:044MemoryBook200.jpg|thumb|right|human brain as memory archive]]<br />
Memory palaces are a static archive of files. Vismann writes, “The immobile tomes are their own tombs...The immobilization amounts to a musealization, creating a work of art out of files (Vismann 161-162).” The memory palace echoes this sentiment and acts more as a mausoleum than a museum. The frozen architecture of the memory palace is doubled by the frozen images within it, turning the palace into a crypt. The shaping of the memory palace into a petrified and dead picture reveals the artifice of constructed memory. Its static and spectral quality lends it to the space of the crypt and removes it from the space of the living. It is the dead memory that must be summoned by the speaker, called to as the missing Other, and resurrected into the present.<br />
<br />
====Forgetting====<br />
Memory Palaces must be practiced, otherwise they are prone to being forgotten. They are meant to be remembered for a specific event, such as a specific speech, but once the event has passed, the memory palace recedes, shatters, and erases itself into the depths of the mystic writing pad’s unconscious. The memory palace, then, is made to be forgotten. Vismann writes, “With one sharp and one blunt end, the stylus unites writing and erasing, those two fundamental chancery operations, in one instrument. Herein lies an analogy to the workings of memory: just as the Greek verb hypomnematizesthai equates filing and remembering, its opposite, exaleiphein, combines a practical act and a function of memory by referring both to forgetting and wiping off (Vismann 55).” In this sense the memory palace is obliterated and becomes buried as a trace and remnant. Memory and forgetting work as though in a circuit, the production of one is almost always the production of the other, to remember one thing often causes one to forget another less relevant thing. Vismann also discusses forgetting as enabling memory, just as the afterimage or trace enables the original image, or the second gives birth to the first. Mechanical reproduction also enables the original, revealing the necessity of the copy and the negation in order to preserve the referent. There is only so much space in the human brain, therefore acquiring new information or new memories must also imply a certain amount of forgetting.<br />
<br />
==Mnemonic Expression: Writing Secrets and Speaking the Mind==<br />
<br />
''The art of memory is like an inner writing'' - Frances Yates.<br />
<br />
While mnemonic techniques were designed for oral performance without visible written aid, they were, from a Derridean perspective, systems of representation organized by writing. Rather than utilizing writing to externalize memory, mnemonics structured texts to correlate with the (variously imagined) inner mechanisms of the psyche. Mnemonics shaped poetics via rhyme and meter, for instance, rendering the text structurally uniform so that it might be more easily remembered and spoken. Mnemonic technique thus interfaced between speech and writing, presence and trace. In the same vein, mnemonics mediated between the interior mind and the external world, articulating both. Mnemonics are thus not simply storage techniques but expression: a form of writing (or ''art'' of memory) that reveals historically deviant memories and, in attempting to control its input and output, represents the persistently black-boxed functioning of the human mind.<br />
<br />
===Mnemonics as cryptography===<br />
<br />
As a mode of mediation, mnemonics represent a curious combination of semiotics and functional nonsense. Mnemonic signs (images, places, phrases) must be nearly evacuated of meaning in order to cue—but not replace—the desired information actively attached to (or associated with) them. From this perspective, articulated above [http://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php/Mnemonics#Arbitrariness_and_the_Cake-Mix_Effect], mnemonics functioned as a storage technique comprised of arbitrary signifiers (like Roy G. Biv) rather than a communicative semantic system. The seemingly nonsensical functioning of mnemonics, however, leaves open the opportunity for obfuscation. If mnemonics could be 'objectively' coded for memory, then they could also perform as encrypted transmission.<br />
<br />
====Giordano Bruno's magic mnemonics====<br />
<br />
Giordano Bruno, a Dominican friar and peripatetic philosopher famous for his “amazing powers of recollection” (Zielinski 72) provides a historical example of the cryptographic, communicative potential of mnemonics in the late 16th century. Bruno was eventually burned at the stake during the Inquisition for his use of magic and allegiance to hermeticism: a philosophy named for Hermes and Thoth and based in Egyptian astrology, which, needless to say, clashed with Christian doctrine. In ''Deep Time of The Media'', Siegfried Zielinski links hermetic tradition (which persisted into the Renaissance but had to be promulgated secretly) to the “subhistory” stemming from “the passion for encrypting and deciphering texts runs through the sciences” since the 13th century (Zielinski 73). He also notes that cryptography made particular demands on memory and was thus bound to mnemonic ability (83). Bruno took this relationship one step further. In his writings and teachings, Bruno endeavored to both transmit and internalize hermetic secrets through mnemonic technique. <br />
[[Image: bruno_memory_wheel.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|Frances Yates' rendition of Giordano Bruno's mnemonic wheel described in ''Shadows'' (1582).]] “The secret was the combination of the Hermetic beliefs with the techniques of the art of memory” (Yates 305) writes Frances Yates, so that these “memory systems” became “a mode of transmitting a religion, or an ethic, or some message of universal import” (387). <br />
<br />
Bruno’s system of “magic mnemonics” (Yates 223) hinged on his belief that the memorization of significant images enabled the "harnessing of the inner world of the imagination to the stars, or reproducing the the celestial world within" (215). Memory, for Bruno, was thus a dioptric medium, allowing the passage of the sublime order of the heavens into the individual psyche, "arriving at the vision within of the One light diffused through all" (230). This divine lumen, however, was guarded by catoptric technique. Bruno's mnemonic system was based the arrangement of intricate wheels of astral symbols and magic images. Bruno's first book on the art of memory is aptly titled ''Shadows'': as Yates observes, there is “Circaean mystification at the heart of this memory treatise” (247). Bruno’s mnemonic code thus had a dual function to reveal and conceal. He sought to at once unify the human imagination and the celestial order through memory, and to keep this mnemonic recipe secret, decipherable only by those who understood hermetic principles and believed in magic.<br />
<br />
===Written in wax===<br />
<br />
Wax—the inscription media associated with classical rhetoric and art of memory—was remediated in recording technology and psychoanalytic discourse at the turn of the 20th century. Through a brief comparison of modern and antique articulations of wax as the material substrate of memory, we may glimpse how the rise and fall of mnemonics is subject to the imagined materiality—and malleability—of the mind.<br />
<br />
====Antique imaginary: the obvious====<br />
<br />
Cicero’s ''De oratore'' (finished in 55 B.C.E.) is among the earliest treatises describing mnemonics as a rhetorical art (Yates 17). Cicero credits Simonides with the invention of the art of memory, when, with “with almost divine powers of memory,” he “wrote down what he wanted to remember in certain places in his possession by means of images, just as if he were describing letters on wax” (qtd. in Yates 19). Yates interprets Cicero’s portrayal of the origin of mnemonics as “an inner writing on wax” (19): Simonides internalizes the wax tablet, the medium for recording speech that Phaedrus famously concealed under his cloak in Plato’s dialogue. Cornelia Vismann identifies wax as the key medium in the shift from oral to written legal and administrative culture in the West. “To synchronize speech and writing,” Vismann describes, “the speedwriters or exceptores responsible for files and protocols drew their letters in wax, which, in Quintilian’s words, puts up as little resistance to inscribing as it does to erasing” (Vismann 55). These speedwriters were also employed to take down the senate minutes, which “in search for the aura of the authentic,” “aim[ed] for [a] presentist effect” (54). Mnemonic systems were likewise designed to uphold these cultural values of presence and authenticity, and were analogous to wax in their ability to suture oral performance and written record.<br />
[[Image: waxtablet.jpg|left|300px|thumb|A Grecian wax tablet.]]<br />
Wax was thus the obvious material through (and on) which to describe mnemonics, which interfaced between speech and writing. The metaphor has an additional layer: as a malleable, hand-held medium, the wax tablet suggests that the memory is also easily manipulable by an autonomous author. Cicero renders Simonides as the authorial agent of his inner wax tablet, and thus in control of his memory. Nearly two millennia later, during the modern turn, the idea that one could rely on—let alone control—one’s memory was undercut by the development of recording technologies and the rise of psychoanalytic theories of trauma and repression. Curiously, at this historical moment, the connection between wax and memory that once portrayed both mnemonics and the inner-workings of the classical mind is again applied to mental faculties. This later incarnation of inner wax, however, is not subject to authorial intent, but inscribed upon by machines and the Unconscious.<br />
<br />
====Modern memory: the return of the repressed?====<br />
<br />
Two notable depictions of wax as the material substrate of memory bracket Kittler’s year 1900: Jean-Marie Guyau’s Memory and Phonograph (1880) and Sigmund Freud’s Note Upon the ‘Mystic-Writing Pad’ (1925). “What good are the poetic mnemonic techniques of rhyme and meter when wax rolls can store not only substance and tone but real sounds?” (Kittler 1992, 236), Kittler asks in ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Guyau addressed this anxiety of the inferiority of human memory and the limits of language early on by claiming the phonograph as the most exact metaphor for man’s ability to record and recite—to read, write, and speak. Notions of manipulating the memory with images, places, and signs is replaced with a techno-scientific inscription in Guyau’s comparison: “Upon speaking into a phonograph, the vibrations of one’s voice are transferred into a point that engraves lines on a metal plate…in analogous ways, invisible lines are incessantly carved into the brain cells” (qtd. in Kittler 1999, 30-31).<br />
<br />
Freud’s use of the [[mystic-writing pad]] as an analogy for the psyche also revises the idea of memory and inscription. Freud dismisses mnemonics right off the bat: “If I distrust my memory,” he begins, “I am able to supplement and guarantee its working by making a note in writing” (Freud 227). External “devices to aid memory” (228) are imperfect compared to our own sensory apparatus, however, which “has an unlimited receptive capacity for new perceptions and nevertheless lays down permanent—even though not unalterable—memory-traces of them” (228). Though he distrusts his memory, Freud echoes the ancient Greeks in imagining the psychic apparatus as a remediation of the wax tablet: the mystic-writing pad. Unlike the imagined mnemonic tablet, however, Freud’s pad is not consciously inscribed, but “receives perceptions (which are accompanied—but are not consciously manipulated—"by consciousness)and passes the excitation on to the unconscious mnemic systems” (231).<br />
<br />
Though these modern articulations of the mind destabilize the ability of human memory (assumed by mnemonics) and man’s conscious power over it (and symbolized by wax), they are haunted by the idea of control and power that they repress. Guyau and Freud participate in the same endeavor to represent the black box of the mind, reiterating the art of memory via technological and psycho-scientific metaphor.<br />
<br />
==Obsolescence and the Changing Thinker==<br />
<br />
<br />
According to Yates, the quest for improved memory through artificial mnemonic systems emerges as a critical part of our attempt to organize knowledge and impose a comprehensible order on our chaotic world. Perhaps the decline of these time-honored techniques is simply due to the fact that it is decreasingly relevant or important to remember things. The way we interact with information has changed drastically since a time before writing, thus changing the way we think. As Nietzsche observed, "our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts" ([http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ Carr]). When the printing press was invented by Johann Gutenberg in the early 1450s, memory techniques started to lose their prominence. People were suddenly able to record history, genealogies, law codes and stories without committing them to memory. <br />
<br />
With easy access to computer databases and the Internet, the need for mnemonic devices is has faded even further. This shift in thinking was pointed out in a recent article published in the New York Times: "Why bother remembering the clever poem that tells the value of pi to 21 places (3.141592653589793238462) when you can look it up online and get a virtual googol of places? Why is it necessary in this information age to remember most thing, except maybe your user name and password(s)?" ([http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html Rosenthal]). Clive Thompson summed up the change in thinking even more succinctly in [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson ''Wired''] magazine: "Almost without noticing it, we've outsourced important peripheral brain functions to the silicon around us." In a time when memory was the only storage device or at least one of the most efficient, mnemonics were an obvious form of mediation, but as new technologies have become available making it simple to find almost any fact in a few quick keystrokes and a quick skimming of a web page, those old strategies have become less necessary. As Crary observes, audiences must be trained to use new mediums and technologies (Crary 6), and through our re-training, it is not surprising mnemonics have largely disappeared. We have been schooled in new ways of solving the problem of retaining important details, with external resources in hand. Perhaps this modern resistance to memorization masks an anxiety caused by a diminished sense of our own mnemonic capabilities (Cambor 2001) due to developments in technology and the emergence of psychoanalysis at the turn of the modern era, or perhaps memory itself is a dying medium.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
* Carr, Nicholas. [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"] ''The Atlantic''. The Atlantic Monthly Group, July-Aug. 2008. Web. 10 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Crary, Jonathan. ''Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century''. Boston: MIT Press, 1992.<br />
* de Man, Paul. ''Aesthetic Ideology''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Dissemination''. New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 2004.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Speech and phenomena: and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs''. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. <br />
* Donald Phillip Verene, Vico’s Science of Imagination (Ithaca, 1981), 96-126<br />
* Fentress, James and Chris Wickham (1992) Social Memory. Oxford: Blackwell. <br />
* Freud, Sigmund. ''The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud''. Ed. James Strachey. London: The Hogarth Press, 1961.<br />
* Kittler, Friedrich A. ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.<br />
* --. ''Gramophone, Film, Typewriter''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton. ''The Art of Memory Reconceived: From Rhetoric to Psychoanalysis''. Journal of the History of Ideas, 48(3), 371-392<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton, "The new science of giambattista Vico: Historicism in its Relation to Poetics" ''Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism'', 30 (1972), 362-64<br />
* Rosenthal, Jack. [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html "Mnemonics."] ''New York Times''. New York Times Company, 17 July 2005. Web. 11 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Ronell, Avital. "Scoring Literature: The Drug Culture". (Lecture, NYU, 4/8/10).<br />
* Thompson, Clive. [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson "Your Outboard Brain Knows All"] ''Wired''. Conde Nast Digital, 25 Sept. 2007. Web. 11. Apr. 2010.<br />
* Vismann, Cornelia. ''Files: Law and Media Technology''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008.<br />
* Yates, Frances A. ''The Art of Memory''. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966.<br />
* Zielinski, Siegfried. ''Deep Time of the Media''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
==External Links==<br />
* [http://www.eudesign.com/mnems/_mnframe.htm Mnemonics] - a list of a number of standardized mnemonic devices<br />
* [http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-memory.htm How Human Memory Works] - a simple overview of the mental process<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Mnemonics&diff=8641Mnemonics2010-04-12T16:19:44Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Giordano Bruno's magic mnemonics */</p>
<hr />
<div><div style="text-align:center;">"'''M'''nemonics '''N'''eatly '''E'''liminate '''M'''an's '''O'''nly '''N'''emesis ('''I'''nsufficient '''C'''erebral '''S'''torage)"</div><br />
<br />
Mnemonics, or the art of memory, is today regarded as an arcane intellectual interest. It functions on the periphery of popular culture, largely through a literature of self-help designed to bolster the confidence of those insecure about their powers of recollection. If it is a useful skill, it is not an essential one in a civilization whose collective memory is securely stored in the printed word and, more recently, in digital media. Today’s archive exists in the library or the personal computer, not in the depths of a well-ordered mind. <br />
<br />
Most of the mnemonic devices and techniques that remain today are simple and standardized. They are tools for remembering sequences of information, especially for recall in testing situations. Rather than learning general mnemonic tricks, students are left with specific rhymes or sentences to remember, for example: "Roy G. Biv" to remember the colors of the rainbow; "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally" for the algebraic order of operations; and "lefty, loosey; righty, tighty" for mechanics. Despite the longevity of some of these specific mnemonics, however, they are but a mere suggestion of the much more complex and widespread mnemonic strategies of yesteryear: from the wandering rhapsody of ancient Greece who enthralled listeners with the epic tales of Homer to the philosophers of the Renaissance who constructed imaginary memory palaces to present their intricate designs of the cosmos. This dossier will explore mnemonics as a mode of mediation that stored knowledge in a world invested in the authority of the spoken word, and strove to represent and control the historically black-boxed functioning of human memory.<br />
<br />
[[File:Erinnern.jpg|right|]]<br />
<br />
==Historical Sketch of Old Works on Mnemonics==<br />
[[File:10133 vico dipintura.gif|400px|thumb|left|Cover image from Giambattista Vico's book ''The New Science''. Each symbol was mean to help the reader recall all of the ideas in the book.]]<br />
<br />
“A memory consists in the awareness, first, of the diminished intensity of an impression, second, of its increased ease, and third, of the connections it entertains with other impressions” (Kittler 1999, 31).<br />
<br />
Long before transcription existed, there have been oral records of events in history: genealogies. In medieval Iceland, administrators of the law had to commit their entire juridical system to memory (Fentress and Wickham, 1992). In Ireland, bards would study for twelve years in order to memorize over 500 stories, as well as genealogies of all the leading Irish families (MacManus, 1967).<br />
<br />
Reflecting back on this mnemonic oral tradition, the 18th century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico contends that key to understanding of the nature of memory is derived from the direct correspondence between image and idea in primitive poetic language. In the beginnings of civilization, image and idea were one. Primitive peoples possessed robust memories because of the inseparable association they made between images and ideas in their comprehension of the world. They thought metaphorically, and the metaphors that they uttered were easily mimicked and remembered because they were richly expressive, grandiose, and full of wonder at the world. Vico revealed that the link between human imagination and the universe that the Renaissance Neoplatonists had sought to discover magically was in fact born historically in the development of human consciousness (Verene, 101). <br />
<br />
The source of mnemonist’s method is visible in the poetic logic of Vico’s theory of the emergence of human consciousness. That theory, too, involves the relationship between places and images, which Vico labels ''topics'' and ''tropes''. Topics were the poetic of formulae through which primitive people identified the phenomena of the world. As imaginative representations of particular aspects of realty, they provided common places or fixed points of reference amidst the flux of sense experience (Yates, 31). Considered in this context, Vico’s new art of memory becomes a retrospective search for connection between our present conceptions and the lost poetic images out of which they were born. In the logic of Vichian poetics, the new art of memory is a reconstruction of the imaginative process by which the poets of antiquity gave shape to their perception of the world. Therein the imaginative sources of our present ideas are to be found. The original topic might be linked to a palimpsest, repeatedly covered over with more abstract imagery as the human mind historically ascended the tropological gradient of linguistic expression. Vico’s art of memory was to decipher each tropological layer along the way until the original metaphorical topic, long forgotten, was recalled to mind (Hutton, 379).<br />
<br />
=== Freud's theory as a reverse mnemonics ===<br />
<br />
If mnemonics lay at the source of Romantic soul-searching (both personal and collective), the techniques themselves were only rarely the subject of introspective comment. It was left to Sigmund Freud at the turn of the 20th century to explain the role of memory in introspection in terms of a mnemonic code (Hutton, 386). In his theory of screen memories, Freud posits the constructive power of the unconscious mind to shape recollection. Forgetting rather than remembering is what we wish to do, he argues, because it is easier to live with a screen of fantasies rather than face the reality of our past. To use his terminology, memory is tendentious in that it reflects unconscious psychic intent. In this respect the Unconscious is the guardian of memory, legislating the selection of what is remembered, and what is repressed or hidden away. As an art of memory, therefore, psychoanalysis is a technique for deciphering the psychic intent encoded in screen memories (Hutton, 388). As we elaborate below, Freud's theory of the Unconscious, and of the forces of repression and trauma that affect the psyche, is incompatible with the classical lineage of mnemonics that assumes the individual's conscious control over his or her memory.<br />
<br />
==The Technology of Memory==<br />
[[File:Room 07 Fludd0002.jpg|thumb|computerized memory theater]]<br />
===How Mnemonics Work===<br />
<br />
Mnemonics may be viewed as storage devices for information in the human mind. The brain, however, is like a black box, and has been throughout human history: many of its operations are a mystery, and we are still just uncovering how it accomplishes many of the tasks we take for granted. Memory is one such process that captured the imaginations of pre-modern thinkers, and that contemporary scientists are still trying to understand. However, there are a few things that have been discovered over the years about how mnemonics function. The process of remembering is split up into different steps: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Mnemonics are involved with encoding. The best way to learn things, or encode them, is to associate them with other things. In people's mind, "apple" will often be associated with "red" and "round." By retrieving the concept of "red," the memory of "apple" will also be triggered. Mnemonics capitalize on this principle by creating more entry points to different pieces of information.<br />
<br />
At first glance, mnemonics may seem rather counter-intuitive because they require one to remember more information in order to solve the problem of remembering something else entirely. Rather than simply remembering one date, 1492 for example, mnemonics ask that you remember a poem: "In 1492 / Columbus sailed the ocean blue." More information is required in an attempt to lodge an initial piece of information in one's mind. While this technique seems rather contradictory, it works because it creates associations, or configurations of information more likely to stick in one's memory. A useful metaphor may be that a memory is a series of files. Mnemonics store bits of information in a number of different files through which to access the information.<br />
<br />
===Arbitrariness and the Cake-Mix Effect===<br />
<br />
In many mnemonic systems, the specifics of the "extra" information one learns to create associations is often entirely arbitrary and can be adapted for each individual. Much like pre-packaged cake mix, mnemonic techniques offer a basic structure, but the particular words and connections that will best work for an individual mind must be added to the formula for it to function. For example, a common strategy for remembering an ordered list is to remember the first letter of each item and put together a new sentence in which each of the words starts with one of the letters needing to be remembered, in the proper order. So if one wanted to remember biological taxonomic classifications from broadest to most specific ('''K'''ingdom, '''P'''hylum, '''C'''lass, '''O'''rder, '''F'''amily, '''G'''enus, '''S'''pecies, '''V'''ariety), one need construct a new sentence in which each subsequent word starts with the next letter in order (K,P,C,O,F,G,S,V). Each individual might have a different sentence that works best for him or her, however. So while one student might find it most advantageous to remember "'''K'''ing '''P'''hilip's '''C'''lassic '''O'''rder: '''F'''amily '''G'''enius - '''S'''pecial '''V'''alue'" another might find it easier to remember "'''K'''indly '''P'''lace '''C'''over '''O'''n '''F'''resh '''G'''reen '''S'''pring '''V'''egetables." This flexibility makes mnemonics a useful set of strategies, and the failure of these techniques is often dependent on the arbitrary information filled into the system. If someone fails to remember the order of the taxonomical classes it is usually because the sentence used is not the best for the user. Many mnemonic systems work in this manner, tailored to the individual mind. One prime historical example of this is the memory palace.<br />
<br />
==Method of Loci==<br />
<br />
A poetic, time-honored example of the method of loci may be found in the cosmology of Australian aborigines, whose ancestors are said to have sung the world into existence (Cambor, 2001). Every rock and crevice of the outback has a song associated with it, and the traveler knows their location exactly by their place in the song, the words of which corresponds to their physical surroundings. These songs have been transcribed to aid in the understanding of the geology of the continent. Across the globe, in Ancient Rome, mnemonics were used by lawyers to remember the points they wanted to make in a lawsuit. The method of loci was first formally described by Quitilian, a first century Roman rhetorician. As the historian Frances Yates describes in her book ''The Art of Memory'', the most common forms of the method of loci are memory palaces, memory theaters, and memory gardens. <br />
<br />
===Case Study or Trace Study of the Memory Palace===<br />
[[File:Fludd-the-art-of-memory-89.jpg|thumb|right|Engraving by Robert Fludd revealing memory attached to images]]<br />
<br />
Memory Palaces are methods of loci which use an imagined architecture to structure a speech based on associations of symbols. They are a spatialized remediation of association. Before memory palaces were implemented, hieroglyphs and other forms of picture writing were already using symbols to stand in for words and ideas. Memory palaces abstract this notion of association and complicate in order to allow one to remember hundreds of ideas. While mnemonics can be written down, the memory palace is completely imagined, and therefore the process and the media is black boxed within the mind of the subject, and like Iris, the message or information is internalized. This method was developed out of a human lack, and the need to remember large amounts of information. When using the memory palace, one needs only to remember the symbols, after which the encoded information becomes unlocked like the chirograph which connects to its counterpart. Memory palaces were constructed out of an anxiety for memory being lost, but in reality it is always already lost. <br />
<br />
This mode of mediation is based on location, but it itself has no location and exists as a non-space that stores imagined data. The subject that uses the memory palace becomes split and is forced to inhabit two realities as one must imagine walking through the memory palace and picking up each predetermined object while simultaneously being rooted in a physical space and delivering a live speech to an audience. The subject must navigate the memory palace like an automaton on automatic pilot but cannot get fully immersed or lost in it. Discipline of the mind and the body is necessary since the subject cannot think, but must become a machine and instrument for the reading of memory. <br />
<br />
====The Mechanization of Memory====<br />
<br />
Hegel discusses memory in two terms: “Erinnerung” and “Gedächtnis.” Erinnerung for Hegel is recollection, memory based on learning and internalization. It therefore has a relationship to the past and to a missing Other. Gedächtnis is the forgetting of meaning in favor of memorization and technologized memory, just as the technologization of speech through the act of writing represents the erasure of speech and the marking of its becoming forgotten. Gedächtnis acts as the simulacrum and mechanical reproduction of memory but empties it of its original meaning (Ronell, 2010). Memory palaces fall under Gedächtnis, as they are a phantom crutch or prosthetic for remembering which can be easily dismantled and forgotten. The technique does reflect Erinnerung in that it calls to its missing Other which is the real house, but, because reality of the memory palace is artificially constructed, it has no relationship to the past. The associations within the memory palace are also artificial, revealing the manipulation of memory which becomes something external that can be altered and changed. Derrida writes, “What Plato is attacking in sophistics, therefore, is not simply recourse to memory but, within such recourse, the substitution of the mnemonic device for live memory, of the prosthesis for the organ; the perversion that consists of replacing a limb by a thing, here, substituting the passive, mechanical ‘by-heart’ for the active reanimation of knowledge, for its reproduction in the present. The boundary (between inside and outside, living and nonliving) separates not only speech from writing but also memory as an unveiling (re-)producing a presence from re-memoration as the mere repetition of a monument…(Derrida 109).” Paul de Man elaborates on the contradictory nature of Gedächtnis and Erinnerung, “Memory effaces remembrance (or recollection) just as the I effaces itself. The faculty that enables thought to exist also makes its preservation impossible. The art, the ''techné'', of writing which cannot be separated from thought and from memorization can only be preserved in the figural mode of the symbol, the very mode it has to do away with if it is to occur at all (de Man 102).” Here, Gedächtnis effaces Erinnerung, like mechanical reproduction effaces the original, and writing effaces speech.<br />
<br />
====Memory Palace as Afterimage and Trace====<br />
[[File:Afterimage1.JPG|thumb|left|Purkyně's "artery figure" taken from Zielinksi's ''Deep Time of the Media'']]<br />
The effacing of Erinnerung caused by Gedächtnis also speaks to the idea of an afterimage which effaces the original image. The memory palace is an afterimage and faint impression of one’s home which it replaces. Jonathan Crary writes that the afterimage “…allowed one to conceive of sensory perception as cut from any necessary link with an external referent. The afterimage – the presence of sensation in the absence of a stimulus – and its subsequent modulations posed a theoretical and empirical demonstration of autonomous vision, of an optical experience that was produced by and within the subject (Crary 98).” The afterimage of the memory palace is detachable, once it is created the originary house isn’t necessary to evoke it, rather it can be evoked independently by the subject. Memory palaces are the navigation of symbols within a space, where space itself is also a symbol. The nature of these symbols are imagined and therefore nonpresent, they exist rather, as a trace or impression of signs. Derrida examined the difference between signs which he saw as related to living memory, and the “trace” which is an impression of a sign, having to do with dead memory. Derrida writes, “The trace is not a presence but is rather the simulacrum of a presence that dislocates, displaces, and refers beyond itself. The trace has, properly speaking, no place, for effacement belongs to the very structure of the trace. Effacement must always be able to overtake the trace; otherwise it would not be a trace but an indestructible and monumental substance (Derrida 156).” The trace refers to that which is no longer present, leaving only the relics and remains to be read.<br />
<br />
====Memory as Archive and Crypt====<br />
[[File:044MemoryBook200.jpg|thumb|right|human brain as memory archive]]<br />
Memory palaces are a static archive of files. Vismann writes, “The immobile tomes are their own tombs...The immobilization amounts to a musealization, creating a work of art out of files (Vismann 161-162).” The memory palace echoes this sentiment and acts more as a mausoleum than a museum. The frozen architecture of the memory palace is doubled by the frozen images within it, turning the palace into a crypt. The shaping of the memory palace into a petrified and dead picture reveals the artifice of constructed memory. Its static and spectral quality lends it to the space of the crypt and removes it from the space of the living. It is the dead memory that must be summoned by the speaker, called to as the missing Other, and resurrected into the present.<br />
<br />
====Forgetting====<br />
Memory Palaces must be practiced, otherwise they are prone to being forgotten. They are meant to be remembered for a specific event, such as a specific speech, but once the event has passed, the memory palace recedes, shatters, and erases itself into the depths of the mystic writing pad’s unconscious. The memory palace, then, is made to be forgotten. Vismann writes, “With one sharp and one blunt end, the stylus unites writing and erasing, those two fundamental chancery operations, in one instrument. Herein lies an analogy to the workings of memory: just as the Greek verb hypomnematizesthai equates filing and remembering, its opposite, exaleiphein, combines a practical act and a function of memory by referring both to forgetting and wiping off (Vismann 55).” In this sense the memory palace is obliterated and becomes buried as a trace and remnant. Memory and forgetting work as though in a circuit, the production of one is almost always the production of the other, to remember one thing often causes one to forget another less relevant thing. Vismann also discusses forgetting as enabling memory, just as the afterimage or trace enables the original image, or the second gives birth to the first. Mechanical reproduction also enables the original, revealing the necessity of the copy and the negation in order to preserve the referent. There is only so much space in the human brain, therefore acquiring new information or new memories must also imply a certain amount of forgetting.<br />
<br />
==Mnemonic Expression: Writing Secrets and Speaking the Mind==<br />
<br />
''The art of memory is like an inner writing'' - Frances Yates.<br />
<br />
While mnemonic techniques were designed for oral performance without visible written aid, they were, from a Derridean perspective, systems of representation organized by writing. Rather than utilizing writing to externalize memory, mnemonics structured texts to correlate with the (variously imagined) inner mechanisms of the psyche. Mnemonics shaped poetics via rhyme and meter, for instance, rendering the text structurally uniform so that it might be more easily remembered and spoken. Mnemonic technique thus interfaced between speech and writing, presence and trace. In the same vein, mnemonics mediated between the interior mind and the external world, articulating both. Mnemonics are thus not simply storage techniques but expression: a form of writing (or ''art'' of memory) that reveals historically deviant memories and, in attempting to control its input and output, represents the persistently black-boxed functioning of the human mind.<br />
<br />
===Mnemonics as cryptography===<br />
<br />
As a mode of mediation, mnemonics represent a curious combination of semiotics and functional nonsense. Mnemonic signs (images, places, phrases) must be nearly evacuated of meaning in order to cue—but not replace—the desired information actively attached to (or associated with) them. From this perspective, articulated above [http://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php/Mnemonics#Arbitrariness_and_the_Cake-Mix_Effect], mnemonics functioned as a storage technique comprised of arbitrary signifiers (like Roy G. Biv) rather than a communicative semantic system. The seemingly nonsensical functioning of mnemonics, however, leaves open the opportunity for obfuscation. If mnemonics could be 'objectively' coded for memory, then they could also perform as encrypted transmission.<br />
<br />
====Giordano Bruno's magic mnemonics====<br />
<br />
Giordano Bruno, a Dominican friar and peripatetic philosopher famous for his “amazing powers of recollection” (Zielinski 72) provides a historical example of the cryptographic, communicative potential of mnemonics in the late 16th century. Bruno was eventually burned at the stake during the Inquisition for his use of magic and allegiance to hermeticism: a philosophy named for Hermes and Thoth and based in Egyptian astrology, which, needless to say, clashed with Christian doctrine. In ''Deep Time of The Media'', Siegfried Zielinski links hermetic tradition (which persisted into the Renaissance but had to be promulgated secretly) to the “subhistory” stemming from “the passion for encrypting and deciphering texts runs through the sciences” since the 13th century (Zielinski 73). He also notes that cryptography made particular demands on memory and was thus bound to mnemonic ability (83). Bruno took this relationship one step further. In his writings and teachings, Bruno endeavored to both transmit and internalize hermetic secrets through mnemonic technique. <br />
[[Image: bruno_memory_wheel.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|Frances Yates' rendition of Giordano Bruno's mnemonic wheel described in ''Shadows'' (1582).]] “The secret was the combination of the Hermetic beliefs with the techniques of the art of memory” (Yates 305) writes Frances Yates, so that these “memory systems” became “a mode of transmitting a religion, or an ethic, or some message of universal import” (387). <br />
<br />
Bruno’s system of “magic mnemonics” (Yates 223) hinged on his belief that the memorization of significant images enabled the "harnessing of the inner world of the imagination to the stars, or reproducing the the celestial world within" (215). Memory, for Bruno, was thus a dioptric medium, allowing the passage of the sublime order of the heavens into the individual psyche, "arriving at the vision within of the One light diffused through all" (230). This divine lumen, however, was guarded by catoptric technique. Bruno's mnemonic system was based the arrangement of intricate wheels of astral symbols and magic images. Bruno's first book on the art of memory is aptly titled ''Shadows'': as Yates observes, there is “Circaean mystification at the heart of this memory treatise” (247). Bruno’s mnemonic code thus had a dual function to reveal and conceal. He sought to at once unify the human imagination and the celestial order through memory, and to keep this mnemonic recipe secret, decipherable only by those who understood hermetic principles and believed in magic.<br />
<br />
===Written in wax===<br />
<br />
Wax—the inscription media associated with classical rhetoric and art of memory—was remediated in recording technology and psychoanalytic discourse at the turn of the 20th century. Through a brief comparison of modern and antique articulations of wax as the material substrate of memory, we may glimpse how the rise and fall of mnemonics is subject to the imagined materiality—and malleability—of the mind.<br />
<br />
====Antique imaginary: the obvious====<br />
<br />
Cicero’s ''De oratore'' (finished in 55 B.C.E.) is among the earliest treatises describing mnemonics as a rhetorical art (Yates 17). Cicero credits Simonides with the invention of the art of memory, when, with “with almost divine powers of memory,” he “wrote down what he wanted to remember in certain places in his possession by means of images, just as if he were describing letters on wax” (qtd. in Yates 19). Yates interprets Cicero’s portrayal of the origin of mnemonics as “an inner writing on wax” (19): Simonides internalizes the wax tablet, the medium for recording speech that Phaedrus famously concealed under his cloak in Plato’s dialogue. Cornelia Vismann identifies wax as the key medium in the shift from oral to written legal and administrative culture in the West. “To synchronize speech and writing,” Vismann describes, “the speedwriters or exceptores responsible for files and protocols drew their letters in wax, which, in Quintilian’s words, puts up as little resistance to inscribing as it does to erasing” (Vismann 55). These speedwriters also assigned to take down the senate minutes, which “in search for the aura of the authentic,” “aim[ed] for [a] presentist effect” (54). Mnemonic systems were also designed to uphold these cultural values of presence and authenticity, and were analogous to wax in their ability to suture oral performance and written record.<br />
[[Image: waxtablet.jpg|left|300px|thumb|A Grecian wax tablet.]]<br />
Wax was thus the obvious material through (and on) which to describe mnemonics, which interfaced between speech and writing. The metaphor has an additional layer: as a malleable, hand-held medium, the wax tablet suggests that the memory is likewise easily manipulable by an autonomous author. Cicero renders Simonides as the authorial agent of his inner wax tablet, and thus in control of his memory. Nearly two millennia later, during the modern turn, the idea that one could rely on—let alone control—one’s memory was undercut by the development of recording technologies and the rise of psychoanalytic theories of trauma and repression. Curiously, at this historical moment, the connection between wax and memory that once portrayed both mnemonics and the inner-workings of the classical mind is again applied to the mind. This later incarnation of inner wax, however, is not subject to authorial intent, but inscribed upon by machines and the Unconscious.<br />
<br />
====Modern memory: the return of the repressed?====<br />
<br />
Two notable depictions of wax as the material substrate of memory bracket Kittler’s year 1900: Jean-Marie Guyau’s Memory and Phonograph (1880) and Sigmund Freud’s Note Upon the ‘Mystic-Writing Pad’ (1925). “What good are the poetic mnemonic techniques of rhyme and meter when wax rolls can store not only substance and tone but real sounds?” (Kittler 1992, 236), Kittler asks in ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Guyau addressed this anxiety of the inferiority of human memory and the limits of language early on by claiming the phonograph as the most exact metaphor for man’s ability to record and recite—to read, write, and speak. Notions of manipulating the memory with images, places, and signs is replaced with a techno-scientific inscription in Guyau’s comparison: “Upon speaking into a phonograph, the vibrations of one’s voice are transferred into a point that engraves lines on a metal plate…in analogous ways, invisible lines are incessantly carved into the brain cells” (qtd. in Kittler 1999, 30-31).<br />
<br />
Freud’s use of the [[mystic-writing pad]] as an analogy for the psyche also revises the idea of memory and inscription. Freud dismisses mnemonics right off the bat: “If I distrust my memory,” he begins, “I am able to supplement and guarantee its working by making a note in writing” (Freud 227). External “devices to aid memory” (228) are imperfect compared to our own sensory apparatus, however, which “has an unlimited receptive capacity for new perceptions and nevertheless lays down permanent—even though not unalterable—memory-traces of them” (228). Though he distrusts his memory, Freud echoes the ancient Greeks in imagining the psychic apparatus as a remediation of the wax tablet: the mystic-writing pad. Unlike the imagined mnemonic tablet, however, Freud’s pad is not consciously inscribed, but “receives perceptions (which are accompanied—but are not consciously manipulated—"by consciousness)and passes the excitation on to the unconscious mnemic systems” (231).<br />
<br />
Though these modern articulations of the mind destabilize the ability of human memory (assumed by mnemonics) and man’s conscious power over it (and symbolized by wax), they are haunted by the idea of control and power that they repress. Guyau and Freud participate in the same endeavor to represent the black box of the mind, reiterating the art of memory via technological and psycho-scientific metaphor.<br />
<br />
==Obsolescence and the Changing Thinker==<br />
<br />
<br />
According to Yates, the quest for improved memory through artificial mnemonic systems emerges as a critical part of our attempt to organize knowledge and impose a comprehensible order on our chaotic world. Perhaps the decline of these time-honored techniques is simply due to the fact that it is decreasingly relevant or important to remember things. The way we interact with information has changed drastically since a time before writing, thus changing the way we think. As Nietzsche observed, "our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts" ([http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ Carr]). When the printing press was invented by Johann Gutenberg in the early 1450s, memory techniques started to lose their prominence. People were suddenly able to record history, genealogies, law codes and stories without committing them to memory. <br />
<br />
With easy access to computer databases and the Internet, the need for mnemonic devices is has faded even further. This shift in thinking was pointed out in a recent article published in the New York Times: "Why bother remembering the clever poem that tells the value of pi to 21 places (3.141592653589793238462) when you can look it up online and get a virtual googol of places? Why is it necessary in this information age to remember most thing, except maybe your user name and password(s)?" ([http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html Rosenthal]). Clive Thompson summed up the change in thinking even more succinctly in [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson ''Wired''] magazine: "Almost without noticing it, we've outsourced important peripheral brain functions to the silicon around us." In a time when memory was the only storage device or at least one of the most efficient, mnemonics were an obvious form of mediation, but as new technologies have become available making it simple to find almost any fact in a few quick keystrokes and a quick skimming of a web page, those old strategies have become less necessary. As Crary observes, audiences must be trained to use new mediums and technologies (Crary 6), and through our re-training, it is not surprising mnemonics have largely disappeared. We have been schooled in new ways of solving the problem of retaining important details, with external resources in hand. Perhaps this modern resistance to memorization masks an anxiety caused by a diminished sense of our own mnemonic capabilities (Cambor 2001) due to developments in technology and the emergence of psychoanalysis at the turn of the modern era, or perhaps memory itself is a dying medium.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
* Carr, Nicholas. [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"] ''The Atlantic''. The Atlantic Monthly Group, July-Aug. 2008. Web. 10 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Crary, Jonathan. ''Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century''. Boston: MIT Press, 1992.<br />
* de Man, Paul. ''Aesthetic Ideology''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Dissemination''. New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 2004.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Speech and phenomena: and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs''. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. <br />
* Donald Phillip Verene, Vico’s Science of Imagination (Ithaca, 1981), 96-126<br />
* Fentress, James and Chris Wickham (1992) Social Memory. Oxford: Blackwell. <br />
* Freud, Sigmund. ''The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud''. Ed. James Strachey. London: The Hogarth Press, 1961.<br />
* Kittler, Friedrich A. ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.<br />
* --. ''Gramophone, Film, Typewriter''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton. ''The Art of Memory Reconceived: From Rhetoric to Psychoanalysis''. Journal of the History of Ideas, 48(3), 371-392<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton, "The new science of giambattista Vico: Historicism in its Relation to Poetics" ''Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism'', 30 (1972), 362-64<br />
* Rosenthal, Jack. [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html "Mnemonics."] ''New York Times''. New York Times Company, 17 July 2005. Web. 11 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Ronell, Avital. "Scoring Literature: The Drug Culture". (Lecture, NYU, 4/8/10).<br />
* Thompson, Clive. [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson "Your Outboard Brain Knows All"] ''Wired''. Conde Nast Digital, 25 Sept. 2007. Web. 11. Apr. 2010.<br />
* Vismann, Cornelia. ''Files: Law and Media Technology''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008.<br />
* Yates, Frances A. ''The Art of Memory''. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966.<br />
* Zielinski, Siegfried. ''Deep Time of the Media''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
==External Links==<br />
* [http://www.eudesign.com/mnems/_mnframe.htm Mnemonics] - a list of a number of standardized mnemonic devices<br />
* [http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-memory.htm How Human Memory Works] - a simple overview of the mental process<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Mnemonics&diff=8639Mnemonics2010-04-12T16:18:29Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Giordano Bruno's magic mnemonics */</p>
<hr />
<div><div style="text-align:center;">"'''M'''nemonics '''N'''eatly '''E'''liminate '''M'''an's '''O'''nly '''N'''emesis ('''I'''nsufficient '''C'''erebral '''S'''torage)"</div><br />
<br />
Mnemonics, or the art of memory, is today regarded as an arcane intellectual interest. It functions on the periphery of popular culture, largely through a literature of self-help designed to bolster the confidence of those insecure about their powers of recollection. If it is a useful skill, it is not an essential one in a civilization whose collective memory is securely stored in the printed word and, more recently, in digital media. Today’s archive exists in the library or the personal computer, not in the depths of a well-ordered mind. <br />
<br />
Most of the mnemonic devices and techniques that remain today are simple and standardized. They are tools for remembering sequences of information, especially for recall in testing situations. Rather than learning general mnemonic tricks, students are left with specific rhymes or sentences to remember, for example: "Roy G. Biv" to remember the colors of the rainbow; "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally" for the algebraic order of operations; and "lefty, loosey; righty, tighty" for mechanics. Despite the longevity of some of these specific mnemonics, however, they are but a mere suggestion of the much more complex and widespread mnemonic strategies of yesteryear: from the wandering rhapsody of ancient Greece who enthralled listeners with the epic tales of Homer to the philosophers of the Renaissance who constructed imaginary memory palaces to present their intricate designs of the cosmos. This dossier will explore mnemonics as a mode of mediation that stored knowledge in a world invested in the authority of the spoken word, and strove to represent and control the historically black-boxed functioning of human memory.<br />
<br />
[[File:Erinnern.jpg|right|]]<br />
<br />
==Historical Sketch of Old Works on Mnemonics==<br />
[[File:10133 vico dipintura.gif|400px|thumb|left|Cover image from Giambattista Vico's book ''The New Science''. Each symbol was mean to help the reader recall all of the ideas in the book.]]<br />
<br />
“A memory consists in the awareness, first, of the diminished intensity of an impression, second, of its increased ease, and third, of the connections it entertains with other impressions” (Kittler 1999, 31).<br />
<br />
Long before transcription existed, there have been oral records of events in history: genealogies. In medieval Iceland, administrators of the law had to commit their entire juridical system to memory (Fentress and Wickham, 1992). In Ireland, bards would study for twelve years in order to memorize over 500 stories, as well as genealogies of all the leading Irish families (MacManus, 1967).<br />
<br />
Reflecting back on this mnemonic oral tradition, the 18th century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico contends that key to understanding of the nature of memory is derived from the direct correspondence between image and idea in primitive poetic language. In the beginnings of civilization, image and idea were one. Primitive peoples possessed robust memories because of the inseparable association they made between images and ideas in their comprehension of the world. They thought metaphorically, and the metaphors that they uttered were easily mimicked and remembered because they were richly expressive, grandiose, and full of wonder at the world. Vico revealed that the link between human imagination and the universe that the Renaissance Neoplatonists had sought to discover magically was in fact born historically in the development of human consciousness (Verene, 101). <br />
<br />
The source of mnemonist’s method is visible in the poetic logic of Vico’s theory of the emergence of human consciousness. That theory, too, involves the relationship between places and images, which Vico labels ''topics'' and ''tropes''. Topics were the poetic of formulae through which primitive people identified the phenomena of the world. As imaginative representations of particular aspects of realty, they provided common places or fixed points of reference amidst the flux of sense experience (Yates, 31). Considered in this context, Vico’s new art of memory becomes a retrospective search for connection between our present conceptions and the lost poetic images out of which they were born. In the logic of Vichian poetics, the new art of memory is a reconstruction of the imaginative process by which the poets of antiquity gave shape to their perception of the world. Therein the imaginative sources of our present ideas are to be found. The original topic might be linked to a palimpsest, repeatedly covered over with more abstract imagery as the human mind historically ascended the tropological gradient of linguistic expression. Vico’s art of memory was to decipher each tropological layer along the way until the original metaphorical topic, long forgotten, was recalled to mind (Hutton, 379).<br />
<br />
=== Freud's theory as a reverse mnemonics ===<br />
<br />
If mnemonics lay at the source of Romantic soul-searching (both personal and collective), the techniques themselves were only rarely the subject of introspective comment. It was left to Sigmund Freud at the turn of the 20th century to explain the role of memory in introspection in terms of a mnemonic code (Hutton, 386). In his theory of screen memories, Freud posits the constructive power of the unconscious mind to shape recollection. Forgetting rather than remembering is what we wish to do, he argues, because it is easier to live with a screen of fantasies rather than face the reality of our past. To use his terminology, memory is tendentious in that it reflects unconscious psychic intent. In this respect the Unconscious is the guardian of memory, legislating the selection of what is remembered, and what is repressed or hidden away. As an art of memory, therefore, psychoanalysis is a technique for deciphering the psychic intent encoded in screen memories (Hutton, 388). As we elaborate below, Freud's theory of the Unconscious, and of the forces of repression and trauma that affect the psyche, is incompatible with the classical lineage of mnemonics that assumes the individual's conscious control over his or her memory.<br />
<br />
==The Technology of Memory==<br />
[[File:Room 07 Fludd0002.jpg|thumb|computerized memory theater]]<br />
===How Mnemonics Work===<br />
<br />
Mnemonics may be viewed as storage devices for information in the human mind. The brain, however, is like a black box, and has been throughout human history: many of its operations are a mystery, and we are still just uncovering how it accomplishes many of the tasks we take for granted. Memory is one such process that captured the imaginations of pre-modern thinkers, and that contemporary scientists are still trying to understand. However, there are a few things that have been discovered over the years about how mnemonics function. The process of remembering is split up into different steps: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Mnemonics are involved with encoding. The best way to learn things, or encode them, is to associate them with other things. In people's mind, "apple" will often be associated with "red" and "round." By retrieving the concept of "red," the memory of "apple" will also be triggered. Mnemonics capitalize on this principle by creating more entry points to different pieces of information.<br />
<br />
At first glance, mnemonics may seem rather counter-intuitive because they require one to remember more information in order to solve the problem of remembering something else entirely. Rather than simply remembering one date, 1492 for example, mnemonics ask that you remember a poem: "In 1492 / Columbus sailed the ocean blue." More information is required in an attempt to lodge an initial piece of information in one's mind. While this technique seems rather contradictory, it works because it creates associations, or configurations of information more likely to stick in one's memory. A useful metaphor may be that a memory is a series of files. Mnemonics store bits of information in a number of different files through which to access the information.<br />
<br />
===Arbitrariness and the Cake-Mix Effect===<br />
<br />
In many mnemonic systems, the specifics of the "extra" information one learns to create associations is often entirely arbitrary and can be adapted for each individual. Much like pre-packaged cake mix, mnemonic techniques offer a basic structure, but the particular words and connections that will best work for an individual mind must be added to the formula for it to function. For example, a common strategy for remembering an ordered list is to remember the first letter of each item and put together a new sentence in which each of the words starts with one of the letters needing to be remembered, in the proper order. So if one wanted to remember biological taxonomic classifications from broadest to most specific ('''K'''ingdom, '''P'''hylum, '''C'''lass, '''O'''rder, '''F'''amily, '''G'''enus, '''S'''pecies, '''V'''ariety), one need construct a new sentence in which each subsequent word starts with the next letter in order (K,P,C,O,F,G,S,V). Each individual might have a different sentence that works best for him or her, however. So while one student might find it most advantageous to remember "'''K'''ing '''P'''hilip's '''C'''lassic '''O'''rder: '''F'''amily '''G'''enius - '''S'''pecial '''V'''alue'" another might find it easier to remember "'''K'''indly '''P'''lace '''C'''over '''O'''n '''F'''resh '''G'''reen '''S'''pring '''V'''egetables." This flexibility makes mnemonics a useful set of strategies, and the failure of these techniques is often dependent on the arbitrary information filled into the system. If someone fails to remember the order of the taxonomical classes it is usually because the sentence used is not the best for the user. Many mnemonic systems work in this manner, tailored to the individual mind. One prime historical example of this is the memory palace.<br />
<br />
==Method of Loci==<br />
<br />
A poetic, time-honored example of the method of loci may be found in the cosmology of Australian aborigines, whose ancestors are said to have sung the world into existence (Cambor, 2001). Every rock and crevice of the outback has a song associated with it, and the traveler knows their location exactly by their place in the song, the words of which corresponds to their physical surroundings. These songs have been transcribed to aid in the understanding of the geology of the continent. Across the globe, in Ancient Rome, mnemonics were used by lawyers to remember the points they wanted to make in a lawsuit. The method of loci was first formally described by Quitilian, a first century Roman rhetorician. As the historian Frances Yates describes in her book ''The Art of Memory'', the most common forms of the method of loci are memory palaces, memory theaters, and memory gardens. <br />
<br />
===Case Study or Trace Study of the Memory Palace===<br />
[[File:Fludd-the-art-of-memory-89.jpg|thumb|right|Engraving by Robert Fludd revealing memory attached to images]]<br />
<br />
Memory Palaces are methods of loci which use an imagined architecture to structure a speech based on associations of symbols. They are a spatialized remediation of association. Before memory palaces were implemented, hieroglyphs and other forms of picture writing were already using symbols to stand in for words and ideas. Memory palaces abstract this notion of association and complicate in order to allow one to remember hundreds of ideas. While mnemonics can be written down, the memory palace is completely imagined, and therefore the process and the media is black boxed within the mind of the subject, and like Iris, the message or information is internalized. This method was developed out of a human lack, and the need to remember large amounts of information. When using the memory palace, one needs only to remember the symbols, after which the encoded information becomes unlocked like the chirograph which connects to its counterpart. Memory palaces were constructed out of an anxiety for memory being lost, but in reality it is always already lost. <br />
<br />
This mode of mediation is based on location, but it itself has no location and exists as a non-space that stores imagined data. The subject that uses the memory palace becomes split and is forced to inhabit two realities as one must imagine walking through the memory palace and picking up each predetermined object while simultaneously being rooted in a physical space and delivering a live speech to an audience. The subject must navigate the memory palace like an automaton on automatic pilot but cannot get fully immersed or lost in it. Discipline of the mind and the body is necessary since the subject cannot think, but must become a machine and instrument for the reading of memory. <br />
<br />
====The Mechanization of Memory====<br />
<br />
Hegel discusses memory in two terms: “Erinnerung” and “Gedächtnis.” Erinnerung for Hegel is recollection, memory based on learning and internalization. It therefore has a relationship to the past and to a missing Other. Gedächtnis is the forgetting of meaning in favor of memorization and technologized memory, just as the technologization of speech through the act of writing represents the erasure of speech and the marking of its becoming forgotten. Gedächtnis acts as the simulacrum and mechanical reproduction of memory but empties it of its original meaning (Ronell, 2010). Memory palaces fall under Gedächtnis, as they are a phantom crutch or prosthetic for remembering which can be easily dismantled and forgotten. The technique does reflect Erinnerung in that it calls to its missing Other which is the real house, but, because reality of the memory palace is artificially constructed, it has no relationship to the past. The associations within the memory palace are also artificial, revealing the manipulation of memory which becomes something external that can be altered and changed. Derrida writes, “What Plato is attacking in sophistics, therefore, is not simply recourse to memory but, within such recourse, the substitution of the mnemonic device for live memory, of the prosthesis for the organ; the perversion that consists of replacing a limb by a thing, here, substituting the passive, mechanical ‘by-heart’ for the active reanimation of knowledge, for its reproduction in the present. The boundary (between inside and outside, living and nonliving) separates not only speech from writing but also memory as an unveiling (re-)producing a presence from re-memoration as the mere repetition of a monument…(Derrida 109).” Paul de Man elaborates on the contradictory nature of Gedächtnis and Erinnerung, “Memory effaces remembrance (or recollection) just as the I effaces itself. The faculty that enables thought to exist also makes its preservation impossible. The art, the ''techné'', of writing which cannot be separated from thought and from memorization can only be preserved in the figural mode of the symbol, the very mode it has to do away with if it is to occur at all (de Man 102).” Here, Gedächtnis effaces Erinnerung, like mechanical reproduction effaces the original, and writing effaces speech.<br />
<br />
====Memory Palace as Afterimage and Trace====<br />
[[File:Afterimage1.JPG|thumb|left|Purkyně's "artery figure" taken from Zielinksi's ''Deep Time of the Media'']]<br />
The effacing of Erinnerung caused by Gedächtnis also speaks to the idea of an afterimage which effaces the original image. The memory palace is an afterimage and faint impression of one’s home which it replaces. Jonathan Crary writes that the afterimage “…allowed one to conceive of sensory perception as cut from any necessary link with an external referent. The afterimage – the presence of sensation in the absence of a stimulus – and its subsequent modulations posed a theoretical and empirical demonstration of autonomous vision, of an optical experience that was produced by and within the subject (Crary 98).” The afterimage of the memory palace is detachable, once it is created the originary house isn’t necessary to evoke it, rather it can be evoked independently by the subject. Memory palaces are the navigation of symbols within a space, where space itself is also a symbol. The nature of these symbols are imagined and therefore nonpresent, they exist rather, as a trace or impression of signs. Derrida examined the difference between signs which he saw as related to living memory, and the “trace” which is an impression of a sign, having to do with dead memory. Derrida writes, “The trace is not a presence but is rather the simulacrum of a presence that dislocates, displaces, and refers beyond itself. The trace has, properly speaking, no place, for effacement belongs to the very structure of the trace. Effacement must always be able to overtake the trace; otherwise it would not be a trace but an indestructible and monumental substance (Derrida 156).” The trace refers to that which is no longer present, leaving only the relics and remains to be read.<br />
<br />
====Memory as Archive and Crypt====<br />
[[File:044MemoryBook200.jpg|thumb|right|human brain as memory archive]]<br />
Memory palaces are a static archive of files. Vismann writes, “The immobile tomes are their own tombs...The immobilization amounts to a musealization, creating a work of art out of files (Vismann 161-162).” The memory palace echoes this sentiment and acts more as a mausoleum than a museum. The frozen architecture of the memory palace is doubled by the frozen images within it, turning the palace into a crypt. The shaping of the memory palace into a petrified and dead picture reveals the artifice of constructed memory. Its static and spectral quality lends it to the space of the crypt and removes it from the space of the living. It is the dead memory that must be summoned by the speaker, called to as the missing Other, and resurrected into the present.<br />
<br />
====Forgetting====<br />
Memory Palaces must be practiced, otherwise they are prone to being forgotten. They are meant to be remembered for a specific event, such as a specific speech, but once the event has passed, the memory palace recedes, shatters, and erases itself into the depths of the mystic writing pad’s unconscious. The memory palace, then, is made to be forgotten. Vismann writes, “With one sharp and one blunt end, the stylus unites writing and erasing, those two fundamental chancery operations, in one instrument. Herein lies an analogy to the workings of memory: just as the Greek verb hypomnematizesthai equates filing and remembering, its opposite, exaleiphein, combines a practical act and a function of memory by referring both to forgetting and wiping off (Vismann 55).” In this sense the memory palace is obliterated and becomes buried as a trace and remnant. Memory and forgetting work as though in a circuit, the production of one is almost always the production of the other, to remember one thing often causes one to forget another less relevant thing. Vismann also discusses forgetting as enabling memory, just as the afterimage or trace enables the original image, or the second gives birth to the first. Mechanical reproduction also enables the original, revealing the necessity of the copy and the negation in order to preserve the referent. There is only so much space in the human brain, therefore acquiring new information or new memories must also imply a certain amount of forgetting.<br />
<br />
==Mnemonic Expression: Writing Secrets and Speaking the Mind==<br />
<br />
''The art of memory is like an inner writing'' - Frances Yates.<br />
<br />
While mnemonic techniques were designed for oral performance without visible written aid, they were, from a Derridean perspective, systems of representation organized by writing. Rather than utilizing writing to externalize memory, mnemonics structured texts to correlate with the (variously imagined) inner mechanisms of the psyche. Mnemonics shaped poetics via rhyme and meter, for instance, rendering the text structurally uniform so that it might be more easily remembered and spoken. Mnemonic technique thus interfaced between speech and writing, presence and trace. In the same vein, mnemonics mediated between the interior mind and the external world, articulating both. Mnemonics are thus not simply storage techniques but expression: a form of writing (or ''art'' of memory) that reveals historically deviant memories and, in attempting to control its input and output, represents the persistently black-boxed functioning of the human mind.<br />
<br />
===Mnemonics as cryptography===<br />
<br />
As a mode of mediation, mnemonics represent a curious combination of semiotics and functional nonsense. Mnemonic signs (images, places, phrases) must be nearly evacuated of meaning in order to cue—but not replace—the desired information actively attached to (or associated with) them. From this perspective, articulated above [http://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php/Mnemonics#Arbitrariness_and_the_Cake-Mix_Effect], mnemonics functioned as a storage technique comprised of arbitrary signifiers (like Roy G. Biv) rather than a communicative semantic system. The seemingly nonsensical functioning of mnemonics, however, leaves open the opportunity for obfuscation. If mnemonics could be 'objectively' coded for memory, then they could also perform as encrypted transmission.<br />
<br />
====Giordano Bruno's magic mnemonics====<br />
<br />
Giordano Bruno, a Dominican friar and peripatetic philosopher famous for his “amazing powers of recollection” (Zielinski 72) provides a historical example of the cryptographic, communicative potential of mnemonics in the late 16th century. Bruno was eventually burned at the stake during the Inquisition for his use of magic and allegiance to hermeticism: a philosophy named for Hermes and Thoth and based in Egyptian astrology, which, needless to say, clashed with Christian doctrine. In ''The Deep Time of The Media'', Siegfried Zielinski links hermetic tradition (which persisted into the Renaissance but had to be promulgated secretly) to the “subhistory” stemming from “the passion for encrypting and deciphering texts runs through the sciences” since the 13th century (Zielinski 73). He also notes that cryptography made particular demands on memory and was thus bound to mnemonic ability (83). Bruno took this relationship one step further. In his writings and teachings, Bruno endeavored to both transmit and internalize hermetic secrets through mnemonic technique. <br />
[[Image: bruno_memory_wheel.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|Frances Yates' rendition of Giordano Bruno's mnemonic wheel described in ''Shadows'' (1582).]] “The secret was the combination of the Hermetic beliefs with the techniques of the art of memory” (Yates 305) writes Frances Yates, so that these “memory systems” became “a mode of transmitting a religion, or an ethic, or some message of universal import” (387). <br />
<br />
Bruno’s system of “magic mnemonics” (Yates 223) hinged on his belief that the memorization of significant images enabled the "harnessing of the inner world of the imagination to the stars, or reproducing the the celestial world within" (215). Memory, for Bruno, was thus a dioptric medium, allowing the passage of the sublime order of the heavens into the individual psyche, "arriving at the vision within of the One light diffused through all" (230). This divine lumen, however, was guarded by catoptric technique. Bruno's mnemonic system was based the arrangement of intricate wheels of astral symbols and magic images. Bruno's first book on the art of memory is aptly titled ''Shadows'': as Yates observes, there is “Circaean mystification at the heart of this memory treatise” (247). Bruno’s mnemonic code thus had a dual function to reveal and conceal. He sought to at once unify the human imagination and the celestial order through memory, and to keep this mnemonic recipe secret, decipherable only by those who understood hermetic principles and believed in magic.<br />
<br />
===Written in wax===<br />
<br />
Wax—the inscription media associated with classical rhetoric and art of memory—was remediated in recording technology and psychoanalytic discourse at the turn of the 20th century. Through a brief comparison of modern and antique articulations of wax as the material substrate of memory, we may glimpse how the rise and fall of mnemonics is subject to the imagined materiality—and malleability—of the mind.<br />
<br />
====Antique imaginary: the obvious====<br />
<br />
Cicero’s ''De oratore'' (finished in 55 B.C.E.) is among the earliest treatises describing mnemonics as a rhetorical art (Yates 17). Cicero credits Simonides with the invention of the art of memory, when, with “with almost divine powers of memory,” he “wrote down what he wanted to remember in certain places in his possession by means of images, just as if he were describing letters on wax” (qtd. in Yates 19). Yates interprets Cicero’s portrayal of the origin of mnemonics as “an inner writing on wax” (19): Simonides internalizes the wax tablet, the medium for recording speech that Phaedrus famously concealed under his cloak in Plato’s dialogue. Cornelia Vismann identifies wax as the key medium in the shift from oral to written legal and administrative culture in the West. “To synchronize speech and writing,” Vismann describes, “the speedwriters or exceptores responsible for files and protocols drew their letters in wax, which, in Quintilian’s words, puts up as little resistance to inscribing as it does to erasing” (Vismann 55). These speedwriters also assigned to take down the senate minutes, which “in search for the aura of the authentic,” “aim[ed] for [a] presentist effect” (54). Mnemonic systems were also designed to uphold these cultural values of presence and authenticity, and were analogous to wax in their ability to suture oral performance and written record.<br />
[[Image: waxtablet.jpg|left|300px|thumb|A Grecian wax tablet.]]<br />
Wax was thus the obvious material through (and on) which to describe mnemonics, which interfaced between speech and writing. The metaphor has an additional layer: as a malleable, hand-held medium, the wax tablet suggests that the memory is likewise easily manipulable by an autonomous author. Cicero renders Simonides as the authorial agent of his inner wax tablet, and thus in control of his memory. Nearly two millennia later, during the modern turn, the idea that one could rely on—let alone control—one’s memory was undercut by the development of recording technologies and the rise of psychoanalytic theories of trauma and repression. Curiously, at this historical moment, the connection between wax and memory that once portrayed both mnemonics and the inner-workings of the classical mind is again applied to the mind. This later incarnation of inner wax, however, is not subject to authorial intent, but inscribed upon by machines and the Unconscious.<br />
<br />
====Modern memory: the return of the repressed?====<br />
<br />
Two notable depictions of wax as the material substrate of memory bracket Kittler’s year 1900: Jean-Marie Guyau’s Memory and Phonograph (1880) and Sigmund Freud’s Note Upon the ‘Mystic-Writing Pad’ (1925). “What good are the poetic mnemonic techniques of rhyme and meter when wax rolls can store not only substance and tone but real sounds?” (Kittler 1992, 236), Kittler asks in ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Guyau addressed this anxiety of the inferiority of human memory and the limits of language early on by claiming the phonograph as the most exact metaphor for man’s ability to record and recite—to read, write, and speak. Notions of manipulating the memory with images, places, and signs is replaced with a techno-scientific inscription in Guyau’s comparison: “Upon speaking into a phonograph, the vibrations of one’s voice are transferred into a point that engraves lines on a metal plate…in analogous ways, invisible lines are incessantly carved into the brain cells” (qtd. in Kittler 1999, 30-31).<br />
<br />
Freud’s use of the [[mystic-writing pad]] as an analogy for the psyche also revises the idea of memory and inscription. Freud dismisses mnemonics right off the bat: “If I distrust my memory,” he begins, “I am able to supplement and guarantee its working by making a note in writing” (Freud 227). External “devices to aid memory” (228) are imperfect compared to our own sensory apparatus, however, which “has an unlimited receptive capacity for new perceptions and nevertheless lays down permanent—even though not unalterable—memory-traces of them” (228). Though he distrusts his memory, Freud echoes the ancient Greeks in imagining the psychic apparatus as a remediation of the wax tablet: the mystic-writing pad. Unlike the imagined mnemonic tablet, however, Freud’s pad is not consciously inscribed, but “receives perceptions (which are accompanied—but are not consciously manipulated—"by consciousness)and passes the excitation on to the unconscious mnemic systems” (231).<br />
<br />
Though these modern articulations of the mind destabilize the ability of human memory (assumed by mnemonics) and man’s conscious power over it (and symbolized by wax), they are haunted by the idea of control and power that they repress. Guyau and Freud participate in the same endeavor to represent the black box of the mind, reiterating the art of memory via technological and psycho-scientific metaphor.<br />
<br />
==Obsolescence and the Changing Thinker==<br />
<br />
<br />
According to Yates, the quest for improved memory through artificial mnemonic systems emerges as a critical part of our attempt to organize knowledge and impose a comprehensible order on our chaotic world. Perhaps the decline of these time-honored techniques is simply due to the fact that it is decreasingly relevant or important to remember things. The way we interact with information has changed drastically since a time before writing, thus changing the way we think. As Nietzsche observed, "our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts" ([http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ Carr]). When the printing press was invented by Johann Gutenberg in the early 1450s, memory techniques started to lose their prominence. People were suddenly able to record history, genealogies, law codes and stories without committing them to memory. <br />
<br />
With easy access to computer databases and the Internet, the need for mnemonic devices is has faded even further. This shift in thinking was pointed out in a recent article published in the New York Times: "Why bother remembering the clever poem that tells the value of pi to 21 places (3.141592653589793238462) when you can look it up online and get a virtual googol of places? Why is it necessary in this information age to remember most thing, except maybe your user name and password(s)?" ([http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html Rosenthal]). Clive Thompson summed up the change in thinking even more succinctly in [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson ''Wired''] magazine: "Almost without noticing it, we've outsourced important peripheral brain functions to the silicon around us." In a time when memory was the only storage device or at least one of the most efficient, mnemonics were an obvious form of mediation, but as new technologies have become available making it simple to find almost any fact in a few quick keystrokes and a quick skimming of a web page, those old strategies have become less necessary. As Crary observes, audiences must be trained to use new mediums and technologies (Crary 6), and through our re-training, it is not surprising mnemonics have largely disappeared. We have been schooled in new ways of solving the problem of retaining important details, with external resources in hand. Perhaps this modern resistance to memorization masks an anxiety caused by a diminished sense of our own mnemonic capabilities (Cambor 2001) due to developments in technology and the emergence of psychoanalysis at the turn of the modern era, or perhaps memory itself is a dying medium.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
* Carr, Nicholas. [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"] ''The Atlantic''. The Atlantic Monthly Group, July-Aug. 2008. Web. 10 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Crary, Jonathan. ''Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century''. Boston: MIT Press, 1992.<br />
* de Man, Paul. ''Aesthetic Ideology''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Dissemination''. New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 2004.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Speech and phenomena: and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs''. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. <br />
* Donald Phillip Verene, Vico’s Science of Imagination (Ithaca, 1981), 96-126<br />
* Fentress, James and Chris Wickham (1992) Social Memory. Oxford: Blackwell. <br />
* Freud, Sigmund. ''The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud''. Ed. James Strachey. London: The Hogarth Press, 1961.<br />
* Kittler, Friedrich A. ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.<br />
* --. ''Gramophone, Film, Typewriter''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton. ''The Art of Memory Reconceived: From Rhetoric to Psychoanalysis''. Journal of the History of Ideas, 48(3), 371-392<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton, "The new science of giambattista Vico: Historicism in its Relation to Poetics" ''Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism'', 30 (1972), 362-64<br />
* Rosenthal, Jack. [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html "Mnemonics."] ''New York Times''. New York Times Company, 17 July 2005. Web. 11 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Ronell, Avital. "Scoring Literature: The Drug Culture". (Lecture, NYU, 4/8/10).<br />
* Thompson, Clive. [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson "Your Outboard Brain Knows All"] ''Wired''. Conde Nast Digital, 25 Sept. 2007. Web. 11. Apr. 2010.<br />
* Vismann, Cornelia. ''Files: Law and Media Technology''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008.<br />
* Yates, Frances A. ''The Art of Memory''. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966.<br />
* Zielinski, Siegfried. ''Deep Time of the Media''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
==External Links==<br />
* [http://www.eudesign.com/mnems/_mnframe.htm Mnemonics] - a list of a number of standardized mnemonic devices<br />
* [http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-memory.htm How Human Memory Works] - a simple overview of the mental process<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Mnemonics&diff=8635Mnemonics2010-04-12T16:10:29Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Obsolescence and the Changing Thinker */</p>
<hr />
<div><div style="text-align:center;">"'''M'''nemonics '''N'''eatly '''E'''liminate '''M'''an's '''O'''nly '''N'''emesis ('''I'''nsufficient '''C'''erebral '''S'''torage)"</div><br />
<br />
Mnemonics, or the art of memory, is today regarded as an arcane intellectual interest. It functions on the periphery of popular culture, largely through a literature of self-help designed to bolster the confidence of those insecure about their powers of recollection. If it is a useful skill, it is not an essential one in a civilization whose collective memory is securely stored in the printed word and, more recently, in digital media. Today’s archive exists in the library or the personal computer, not in the depths of a well-ordered mind. <br />
<br />
Most of the mnemonic devices and techniques that remain today are simple and standardized. They are tools for remembering sequences of information, especially for recall in testing situations. Rather than learning general mnemonic tricks, students are left with specific rhymes or sentences to remember, for example: "Roy G. Biv" to remember the colors of the rainbow; "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally" for the algebraic order of operations; and "lefty, loosey; righty, tighty" for mechanics. Despite the longevity of some of these specific mnemonics, however, they are but a mere suggestion of the much more complex and widespread mnemonic strategies of yesteryear: from the wandering rhapsody of ancient Greece who enthralled listeners with the epic tales of Homer to the philosophers of the Renaissance who constructed imaginary memory palaces to present their intricate designs of the cosmos. This dossier will explore mnemonics as a mode of mediation that stored knowledge in a world invested in the authority of the spoken word, and strove to represent and control the historically black-boxed functioning of human memory.<br />
<br />
[[File:Erinnern.jpg|right|]]<br />
<br />
==Historical Sketch of Old Works on Mnemonics==<br />
[[File:10133 vico dipintura.gif|400px|thumb|left|Cover image from Giambattista Vico's book ''The New Science''. Each symbol was mean to help the reader recall all of the ideas in the book.]]<br />
<br />
“A memory consists in the awareness, first, of the diminished intensity of an impression, second, of its increased ease, and third, of the connections it entertains with other impressions” (Kittler 1999, 31).<br />
<br />
Long before transcription existed, there have been oral records of events in history: genealogies. In medieval Iceland, administrators of the law had to commit their entire juridical system to memory (Fentress and Wickham, 1992). In Ireland, bards would study for twelve years in order to memorize over 500 stories, as well as genealogies of all the leading Irish families (MacManus, 1967).<br />
<br />
Reflecting back on this mnemonic oral tradition, the 18th century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico contends that key to understanding of the nature of memory is derived from the direct correspondence between image and idea in primitive poetic language. In the beginnings of civilization, image and idea were one. Primitive peoples possessed robust memories because of the inseparable association they made between images and ideas in their comprehension of the world. They thought metaphorically, and the metaphors that they uttered were easily mimicked and remembered because they were richly expressive, grandiose, and full of wonder at the world. Vico revealed that the link between human imagination and the universe that the Renaissance Neoplatonists had sought to discover magically was in fact born historically in the development of human consciousness (Verene, 101). <br />
<br />
The source of mnemonist’s method is visible in the poetic logic of Vico’s theory of the emergence of human consciousness. That theory, too, involves the relationship between places and images, which Vico labels ''topics'' and ''tropes''. Topics were the poetic of formulae through which primitive people identified the phenomena of the world. As imaginative representations of particular aspects of realty, they provided common places or fixed points of reference amidst the flux of sense experience (Yates, 31). Considered in this context, Vico’s new art of memory becomes a retrospective search for connection between our present conceptions and the lost poetic images out of which they were born. In the logic of Vichian poetics, the new art of memory is a reconstruction of the imaginative process by which the poets of antiquity gave shape to their perception of the world. Therein the imaginative sources of our present ideas are to be found. The original topic might be linked to a palimpsest, repeatedly covered over with more abstract imagery as the human mind historically ascended the tropological gradient of linguistic expression. Vico’s art of memory was to decipher each tropological layer along the way until the original metaphorical topic, long forgotten, was recalled to mind (Hutton, 379).<br />
<br />
=== Freud's theory as a reverse mnemonics ===<br />
<br />
If mnemonics lay at the source of Romantic soul-searching (both personal and collective), the techniques themselves were only rarely the subject of introspective comment. It was left to Sigmund Freud at the turn of the 20th century to explain the role of memory in introspection in terms of a mnemonic code (Hutton, 386). In his theory of screen memories, Freud posits the constructive power of the unconscious mind to shape recollection. Forgetting rather than remembering is what we wish to do, he argues, because it is easier to live with a screen of fantasies rather than face the reality of our past. To use his terminology, memory is tendentious in that it reflects unconscious psychic intent. In this respect the Unconscious is the guardian of memory, legislating the selection of what is remembered, and what is repressed or hidden away. As an art of memory, therefore, psychoanalysis is a technique for deciphering the psychic intent encoded in screen memories (Hutton, 388). As we elaborate below, Freud's theory of the Unconscious, and of the forces of repression and trauma that affect the psyche, is incompatible with the classical lineage of mnemonics that assumes the individual's conscious control over his or her memory.<br />
<br />
==The Technology of Memory==<br />
[[File:Room 07 Fludd0002.jpg|thumb|computerized memory theater]]<br />
===How Mnemonics Work===<br />
<br />
Mnemonics may be viewed as storage devices for information in the human mind. The brain, however, is like a black box, and has been throughout human history: many of its operations are a mystery, and we are still just uncovering how it accomplishes many of the tasks we take for granted. Memory is one such process that captured the imaginations of pre-modern thinkers, and that contemporary scientists are still trying to understand. However, there are a few things that have been discovered over the years about how mnemonics function. The process of remembering is split up into different steps: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Mnemonics are involved with encoding. The best way to learn things, or encode them, is to associate them with other things. In people's mind, "apple" will often be associated with "red" and "round." By retrieving the concept of "red," the memory of "apple" will also be triggered. Mnemonics capitalize on this principle by creating more entry points to different pieces of information.<br />
<br />
At first glance, mnemonics may seem rather counter-intuitive because they require one to remember more information in order to solve the problem of remembering something else entirely. Rather than simply remembering one date, 1492 for example, mnemonics ask that you remember a poem: "In 1492 / Columbus sailed the ocean blue." More information is required in an attempt to lodge an initial piece of information in one's mind. While this technique seems rather contradictory, it works because it creates associations, or configurations of information more likely to stick in one's memory. A useful metaphor may be that a memory is a series of files. Mnemonics store bits of information in a number of different files through which to access the information.<br />
<br />
===Arbitrariness and the Cake-Mix Effect===<br />
<br />
In many mnemonic systems, the specifics of the "extra" information one learns to create associations is often entirely arbitrary and can be adapted for each individual. Much like pre-packaged cake mix, mnemonic techniques offer a basic structure, but the particular words and connections that will best work for an individual mind must be added to the formula for it to function. For example, a common strategy for remembering an ordered list is to remember the first letter of each item and put together a new sentence in which each of the words starts with one of the letters needing to be remembered, in the proper order. So if one wanted to remember biological taxonomic classifications from broadest to most specific ('''K'''ingdom, '''P'''hylum, '''C'''lass, '''O'''rder, '''F'''amily, '''G'''enus, '''S'''pecies, '''V'''ariety), one need construct a new sentence in which each subsequent word starts with the next letter in order (K,P,C,O,F,G,S,V). Each individual might have a different sentence that works best for him or her, however. So while one student might find it most advantageous to remember "'''K'''ing '''P'''hilip's '''C'''lassic '''O'''rder: '''F'''amily '''G'''enius - '''S'''pecial '''V'''alue'" another might find it easier to remember "'''K'''indly '''P'''lace '''C'''over '''O'''n '''F'''resh '''G'''reen '''S'''pring '''V'''egetables." This flexibility makes mnemonics a useful set of strategies, and the failure of these techniques is often dependent on the arbitrary information filled into the system. If someone fails to remember the order of the taxonomical classes it is usually because the sentence used is not the best for the user. Many mnemonic systems work in this manner, tailored to the individual mind. One prime historical example of this is the memory palace.<br />
<br />
==Method of Loci==<br />
<br />
A poetic, time-honored example of the method of loci may be found in the cosmology of Australian aborigines, whose ancestors are said to have sung the world into existence (Cambor, 2001). Every rock and crevice of the outback has a song associated with it, and the traveler knows their location exactly by their place in the song, the words of which corresponds to their physical surroundings. These songs have been transcribed to aid in the understanding of the geology of the continent. Across the globe, in Ancient Rome, mnemonics were used by lawyers to remember the points they wanted to make in a lawsuit. The method of loci was first formally described by Quitilian, a first century Roman rhetorician. As the historian Frances Yates describes in her book ''The Art of Memory'', the most common forms of the method of loci are memory palaces, memory theaters, and memory gardens. <br />
<br />
===Case Study or Trace Study of the Memory Palace===<br />
[[File:Fludd-the-art-of-memory-89.jpg|thumb|right|Engraving by Robert Fludd revealing memory attached to images]]<br />
<br />
Memory Palaces are methods of loci which use an imagined architecture to structure a speech based on associations of symbols. They are a spatialized remediation of association. Before memory palaces were implemented, hieroglyphs and other forms of picture writing were already using symbols to stand in for words and ideas. Memory palaces abstract this notion of association and complicate in order to allow one to remember hundreds of ideas. While mnemonics can be written down, the memory palace is completely imagined, and therefore the process and the media is black boxed within the mind of the subject, and like Iris, the message or information is internalized. This method was developed out of a human lack, and the need to remember large amounts of information. When using the memory palace, one needs only to remember the symbols, after which the encoded information becomes unlocked like the chirograph which connects to its counterpart. Memory palaces were constructed out of an anxiety for memory being lost, but in reality it is always already lost. <br />
<br />
This mode of mediation is based on location, but it itself has no location and exists as a non-space that stores imagined data. The subject that uses the memory palace becomes split and is forced to inhabit two realities as one must imagine walking through the memory palace and picking up each predetermined object while simultaneously being rooted in a physical space and delivering a live speech to an audience. The subject must navigate the memory palace like an automaton on automatic pilot but cannot get fully immersed or lost in it. Discipline of the mind and the body is necessary since the subject cannot think, but must become a machine and instrument for the reading of memory. <br />
<br />
====The Mechanization of Memory====<br />
<br />
Hegel discusses memory in two terms: “Erinnerung” and “Gedächtnis.” Erinnerung for Hegel is recollection, memory based on learning and internalization. It therefore has a relationship to the past and to a missing Other. Gedächtnis is the forgetting of meaning in favor of memorization and technologized memory, just as the technologization of speech through the act of writing represents the erasure of speech and the marking of its becoming forgotten. Gedächtnis acts as the simulacrum and mechanical reproduction of memory but empties it of its original meaning (Ronell, 2010). Memory palaces fall under Gedächtnis, as they are a phantom crutch or prosthetic for remembering which can be easily dismantled and forgotten. The technique does reflect Erinnerung in that it calls to its missing Other which is the real house, but, because reality of the memory palace is artificially constructed, it has no relationship to the past. The associations within the memory palace are also artificial, revealing the manipulation of memory which becomes something external that can be altered and changed. Derrida writes, “What Plato is attacking in sophistics, therefore, is not simply recourse to memory but, within such recourse, the substitution of the mnemonic device for live memory, of the prosthesis for the organ; the perversion that consists of replacing a limb by a thing, here, substituting the passive, mechanical ‘by-heart’ for the active reanimation of knowledge, for its reproduction in the present. The boundary (between inside and outside, living and nonliving) separates not only speech from writing but also memory as an unveiling (re-)producing a presence from re-memoration as the mere repetition of a monument…(Derrida 109).” Paul de Man elaborates on the contradictory nature of Gedächtnis and Erinnerung, “Memory effaces remembrance (or recollection) just as the I effaces itself. The faculty that enables thought to exist also makes its preservation impossible. The art, the ''techné'', of writing which cannot be separated from thought and from memorization can only be preserved in the figural mode of the symbol, the very mode it has to do away with if it is to occur at all (de Man 102).” Here, Gedächtnis effaces Erinnerung, like mechanical reproduction effaces the original, and writing effaces speech.<br />
<br />
====Memory Palace as Afterimage and Trace====<br />
[[File:Afterimage1.JPG|thumb|left|Purkyně's "artery figure" taken from Zielinksi's ''Deep Time of the Media'']]<br />
The effacing of Erinnerung caused by Gedächtnis also speaks to the idea of an afterimage which effaces the original image. The memory palace is an afterimage and faint impression of one’s home which it replaces. Jonathan Crary writes that the afterimage “…allowed one to conceive of sensory perception as cut from any necessary link with an external referent. The afterimage – the presence of sensation in the absence of a stimulus – and its subsequent modulations posed a theoretical and empirical demonstration of autonomous vision, of an optical experience that was produced by and within the subject (Crary 98).” The afterimage of the memory palace is detachable, once it is created the originary house isn’t necessary to evoke it, rather it can be evoked independently by the subject. Memory palaces, while seeming to be about semiotics, have more to do with Derrida's concept of the "trace." Derrida writes, “The trace is not a presence but is rather the simulacrum of a presence that dislocates, displaces, and refers beyond itself. The trace has, properly speaking, no place, for effacement belongs to the very structure of the trace. Effacement must always be able to overtake the trace; otherwise it would not be a trace but an indestructible and monumental substance (Derrida 156).” The trace refers to that which is no longer present, leaving only the relics and remains to be read.<br />
<br />
====Memory as Archive and Crypt====<br />
[[File:044MemoryBook200.jpg|thumb|right|human brain as memory archive]]<br />
Memory palaces are a static archive of files. Vismann writes, “The immobile tomes are their own tombs...The immobilization amounts to a musealization, creating a work of art out of files (Vismann 161-162).” The memory palace echoes this sentiment and acts more as a mausoleum than a museum. The frozen architecture of the memory palace is doubled by the frozen images within it, turning the palace into a crypt. The shaping of the memory palace into a petrified and dead picture reveals the artifice of constructed memory. Its static and spectral quality lends it to the space of the crypt and removes it from the space of the living. It is the dead memory that must be summoned by the speaker, called to as the missing Other, and resurrected into the present.<br />
<br />
====Forgetting====<br />
Memory Palaces must be practiced, otherwise they are prone to being forgotten. They are meant to be remembered for a specific event, such as a specific speech, but once the event has passed, the memory palace recedes, shatters, and erases itself into the depths of the mystic writing pad’s unconscious. The memory palace, then, is made to be forgotten. Vismann writes, “With one sharp and one blunt end, the stylus unites writing and erasing, those two fundamental chancery operations, in one instrument. Herein lies an analogy to the workings of memory: just as the Greek verb hypomnematizesthai equates filing and remembering, its opposite, exaleiphein, combines a practical act and a function of memory by referring both to forgetting and wiping off (Vismann 55).” In this sense the memory palace is obliterated and becomes buried as a trace and remnant. Memory and forgetting work as though in a circuit, the production of one is almost always the production of the other, to remember one thing often causes one to forget another less relevant thing. Vismann also discusses forgetting as enabling memory, just as the afterimage or trace enables the original image, or the second gives birth to the first. Mechanical reproduction also enables the original, revealing the necessity of the copy and the negation in order to preserve the referent. There is only so much space in the human brain, therefore acquiring new information or new memories must also imply a certain amount of forgetting.<br />
<br />
==Mnemonic Expression: Writing Secrets and Speaking the Mind==<br />
<br />
''The art of memory is like an inner writing'' - Frances Yates.<br />
<br />
While mnemonic techniques were designed for oral performance without visible written aid, they were, from a Derridean perspective, systems of representation organized by writing. Rather than utilizing writing to externalize memory, mnemonics structured texts to correlate with the (variously imagined) inner mechanisms of the psyche. Mnemonics shaped poetics via rhyme and meter, for instance, rendering the text structurally uniform so that it might be more easily remembered and spoken. Mnemonic technique thus interfaced between speech and writing, presence and trace. In the same vein, mnemonics mediated between the interior mind and the external world, articulating both. Mnemonics are thus not simply storage techniques but expression: a form of writing (or ''art'' of memory) that reveals historically deviant memories and, in attempting to control its input and output, represents the persistently black-boxed functioning of the human mind.<br />
<br />
===Mnemonics as cryptography===<br />
<br />
As a mode of mediation, mnemonics represent a curious combination of semiotics and functional nonsense. Mnemonic signs (images, places, phrases) must be nearly evacuated of meaning in order to cue—but not replace—the desired information actively attached to (or associated with) them. From this perspective, articulated above [http://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php/Mnemonics#Arbitrariness_and_the_Cake-Mix_Effect], mnemonics functioned as a storage technique comprised of arbitrary signifiers (like Roy G. Biv) rather than a communicative semantic system. The seemingly nonsensical functioning of mnemonics, however, leaves open the opportunity for obfuscation. If mnemonics could be 'objectively' coded for memory, then they could also perform as encrypted transmission.<br />
<br />
====Giordano Bruno's magic mnemonics====<br />
<br />
Giordano Bruno, a Dominican friar and peripatetic philosopher famous for his “amazing powers of recollection” (Zielinski 72) provides a historical example of the cryptographic, communicative potential of mnemonics in the late 16th century. Bruno was eventually burned at the stake during the Inquisition for his use of magic and allegiance to hermeticism: a philosophy named for Hermes and based in Egyptian astrology, which, needless to say, clashed with Christian doctrine. In The Deep Time of The Media, Siegfried Zielinski links hermetic tradition (which persisted into the Renaissance but had to be promulgated secretly) to the “subhistory” stemming from “the passion for encrypting and deciphering texts runs through the sciences” since the 13th century (Zielinski 73). He also notes that cryptography made particular demands on memory and was thus bound to mnemonic ability (83). Bruno took this relationship one step further. In his writings and teachings, Bruno endeavored to both transmit and internalize hermetic secrets through mnemonic technique. <br />
[[Image: bruno_memory_wheel.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|Frances Yates' rendition of Giordano Bruno's mnemonic wheel described in ''Shadows'' (1582).]] “The secret was the combination of the Hermetic beliefs with the techniques of the art of memory” (Yates 305) writes Frances Yates, so that these “memory systems” became “a mode of transmitting a religion, or an ethic, or some message of universal import” (387). <br />
<br />
Bruno’s system of “magic mnemonics” (Yates 223) hinged on his belief that the memorization of significant images enabled the "harnessing of the inner world of the imagination to the stars, or reproducing the the celestial world within" (215). Memory, for Bruno, was thus a dioptric medium, allowing the passage of the sublime order of the heavens into the individual psyche, "arriving at the vision within of the One light diffused through all" (230). This divine lumen, however, was guarded by catoptric technique. Bruno's mnemonic system was based the arrangement of intricate wheels of astral symbols and magic images. Bruno's first book on the art of memory is aptly titled ''Shadows'': as Yates observes, there is “Circaean mystification at the heart of this memory treatise” (247). Bruno’s mnemonic code thus had a dual function to reveal and conceal. He sought to at once unify the human imagination and the celestial order through memory, and to keep this mnemonic recipe secret, decipherable only by those who understood hermetic principles and believed in magic.<br />
<br />
===Written in wax===<br />
<br />
Wax—the inscription media associated with classical rhetoric and art of memory—was remediated in recording technology and psychoanalytic discourse at the turn of the 20th century. Through a brief comparison of modern and antique articulations of wax as the material substrate of memory, we may glimpse how the rise and fall of mnemonics is subject to the imagined materiality—and malleability—of the mind.<br />
<br />
====Antique imaginary: the obvious====<br />
<br />
Cicero’s ''De oratore'' (finished in 55 B.C.E.) is among the earliest treatises describing mnemonics as a rhetorical art (Yates 17). Cicero credits Simonides with the invention of the art of memory, when, with “with almost divine powers of memory,” he “wrote down what he wanted to remember in certain places in his possession by means of images, just as if he were describing letters on wax” (qtd. in Yates 19). Yates interprets Cicero’s portrayal of the origin of mnemonics as “an inner writing on wax” (19): Simonides internalizes the wax tablet, the medium for recording speech that Phaedrus famously concealed under his cloak in Plato’s dialogue. Cornelia Vismann identifies wax as the key medium in the shift from oral to written legal and administrative culture in the West. “To synchronize speech and writing,” Vismann describes, “the speedwriters or exceptores responsible for files and protocols drew their letters in wax, which, in Quintilian’s words, puts up as little resistance to inscribing as it does to erasing” (Vismann 55). These speedwriters also assigned to take down the senate minutes, which “in search for the aura of the authentic,” “aim[ed] for [a] presentist effect” (54). Mnemonic systems were also designed to uphold these cultural values of presence and authenticity, and were analogous to wax in their ability to suture oral performance and written record.<br />
[[Image: waxtablet.jpg|left|300px|thumb|A Grecian wax tablet.]]<br />
Wax was thus the obvious material through (and on) which to describe mnemonics, which interfaced between speech and writing. The metaphor has an additional layer: as a malleable, hand-held medium, the wax tablet suggests that the memory is likewise easily manipulable by an autonomous author. Cicero renders Simonides as the authorial agent of his inner wax tablet, and thus in control of his memory. Nearly two millennia later, during the modern turn, the idea that one could rely on—let alone control—one’s memory was undercut by the development of recording technologies and the rise of psychoanalytic theories of trauma and repression. Curiously, at this historical moment, the connection between wax and memory that once portrayed both mnemonics and the inner-workings of the classical mind is again applied to the mind. This later incarnation of inner wax, however, is not subject to authorial intent, but inscribed upon by machines and the Unconscious.<br />
<br />
====Modern memory: the return of the repressed?====<br />
<br />
Two notable depictions of wax as the material substrate of memory bracket Kittler’s year 1900: Jean-Marie Guyau’s Memory and Phonograph (1880) and Sigmund Freud’s Note Upon the ‘Mystic-Writing Pad’ (1925). “What good are the poetic mnemonic techniques of rhyme and meter when wax rolls can store not only substance and tone but real sounds?” (Kittler 1992, 236), Kittler asks in ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Guyau addressed this anxiety of the inferiority of human memory and the limits of language early on by claiming the phonograph as the most exact metaphor for man’s ability to record and recite—to read, write, and speak. Notions of manipulating the memory with images, places, and signs is replaced with a techno-scientific inscription in Guyau’s comparison: “Upon speaking into a phonograph, the vibrations of one’s voice are transferred into a point that engraves lines on a metal plate…in analogous ways, invisible lines are incessantly carved into the brain cells” (qtd. in Kittler 1999, 30-31).<br />
<br />
Freud’s use of the [[mystic-writing pad]] as an analogy for the psyche also revises the idea of memory and inscription. Freud dismisses mnemonics right off the bat: “If I distrust my memory,” he begins, “I am able to supplement and guarantee its working by making a note in writing” (Freud 227). External “devices to aid memory” (228) are imperfect compared to our own sensory apparatus, however, which “has an unlimited receptive capacity for new perceptions and nevertheless lays down permanent—even though not unalterable—memory-traces of them” (228). Though he distrusts his memory, Freud echoes the ancient Greeks in imagining the psychic apparatus as a remediation of the wax tablet: the mystic-writing pad. Unlike the imagined mnemonic tablet, however, Freud’s pad is not consciously inscribed, but “receives perceptions (which are accompanied—but are not consciously manipulated—"by consciousness)and passes the excitation on to the unconscious mnemic systems” (231).<br />
<br />
Though these modern articulations of the mind destabilize the ability of human memory (assumed by mnemonics) and man’s conscious power over it (and symbolized by wax), they are haunted by the idea of control and power that they repress. Guyau and Freud participate in the same endeavor to represent the black box of the mind, reiterating the art of memory via technological and psycho-scientific metaphor.<br />
<br />
==Obsolescence and the Changing Thinker==<br />
<br />
<br />
According to Yates, the quest for improved memory through artificial mnemonic systems emerges as a critical part of our attempt to organize knowledge and impose a comprehensible order on our chaotic world. Perhaps the decline of these time-honored techniques is simply due to the fact that it is decreasingly relevant or important to remember things. The way we interact with information has changed drastically since a time before writing, thus changing the way we think. As Nietzsche observed, "our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts" ([http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ Carr]). When the printing press was invented by Johann Gutenberg in the early 1450s, memory techniques started to lose their prominence. People were suddenly able to record history, genealogies, law codes and stories without committing them to memory. <br />
<br />
With easy access to computer databases and the Internet, the need for mnemonic devices is has faded even further. This shift in thinking was pointed out in a recent article published in the New York Times: "Why bother remembering the clever poem that tells the value of pi to 21 places (3.141592653589793238462) when you can look it up online and get a virtual googol of places? Why is it necessary in this information age to remember most thing, except maybe your user name and password(s)?" ([http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html Rosenthal]). Clive Thompson summed up the change in thinking even more succinctly in [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson ''Wired''] magazine: "Almost without noticing it, we've outsourced important peripheral brain functions to the silicon around us." In a time when memory was the only storage device or at least one of the most efficient, mnemonics were an obvious form of mediation, but as new technologies have become available making it simple to find almost any fact in a few quick keystrokes and a quick skimming of a web page, those old strategies have become less necessary. As Crary observes, audiences must be trained to use new mediums and technologies (Crary 6), and through our re-training, it is not surprising mnemonics have largely disappeared. We have been schooled in new ways of solving the problem of retaining important details, with external resources in hand. Perhaps this modern resistance to memorization masks an anxiety caused by a diminished sense of our own mnemonic capabilities (Cambor 2001) due to developments in technology and the emergence of psychoanalysis at the turn of the modern era, or perhaps memory itself is a dying medium.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
* Carr, Nicholas. [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"] ''The Atlantic''. The Atlantic Monthly Group, July-Aug. 2008. Web. 10 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Crary, Jonathan. ''Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century''. Boston: MIT Press, 1992.<br />
* de Man, Paul. ''Aesthetic Ideology''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Dissemination''. New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 2004.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Speech and phenomena: and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs''. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. <br />
* Donald Phillip Verene, Vico’s Science of Imagination (Ithaca, 1981), 96-126<br />
* Fentress, James and Chris Wickham (1992) Social Memory. Oxford: Blackwell. <br />
* Freud, Sigmund. ''The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud''. Ed. James Strachey. London: The Hogarth Press, 1961.<br />
* Kittler, Friedrich A. ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.<br />
* --. ''Gramophone, Film, Typewriter''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton. ''The Art of Memory Reconceived: From Rhetoric to Psychoanalysis''. Journal of the History of Ideas, 48(3), 371-392<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton, "The new science of giambattista Vico: Historicism in its Relation to Poetics" ''Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism'', 30 (1972), 362-64<br />
* Rosenthal, Jack. [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html "Mnemonics."] ''New York Times''. New York Times Company, 17 July 2005. Web. 11 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Ronell, Avital. "Scoring Literature: The Drug Culture". (Lecture, NYU, 4/8/10).<br />
* Thompson, Clive. [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson "Your Outboard Brain Knows All"] ''Wired''. Conde Nast Digital, 25 Sept. 2007. Web. 11. Apr. 2010.<br />
* Vismann, Cornelia. ''Files: Law and Media Technology''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008.<br />
* Yates, Frances A. ''The Art of Memory''. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966.<br />
* Zielinski, Siegfried. ''Deep Time of the Media''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
==External Links==<br />
* [http://www.eudesign.com/mnems/_mnframe.htm Mnemonics] - a list of a number of standardized mnemonic devices<br />
* [http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-memory.htm How Human Memory Works] - a simple overview of the mental process<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Mnemonics&diff=8630Mnemonics2010-04-12T16:05:09Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Obsolescence and the Changing Thinker */</p>
<hr />
<div><div style="text-align:center;">"'''M'''nemonics '''N'''eatly '''E'''liminate '''M'''an's '''O'''nly '''N'''emesis ('''I'''nsufficient '''C'''erebral '''S'''torage)"</div><br />
<br />
Mnemonics, or the art of memory, is today regarded as an arcane intellectual interest. It functions on the periphery of popular culture, largely through a literature of self-help designed to bolster the confidence of those insecure about their powers of recollection. If it is a useful skill, it is not an essential one in a civilization whose collective memory is securely stored in the printed word and, more recently, in digital media. Today’s archive exists in the library or the personal computer, not in the depths of a well-ordered mind. <br />
<br />
Most of the mnemonic devices and techniques that remain today are simple and standardized. They are tools for remembering sequences of information, especially for recall in testing situations. Rather than learning general mnemonic tricks, students are left with specific rhymes or sentences to remember, for example: "Roy G. Biv" to remember the colors of the rainbow; "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally" for the algebraic order of operations; and "lefty, loosey; righty, tighty" for mechanics. Despite the longevity of some of these specific mnemonics, however, they are but a mere suggestion of the much more complex and widespread mnemonic strategies of yesteryear: from the wandering rhapsody of ancient Greece who enthralled listeners with the epic tales of Homer to the philosophers of the Renaissance who constructed imaginary memory palaces to present their intricate designs of the cosmos. This dossier will explore mnemonics as a mode of mediation that stored knowledge in a world invested in the authority of the spoken word, and strove to represent and control the historically black-boxed functioning of human memory.<br />
<br />
[[File:Erinnern.jpg|right|]]<br />
<br />
==Historical Sketch of Old Works on Mnemonics==<br />
[[File:10133 vico dipintura.gif|400px|thumb|left|Cover image from Giambattista Vico's book ''The New Science''. Each symbol was mean to help the reader recall all of the ideas in the book.]]<br />
<br />
“A memory consists in the awareness, first, of the diminished intensity of an impression, second, of its increased ease, and third, of the connections it entertains with other impressions” (Kittler 1999, 31).<br />
<br />
Long before transcription existed, there have been oral records of events in history: genealogies. In medieval Iceland, administrators of the law had to commit their entire juridical system to memory (Fentress and Wickham, 1992). In Ireland, bards would study for twelve years in order to memorize over 500 stories, as well as genealogies of all the leading Irish families (MacManus, 1967).<br />
<br />
Reflecting back on this mnemonic oral tradition, the 18th century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico contends that key to understanding of the nature of memory is derived from the direct correspondence between image and idea in primitive poetic language. In the beginnings of civilization, image and idea were one. Primitive peoples possessed robust memories because of the inseparable association they made between images and ideas in their comprehension of the world. They thought metaphorically, and the metaphors that they uttered were easily mimicked and remembered because they were richly expressive, grandiose, and full of wonder at the world. Vico revealed that the link between human imagination and the universe that the Renaissance Neoplatonists had sought to discover magically was in fact born historically in the development of human consciousness (Verene, 101). <br />
<br />
The source of mnemonist’s method is visible in the poetic logic of Vico’s theory of the emergence of human consciousness. That theory, too, involves the relationship between places and images, which Vico labels ''topics'' and ''tropes''. Topics were the poetic of formulae through which primitive people identified the phenomena of the world. As imaginative representations of particular aspects of realty, they provided common places or fixed points of reference amidst the flux of sense experience (Yates, 31). Considered in this context, Vico’s new art of memory becomes a retrospective search for connection between our present conceptions and the lost poetic images out of which they were born. In the logic of Vichian poetics, the new art of memory is a reconstruction of the imaginative process by which the poets of antiquity gave shape to their perception of the world. Therein the imaginative sources of our present ideas are to be found. The original topic might be linked to a palimpsest, repeatedly covered over with more abstract imagery as the human mind historically ascended the tropological gradient of linguistic expression. Vico’s art of memory was to decipher each tropological layer along the way until the original metaphorical topic, long forgotten, was recalled to mind (Hutton, 379).<br />
<br />
=== Freud's theory as a reverse mnemonics ===<br />
<br />
If mnemonics lay at the source of Romantic soul-searching (both personal and collective), the techniques themselves were only rarely the subject of introspective comment. It was left to Sigmund Freud at the turn of the 20th century to explain the role of memory in introspection in terms of a mnemonic code (Hutton, 386). In his theory of screen memories, Freud posits the constructive power of the unconscious mind to shape recollection. Forgetting rather than remembering is what we wish to do, he argues, because it is easier to live with a screen of fantasies rather than face the reality of our past. To use his terminology, memory is tendentious in that it reflects unconscious psychic intent. In this respect the Unconscious is the guardian of memory, legislating the selection of what is remembered, and what is repressed or hidden away. As an art of memory, therefore, psychoanalysis is a technique for deciphering the psychic intent encoded in screen memories (Hutton, 388). As we elaborate below, Freud's theory of the Unconscious, and of the forces of repression and trauma that affect the psyche, is incompatible with the classical lineage of mnemonics that assumes the individual's conscious control over his or her memory.<br />
<br />
==The Technology of Memory==<br />
[[File:Room 07 Fludd0002.jpg|thumb|computerized memory theater]]<br />
===How Mnemonics Work===<br />
<br />
Mnemonics may be viewed as storage devices for information in the human mind. The brain, however, is like a black box, and has been throughout human history: many of its operations are a mystery, and we are still just uncovering how it accomplishes many of the tasks we take for granted. Memory is one such process that captured the imaginations of pre-modern thinkers, and that contemporary scientists are still trying to understand. However, there are a few things that have been discovered over the years about how mnemonics function. The process of remembering is split up into different steps: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Mnemonics are involved with encoding. The best way to learn things, or encode them, is to associate them with other things. In people's mind, "apple" will often be associated with "red" and "round." By retrieving the concept of "red," the memory of "apple" will also be triggered. Mnemonics capitalize on this principle by creating more entry points to different pieces of information.<br />
<br />
At first glance, mnemonics may seem rather counter-intuitive because they require one to remember more information in order to solve the problem of remembering something else entirely. Rather than simply remembering one date, 1492 for example, mnemonics ask that you remember a poem: "In 1492 / Columbus sailed the ocean blue." More information is required in an attempt to lodge an initial piece of information in one's mind. While this technique seems rather contradictory, it works because it creates associations, or configurations of information more likely to stick in one's memory. A useful metaphor may be that a memory is a series of files. Mnemonics store bits of information in a number of different files through which to access the information.<br />
<br />
===Arbitrariness and the Cake-Mix Effect===<br />
<br />
In many mnemonic systems, the specifics of the "extra" information one learns to create associations is often entirely arbitrary and can be adapted for each individual. Much like pre-packaged cake mix, mnemonic techniques offer a basic structure, but the particular words and connections that will best work for an individual mind must be added to the formula for it to function. For example, a common strategy for remembering an ordered list is to remember the first letter of each item and put together a new sentence in which each of the words starts with one of the letters needing to be remembered, in the proper order. So if one wanted to remember biological taxonomic classifications from broadest to most specific ('''K'''ingdom, '''P'''hylum, '''C'''lass, '''O'''rder, '''F'''amily, '''G'''enus, '''S'''pecies, '''V'''ariety), one need construct a new sentence in which each subsequent word starts with the next letter in order (K,P,C,O,F,G,S,V). Each individual might have a different sentence that works best for him or her, however. So while one student might find it most advantageous to remember "'''K'''ing '''P'''hilip's '''C'''lassic '''O'''rder: '''F'''amily '''G'''enius - '''S'''pecial '''V'''alue'" another might find it easier to remember "'''K'''indly '''P'''lace '''C'''over '''O'''n '''F'''resh '''G'''reen '''S'''pring '''V'''egetables." This flexibility makes mnemonics a useful set of strategies, and the failure of these techniques is often dependent on the arbitrary information filled into the system. If someone fails to remember the order of the taxonomical classes it is usually because the sentence used is not the best for the user. Many mnemonic systems work in this manner, tailored to the individual mind. One prime historical example of this is the memory palace.<br />
<br />
==Method of Loci==<br />
<br />
A poetic, time-honored example of the method of loci may be found in the cosmology of Australian aborigines, whose ancestors are said to have sung the world into existence (Cambor, 2001). Every rock and crevice of the outback has a song associated with it, and the traveler knows their location exactly by their place in the song, the words of which corresponds to their physical surroundings. These songs have been transcribed to aid in the understanding of the geology of the continent. Across the globe, in Ancient Rome, mnemonics were used by lawyers to remember the points they wanted to make in a lawsuit. The method of loci was first formally described by Quitilian, a first century Roman rhetorician. As the historian Frances Yates describes in her book ''The Art of Memory'', the most common forms of the method of loci are memory palaces, memory theaters, and memory gardens. <br />
<br />
===Case Study or Trace Study of the Memory Palace===<br />
[[File:Fludd-the-art-of-memory-89.jpg|thumb|right|Engraving by Robert Fludd revealing memory attached to images]]<br />
<br />
Memory Palaces are methods of loci which use an imagined architecture to structure a speech based on associations of symbols. They are a spatialized remediation of association. Before memory palaces were implemented, hieroglyphs and other forms of picture writing were already using symbols to stand in for words and ideas. Memory palaces abstract this notion of association and complicate in order to allow one to remember hundreds of ideas. While mnemonics can be written down, the memory palace is completely imagined, and therefore the process and the media is black boxed within the mind of the subject, and like Iris, the message or information is internalized. This method was developed out of a human lack, and the need to remember large amounts of information. When using the memory palace, one needs only to remember the symbols, after which the encoded information becomes unlocked like the chirograph which connects to its counterpart. Memory palaces were constructed out of an anxiety for memory being lost, but in reality it is always already lost. <br />
<br />
This mode of mediation is based on location, but it itself has no location and exists as a non-space that stores imagined data. The subject that uses the memory palace becomes split and is forced to inhabit two realities as one must imagine walking through the memory palace and picking up each predetermined object while simultaneously being rooted in a physical space and delivering a live speech to an audience. The subject must navigate the memory palace like an automaton on automatic pilot but cannot get fully immersed or lost in it. Discipline of the mind and the body is necessary since the subject cannot think, but must become a machine and instrument for the reading of memory. <br />
<br />
====The Mechanization of Memory====<br />
<br />
Hegel discusses memory in two terms: “Erinnerung” and “Gedächtnis.” Erinnerung for Hegel is recollection, memory based on learning and internalization. It therefore has a relationship to the past and to a missing Other. Gedächtnis is the forgetting of meaning in favor of memorization and technologized memory, just as the technologization of speech through the act of writing represents the erasure of speech and the marking of its becoming forgotten. Gedächtnis acts as the simulacrum and mechanical reproduction of memory emptied of its original and of meaning (Ronell, 2010). Memory palaces fall under Gedächtnis, as they are a phantom crutch or prosthetic for remembering which can be easily dismantled and forgotten. The technique does reflect Erinnerung in that it calls to its missing Other which is the real house, but, because reality of the memory palace is artificially constructed, it has no relationship to the past. The associations within the memory palace are also artificial, revealing the manipulation of memory which becomes something external that can be altered and changed. Derrida writes, “What Plato is attacking in sophistics, therefore, is not simply recourse to memory but, within such recourse, the substitution of the mnemonic device for live memory, of the prosthesis for the organ; the perversion that consists of replacing a limb by a thing, here, substituting the passive, mechanical ‘by-heart’ for the active reanimation of knowledge, for its reproduction in the present. The boundary (between inside and outside, living and nonliving) separates not only speech from writing but also memory as an unveiling (re-)producing a presence from re-memoration as the mere repetition of a monument…(Derrida 109).” Paul de Man elaborates on the contradictory nature of Gedächtnis and Erinnerung, “Memory effaces remembrance (or recollection) just as the I effaces itself. The faculty that enables thought to exist also makes its preservation impossible. The art, the ''techné'', of writing which cannot be separated from thought and from memorization can only be preserved in the figural mode of the symbol, the very mode it has to do away with if it is to occur at all (de Man 102).” Here, Gedächtnis effaces Erinnerung, like mechanical reproduction effaces the original, and writing effaces speech.<br />
<br />
====Memory Palace as Afterimage and Trace====<br />
[[File:Afterimage1.JPG|thumb|left|Purkyně's "artery figure" taken from Zielinksi's ''Deep Time of the Media'']]<br />
The effacing of Erinnerung caused by Gedächtnis also speaks to the idea of an afterimage which effaces the original image. The memory palace is an afterimage and faint impression of one’s home which it replaces. Jonathan Crary writes that the afterimage “…allowed one to conceive of sensory perception as cut from any necessary link with an external referent. The afterimage – the presence of sensation in the absence of a stimulus – and its subsequent modulations posed a theoretical and empirical demonstration of autonomous vision, of an optical experience that was produced by and within the subject (Crary 98).” The afterimage of the memory palace is detachable, once it is created the originary house isn’t necessary to evoke it, rather it can be evoked independently by the subject. Memory palaces, while seeming to be about semiotics, have more to do with Derrida's concept of the "trace." Derrida writes, “The trace is not a presence but is rather the simulacrum of a presence that dislocates, displaces, and refers beyond itself. The trace has, properly speaking, no place, for effacement belongs to the very structure of the trace. Effacement must always be able to overtake the trace; otherwise it would not be a trace but an indestructible and monumental substance (Derrida 156).” The trace refers to that which is no longer present, leaving only the reliced remains to be read.<br />
<br />
<br />
====Memory as Archive and Crypt====<br />
[[File:044MemoryBook200.jpg|thumb|right|human brain as memory archive]]<br />
Memory palaces are a static archive of files. Vismann writes, “The immobile tomes are their own tombs...The immobilization amounts to a musealization, creating a work of art out of files (Vismann 161-162).” The memory palace echoes this sentiment and acts more as a mausoleum than a museum. The frozen architecture of the memory palace is doubled by the frozen images within it, turning the palace into a crypt. The shaping of the memory palace into a petrified and dead picture reveals the artifice of constructed memory. Its static and spectral quality lends it to the space of the crypt and removes it from the space of the living. It is the dead memory that must be summoned by the speaker, called to as the missing Other, and resurrected into the present.<br />
<br />
====Forgetting====<br />
Memory Palaces must be practiced, otherwise they are prone to being forgotten. They are meant to be remembered for a specific event, such as a specific speech, but once the event has passed, the memory palace recedes, shatters, and erases itself into the depths of the mystic writing pad’s unconscious. The memory palace, then, is made to be forgotten. Vismann writes, “With one sharp and one blunt end, the stylus unites writing and erasing, those two fundamental chancery operations, in one instrument. Herein lies an analogy to the workings of memory: just as the Greek verb hypomnematizesthai equates filing and remembering, its opposite, exaleiphein, combines a practical act and a function of memory by referring both to forgetting and wiping off (Vismann 55).” In this sense the memory palace is obliterated and becomes buried as a trace and remnant. Memory and forgetting work as though in a circuit, the production of one is almost always the production of the other, to remember one thing often causes one to forget another less relevant thing. Vismann also discusses forgetting as enabling memory, just as the afterimage or trace enables the original image, or the second gives birth to the first. Mechanical reproduction also enables the original, revealing the necessity of the copy and the negation in order to preserve the referent. There is only so much space in the human brain, therefore acquiring new information or new memories must also imply a certain amount of forgetting.<br />
<br />
==Mnemonic Expression: Writing Secrets and Speaking the Mind==<br />
<br />
''The art of memory is like an inner writing'' - Frances Yates.<br />
<br />
While mnemonic techniques were designed for oral performance without visible written aid, they were, from a Derridean perspective, systems of representation organized by writing. Rather than utilizing writing to externalize memory, mnemonics structured texts to correlate with the (variously imagined) inner mechanisms of the psyche. Mnemonics shaped poetics via rhyme and meter, for instance, rendering the text structurally uniform so that it might be more easily remembered and spoken. Mnemonic technique thus interfaced between speech and writing, presence and trace. In the same vein, mnemonics mediated between the interior mind and the external world, articulating both. Mnemonics are thus not simply storage techniques but expression: a form of writing (or ''art'' of memory) that reveals historically deviant memories and, in attempting to control its input and output, represents the persistently black-boxed functioning of the human mind.<br />
<br />
===Mnemonics as cryptography===<br />
<br />
As a mode of mediation, mnemonics represent a curious combination of semiotics and functional nonsense. Mnemonic signs (images, places, phrases) must be nearly evacuated of meaning in order to cue—but not replace—the desired information actively attached to (or associated with) them. From this perspective, articulated above [http://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php/Mnemonics#Arbitrariness_and_the_Cake-Mix_Effect], mnemonics functioned as a storage technique comprised of arbitrary signifiers (like Roy G. Biv) rather than a communicative semantic system. The seemingly nonsensical functioning of mnemonics, however, leaves open the opportunity for obfuscation. If mnemonics could be 'objectively' coded for memory, then they could also perform as encrypted transmission.<br />
<br />
====Giordano Bruno's magic mnemonics====<br />
<br />
Giordano Bruno, a Dominican friar and peripatetic philosopher famous for his “amazing powers of recollection” (Zielinski 72) provides a historical example of the cryptographic, communicative potential of mnemonics in the late 16th century. Bruno was eventually burned at the stake during the Inquisition for his use of magic and allegiance to hermeticism: a philosophy named for Hermes and based in Egyptian astrology, which, needless to say, clashed with Christian doctrine. In The Deep Time of The Media, Siegfried Zielinski links hermetic tradition (which persisted into the Renaissance but had to be promulgated secretly) to the “subhistory” stemming from “the passion for encrypting and deciphering texts runs through the sciences” since the 13th century (Zielinski 73). He also notes that cryptography made particular demands on memory and was thus bound to mnemonic ability (83). Bruno took this relationship one step further. In his writings and teachings, Bruno endeavored to both transmit and internalize hermetic secrets through mnemonic technique. <br />
[[Image: bruno_memory_wheel.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|Frances Yates' rendition of Giordano Bruno's mnemonic wheel described in ''Shadows'' (1582).]] “The secret was the combination of the Hermetic beliefs with the techniques of the art of memory” (Yates 305) writes Frances Yates, so that these “memory systems” became “a mode of transmitting a religion, or an ethic, or some message of universal import” (387). <br />
<br />
Bruno’s system of “magic mnemonics” (Yates 223) hinged on his belief that the memorization of significant images enabled the "harnessing of the inner world of the imagination to the stars, or reproducing the the celestial world within" (215). Memory, for Bruno, was thus a dioptric medium, allowing the passage of the sublime order of the heavens into the individual psyche, "arriving at the vision within of the One light diffused through all" (230). This divine lumen, however, was guarded by catoptric technique. Bruno's mnemonic system was based the arrangement of intricate wheels of astral symbols and magic images. Bruno's first book on the art of memory is aptly titled ''Shadows'': as Yates observes, there is “Circaean mystification at the heart of this memory treatise” (247). Bruno’s mnemonic code thus had a dual function to reveal and conceal. He sought to at once unify the human imagination and the celestial order through memory, and to keep this mnemonic recipe secret, decipherable only by those who understood hermetic principles and believed in magic.<br />
<br />
===Written in wax===<br />
<br />
Wax—the inscription media associated with classical rhetoric and art of memory—was remediated in recording technology and psychoanalytic discourse at the turn of the 20th century. Through a brief comparison of modern and antique articulations of wax as the material substrate of memory, we may glimpse how the rise and fall of mnemonics is subject to the imagined materiality—and malleability—of the mind.<br />
<br />
====Antique imaginary: the obvious====<br />
<br />
Cicero’s ''De oratore'' (finished in 55 B.C.E.) is among the earliest treatises describing mnemonics as a rhetorical art (Yates 17). Cicero credits Simonides with the invention of the art of memory, when, with “with almost divine powers of memory,” he “wrote down what he wanted to remember in certain places in his possession by means of images, just as if he were describing letters on wax” (qtd. in Yates 19). Yates interprets Cicero’s portrayal of the origin of mnemonics as “an inner writing on wax” (19): Simonides internalizes the wax tablet, the medium for recording speech that Phaedrus famously concealed under his cloak in Plato’s dialogue. Cornelia Vismann identifies wax as the key medium in the shift from oral to written legal and administrative culture in the West. “To synchronize speech and writing,” Vismann describes, “the speedwriters or exceptores responsible for files and protocols drew their letters in wax, which, in Quintilian’s words, puts up as little resistance to inscribing as it does to erasing” (Vismann 55). These speedwriters also assigned to take down the senate minutes, which “in search for the aura of the authentic,” “aim[ed] for [a] presentist effect” (54). Mnemonic systems were also designed to uphold these cultural values of presence and authenticity, and were analogous to wax in their ability to suture oral performance and written record.<br />
[[Image: waxtablet.jpg|left|300px|thumb|A Grecian wax tablet.]]<br />
Wax was thus the obvious material through (and on) which to describe mnemonics, which interfaced between speech and writing. The metaphor has an additional layer: as a malleable, hand-held medium, the wax tablet suggests that the memory is likewise easily manipulable by an autonomous author. Cicero renders Simonides as the authorial agent of his inner wax tablet, and thus in control of his memory. Nearly two millennia later, during the modern turn, the idea that one could rely on—let alone control—one’s memory was undercut by the development of recording technologies and the rise of psychoanalytic theories of trauma and repression. Curiously, at this historical moment, the connection between wax and memory that once portrayed both mnemonics and the inner-workings of the classical mind is again applied to the mind. This later incarnation of inner wax, however, is not subject to authorial intent, but inscribed upon by machines and the Unconscious.<br />
<br />
====Modern memory: the return of the repressed?====<br />
<br />
Two notable depictions of wax as the material substrate of memory bracket Kittler’s year 1900: Jean-Marie Guyau’s Memory and Phonograph (1880) and Sigmund Freud’s Note Upon the ‘Mystic-Writing Pad’ (1925). “What good are the poetic mnemonic techniques of rhyme and meter when wax rolls can store not only substance and tone but real sounds?” (Kittler 1992, 236), Kittler asks in ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Guyau addressed this anxiety of the inferiority of human memory and the limits of language early on by claiming the phonograph as the most exact metaphor for man’s ability to record and recite—to read, write, and speak. Notions of manipulating the memory with images, places, and signs is replaced with a techno-scientific inscription in Guyau’s comparison: “Upon speaking into a phonograph, the vibrations of one’s voice are transferred into a point that engraves lines on a metal plate…in analogous ways, invisible lines are incessantly carved into the brain cells” (qtd. in Kittler 1999, 30-31).<br />
<br />
Freud’s use of the [[mystic-writing pad]] as an analogy for the psyche also revises the idea of memory and inscription. Freud dismisses mnemonics right off the bat: “If I distrust my memory,” he begins, “I am able to supplement and guarantee its working by making a note in writing” (Freud 227). External “devices to aid memory” (228) are imperfect compared to our own sensory apparatus, however, which “has an unlimited receptive capacity for new perceptions and nevertheless lays down permanent—even though not unalterable—memory-traces of them” (228). Though he distrusts his memory, Freud echoes the ancient Greeks in imagining the psychic apparatus as a remediation of the wax tablet: the mystic-writing pad. Unlike the imagined mnemonic tablet, however, Freud’s pad is not consciously inscribed, but “receives perceptions (which are accompanied—but are not consciously manipulated—"by consciousness)and passes the excitation on to the unconscious mnemic systems” (231).<br />
<br />
Though these modern articulations of the mind destabilize the ability of human memory (assumed by mnemonics) and man’s conscious power over it (and symbolized by wax), they are haunted by the idea of control and power that they repress. Guyau and Freud participate in the same endeavor to represent the black box of the mind, reiterating the art of memory via technological and psycho-scientific metaphor.<br />
<br />
==Obsolescence and the Changing Thinker==<br />
<br />
<br />
According to Yates, the quest for improved memory through artificial mnemonic systems emerges as a critical part of our attempt to organize knowledge and impose a comprehensible order on our chaotic world. Perhaps the decline of these time-worn techniques is simply due to the fact that it is decreasingly relevant or important to remember things. The way we interact with information has changed drastically since a time before writing, thus changing the way we think. As Nietzsche observed, "our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts" ([http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ Carr]). When the printing press was invented by Johann Gutenberg in the early 1450s, memory techniques started to lose their prominence. People were suddenly able to record history, genealogies, law codes and stories without committing them to memory. <br />
<br />
With easy access to computer databases and the Internet, the need for mnemonic devices is has faded even further. This shift in thinking was pointed out in a recent article published in the New York Times: "Why bother remembering the clever poem that tells the value of pi to 21 places (3.141592653589793238462) when you can look it up online and get a virtual googol of places? Why is it necessary in this information age to remember most thing, except maybe your user name and password(s)?" ([http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html Rosenthal]). Clive Thompson summed up the change in thinking even more succinctly in [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson ''Wired''] magazine: "Almost without noticing it, we've outsourced important peripheral brain functions to the silicon around us." In a time when memory was the only storage device or at least one of the most efficient, mnemonics were an obvious form of mediation, but as new technologies have become available making it simple to find almost any fact in a few quick keystrokes and a quick skimming of a web page, those old strategies have become less necessary. As Crary observes, audiences must be trained to use new mediums and technologies (Crary 6), and through our re-training, it is not surprising mnemonics have largely disappeared. We have been schooled in new ways of solving the problem of retaining important details, with external resources in hand. Perhaps this modern resistance to memorization masks an anxiety caused by a diminished sense of our own mnemonic capabilities (Cambor 2001) due to developments in technology and the emergence of psychoanalysis at the turn of the modern era, or perhaps memory itself is a dying medium.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
* Carr, Nicholas. [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"] ''The Atlantic''. The Atlantic Monthly Group, July-Aug. 2008. Web. 10 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Crary, Jonathan. ''Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century''. Boston: MIT Press, 1992.<br />
* de Man, Paul. ''Aesthetic Ideology''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Dissemination''. New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 2004.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Speech and phenomena: and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs''. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. <br />
* Donald Phillip Verene, Vico’s Science of Imagination (Ithaca, 1981), 96-126<br />
* Fentress, James and Chris Wickham (1992) Social Memory. Oxford: Blackwell. <br />
* Freud, Sigmund. ''The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud''. Ed. James Strachey. London: The Hogarth Press, 1961.<br />
* Kittler, Friedrich A. ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.<br />
* --. ''Gramophone, Film, Typewriter''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton. ''The Art of Memory Reconceived: From Rhetoric to Psychoanalysis''. Journal of the History of Ideas, 48(3), 371-392<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton, "The new science of giambattista Vico: Historicism in its Relation to Poetics" ''Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism'', 30 (1972), 362-64<br />
* Rosenthal, Jack. [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html "Mnemonics."] ''New York Times''. New York Times Company, 17 July 2005. Web. 11 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Ronell, Avital. "Scoring Literature: The Drug Culture". (Lecture, NYU, 4/8/10).<br />
* Thompson, Clive. [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson "Your Outboard Brain Knows All"] ''Wired''. Conde Nast Digital, 25 Sept. 2007. Web. 11. Apr. 2010.<br />
* Vismann, Cornelia. ''Files: Law and Media Technology''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008.<br />
* Yates, Frances A. ''The Art of Memory''. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966.<br />
* Zielinski, Siegfried. ''Deep Time of the Media''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
==External Links==<br />
* [http://www.eudesign.com/mnems/_mnframe.htm Mnemonics] - a list of a number of standardized mnemonic devices<br />
* [http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-memory.htm How Human Memory Works] - a simple overview of the mental process<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Mnemonics&diff=8621Mnemonics2010-04-12T15:50:57Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Historical Sketch of Old Works on Mnemonics */</p>
<hr />
<div><div style="text-align:center;">"'''M'''nemonics '''N'''eatly '''E'''liminate '''M'''an's '''O'''nly '''N'''emesis ('''I'''nsufficient '''C'''erebral '''S'''torage)"</div><br />
<br />
Mnemonics, or the art of memory, is today regarded as an arcane intellectual interest. It functions on the periphery of popular culture, largely through a literature of self-help designed to bolster the confidence of those insecure about their powers of recollection. If it is a useful skill, it is not an essential one in a civilization whose collective memory is securely stored in the printed word and, more recently, in digital media. Today’s archive exists in the library or the personal computer, not in the depths of a well-ordered mind. <br />
<br />
Most of the mnemonic devices and techniques that remain today are simple and standardized. They are tools for remembering sequences of information, especially for recall in testing situations. Rather than learning general mnemonic tricks, students are left with specific rhymes or sentences to remember, for example: "Roy G. Biv" to remember the colors of the rainbow; "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally" for the algebraic order of operations; and "lefty, loosey; righty, tighty" for mechanics. Despite the longevity of some of these specific mnemonics, however, they are but a mere suggestion of the much more complex and widespread mnemonic strategies of yesteryear: from the wandering rhapsody of ancient Greece who enthralled listeners with the epic tales of Homer to the philosophers of the Renaissance who constructed imaginary memory palaces to present their intricate designs of the cosmos. This dossier will explore mnemonics as a mode of mediation that stored knowledge in a world invested in the authority of the spoken word, and strove to represent and control the historically black-boxed functioning of human memory.<br />
<br />
[[File:Erinnern.jpg|right|]]<br />
<br />
==Historical Sketch of Old Works on Mnemonics==<br />
[[File:10133 vico dipintura.gif|400px|thumb|left|Cover image from Giambattista Vico's book ''The New Science''. Each symbol was mean to help the reader recall all of the ideas in the book.]]<br />
<br />
“A memory consists in the awareness, first, of the diminished intensity of an impression, second, of its increased ease, and third, of the connections it entertains with other impressions” (Kittler 1999, 31).<br />
<br />
Long before transcription existed, there have been oral records of events in history: genealogies. In medieval Iceland, administrators of the law had to commit their entire juridical system to memory (Fentress and Wickham, 1992). In Ireland, bards would study for twelve years in order to memorize over 500 stories, as well as genealogies of all the leading Irish families (MacManus, 1967).<br />
<br />
Reflecting back on this mnemonic oral tradition, the 18th century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico contends that key to understanding of the nature of memory is derived from the direct correspondence between image and idea in primitive poetic language. In the beginnings of civilization, image and idea were one. Primitive peoples possessed robust memories because of the inseparable association they made between images and ideas in their comprehension of the world. They thought metaphorically, and the metaphors that they uttered were easily mimicked and remembered because they were richly expressive, grandiose, and full of wonder at the world. Vico revealed that the link between human imagination and the universe that the Renaissance Neoplatonists had sought to discover magically was in fact born historically in the development of human consciousness (Verene, 101). <br />
<br />
The source of mnemonist’s method is visible in the poetic logic of Vico’s theory of the emergence of human consciousness. That theory, too, involves the relationship between places and images, which Vico labels ''topics'' and ''tropes''. Topics were the poetic of formulae through which primitive people identified the phenomena of the world. As imaginative representations of particular aspects of realty, they provided common places or fixed points of reference amidst the flux of sense experience (Yates, 31). Considered in this context, Vico’s new art of memory becomes a retrospective search for connection between our present conceptions and the lost poetic images out of which they were born. In the logic of Vichian poetics, the new art of memory is a reconstruction of the imaginative process by which the poets of antiquity gave shape to their perception of the world. Therein the imaginative sources of our present ideas are to be found. The original topic might be linked to a palimpsest, repeatedly covered over with more abstract imagery as the human mind historically ascended the tropological gradient of linguistic expression. Vico’s art of memory was to decipher each tropological layer along the way until the original metaphorical topic, long forgotten, was recalled to mind (Hutton, 379).<br />
<br />
=== Freud's theory as a reverse mnemonics ===<br />
<br />
If mnemonics lay at the source of Romantic soul-searching (both personal and collective), the techniques themselves were only rarely the subject of introspective comment. It was left to Sigmund Freud at the turn of the 20th century to explain the role of memory in introspection in terms of a mnemonic code (Hutton, 386). In his theory of screen memories, Freud posits the constructive power of the unconscious mind to shape recollection. Forgetting rather than remembering is what we wish to do, he argues, because it is easier to live with a screen of fantasies rather than face the reality of our past. To use his terminology, memory is tendentious in that it reflects unconscious psychic intent. In this respect the Unconscious is the guardian of memory, legislating the selection of what is remembered, and what is repressed or hidden away. As an art of memory, therefore, psychoanalysis is a technique for deciphering the psychic intent encoded in screen memories (Hutton, 388). As we elaborate below, Freud's theory of the Unconscious, and of the forces of repression and trauma that affect the psyche, is incompatible with the classical lineage of mnemonics that assumes the individual's conscious control over his or her memory.<br />
<br />
==The Technology of Memory==<br />
[[File:Room 07 Fludd0002.jpg|thumb|computerized memory theater]]<br />
===How Mnemonics Work===<br />
<br />
Mnemonics may be viewed as storage devices for information in the human mind. The brain, however, is like a black box, and has been throughout human history: many of its operations are a mystery, and we are still just uncovering how it accomplishes many of the tasks we take for granted. Memory is one such process that captured the imaginations of pre-modern thinkers, and that contemporary scientists are still trying to understand. However, there are a few things that have been discovered over the years about how mnemonics function. The process of remembering is split up into different steps: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Mnemonics are involved with encoding. The best way to learn things, or encode them, is to associate them with other things. In people's mind, "apple" will often be associated with "red" and "round." By retrieving the concept of "red," the memory of "apple" will also be triggered. Mnemonics capitalize on this principle by creating more entry points to different pieces of information.<br />
<br />
At first glance, mnemonics may seem rather counter-intuitive because they require one to remember more information in order to solve the problem of remembering something else entirely. Rather than simply remembering one date, 1492 for example, mnemonics ask that you remember a poem: "In 1492 / Columbus sailed the ocean blue." More information is required in an attempt to lodge an initial piece of information in one's mind. While this technique seems rather contradictory, it works because it creates associations, or configurations of information more likely to stick in one's memory. A useful metaphor may be that a memory is a series of files. Mnemonics store bits of information in a number of different files through which to access the information.<br />
<br />
===Arbitrariness and the Cake-Mix Effect===<br />
<br />
In many mnemonic systems, the specifics of the "extra" information one learns to create associations is often entirely arbitrary and can be adapted for each individual. Much like pre-packaged cake mix, mnemonic techniques offer a basic structure, but the particular words and connections that will best work for an individual mind must be added to the formula for it to function. For example, a common strategy for remembering an ordered list is to remember the first letter of each item and put together a new sentence in which each of the words starts with one of the letters needing to be remembered, in the proper order. So if one wanted to remember biological taxonomic classifications from broadest to most specific ('''K'''ingdom, '''P'''hylum, '''C'''lass, '''O'''rder, '''F'''amily, '''G'''enus, '''S'''pecies, '''V'''ariety), one need construct a new sentence in which each subsequent word starts with the next letter in order (K,P,C,O,F,G,S,V). Each individual might have a different sentence that works best for him or her, however. So while one student might find it most advantageous to remember "'''K'''ing '''P'''hilip's '''C'''lassic '''O'''rder: '''F'''amily '''G'''enius - '''S'''pecial '''V'''alue'" another might find it easier to remember "'''K'''indly '''P'''lace '''C'''over '''O'''n '''F'''resh '''G'''reen '''S'''pring '''V'''egetables." This flexibility makes mnemonics a useful set of strategies, and the failure of these techniques is often dependent on the arbitrary information filled into the system. If someone fails to remember the order of the taxonomical classes it is usually because the sentence used is not the best for the user. Many mnemonic systems work in this manner, tailored to the individual mind. One prime historical example of this is the memory palace.<br />
<br />
==Method of Loci==<br />
<br />
A poetic, time-honored example of the method of loci may be found in the cosmology of Australian aborigines, whose ancestors are said to have sung the world into existence (Cambor, 2001). Every rock and crevice of the outback has a song associated with it, and the traveler knows their location exactly by their place in the song, the words of which corresponds to their physical surroundings. These songs have been transcribed to aid in the understanding of the geology of the continent. Across the globe, in Ancient Rome, mnemonics were used by lawyers to remember the points they wanted to make in a lawsuit. The method of loci was first formally described by Quitilian, a first century Roman rhetorician. As the historian Frances Yates describes in her book ''The Art of Memory'', the most common forms of the method of loci are memory palaces, memory theaters, and memory gardens. <br />
<br />
===Case Study or Trace Study of the Memory Palace===<br />
[[File:Fludd-the-art-of-memory-89.jpg|thumb|right|Engraving by Robert Fludd revealing memory attached to images]]<br />
<br />
Memory Palaces are methods of loci which use an imagined architecture to structure a speech based on associations of symbols. They are a spatialized remediation of association. Before memory palaces were implemented, hieroglyphs and other forms of picture writing were already using symbols to stand in for words and ideas. Memory palaces abstract this notion of association and complicate in order to allow one to remember hundreds of ideas. While mnemonics can be written down, the memory palace is completely imagined, and therefore the process and the media is black boxed within the mind of the subject, and like Iris, the message or information is internalized. This method was developed out of a human lack, and the need to remember large amounts of information. When using the memory palace, one needs only to remember the symbols, after which the encoded information becomes unlocked like the chirograph which connects to its counterpart. Memory palaces were constructed out of an anxiety for memory being lost, but in reality it is always already lost. <br />
<br />
This mode of mediation is based on location, but it itself has no location and exists as a non-space that stores imagined data. The subject that uses the memory palace becomes split and is forced to inhabit two realities as one must imagine walking through the memory palace and picking up each predetermined object while simultaneously being rooted in a physical space and delivering a live speech to an audience. The subject must navigate the memory palace like an automaton on automatic pilot but cannot get fully immersed or lost in it. Discipline of the mind and the body is necessary since the subject cannot think, but must become a machine and instrument for the reading of memory. <br />
<br />
====The Mechanization of Memory====<br />
<br />
Hegel discusses memory in two terms: “Erinnerung” and “Gedächtnis.” Erinnerung for Hegel is recollection, memory based on learning and internalization. It therefore has a relationship to the past and to a missing Other. Gedächtnis is the forgetting of meaning in favor of memorization and technologized memory, just as the technologization of speech through the act of writing represents the erasure of speech and the marking of its becoming forgotten. Gedächtnis acts as the simulacrum and mechanical reproduction of memory emptied of its original and of meaning (Ronell, 2010). Memory palaces fall under Gedächtnis, as they are a phantom crutch or prosthetic for remembering which can be easily dismantled and forgotten. The technique does reflect Erinnerung in that it calls to its missing Other which is the real house, but, because reality of the memory palace is artificially constructed, it has no relationship to the past. The associations within the memory palace are also artificial, revealing the manipulation of memory which becomes something external that can be altered and changed. Derrida writes, “What Plato is attacking in sophistics, therefore, is not simply recourse to memory but, within such recourse, the substitution of the mnemonic device for live memory, of the prosthesis for the organ; the perversion that consists of replacing a limb by a thing, here, substituting the passive, mechanical ‘by-heart’ for the active reanimation of knowledge, for its reproduction in the present. The boundary (between inside and outside, living and nonliving) separates not only speech from writing but also memory as an unveiling (re-)producing a presence from re-memoration as the mere repetition of a monument…(Derrida 109).” Paul de Man elaborates on the contradictory nature of Gedächtnis and Erinnerung, “Memory effaces remembrance (or recollection) just as the I effaces itself. The faculty that enables thought to exist also makes its preservation impossible. The art, the ''techné'', of writing which cannot be separated from thought and from memorization can only be preserved in the figural mode of the symbol, the very mode it has to do away with if it is to occur at all (de Man 102).” Here, Gedächtnis effaces Erinnerung, like mechanical reproduction effaces the original, and writing effaces speech.<br />
<br />
====Memory Palace as Afterimage and Trace====<br />
[[File:Afterimage1.JPG|thumb|left|Purkyně's "artery figure" taken from Zielinksi's ''Deep Time of the Media'']]<br />
The effacing of Erinnerung caused by Gedächtnis also speaks to the idea of an afterimage which effaces the original image. The memory palace is an afterimage and faint impression of one’s home which it replaces. Jonathan Crary writes that the afterimage “…allowed one to conceive of sensory perception as cut from any necessary link with an external referent. The afterimage – the presence of sensation in the absence of a stimulus – and its subsequent modulations posed a theoretical and empirical demonstration of autonomous vision, of an optical experience that was produced by and within the subject (Crary 98).” The afterimage of the memory palace is detachable, once it is created the originary house isn’t necessary to evoke it, rather it can be evoked independently by the subject. Memory palaces, while seeming to be about semiotics, have more to do with Derrida's concept of the "trace." Derrida writes, “The trace is not a presence but is rather the simulacrum of a presence that dislocates, displaces, and refers beyond itself. The trace has, properly speaking, no place, for effacement belongs to the very structure of the trace. Effacement must always be able to overtake the trace; otherwise it would not be a trace but an indestructible and monumental substance (Derrida 156).” The trace refers to that which is no longer present, leaving only the reliced remains to be read.<br />
<br />
====Memory as Archive and Crypt====<br />
[[File:044MemoryBook200.jpg|thumb|right|human brain as memory archive]]<br />
Memory palaces are a static archive of files. Vismann writes, “The immobile tomes are their own tombs...The immobilization amounts to a musealization, creating a work of art out of files (Vismann 161-162).” The memory palace echoes this sentiment and acts more as a mausoleum than a museum. The frozen architecture of the memory palace is doubled by the frozen images within it, turning the palace into a crypt. The shaping of the memory palace into a petrified and dead picture reveals the artifice of constructed memory. Its static and spectral quality lends it to the space of the crypt and removes it from the space of the living. It is the dead memory that must be summoned by the speaker, called to as the missing Other, and resurrected into the present.<br />
<br />
====Forgetting====<br />
Memory Palaces must be practiced, otherwise they are prone to being forgotten. They are meant to be remembered for a specific event, such as a specific speech, but once the event has passed, the memory palace recedes, shatters, and erases itself into the depths of the mystic writing pad’s unconscious. The memory palace, then, is made to be forgotten. Vismann writes, “With one sharp and one blunt end, the stylus unites writing and erasing, those two fundamental chancery operations, in one instrument. Herein lies an analogy to the workings of memory: just as the Greek verb hypomnematizesthai equates filing and remembering, its opposite, exaleiphein, combines a practical act and a function of memory by referring both to forgetting and wiping off (Vismann 55).” In this sense the memory palace is obliterated and becomes buried as a trace and remnant. Memory and forgetting work as though in a circuit, the production of one is almost always the production of the other, to remember one thing often causes one to forget another less relevant thing. Vismann also discusses forgetting as enabling memory, just as the afterimage or trace enables the original image, or the second gives birth to the first. Mechanical reproduction also enables the original, revealing the necessity of the copy and the negation in order to preserve the referent. There is only so much space in the human brain, therefore acquiring new information or new memories must also imply a certain amount of forgetting.<br />
<br />
==Mnemonic Expression: Writing Secrets and Speaking the Mind==<br />
<br />
''The art of memory is like an inner writing'' - Frances Yates.<br />
<br />
While mnemonic techniques were designed for oral performance without visible written aid, they were, from a Derridean perspective, systems of representation organized by writing. Rather than utilizing writing to externalize memory, mnemonics structured texts to correlate with the (variously imagined) inner mechanisms of the psyche. Mnemonics shaped poetics via rhyme and meter, for instance, rendering the text structurally uniform so that it might be more easily remembered and spoken. Mnemonic technique thus interfaced between speech and writing, presence and trace. In the same vein, mnemonics mediated between the interior mind and the external world, articulating both. Mnemonics are thus not simply storage techniques but expression: a form of writing (or ''art'' of memory) that reveals historically deviant memories and, in attempting to control its input and output, represents the persistently black-boxed functioning of the human mind.<br />
<br />
===Mnemonics as cryptography===<br />
<br />
As a mode of mediation, mnemonics represent a curious combination of semiotics and functional nonsense. Mnemonic signs (images, places, phrases) must be nearly evacuated of meaning in order to cue—but not replace—the desired information actively attached to (or associated with) them. From this perspective, articulated above [http://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php/Mnemonics#Arbitrariness_and_the_Cake-Mix_Effect], mnemonics functioned as a storage technique comprised of arbitrary signifiers (like Roy G. Biv) rather than a communicative semantic system. The seemingly nonsensical functioning of mnemonics, however, leaves open the opportunity for obfuscation. If mnemonics could be 'objectively' coded for memory, then they could also perform as encrypted transmission.<br />
<br />
====Giordano Bruno's magic mnemonics====<br />
<br />
Giordano Bruno, a Dominican friar and peripatetic philosopher famous for his “amazing powers of recollection” (Zielinski 72) provides a historical example of the cryptographic, communicative potential of mnemonics in the late 16th century. Bruno was eventually burned at the stake during the Inquisition for his use of magic and allegiance to hermeticism: a philosophy named for Hermes and based in Egyptian astrology, which, needless to say, clashed with Christian doctrine. In The Deep Time of The Media, Siegfried Zielinski links hermetic tradition (which persisted into the Renaissance but had to be promulgated secretly) to the “subhistory” stemming from “the passion for encrypting and deciphering texts runs through the sciences” since the 13th century (Zielinski 73). He also notes that cryptography made particular demands on memory and was thus bound to mnemonic ability (83). Bruno took this relationship one step further. In his writings and teachings, Bruno endeavored to both transmit and internalize hermetic secrets through mnemonic technique. <br />
[[Image: bruno_memory_wheel.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|Frances Yates' rendition of Giordano Bruno's mnemonic wheel described in ''Shadows'' (1582).]] “The secret was the combination of the Hermetic beliefs with the techniques of the art of memory” (Yates 305) writes Frances Yates, so that these “memory systems” became “a mode of transmitting a religion, or an ethic, or some message of universal import” (387). <br />
<br />
Bruno’s system of “magic mnemonics” (Yates 223) hinged on his belief that the memorization of significant images enabled the "harnessing of the inner world of the imagination to the stars, or reproducing the the celestial world within" (215). Memory, for Bruno, was thus a dioptric medium, allowing the passage of the sublime order of the heavens into the individual psyche, "arriving at the vision within of the One light diffused through all" (230). This divine lumen, however, was guarded by catoptric technique. Bruno's mnemonic system was based the arrangement of intricate wheels of astral symbols and magic images. Bruno's first book on the art of memory is aptly titled ''Shadows'': as Yates observes, there is “Circaean mystification at the heart of this memory treatise” (247). Bruno’s mnemonic code thus had a dual function to reveal and conceal. He sought to at once unify the human imagination and the celestial order through memory, and to keep this mnemonic recipe secret, decipherable only by those who understood hermetic principles and believed in magic.<br />
<br />
===Written in wax===<br />
<br />
Wax—the inscription media associated with classical rhetoric and art of memory—was remediated in recording technology and psychoanalytic discourse at the turn of the 20th century. Through a brief comparison of modern and antique articulations of wax as the material substrate of memory, we may glimpse how the rise and fall of mnemonics is subject to the imagined materiality—and malleability—of the mind.<br />
<br />
====Antique imaginary: the obvious====<br />
<br />
Cicero’s ''De oratore'' (finished in 55 B.C.E.) is among the earliest treatises describing mnemonics as a rhetorical art (Yates 17). Cicero credits Simonides with the invention of the art of memory, when, with “with almost divine powers of memory,” he “wrote down what he wanted to remember in certain places in his possession by means of images, just as if he were describing letters on wax” (qtd. in Yates 19). Yates interprets Cicero’s portrayal of the origin of mnemonics as “an inner writing on wax” (19): Simonides internalizes the wax tablet, the medium for recording speech that Phaedrus famously concealed under his cloak in Plato’s dialogue. Cornelia Vismann identifies wax as the key medium in the shift from oral to written legal and administrative culture in the West. “To synchronize speech and writing,” Vismann describes, “the speedwriters or exceptores responsible for files and protocols drew their letters in wax, which, in Quintilian’s words, puts up as little resistance to inscribing as it does to erasing” (Vismann 55). These speedwriters also assigned to take down the senate minutes, which “in search for the aura of the authentic,” “aim[ed] for [a] presentist effect” (54). Mnemonic systems were also designed to uphold these cultural values of presence and authenticity, and were analogous to wax in their ability to suture oral performance and written record.<br />
[[Image: waxtablet.jpg|left|300px|thumb|A Grecian wax tablet.]]<br />
Wax was thus the obvious material through (and on) which to describe mnemonics, which interfaced between speech and writing. The metaphor has an additional layer: as a malleable, hand-held medium, the wax tablet suggests that the memory is likewise easily manipulable by an autonomous author. Cicero renders Simonides as the authorial agent of his inner wax tablet, and thus in control of his memory. Nearly two millennia later, during the modern turn, the idea that one could rely on—let alone control—one’s memory was undercut by the development of recording technologies and the rise of psychoanalytic theories of trauma and repression. Curiously, at this historical moment, the connection between wax and memory that once portrayed both mnemonics and the inner-workings of the classical mind is again applied to the mind. This later incarnation of inner wax, however, is not subject to authorial intent, but inscribed upon by machines and the Unconscious.<br />
<br />
====Modern memory: the return of the repressed?====<br />
<br />
Two notable depictions of wax as the material substrate of memory bracket Kittler’s year 1900: Jean-Marie Guyau’s Memory and Phonograph (1880) and Sigmund Freud’s Note Upon the ‘Mystic-Writing Pad’ (1925). “What good are the poetic mnemonic techniques of rhyme and meter when wax rolls can store not only substance and tone but real sounds?” (Kittler 1992, 236), Kittler asks in ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Guyau addressed this anxiety of the inferiority of human memory and the limits of language early on by claiming the phonograph as the most exact metaphor for man’s ability to record and recite—to read, write, and speak. Notions of manipulating the memory with images, places, and signs is replaced with a techno-scientific inscription in Guyau’s comparison: “Upon speaking into a phonograph, the vibrations of one’s voice are transferred into a point that engraves lines on a metal plate…in analogous ways, invisible lines are incessantly carved into the brain cells” (qtd. in Kittler 1999, 30-31).<br />
<br />
Freud’s use of the [[mystic-writing pad]] as an analogy for the psyche also revises the idea of memory and inscription. Freud dismisses mnemonics right off the bat: “If I distrust my memory,” he begins, “I am able to supplement and guarantee its working by making a note in writing” (Freud 227). External “devices to aid memory” (228) are imperfect compared to our own sensory apparatus, however, which “has an unlimited receptive capacity for new perceptions and nevertheless lays down permanent—even though not unalterable—memory-traces of them” (228). Though he distrusts his memory, Freud echoes the ancient Greeks in imagining the psychic apparatus as a remediation of the wax tablet: the mystic-writing pad. Unlike the imagined mnemonic tablet, however, Freud’s pad is not consciously inscribed, but “receives perceptions (which are accompanied—but are not consciously manipulated—"by consciousness)and passes the excitation on to the unconscious mnemic systems” (231).<br />
<br />
Though these modern articulations of the mind destabilize the ability of human memory (assumed by mnemonics) and man’s conscious power over it (and symbolized by wax), they are haunted by the idea of control and power that they repress. Guyau and Freud participate in the same endeavor to represent the black box of the mind, reiterating the art of memory via technological and psycho-scientific metaphor.<br />
<br />
==Obsolescence and the Changing Thinker==<br />
<br />
<br />
According to Yates, the quest for improved memory through artificial mnemonic systems emerges as a critical part of our attempt to organize knowledge and impose an understandable order on a chaotic world. Mnemonics were one such attempt, and although they are very efficient at storing information in packages that allow for easy retrieval they are rarely used today, in part because it is decreasingly relevant or important to remember things. As Nietzsche observed, "our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts" ([http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ Carr]). The way we interact with information has changed drastically since a time before writing, thus changing the way we think. To cite the oft-relevant Jonathan Crary, audiences need to be trained to use new mediums and technologies (Crary 6), and it seems as though our new technologies our shaping the way we seek out, take in, and digest information. <br />
<br />
When the printing press was invented by Johann Gutenberg in the early 1450s, memory techniques started to lose their prominence. People were suddenly able to record history, genealogies, law codes and stories without committing them to memory. With easy access to computer databases and the Internet, the need for mnemonic devices is has faded even further. This shift in thinking was pointed out in a recent article published in the New York Times: "Why bother remembering the clever poem that tells the value of pi to 21 places (3.141592653589793238462) when you can look it up online and get a virtual googol of places? Why is it necessary in this information age to remember most thing, except maybe your user name and password(s)?" ([http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html Rosenthal]). Clive Thompson summed up the change in thinking even more succinctly in [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson ''Wired''] magazine: "Almost without noticing it, we've outsourced important peripheral brain functions to the silicon around us." In a time when memory was the only storage device or at least one of the most efficient, mnemonics were an obvious form of mediation, but as new technologies have become available making it simple to find almost any fact in a few quick keystrokes and a quick skimming of a web page, those old strategies have become less necessary. It is not surprising mnemonics have largely disappeared. We have found new ways to solve the problem of retaining important details. Perhaps this modern resistance to memorization masks an anxiety caused by a diminished sense of our own mnemonic capabilities (Cambor 2001) due to developments in technology and the emergence of psychoanalysis, or perhaps memory itself is a dying medium.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
* Carr, Nicholas. [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"] ''The Atlantic''. The Atlantic Monthly Group, July-Aug. 2008. Web. 10 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Crary, Jonathan. ''Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century''. Boston: MIT Press, 1992.<br />
* de Man, Paul. ''Aesthetic Ideology''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Dissemination''. New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 2004.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Speech and phenomena: and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs''. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. <br />
* Donald Phillip Verene, Vico’s Science of Imagination (Ithaca, 1981), 96-126<br />
* Fentress, James and Chris Wickham (1992) Social Memory. Oxford: Blackwell. <br />
* Freud, Sigmund. ''The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud''. Ed. James Strachey. London: The Hogarth Press, 1961.<br />
* Kittler, Friedrich A. ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.<br />
* --. ''Gramophone, Film, Typewriter''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton. ''The Art of Memory Reconceived: From Rhetoric to Psychoanalysis''. Journal of the History of Ideas, 48(3), 371-392<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton, "The new science of giambattista Vico: Historicism in its Relation to Poetics" ''Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism'', 30 (1972), 362-64<br />
* Rosenthal, Jack. [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html "Mnemonics."] ''New York Times''. New York Times Company, 17 July 2005. Web. 11 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Ronell, Avital. "Scoring Literature: The Drug Culture". (Lecture, NYU, 4/8/10).<br />
* Thompson, Clive. [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson "Your Outboard Brain Knows All"] ''Wired''. Conde Nast Digital, 25 Sept. 2007. Web. 11. Apr. 2010.<br />
* Vismann, Cornelia. ''Files: Law and Media Technology''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008.<br />
* Yates, Frances A. ''The Art of Memory''. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966.<br />
* Zielinski, Siegfried. ''Deep Time of the Media''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
==External Links==<br />
* [http://www.eudesign.com/mnems/_mnframe.htm Mnemonics] - a list of a number of standardized mnemonic devices<br />
* [http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-memory.htm How Human Memory Works] - a simple overview of the mental process<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Mnemonics&diff=8616Mnemonics2010-04-12T15:49:39Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Historical Sketch of Old Works on Mnemonics */</p>
<hr />
<div><div style="text-align:center;">"'''M'''nemonics '''N'''eatly '''E'''liminate '''M'''an's '''O'''nly '''N'''emesis ('''I'''nsufficient '''C'''erebral '''S'''torage)"</div><br />
<br />
Mnemonics, or the art of memory, is today regarded as an arcane intellectual interest. It functions on the periphery of popular culture, largely through a literature of self-help designed to bolster the confidence of those insecure about their powers of recollection. If it is a useful skill, it is not an essential one in a civilization whose collective memory is securely stored in the printed word and, more recently, in digital media. Today’s archive exists in the library or the personal computer, not in the depths of a well-ordered mind. <br />
<br />
Most of the mnemonic devices and techniques that remain today are simple and standardized. They are tools for remembering sequences of information, especially for recall in testing situations. Rather than learning general mnemonic tricks, students are left with specific rhymes or sentences to remember, for example: "Roy G. Biv" to remember the colors of the rainbow; "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally" for the algebraic order of operations; and "lefty, loosey; righty, tighty" for mechanics. Despite the longevity of some of these specific mnemonics, however, they are but a mere suggestion of the much more complex and widespread mnemonic strategies of yesteryear: from the wandering rhapsody of ancient Greece who enthralled listeners with the epic tales of Homer to the philosophers of the Renaissance who constructed imaginary memory palaces to present their intricate designs of the cosmos. This dossier will explore mnemonics as a mode of mediation that stored knowledge in a world invested in the authority of the spoken word, and strove to represent and control the historically black-boxed functioning of human memory.<br />
<br />
[[File:Erinnern.jpg|right|]]<br />
<br />
==Historical Sketch of Old Works on Mnemonics==<br />
[[File:10133 vico dipintura.gif|400px|thumb|left|Cover image from Giambattista Vico's book ''The New Science''. Each symbol was mean to help the reader recall all of the ideas in the book.]]<br />
<br />
“A memory consists in the awareness, first, of the diminished intensity of an impression, second, of its increased ease, and third, of the connections it entertains with other impressions” (Kittler 1999, 31).<br />
<br />
Long before transcription existed, there have been oral records of events in history: genealogies. In medieval Iceland, administrators of the law had to commit their entire juridical system to memory (Fentress and Wickham, 1992). In Ireland, bards would study for twelve years in order to memorize over 500 stories, as well as genealogies of all the leading Irish families (MacManus, 1967).<br />
<br />
Reflecting back on this mnemonic oral tradition in the 18th century, Giambattista Vico contends that key to understanding of the nature of memory is derived from the direct correspondence between image and idea in primitive poetic language. In the beginnings of civilization, image and idea were one. Primitive peoples possessed robust memories because of the inseparable association they made between images and ideas in their comprehension of the world. They thought metaphorically, and the metaphors that they uttered were easily mimicked and remembered because they were richly expressive, grandiose, and full of wonder at the world. Vico revealed that the link between human imagination and the universe that the Renaissance Neoplatonists had sought to discover magically was in fact born historically in the development of human consciousness (Verene, 101). <br />
<br />
The source of mnemonist’s method is visible in the poetic logic of Vico’s theory of the emergence of human consciousness. That theory, too, involves the relationship between places and images, which Vico labels ''topics'' and ''tropes''. Topics were the poetic of formulae through which primitive people identified the phenomena of the world. As imaginative representations of particular aspects of realty, they provided common places or fixed points of reference amidst the flux of sense experience (Yates, 31). Considered in this context, Vico’s new art of memory becomes a retrospective search for connection between our present conceptions and the lost poetic images out of which they were born. In the logic of Vichian poetics, the new art of memory is a reconstruction of the imaginative process by which the poets of antiquity gave shape to their perception of the world. Therein the imaginative sources of our present ideas are to be found. The original topic might be linked to a palimpsest, repeatedly covered over with more abstract imagery as the human mind historically ascended the tropological gradient of linguistic expression. Vico’s art of memory was to decipher each tropological layer along the way until the original metaphorical topic, long forgotten, was recalled to mind (Hutton, 379).<br />
<br />
=== Freud's theory as a reverse mnemonics ===<br />
<br />
If mnemonics lay at the source of Romantic soul-searching (both personal and collective), the techniques themselves were only rarely the subject of introspective comment. It was left to Sigmund Freud at the turn of the 20th century to explain the role of memory in introspection in terms of a mnemonic code (Hutton, 386). In his theory of screen memories, Freud posits the constructive power of the unconscious mind to shape recollection. Forgetting rather than remembering is what we wish to do, he argues, because it is easier to live with a screen of fantasies rather than face the reality of our past. To use his terminology, memory is tendentious in that it reflects unconscious psychic intent. In this respect the Unconscious is the guardian of memory, legislating the selection of what is remembered, and what is repressed or hidden away. As an art of memory, therefore, psychoanalysis is a technique for deciphering the psychic intent encoded in screen memories (Hutton, 388). As we elaborate below, Freud's theory of the Unconscious, and of the forces of repression and trauma that affect the psyche, is incompatible with the classical lineage of mnemonics that assumes the individual's conscious control over his or her memory.<br />
<br />
==The Technology of Memory==<br />
[[File:Room 07 Fludd0002.jpg|thumb|computerized memory theater]]<br />
===How Mnemonics Work===<br />
<br />
Mnemonics may be viewed as storage devices for information in the human mind. The brain, however, is like a black box, and has been throughout human history: many of its operations are a mystery, and we are still just uncovering how it accomplishes many of the tasks we take for granted. Memory is one such process that captured the imaginations of pre-modern thinkers, and that contemporary scientists are still trying to understand. However, there are a few things that have been discovered over the years about how mnemonics function. The process of remembering is split up into different steps: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Mnemonics are involved with encoding. The best way to learn things, or encode them, is to associate them with other things. In people's mind, "apple" will often be associated with "red" and "round." By retrieving the concept of "red," the memory of "apple" will also be triggered. Mnemonics capitalize on this principle by creating more entry points to different pieces of information.<br />
<br />
At first glance, mnemonics may seem rather counter-intuitive because they require one to remember more information in order to solve the problem of remembering something else entirely. Rather than simply remembering one date, 1492 for example, mnemonics ask that you remember a poem: "In 1492 / Columbus sailed the ocean blue." More information is required in an attempt to lodge an initial piece of information in one's mind. While this technique seems rather contradictory, it works because it creates associations, or configurations of information more likely to stick in one's memory. A useful metaphor may be that a memory is a series of files. Mnemonics store bits of information in a number of different files through which to access the information.<br />
<br />
===Arbitrariness and the Cake-Mix Effect===<br />
<br />
In many mnemonic systems, the specifics of the "extra" information one learns to create associations is often entirely arbitrary and can be adapted for each individual. Much like pre-packaged cake mix, mnemonic techniques offer a basic structure, but the particular words and connections that will best work for an individual mind must be added to the formula for it to function. For example, a common strategy for remembering an ordered list is to remember the first letter of each item and put together a new sentence in which each of the words starts with one of the letters needing to be remembered, in the proper order. So if one wanted to remember biological taxonomic classifications from broadest to most specific ('''K'''ingdom, '''P'''hylum, '''C'''lass, '''O'''rder, '''F'''amily, '''G'''enus, '''S'''pecies, '''V'''ariety), one need construct a new sentence in which each subsequent word starts with the next letter in order (K,P,C,O,F,G,S,V). Each individual might have a different sentence that works best for him or her, however. So while one student might find it most advantageous to remember "'''K'''ing '''P'''hilip's '''C'''lassic '''O'''rder: '''F'''amily '''G'''enius - '''S'''pecial '''V'''alue'" another might find it easier to remember "'''K'''indly '''P'''lace '''C'''over '''O'''n '''F'''resh '''G'''reen '''S'''pring '''V'''egetables." This flexibility makes mnemonics a useful set of strategies, and the failure of these techniques is often dependent on the arbitrary information filled into the system. If someone fails to remember the order of the taxonomical classes it is usually because the sentence used is not the best for the user. Many mnemonic systems work in this manner, tailored to the individual mind. One prime historical example of this is the memory palace.<br />
<br />
==Method of Loci==<br />
<br />
A poetic, time-honored example of the method of loci may be found in the cosmology of Australian aborigines, whose ancestors are said to have sung the world into existence (Cambor, 2001). Every rock and crevice of the outback has a song associated with it, and the traveler knows their location exactly by their place in the song, the words of which corresponds to their physical surroundings. These songs have been transcribed to aid in the understanding of the geology of the continent. Across the globe, in Ancient Rome, mnemonics were used by lawyers to remember the points they wanted to make in a lawsuit. The method of loci was first formally described by Quitilian, a first century Roman rhetorician. As the historian Frances Yates describes in her book ''The Art of Memory'', the most common forms of the method of loci are memory palaces, memory theaters, and memory gardens. <br />
<br />
===Case Study or Trace Study of the Memory Palace===<br />
[[File:Fludd-the-art-of-memory-89.jpg|thumb|right|Engraving by Robert Fludd revealing memory attached to images]]<br />
<br />
Memory Palaces are methods of loci which use an imagined architecture to structure a speech based on associations of symbols. They are a spatialized remediation of association. Before memory palaces were implemented, hieroglyphs and other forms of picture writing were already using symbols to stand in for words and ideas. Memory palaces abstract this notion of association and complicate in order to allow one to remember hundreds of ideas. While mnemonics can be written down, the memory palace is completely imagined, and therefore the process and the media is black boxed within the mind of the subject, and like Iris, the message or information is internalized. This method was developed out of a human lack, and the need to remember large amounts of information. When using the memory palace, one needs only to remember the symbols, after which the encoded information becomes unlocked like the chirograph which connects to its counterpart. Memory palaces were constructed out of an anxiety for memory being lost, but in reality it is always already lost. <br />
<br />
This mode of mediation is based on location, but it itself has no location and exists as a non-space that stores imagined data. The subject that uses the memory palace becomes split and is forced to inhabit two realities as one must imagine walking through the memory palace and picking up each predetermined object while simultaneously being rooted in a physical space and delivering a live speech to an audience. The subject must navigate the memory palace like an automaton on automatic pilot but cannot get fully immersed or lost in it. Discipline of the mind and the body is necessary since the subject cannot think, but must become a machine and instrument for the reading of memory. <br />
<br />
====The Mechanization of Memory====<br />
<br />
Hegel discusses memory in two terms: “Erinnerung” and “Gedächtnis.” Erinnerung for Hegel is recollection, memory based on learning and internalization. It therefore has a relationship to the past and to a missing Other. Gedächtnis is the forgetting of meaning in favor of memorization and technologized memory, just as the technologization of speech through the act of writing represents the erasure of speech and the marking of its becoming forgotten. Gedächtnis acts as the simulacrum and mechanical reproduction of memory emptied of its original and of meaning (Ronell, 2010). Memory palaces fall under Gedächtnis, as they are a phantom crutch or prosthetic for remembering which can be easily dismantled and forgotten. The technique does reflect Erinnerung in that it calls to its missing Other which is the real house, but, because reality of the memory palace is artificially constructed, it has no relationship to the past. The associations within the memory palace are also artificial, revealing the manipulation of memory which becomes something external that can be altered and changed. Derrida writes, “What Plato is attacking in sophistics, therefore, is not simply recourse to memory but, within such recourse, the substitution of the mnemonic device for live memory, of the prosthesis for the organ; the perversion that consists of replacing a limb by a thing, here, substituting the passive, mechanical ‘by-heart’ for the active reanimation of knowledge, for its reproduction in the present. The boundary (between inside and outside, living and nonliving) separates not only speech from writing but also memory as an unveiling (re-)producing a presence from re-memoration as the mere repetition of a monument…(Derrida 109).” Paul de Man elaborates on the contradictory nature of Gedächtnis and Erinnerung, “Memory effaces remembrance (or recollection) just as the I effaces itself. The faculty that enables thought to exist also makes its preservation impossible. The art, the ''techné'', of writing which cannot be separated from thought and from memorization can only be preserved in the figural mode of the symbol, the very mode it has to do away with if it is to occur at all (de Man 102).” Here, Gedächtnis effaces Erinnerung, like mechanical reproduction effaces the original, and writing effaces speech.<br />
<br />
====Memory Palace as Afterimage and Trace====<br />
[[File:Afterimage1.JPG|thumb|left|Purkyně's "artery figure" taken from Zielinksi's ''Deep Time of the Media'']]<br />
The effacing of Erinnerung caused by Gedächtnis also speaks to the idea of an afterimage which effaces the original image. The memory palace is an afterimage and faint impression of one’s home which it replaces. Jonathan Crary writes that the afterimage “…allowed one to conceive of sensory perception as cut from any necessary link with an external referent. The afterimage – the presence of sensation in the absence of a stimulus – and its subsequent modulations posed a theoretical and empirical demonstration of autonomous vision, of an optical experience that was produced by and within the subject (Crary 98).” The afterimage of the memory palace is detachable, once it is created the originary house isn’t necessary to evoke it, rather it can be evoked independently by the subject. Memory palaces, while seeming to be about semiotics, have more to do with Derrida's concept of the "trace." Derrida writes, “The trace is not a presence but is rather the simulacrum of a presence that dislocates, displaces, and refers beyond itself. The trace has, properly speaking, no place, for effacement belongs to the very structure of the trace. Effacement must always be able to overtake the trace; otherwise it would not be a trace but an indestructible and monumental substance (Derrida 156).” The trace refers to that which is no longer present, leaving only the reliced remains to be read.<br />
<br />
====Memory as Archive and Crypt====<br />
[[File:044MemoryBook200.jpg|thumb|right|human brain as memory archive]]<br />
Memory palaces are a static archive of files. Vismann writes, “The immobile tomes are their own tombs...The immobilization amounts to a musealization, creating a work of art out of files (Vismann 161-162).” The memory palace echoes this sentiment and acts more as a mausoleum than a museum. The frozen architecture of the memory palace is doubled by the frozen images within it, turning the palace into a crypt. The shaping of the memory palace into a petrified and dead picture reveals the artifice of constructed memory. Its static and spectral quality lends it to the space of the crypt and removes it from the space of the living. It is the dead memory that must be summoned by the speaker, called to as the missing Other, and resurrected into the present.<br />
<br />
====Forgetting====<br />
Memory Palaces must be practiced, otherwise they are prone to being forgotten. They are meant to be remembered for a specific event, such as a specific speech, but once the event has passed, the memory palace recedes, shatters, and erases itself into the depths of the mystic writing pad’s unconscious. The memory palace, then, is made to be forgotten. Vismann writes, “With one sharp and one blunt end, the stylus unites writing and erasing, those two fundamental chancery operations, in one instrument. Herein lies an analogy to the workings of memory: just as the Greek verb hypomnematizesthai equates filing and remembering, its opposite, exaleiphein, combines a practical act and a function of memory by referring both to forgetting and wiping off (Vismann 55).” In this sense the memory palace is obliterated and becomes buried as a trace and remnant. Memory and forgetting work as though in a circuit, the production of one is almost always the production of the other, to remember one thing often causes one to forget another less relevant thing. Vismann also discusses forgetting as enabling memory, just as the afterimage or trace enables the original image, or the second gives birth to the first. Mechanical reproduction also enables the original, revealing the necessity of the copy and the negation in order to preserve the referent. There is only so much space in the human brain, therefore acquiring new information or new memories must also imply a certain amount of forgetting.<br />
<br />
==Mnemonic Expression: Writing Secrets and Speaking the Mind==<br />
<br />
''The art of memory is like an inner writing'' - Frances Yates.<br />
<br />
While mnemonic techniques were designed for oral performance without visible written aid, they were, from a Derridean perspective, systems of representation organized by writing. Rather than utilizing writing to externalize memory, mnemonics structured texts to correlate with the (variously imagined) inner mechanisms of the psyche. Mnemonics shaped poetics via rhyme and meter, for instance, rendering the text structurally uniform so that it might be more easily remembered and spoken. Mnemonic technique thus interfaced between speech and writing, presence and trace. In the same vein, mnemonics mediated between the interior mind and the external world, articulating both. Mnemonics are thus not simply storage techniques but expression: a form of writing (or ''art'' of memory) that reveals historically deviant memories and, in attempting to control its input and output, represents the persistently black-boxed functioning of the human mind.<br />
<br />
===Mnemonics as cryptography===<br />
<br />
As a mode of mediation, mnemonics represent a curious combination of semiotics and functional nonsense. Mnemonic signs (images, places, phrases) must be nearly evacuated of meaning in order to cue—but not replace—the desired information actively attached to (or associated with) them. From this perspective, articulated above [http://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php/Mnemonics#Arbitrariness_and_the_Cake-Mix_Effect], mnemonics functioned as a storage technique comprised of arbitrary signifiers (like Roy G. Biv) rather than a communicative semantic system. The seemingly nonsensical functioning of mnemonics, however, leaves open the opportunity for obfuscation. If mnemonics could be 'objectively' coded for memory, then they could also perform as encrypted transmission.<br />
<br />
====Giordano Bruno's magic mnemonics====<br />
<br />
Giordano Bruno, a Dominican friar and peripatetic philosopher famous for his “amazing powers of recollection” (Zielinski 72) provides a historical example of the cryptographic, communicative potential of mnemonics in the late 16th century. Bruno was eventually burned at the stake during the Inquisition for his use of magic and allegiance to hermeticism: a philosophy named for Hermes and based in Egyptian astrology, which, needless to say, clashed with Christian doctrine. In The Deep Time of The Media, Siegfried Zielinski links hermetic tradition (which persisted into the Renaissance but had to be promulgated secretly) to the “subhistory” stemming from “the passion for encrypting and deciphering texts runs through the sciences” since the 13th century (Zielinski 73). He also notes that cryptography made particular demands on memory and was thus bound to mnemonic ability (83). Bruno took this relationship one step further. In his writings and teachings, Bruno endeavored to both transmit and internalize hermetic secrets through mnemonic technique. <br />
[[Image: bruno_memory_wheel.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|Frances Yates' rendition of Giordano Bruno's mnemonic wheel described in ''Shadows'' (1582).]] “The secret was the combination of the Hermetic beliefs with the techniques of the art of memory” (Yates 305) writes Frances Yates, so that these “memory systems” became “a mode of transmitting a religion, or an ethic, or some message of universal import” (387). <br />
<br />
Bruno’s system of “magic mnemonics” (Yates 223) hinged on his belief that the memorization of significant images enabled the "harnessing of the inner world of the imagination to the stars, or reproducing the the celestial world within" (215). Memory, for Bruno, was thus a dioptric medium, allowing the passage of the sublime order of the heavens into the individual psyche, "arriving at the vision within of the One light diffused through all" (230). This divine lumen, however, was guarded by catoptric technique. Bruno's mnemonic system was based the arrangement of intricate wheels of astral symbols and magic images. Bruno's first book on the art of memory is aptly titled ''Shadows'': as Yates observes, there is “Circaean mystification at the heart of this memory treatise” (247). Bruno’s mnemonic code thus had a dual function to reveal and conceal. He sought to at once unify the human imagination and the celestial order through memory, and to keep this mnemonic recipe secret, decipherable only by those who understood hermetic principles and believed in magic.<br />
<br />
===Written in wax===<br />
<br />
Wax—the inscription media associated with classical rhetoric and art of memory—was remediated in recording technology and psychoanalytic discourse at the turn of the 20th century. Through a brief comparison of modern and antique articulations of wax as the material substrate of memory, we may glimpse how the rise and fall of mnemonics is subject to the imagined materiality—and malleability—of the mind.<br />
<br />
====Antique imaginary: the obvious====<br />
<br />
Cicero’s ''De oratore'' (finished in 55 B.C.E.) is among the earliest treatises describing mnemonics as a rhetorical art (Yates 17). Cicero credits Simonides with the invention of the art of memory, when, with “with almost divine powers of memory,” he “wrote down what he wanted to remember in certain places in his possession by means of images, just as if he were describing letters on wax” (qtd. in Yates 19). Yates interprets Cicero’s portrayal of the origin of mnemonics as “an inner writing on wax” (19): Simonides internalizes the wax tablet, the medium for recording speech that Phaedrus famously concealed under his cloak in Plato’s dialogue. Cornelia Vismann identifies wax as the key medium in the shift from oral to written legal and administrative culture in the West. “To synchronize speech and writing,” Vismann describes, “the speedwriters or exceptores responsible for files and protocols drew their letters in wax, which, in Quintilian’s words, puts up as little resistance to inscribing as it does to erasing” (Vismann 55). These speedwriters also assigned to take down the senate minutes, which “in search for the aura of the authentic,” “aim[ed] for [a] presentist effect” (54). Mnemonic systems were also designed to uphold these cultural values of presence and authenticity, and were analogous to wax in their ability to suture oral performance and written record.<br />
[[Image: waxtablet.jpg|left|300px|thumb|A Grecian wax tablet.]]<br />
Wax was thus the obvious material through (and on) which to describe mnemonics, which interfaced between speech and writing. The metaphor has an additional layer: as a malleable, hand-held medium, the wax tablet suggests that the memory is likewise easily manipulable by an autonomous author. Cicero renders Simonides as the authorial agent of his inner wax tablet, and thus in control of his memory. Nearly two millennia later, during the modern turn, the idea that one could rely on—let alone control—one’s memory was undercut by the development of recording technologies and the rise of psychoanalytic theories of trauma and repression. Curiously, at this historical moment, the connection between wax and memory that once portrayed both mnemonics and the inner-workings of the classical mind is again applied to the mind. This later incarnation of inner wax, however, is not subject to authorial intent, but inscribed upon by machines and the Unconscious.<br />
<br />
====Modern memory: the return of the repressed?====<br />
<br />
Two notable depictions of wax as the material substrate of memory bracket Kittler’s year 1900: Jean-Marie Guyau’s Memory and Phonograph (1880) and Sigmund Freud’s Note Upon the ‘Mystic-Writing Pad’ (1925). “What good are the poetic mnemonic techniques of rhyme and meter when wax rolls can store not only substance and tone but real sounds?” (Kittler 1992, 236), Kittler asks in ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Guyau addressed this anxiety of the inferiority of human memory and the limits of language early on by claiming the phonograph as the most exact metaphor for man’s ability to record and recite—to read, write, and speak. Notions of manipulating the memory with images, places, and signs is replaced with a techno-scientific inscription in Guyau’s comparison: “Upon speaking into a phonograph, the vibrations of one’s voice are transferred into a point that engraves lines on a metal plate…in analogous ways, invisible lines are incessantly carved into the brain cells” (qtd. in Kittler 1999, 30-31).<br />
<br />
Freud’s use of the [[mystic-writing pad]] as an analogy for the psyche also revises the idea of memory and inscription. Freud dismisses mnemonics right off the bat: “If I distrust my memory,” he begins, “I am able to supplement and guarantee its working by making a note in writing” (Freud 227). External “devices to aid memory” (228) are imperfect compared to our own sensory apparatus, however, which “has an unlimited receptive capacity for new perceptions and nevertheless lays down permanent—even though not unalterable—memory-traces of them” (228). Though he distrusts his memory, Freud echoes the ancient Greeks in imagining the psychic apparatus as a remediation of the wax tablet: the mystic-writing pad. Unlike the imagined mnemonic tablet, however, Freud’s pad is not consciously inscribed, but “receives perceptions (which are accompanied—but are not consciously manipulated—"by consciousness)and passes the excitation on to the unconscious mnemic systems” (231).<br />
<br />
Though these modern articulations of the mind destabilize the ability of human memory (assumed by mnemonics) and man’s conscious power over it (and symbolized by wax), they are haunted by the idea of control and power that they repress. Guyau and Freud participate in the same endeavor to represent the black box of the mind, reiterating the art of memory via technological and psycho-scientific metaphor.<br />
<br />
==Obsolescence and the Changing Thinker==<br />
<br />
<br />
According to Yates, the quest for improved memory through artificial mnemonic systems emerges as a critical part of our attempt to organize knowledge and impose an understandable order on a chaotic world. Mnemonics were one such attempt, and although they are very efficient at storing information in packages that allow for easy retrieval they are rarely used today, in part because it is decreasingly relevant or important to remember things. As Nietzsche observed, "our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts" ([http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ Carr]). The way we interact with information has changed drastically since a time before writing, thus changing the way we think. To cite the oft-relevant Jonathan Crary, audiences need to be trained to use new mediums and technologies (Crary 6), and it seems as though our new technologies our shaping the way we seek out, take in, and digest information. <br />
<br />
When the printing press was invented by Johann Gutenberg in the early 1450s, memory techniques started to lose their prominence. People were suddenly able to record history, genealogies, law codes and stories without committing them to memory. With easy access to computer databases and the Internet, the need for mnemonic devices is has faded even further. This shift in thinking was pointed out in a recent article published in the New York Times: "Why bother remembering the clever poem that tells the value of pi to 21 places (3.141592653589793238462) when you can look it up online and get a virtual googol of places? Why is it necessary in this information age to remember most thing, except maybe your user name and password(s)?" ([http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html Rosenthal]). Clive Thompson summed up the change in thinking even more succinctly in [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson ''Wired''] magazine: "Almost without noticing it, we've outsourced important peripheral brain functions to the silicon around us." In a time when memory was the only storage device or at least one of the most efficient, mnemonics were an obvious form of mediation, but as new technologies have become available making it simple to find almost any fact in a few quick keystrokes and a quick skimming of a web page, those old strategies have become less necessary. It is not surprising mnemonics have largely disappeared. We have found new ways to solve the problem of retaining important details. Perhaps this modern resistance to memorization masks an anxiety caused by a diminished sense of our own mnemonic capabilities (Cambor 2001) due to developments in technology and the emergence of psychoanalysis, or perhaps memory itself is a dying medium.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
* Carr, Nicholas. [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"] ''The Atlantic''. The Atlantic Monthly Group, July-Aug. 2008. Web. 10 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Crary, Jonathan. ''Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century''. Boston: MIT Press, 1992.<br />
* de Man, Paul. ''Aesthetic Ideology''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Dissemination''. New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 2004.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Speech and phenomena: and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs''. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. <br />
* Donald Phillip Verene, Vico’s Science of Imagination (Ithaca, 1981), 96-126<br />
* Fentress, James and Chris Wickham (1992) Social Memory. Oxford: Blackwell. <br />
* Freud, Sigmund. ''The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud''. Ed. James Strachey. London: The Hogarth Press, 1961.<br />
* Kittler, Friedrich A. ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.<br />
* --. ''Gramophone, Film, Typewriter''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton. ''The Art of Memory Reconceived: From Rhetoric to Psychoanalysis''. Journal of the History of Ideas, 48(3), 371-392<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton, "The new science of giambattista Vico: Historicism in its Relation to Poetics" ''Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism'', 30 (1972), 362-64<br />
* Rosenthal, Jack. [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html "Mnemonics."] ''New York Times''. New York Times Company, 17 July 2005. Web. 11 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Ronell, Avital. "Scoring Literature: The Drug Culture". (Lecture, NYU, 4/8/10).<br />
* Thompson, Clive. [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson "Your Outboard Brain Knows All"] ''Wired''. Conde Nast Digital, 25 Sept. 2007. Web. 11. Apr. 2010.<br />
* Vismann, Cornelia. ''Files: Law and Media Technology''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008.<br />
* Yates, Frances A. ''The Art of Memory''. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966.<br />
* Zielinski, Siegfried. ''Deep Time of the Media''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
==External Links==<br />
* [http://www.eudesign.com/mnems/_mnframe.htm Mnemonics] - a list of a number of standardized mnemonic devices<br />
* [http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-memory.htm How Human Memory Works] - a simple overview of the mental process<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Mnemonics&diff=8597Mnemonics2010-04-12T15:31:15Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Memory Palace as Afterimage and Trace */</p>
<hr />
<div><div style="text-align:center;">"'''M'''nemonics '''N'''eatly '''E'''liminate '''M'''an's '''O'''nly '''N'''emesis ('''I'''nsufficient '''C'''erebral '''S'''torage)"</div><br />
<br />
Mnemonics, or the art of memory, is today regarded as an arcane intellectual interest. It functions on the periphery of popular culture, largely through a literature of self-help designed to bolster the confidence of those insecure about their powers of recollection. If it is a useful skill, it is not an essential one in a civilization whose collective memory is securely stored in the printed word and, more recently, in digital media. Today’s archive exists in the library or the personal computer, not in the depths of a well-ordered mind. <br />
<br />
Most of the mnemonic devices and techniques that remain today are simple and standardized. They are tools for remembering sequences of information, especially for recall in testing situations. Rather than learning general mnemonic tricks, students are left with specific rhymes or sentences to remember, for example: "Roy G. Biv" to remember the colors of the rainbow; "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally" for the algebraic order of operations; and "lefty, loosey; righty, tighty" for mechanics. Despite the longevity of some of these specific mnemonics, however, they are but a mere suggestion of the much more complex and widespread mnemonic strategies of yesteryear: from the wandering rhapsody of ancient Greece who enthralled listeners with the epic tales of Homer to the philosophers of the Renaissance who constructed imaginary memory palaces to present their intricate designs of the cosmos. This dossier will explore mnemonics as a mode of mediation that stored knowledge in a world invested in the authority of the spoken word, and strove to represent and control the historically black-boxed functioning of human memory.<br />
<br />
[[File:Erinnern.jpg|right|]]<br />
<br />
==Historical Sketch of Old Works on Mnemonics==<br />
[[File:10133 vico dipintura.gif|400px|thumb|left|Cover image from Giambattista Vico's book ''The New Science''. Each symbol was mean to help the reader recall all of the ideas in the book.]]<br />
<br />
“A memory consists in the awareness, first, of the diminished intensity of an impression, second, of its increased ease, and third, of the connections it entertains with other impressions” (Kittler 1999, 31).<br />
<br />
Long before transcription existed, there have been oral records of events in history: genealogies. In medieval Iceland, administrators of the law had to commit their entire juridical system to memory (Fentress and Wickham, 1992). In Ireland, bards would study for twelve years in order to memorize over 500 stories, as well as genealogies of all the leading Irish families (MacManus, 1967).<br />
<br />
The key understanding of the nature of memory, Giambattista Vico contends in his book "The New Science" (1725), is derived from the direct correspondence between image and idea in primitive poetic language. In the beginnings of civilization, image and idea were one. Primitive peoples possessed robust memories because of the inseparable association they made between images and ideas in their comprehension of the world. They thought metaphorically, and the metaphors that they uttered were easily mimicked and remembered because they were richly expressive, grandiose, and full of wonder at the world. Vico revealed that the link between human imagination and the universe that the Renaissance Neoplatonists had sought to discover magically was in fact born historically in the development of human consciousness (Verene, 101). <br />
<br />
The source of mnemonist’s method is visible in the poetic logic of Vico’s theory of the emergence of human consciousness. That theory, too, involves the relationship between places and images, which Vico labels ''topics'' and ''tropes''. Topics were the poetic of formulae through which primitive people identified the phenomena of the world. As imaginative representations of particular aspects of realty, they provided common places or fixed points of reference amidst the flux of sense experience (Yates, 31). Considered in this context, Vico’s new art of memory becomes a retrospective search for connection between our present conceptions and the lost poetic images out of which they were born. In the logic of Vichian poetics, the new art of memory is a reconstruction of the imaginative process by which the poets of antiquity gave shape to their perception of the world. Therein the imaginative sources of our present ideas are to be found. The original topic might be linked to a palimpsest, repeatedly covered over with more abstract imagery as the human mind historically ascended the tropological gradient of linguistic expression. Vico’s art of memory was to decipher each tropological layer along the way until the original metaphorical topic, long forgotten, was recalled to mind (Hutton, 379).<br />
<br />
=== Freud's theory as a reverse mnemonics ===<br />
<br />
If mnemonics lay at the source of Romantic soul-searching (both personal and collective), the techniques themselves were only rarely the subject of introspective comment. It was left to Sigmund Freud at the turn of the 20th century to explain the role of memory in introspection in terms of a mnemonic code (Hutton, 386). In his theory of screen memories, Freud posits the constructive power of the unconscious mind to shape recollection. Forgetting rather than remembering is what we wish to do, he argues, because it is easier to live with a screen of fantasies rather than face the reality of our past. To use his terminology, memory is tendentious in that it reflects unconscious psychic intent. In this respect the Unconscious is the guardian of memory, legislating the selection of what is remembered, and what is repressed or hidden away. As an art of memory, therefore, psychoanalysis is a technique for deciphering the psychic intent encoded in screen memories (Hutton, 388). As we elaborate below, Freud's theory of the Unconscious, and of the forces of repression and trauma that affect the psyche, is incompatible with the classical lineage of mnemonics that assumes the individual's conscious control over his or her memory.<br />
<br />
==The Technology of Memory==<br />
[[File:Room 07 Fludd0002.jpg|thumb|computerized memory theater]]<br />
===How Mnemonics Work===<br />
<br />
Mnemonics may be viewed as storage devices for information in the human mind. The brain, however, is like a black box, and has been throughout human history: many of its operations are a mystery, and we are still just uncovering how it accomplishes many of the tasks we take for granted. Memory is one such process that captured the imaginations of pre-modern thinkers, and that contemporary scientists are still trying to understand. However, there are a few things that have been discovered over the years about how mnemonics function. The process of remembering is split up into different steps: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Mnemonics are involved with encoding. The best way to learn things, or encode them, is to associate them with other things. In people's mind, "apple" will often be associated with "red" and "round." By retrieving the concept of "red," the memory of "apple" will also be triggered. Mnemonics capitalize on this principle by creating more entry points to different pieces of information.<br />
<br />
At first glance, mnemonics may seem rather counter-intuitive because they require one to remember more information in order to solve the problem of remembering something else entirely. Rather than simply remembering one date, 1492 for example, mnemonics ask that you remember a poem: "In 1492 / Columbus sailed the ocean blue." More information is required in an attempt to lodge an initial piece of information in one's mind. While this technique seems rather contradictory, it works because it creates associations, or configurations of information more likely to stick in one's memory. A useful metaphor may be that a memory is a series of files. Mnemonics store bits of information in a number of different files through which to access the information.<br />
<br />
===Arbitrariness and the Cake-Mix Effect===<br />
<br />
In many mnemonic systems, the specifics of the "extra" information one learns to create associations is often entirely arbitrary and can be adapted for each individual. Much like pre-packaged cake mix, mnemonic techniques offer a basic structure, but the particular words and connections that will best work for an individual mind must be added to the formula for it to function. For example, a common strategy for remembering an ordered list is to remember the first letter of each item and put together a new sentence in which each of the words starts with one of the letters needing to be remembered, in the proper order. So if one wanted to remember biological taxonomic classifications from broadest to most specific ('''K'''ingdom, '''P'''hylum, '''C'''lass, '''O'''rder, '''F'''amily, '''G'''enus, '''S'''pecies, '''V'''ariety), one need construct a new sentence in which each subsequent word starts with the next letter in order (K,P,C,O,F,G,S,V). Each individual might have a different sentence that works best for him or her, however. So while one student might find it most advantageous to remember "'''K'''ing '''P'''hilip's '''C'''lassic '''O'''rder: '''F'''amily '''G'''enius - '''S'''pecial '''V'''alue'" another might find it easier to remember "'''K'''indly '''P'''lace '''C'''over '''O'''n '''F'''resh '''G'''reen '''S'''pring '''V'''egetables." This flexibility makes mnemonics a useful set of strategies, and the failure of these techniques is often dependent on the arbitrary information filled into the system. If someone fails to remember the order of the taxonomical classes it is usually because the sentence used is not the best for the user. Many mnemonic systems work in this manner, tailored to the individual mind. One prime historical example of this is the memory palace.<br />
<br />
==Method of Loci==<br />
<br />
A poetic, time-honored example of the method of loci may be found in the cosmology of Australian aborigines, whose ancestors are said to have sung the world into existence (Cambor, 2001). Every rock and crevice of the outback has a song associated with it, and the traveler knows their location exactly by their place in the song, the words of which corresponds to their physical surroundings. These songs have been transcribed to aid in the understanding of the geology of the continent. Across the globe, in Ancient Rome, mnemonics were used by lawyers to remember the points they wanted to make in a lawsuit. The method of loci was first formally described by Quitilian, a first century Roman rhetorician. As the historian Frances Yates describes in her book ''The Art of Memory'', the most common forms of the method of loci are memory palaces, memory theaters, and memory gardens. <br />
<br />
===Case Study or Trace Study of the Memory Palace===<br />
[[File:Fludd-the-art-of-memory-89.jpg|thumb|right|Engraving by Robert Fludd revealing memory attached to images]]<br />
<br />
Memory Palaces are methods of loci which use an imagined architecture to structure a speech based on associations of symbols. They are a spatialized remediation of association. Before memory palaces were implemented, hieroglyphs and other forms of picture writing were already using symbols to stand in for words and ideas. Memory palaces abstract this notion of association and complicate in order to allow one to remember hundreds of ideas. While mnemonics can be written down, the memory palace is completely imagined, and therefore the process and the media is black boxed within the mind of the subject, and like Iris, the message or information is internalized. This method was developed out of a human lack, and the need to remember large amounts of information. When using the memory palace, one needs only to remember the symbols, after which the encoded information becomes unlocked like the chirograph which connects to its counterpart. Memory palaces were constructed out of an anxiety for memory being lost, but in reality it is always already lost. <br />
<br />
This mode of mediation is based on location, but it itself has no location and exists as a non-space that stores imagined data. The subject that uses the memory palace becomes split and is forced to inhabit two realities as one must imagine walking through the memory palace and picking up each predetermined object while simultaneously being rooted in a physical space and delivering a live speech to an audience. The subject must navigate the memory palace like an automaton on automatic pilot but cannot get fully immersed or lost in it. Discipline of the mind and the body is necessary since the subject cannot think, but must become a machine and instrument for the reading of memory. <br />
<br />
====The Mechanization of Memory====<br />
<br />
Hegel discusses memory in two terms: “Erinnerung” and “Gedächtnis.” Erinnerung for Hegel is recollection, memory based on learning and internalization. It therefore has a relationship to the past and to a missing Other. Gedächtnis is the forgetting of meaning in favor of memorization and technologized memory, just as the technologization of speech through the act of writing represents the erasure of speech and the marking of its becoming forgotten. Gedächtnis acts as the simulacrum and mechanical reproduction of memory emptied of its original and of meaning (Ronell, 2010). Memory palaces fall under Gedächtnis, as they are a phantom crutch or prosthetic for remembering which can be easily dismantled and forgotten. The technique does reflect Erinnerung in that it calls to its missing Other which is the real house, but, because reality of the memory palace is artificially constructed, it has no relationship to the past. The associations within the memory palace are also artificial, revealing the manipulation of memory which becomes something external that can be altered and changed. Derrida writes, “What Plato is attacking in sophistics, therefore, is not simply recourse to memory but, within such recourse, the substitution of the mnemonic device for live memory, of the prosthesis for the organ; the perversion that consists of replacing a limb by a thing, here, substituting the passive, mechanical ‘by-heart’ for the active reanimation of knowledge, for its reproduction in the present. The boundary (between inside and outside, living and nonliving) separates not only speech from writing but also memory as an unveiling (re-)producing a presence from re-memoration as the mere repetition of a monument…(Derrida 109).” Paul de Man elaborates on the contradictory nature of Gedächtnis and Erinnerung, “Memory effaces remembrance (or recollection) just as the I effaces itself. The faculty that enables thought to exist also makes its preservation impossible. The art, the ''techné'', of writing which cannot be separated from thought and from memorization can only be preserved in the figural mode of the symbol, the very mode it has to do away with if it is to occur at all (de Man 102).” Here, Gedächtnis effaces Erinnerung, like mechanical reproduction effaces the original, and writing effaces speech.<br />
<br />
====Memory Palace as Afterimage and Trace====<br />
[[File:Afterimage1.JPG|thumb|left]]<br />
The effacing of Erinnerung caused by Gedächtnis also speaks to the idea of an afterimage which effaces the original image. The memory palace is an afterimage and faint impression of one’s home which it replaces. Jonathan Crary writes that the afterimage “…allowed one to conceive of sensory perception as cut from any necessary link with an external referent. The afterimage – the presence of sensation in the absence of a stimulus – and its subsequent modulations posed a theoretical and empirical demonstration of autonomous vision, of an optical experience that was produced by and within the subject (Crary 98).” The afterimage of the memory palace is detachable, once it is created the originary house isn’t necessary to evoke it, rather it can be evoked independently by the subject. Memory palaces, while seeming to be about semiotics, have more to do with Derrida's concept of the "trace." Derrida writes, “The trace is not a presence but is rather the simulacrum of a presence that dislocates, displaces, and refers beyond itself. The trace has, properly speaking, no place, for effacement belongs to the very structure of the trace. Effacement must always be able to overtake the trace; otherwise it would not be a trace but an indestructible and monumental substance (Derrida 156).” The trace refers to that which is no longer present, leaving only the reliced remains to be read.<br />
<br />
====Memory as Archive and Crypt====<br />
[[File:044MemoryBook200.jpg|thumb|right|]]<br />
Memory palaces are a static archive of files. Vismann writes, “The immobile tomes are their own tombs...The immobilization amounts to a musealization, creating a work of art out of files (Vismann 161-162).” The memory palace echoes this sentiment and acts more as a mausoleum than a museum. The frozen architecture of the memory palace is doubled by the frozen images within it, turning the palace into a crypt. The shaping of the memory palace into a petrified and dead picture reveals the artifice of constructed memory. Its static and spectral quality lends it to the space of the crypt and removes it from the space of the living. It is the dead memory that must be summoned by the speaker, called to as the missing Other, and resurrected into the present.<br />
<br />
====Forgetting====<br />
Memory Palaces must be practiced, otherwise they are prone to being forgotten. They are meant to be remembered for a specific event, such as a specific speech, but once the event has passed, the memory palace recedes, shatters, and erases itself into the depths of the mystic writing pad’s unconscious. The memory palace, then, is made to be forgotten. Vismann writes, “With one sharp and one blunt end, the stylus unites writing and erasing, those two fundamental chancery operations, in one instrument. Herein lies an analogy to the workings of memory: just as the Greek verb hypomnematizesthai equates filing and remembering, its opposite, exaleiphein, combines a practical act and a function of memory by referring both to forgetting and wiping off (Vismann 55).” In this sense the memory palace is obliterated and becomes buried as a trace and remnant. Memory and forgetting work as though in a circuit, the production of one is almost always the production of the other, to remember one thing often causes one to forget another less relevant thing. Vismann also discusses forgetting as enabling memory, just as the afterimage or trace enables the original image, or the second gives birth to the first. Mechanical reproduction also enables the original, revealing the necessity of the copy and the negation in order to preserve the referent. There is only so much space in the human brain, therefore acquiring new information or new memories must also imply a certain amount of forgetting.<br />
<br />
==Mnemonic Expression: Writing Secrets and Speaking the Mind==<br />
<br />
''The art of memory is like an inner writing'' - Frances Yates.<br />
<br />
While mnemonic techniques were designed for oral performance without visible written aid, they were, from a Derridean perspective, systems of representation organized by writing. Rather than utilizing writing to externalize memory, mnemonics structured texts to correlate with the (variously imagined) inner mechanisms of the psyche. Mnemonics shaped poetics via rhyme and meter, for instance, rendering the text structurally uniform so that it might be more easily remembered and spoken. Mnemonic technique thus interfaced between speech and writing, presence and trace. In the same vein, mnemonics mediated between the interior mind and the external world, articulating both. Mnemonics are thus not simply storage techniques but expression: a form of writing (or ''art'' of memory) that reveals historically deviant memories and, in attempting to control its input and output, represents the persistently black-boxed functioning of the human mind.<br />
<br />
===Mnemonics as cryptography===<br />
<br />
As a mode of mediation, mnemonics represent a curious combination of semiotics and functional nonsense. Mnemonic signs (images, places, phrases) must be nearly evacuated of meaning in order to cue—but not replace—the desired information actively attached to (or associated with) them. From this perspective, articulated above [http://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php/Mnemonics#Arbitrariness_and_the_Cake-Mix_Effect], mnemonics functioned as a storage technique comprised of arbitrary signifiers (like Roy G. Biv) rather than a communicative semantic system. The seemingly nonsensical functioning of mnemonics, however, leaves open the opportunity for obfuscation. If mnemonics could be 'objectively' coded for memory, then they could also perform as encrypted transmission.<br />
<br />
====Giordano Bruno's magic mnemonics====<br />
<br />
Giordano Bruno, a Dominican friar and peripatetic philosopher famous for his “amazing powers of recollection” (Zielinski 72) provides a historical example of the cryptographic, communicative potential of mnemonics in the late 16th century. Bruno was eventually burned at the stake during the Inquisition for his use of magic and allegiance to hermeticism: a philosophy named for Hermes and based in Egyptian astrology, which, needless to say, clashed with Christian doctrine. In The Deep Time of The Media, Siegfried Zielinski links hermetic tradition (which persisted into the Renaissance but had to be promulgated secretly) to the “subhistory” stemming from “the passion for encrypting and deciphering texts runs through the sciences” since the 13th century (Zielinski 73). He also notes that cryptography made particular demands on memory and was thus bound to mnemonic ability (83). Bruno took this relationship one step further. In his writings and teachings, Bruno endeavored to both transmit and internalize hermetic secrets through mnemonic technique. <br />
[[Image: bruno_memory_wheel.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|Frances Yates' rendition of Giordano Bruno's mnemonic wheel described in ''Shadows'' (1582).]] “The secret was the combination of the Hermetic beliefs with the techniques of the art of memory” (Yates 305) writes Frances Yates, so that these “memory systems” became “a mode of transmitting a religion, or an ethic, or some message of universal import” (387). <br />
<br />
Bruno’s system of “magic mnemonics” (Yates 223) hinged on his belief that the memorization of significant images enabled the "harnessing of the inner world of the imagination to the stars, or reproducing the the celestial world within" (215). Memory, for Bruno, was thus a dioptric medium, allowing the passage of the sublime order of the heavens into the individual psyche, "arriving at the vision within of the One light diffused through all" (230). This divine lumen, however, was guarded by catoptric technique. Bruno's mnemonic system was based the arrangement of intricate wheels of astral symbols and magic images. Bruno's first book on the art of memory is aptly titled ''Shadows'': as Yates observes, there is “Circaean mystification at the heart of this memory treatise” (247). Bruno’s mnemonic code thus had a dual function to reveal and conceal. He sought to at once unify the human imagination and the celestial order through memory, and to keep this mnemonic recipe secret, decipherable only by those who understood hermetic principles and believed in magic.<br />
<br />
===Written in wax===<br />
<br />
Wax—the inscription media associated with classical rhetoric and art of memory—was remediated in recording technology and psychoanalytic discourse at the turn of the 20th century. Through a brief comparison of modern and antique articulations of wax as the material substrate of memory, we may glimpse how the rise and fall of mnemonics is subject to the imagined materiality—and malleability—of the mind.<br />
<br />
====Antique imaginary: the obvious====<br />
<br />
Cicero’s ''De oratore'' (finished in 55 B.C.E.) is among the earliest treatises describing mnemonics as a rhetorical art (Yates 17). Cicero credits Simonides with the invention of the art of memory, when, with “with almost divine powers of memory,” he “wrote down what he wanted to remember in certain places in his possession by means of images, just as if he were describing letters on wax” (qtd. in Yates 19). Yates interprets Cicero’s portrayal of the origin of mnemonics as “an inner writing on wax” (19): Simonides internalizes the wax tablet, the medium for recording speech that Phaedrus famously concealed under his cloak in Plato’s dialogue. Cornelia Vismann identifies wax as the key medium in the shift from oral to written legal and administrative culture in the West. “To synchronize speech and writing,” Vismann describes, “the speedwriters or exceptores responsible for files and protocols drew their letters in wax, which, in Quintilian’s words, puts up as little resistance to inscribing as it does to erasing” (Vismann 55). These speedwriters also assigned to take down the senate minutes, which “in search for the aura of the authentic,” “aim[ed] for [a] presentist effect” (54). Mnemonic systems were also designed to uphold these cultural values of presence and authenticity, and were analogous to wax in their ability to suture oral performance and written record.<br />
[[Image: waxtablet.jpg|left|300px|thumb|A Grecian wax tablet.]]<br />
Wax was thus the obvious material through (and on) which to describe mnemonics, which interfaced between speech and writing. The metaphor has an additional layer: as a malleable, hand-held medium, the wax tablet suggests that the memory is likewise easily manipulable by an autonomous author. Cicero renders Simonides as the authorial agent of his inner wax tablet, and thus in control of his memory. Nearly two millennia later, during the modern turn, the idea that one could rely on—let alone control—one’s memory was undercut by the development of recording technologies and the rise of psychoanalytic theories of trauma and repression. Curiously, at this historical moment, the connection between wax and memory that once portrayed both mnemonics and the inner-workings of the classical mind is again applied to the mind. This later incarnation of inner wax, however, is not subject to authorial intent, but inscribed upon by machines and the Unconscious.<br />
<br />
====Modern memory: the return of the repressed?====<br />
<br />
Two notable depictions of wax as the material substrate of memory bracket Kittler’s year 1900: Jean-Marie Guyau’s Memory and Phonograph (1880) and Sigmund Freud’s Note Upon the ‘Mystic-Writing Pad’ (1925). “What good are the poetic mnemonic techniques of rhyme and meter when wax rolls can store not only substance and tone but real sounds?” (Kittler 1992, 236), Kittler asks in ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Guyau addressed this anxiety of the inferiority of human memory and the limits of language early on by claiming the phonograph as the most exact metaphor for man’s ability to record and recite—to read, write, and speak. Notions of manipulating the memory with images, places, and signs is replaced with a techno-scientific inscription in Guyau’s comparison: “Upon speaking into a phonograph, the vibrations of one’s voice are transferred into a point that engraves lines on a metal plate…in analogous ways, invisible lines are incessantly carved into the brain cells” (qtd. in Kittler 1999, 30-31).<br />
<br />
Freud’s use of the [[mystic-writing pad]] as an analogy for the psyche also revises the idea of memory and inscription. Freud dismisses mnemonics right off the bat: “If I distrust my memory,” he begins, “I am able to supplement and guarantee its working by making a note in writing” (Freud 227). External “devices to aid memory” (228) are imperfect compared to our own sensory apparatus, however, which “has an unlimited receptive capacity for new perceptions and nevertheless lays down permanent—even though not unalterable—memory-traces of them” (228). Though he distrusts his memory, Freud echoes the ancient Greeks in imagining the psychic apparatus as a remediation of the wax tablet: the mystic-writing pad. Unlike the imagined mnemonic tablet, however, Freud’s pad is not consciously inscribed, but “receives perceptions (which are accompanied—but are not consciously manipulated—"by consciousness)and passes the excitation on to the unconscious mnemic systems” (231).<br />
<br />
Though these modern articulations of the mind destabilize the ability of human memory (assumed by mnemonics) and man’s conscious power over it (and symbolized by wax), they are haunted by the idea of control and power that they repress. Guyau and Freud participate in the same endeavor to represent the black box of the mind, reiterating the art of memory via technological and psycho-scientific metaphor.<br />
<br />
==Obsolescence and the Changing Thinker==<br />
<br />
<br />
According to Yates, the quest for improved memory through artificial mnemonic systems emerges as a critical part of our attempt to organize knowledge and impose an understandable order on a chaotic world. Mnemonics were one such attempt, and although they are very efficient at storing information in packages that allow for easy retrieval they are rarely used today, in part because it is decreasingly relevant or important to remember things. As Nietzsche observed, "our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts" ([http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ Carr]). The way we interact with information has changed drastically since a time before writing, thus changing the way we think. To cite the oft-relevant Jonathan Crary, audiences need to be trained to use new mediums and technologies (Crary 6), and it seems as though our new technologies our shaping the way we seek out, take in, and digest information. <br />
<br />
When the printing press was invented by Johann Gutenberg in the early 1450s, memory techniques started to lose their prominence. People were suddenly able to record history, genealogies, law codes and stories without committing them to memory. With easy access to computer databases and the Internet, the need for mnemonic devices is has faded even further. This shift in thinking was pointed out in a recent article published in the New York Times: "Why bother remembering the clever poem that tells the value of pi to 21 places (3.141592653589793238462) when you can look it up online and get a virtual googol of places? Why is it necessary in this information age to remember most thing, except maybe your user name and password(s)?" ([http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html Rosenthal]). Clive Thompson summed up the change in thinking even more succinctly in [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson ''Wired''] magazine: "Almost without noticing it, we've outsourced important peripheral brain functions to the silicon around us." In a time when memory was the only storage device or at least one of the most efficient, mnemonics were an obvious form of mediation, but as new technologies have become available making it simple to find almost any fact in a few quick keystrokes and a quick skimming of a web page, those old strategies have become less necessary. It is not surprising mnemonics have largely disappeared. We have found new ways to solve the problem of retaining important details. Perhaps this modern resistance to memorization masks an anxiety caused by a diminished sense of our own mnemonic capabilities (Cambor 2001) due to developments in technology and the emergence of psychoanalysis, or perhaps memory itself is a dying medium.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
* Carr, Nicholas. [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"] ''The Atlantic''. The Atlantic Monthly Group, July-Aug. 2008. Web. 10 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Crary, Jonathan. ''Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century''. Boston: MIT Press, 1992.<br />
* de Man, Paul. ''Aesthetic Ideology''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Dissemination''. New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 2004.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Speech and phenomena: and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs''. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. <br />
* Donald Phillip Verene, Vico’s Science of Imagination (Ithaca, 1981), 96-126<br />
* Fentress, James and Chris Wickham (1992) Social Memory. Oxford: Blackwell. <br />
* Freud, Sigmund. ''The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud''. Ed. James Strachey. London: The Hogarth Press, 1961.<br />
* Kittler, Friedrich A. ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.<br />
* --. ''Gramophone, Film, Typewriter''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton. ''The Art of Memory Reconceived: From Rhetoric to Psychoanalysis''. Journal of the History of Ideas, 48(3), 371-392<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton, "The new science of giambattista Vico: Historicism in its Relation to Poetics" ''Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism'', 30 (1972), 362-64<br />
* Rosenthal, Jack. [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html "Mnemonics."] ''New York Times''. New York Times Company, 17 July 2005. Web. 11 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Ronell, Avital. "Scoring Literature: The Drug Culture". (Lecture, NYU, 4/8/10).<br />
* Thompson, Clive. [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson "Your Outboard Brain Knows All"] ''Wired''. Conde Nast Digital, 25 Sept. 2007. Web. 11. Apr. 2010.<br />
* Vismann, Cornelia. ''Files: Law and Media Technology''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008.<br />
* Yates, Frances A. ''The Art of Memory''. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966.<br />
* Zielinski, Siegfried. ''Deep Time of the Media''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
==External Links==<br />
* [http://www.eudesign.com/mnems/_mnframe.htm Mnemonics] - a list of a number of standardized mnemonic devices<br />
* [http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-memory.htm How Human Memory Works] - a simple overview of the mental process<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Mnemonics&diff=8595Mnemonics2010-04-12T15:26:48Z<p>Gillian Young: /* The Mechanization of Memory */</p>
<hr />
<div><div style="text-align:center;">"'''M'''nemonics '''N'''eatly '''E'''liminate '''M'''an's '''O'''nly '''N'''emesis ('''I'''nsufficient '''C'''erebral '''S'''torage)"</div><br />
<br />
Mnemonics, or the art of memory, is today regarded as an arcane intellectual interest. It functions on the periphery of popular culture, largely through a literature of self-help designed to bolster the confidence of those insecure about their powers of recollection. If it is a useful skill, it is not an essential one in a civilization whose collective memory is securely stored in the printed word and, more recently, in digital media. Today’s archive exists in the library or the personal computer, not in the depths of a well-ordered mind. <br />
<br />
Most of the mnemonic devices and techniques that remain today are simple and standardized. They are tools for remembering sequences of information, especially for recall in testing situations. Rather than learning general mnemonic tricks, students are left with specific rhymes or sentences to remember, for example: "Roy G. Biv" to remember the colors of the rainbow; "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally" for the algebraic order of operations; and "lefty, loosey; righty, tighty" for mechanics. Despite the longevity of some of these specific mnemonics, however, they are but a mere suggestion of the much more complex and widespread mnemonic strategies of yesteryear: from the wandering rhapsody of ancient Greece who enthralled listeners with the epic tales of Homer to the philosophers of the Renaissance who constructed imaginary memory palaces to present their intricate designs of the cosmos. This dossier will explore mnemonics as a mode of mediation that stored knowledge in a world invested in the authority of the spoken word, and strove to represent and control the historically black-boxed functioning of human memory.<br />
<br />
[[File:Erinnern.jpg|right|]]<br />
<br />
==Historical Sketch of Old Works on Mnemonics==<br />
[[File:10133 vico dipintura.gif|400px|thumb|left|Cover image from Giambattista Vico's book ''The New Science''. Each symbol was mean to help the reader recall all of the ideas in the book.]]<br />
<br />
“A memory consists in the awareness, first, of the diminished intensity of an impression, second, of its increased ease, and third, of the connections it entertains with other impressions” (Kittler 1999, 31).<br />
<br />
Long before transcription existed, there have been oral records of events in history: genealogies. In medieval Iceland, administrators of the law had to commit their entire juridical system to memory (Fentress and Wickham, 1992). In Ireland, bards would study for twelve years in order to memorize over 500 stories, as well as genealogies of all the leading Irish families (MacManus, 1967).<br />
<br />
The key understanding of the nature of memory, Giambattista Vico contends in his book "The New Science" (1725), is derived from the direct correspondence between image and idea in primitive poetic language. In the beginnings of civilization, image and idea were one. Primitive peoples possessed robust memories because of the inseparable association they made between images and ideas in their comprehension of the world. They thought metaphorically, and the metaphors that they uttered were easily mimicked and remembered because they were richly expressive, grandiose, and full of wonder at the world. Vico revealed that the link between human imagination and the universe that the Renaissance Neoplatonists had sought to discover magically was in fact born historically in the development of human consciousness (Verene, 101). <br />
<br />
The source of mnemonist’s method is visible in the poetic logic of Vico’s theory of the emergence of human consciousness. That theory, too, involves the relationship between places and images, which Vico labels ''topics'' and ''tropes''. Topics were the poetic of formulae through which primitive people identified the phenomena of the world. As imaginative representations of particular aspects of realty, they provided common places or fixed points of reference amidst the flux of sense experience (Yates, 31). Considered in this context, Vico’s new art of memory becomes a retrospective search for connection between our present conceptions and the lost poetic images out of which they were born. In the logic of Vichian poetics, the new art of memory is a reconstruction of the imaginative process by which the poets of antiquity gave shape to their perception of the world. Therein the imaginative sources of our present ideas are to be found. The original topic might be linked to a palimpsest, repeatedly covered over with more abstract imagery as the human mind historically ascended the tropological gradient of linguistic expression. Vico’s art of memory was to decipher each tropological layer along the way until the original metaphorical topic, long forgotten, was recalled to mind (Hutton, 379).<br />
<br />
=== Freud's theory as a reverse mnemonics ===<br />
<br />
If mnemonics lay at the source of Romantic soul-searching (both personal and collective), the techniques themselves were only rarely the subject of introspective comment. It was left to Sigmund Freud at the turn of the 20th century to explain the role of memory in introspection in terms of a mnemonic code (Hutton, 386). In his theory of screen memories, Freud posits the constructive power of the unconscious mind to shape recollection. Forgetting rather than remembering is what we wish to do, he argues, because it is easier to live with a screen of fantasies rather than face the reality of our past. To use his terminology, memory is tendentious in that it reflects unconscious psychic intent. In this respect the Unconscious is the guardian of memory, legislating the selection of what is remembered, and what is repressed or hidden away. As an art of memory, therefore, psychoanalysis is a technique for deciphering the psychic intent encoded in screen memories (Hutton, 388). As we elaborate below, Freud's theory of the Unconscious, and of the forces of repression and trauma that affect the psyche, is incompatible with the classical lineage of mnemonics that assumes the individual's conscious control over his or her memory.<br />
<br />
==The Technology of Memory==<br />
[[File:Room 07 Fludd0002.jpg|thumb|computerized memory theater]]<br />
===How Mnemonics Work===<br />
<br />
Mnemonics may be viewed as storage devices for information in the human mind. The brain, however, is like a black box, and has been throughout human history: many of its operations are a mystery, and we are still just uncovering how it accomplishes many of the tasks we take for granted. Memory is one such process that captured the imaginations of pre-modern thinkers, and that contemporary scientists are still trying to understand. However, there are a few things that have been discovered over the years about how mnemonics function. The process of remembering is split up into different steps: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Mnemonics are involved with encoding. The best way to learn things, or encode them, is to associate them with other things. In people's mind, "apple" will often be associated with "red" and "round." By retrieving the concept of "red," the memory of "apple" will also be triggered. Mnemonics capitalize on this principle by creating more entry points to different pieces of information.<br />
<br />
At first glance, mnemonics may seem rather counter-intuitive because they require one to remember more information in order to solve the problem of remembering something else entirely. Rather than simply remembering one date, 1492 for example, mnemonics ask that you remember a poem: "In 1492 / Columbus sailed the ocean blue." More information is required in an attempt to lodge an initial piece of information in one's mind. While this technique seems rather contradictory, it works because it creates associations, or configurations of information more likely to stick in one's memory. A useful metaphor may be that a memory is a series of files. Mnemonics store bits of information in a number of different files through which to access the information.<br />
<br />
===Arbitrariness and the Cake-Mix Effect===<br />
<br />
In many mnemonic systems, the specifics of the "extra" information one learns to create associations is often entirely arbitrary and can be adapted for each individual. Much like pre-packaged cake mix, mnemonic techniques offer a basic structure, but the particular words and connections that will best work for an individual mind must be added to the formula for it to function. For example, a common strategy for remembering an ordered list is to remember the first letter of each item and put together a new sentence in which each of the words starts with one of the letters needing to be remembered, in the proper order. So if one wanted to remember biological taxonomic classifications from broadest to most specific ('''K'''ingdom, '''P'''hylum, '''C'''lass, '''O'''rder, '''F'''amily, '''G'''enus, '''S'''pecies, '''V'''ariety), one need construct a new sentence in which each subsequent word starts with the next letter in order (K,P,C,O,F,G,S,V). Each individual might have a different sentence that works best for him or her, however. So while one student might find it most advantageous to remember "'''K'''ing '''P'''hilip's '''C'''lassic '''O'''rder: '''F'''amily '''G'''enius - '''S'''pecial '''V'''alue'" another might find it easier to remember "'''K'''indly '''P'''lace '''C'''over '''O'''n '''F'''resh '''G'''reen '''S'''pring '''V'''egetables." This flexibility makes mnemonics a useful set of strategies, and the failure of these techniques is often dependent on the arbitrary information filled into the system. If someone fails to remember the order of the taxonomical classes it is usually because the sentence used is not the best for the user. Many mnemonic systems work in this manner, tailored to the individual mind. One prime historical example of this is the memory palace.<br />
<br />
==Method of Loci==<br />
<br />
A poetic, time-honored example of the method of loci may be found in the cosmology of Australian aborigines, whose ancestors are said to have sung the world into existence (Cambor, 2001). Every rock and crevice of the outback has a song associated with it, and the traveler knows their location exactly by their place in the song, the words of which corresponds to their physical surroundings. These songs have been transcribed to aid in the understanding of the geology of the continent. Across the globe, in Ancient Rome, mnemonics were used by lawyers to remember the points they wanted to make in a lawsuit. The method of loci was first formally described by Quitilian, a first century Roman rhetorician. As the historian Frances Yates describes in her book ''The Art of Memory'', the most common forms of the method of loci are memory palaces, memory theaters, and memory gardens. <br />
<br />
===Case Study or Trace Study of the Memory Palace===<br />
[[File:Fludd-the-art-of-memory-89.jpg|thumb|right|Engraving by Robert Fludd revealing memory attached to images]]<br />
<br />
Memory Palaces are methods of loci which use an imagined architecture to structure a speech based on associations of symbols. They are a spatialized remediation of association. Before memory palaces were implemented, hieroglyphs and other forms of picture writing were already using symbols to stand in for words and ideas. Memory palaces abstract this notion of association and complicate in order to allow one to remember hundreds of ideas. While mnemonics can be written down, the memory palace is completely imagined, and therefore the process and the media is black boxed within the mind of the subject, and like Iris, the message or information is internalized. This method was developed out of a human lack, and the need to remember large amounts of information. When using the memory palace, one needs only to remember the symbols, after which the encoded information becomes unlocked like the chirograph which connects to its counterpart. Memory palaces were constructed out of an anxiety for memory being lost, but in reality it is always already lost. <br />
<br />
This mode of mediation is based on location, but it itself has no location and exists as a non-space that stores imagined data. The subject that uses the memory palace becomes split and is forced to inhabit two realities as one must imagine walking through the memory palace and picking up each predetermined object while simultaneously being rooted in a physical space and delivering a live speech to an audience. The subject must navigate the memory palace like an automaton on automatic pilot but cannot get fully immersed or lost in it. Discipline of the mind and the body is necessary since the subject cannot think, but must become a machine and instrument for the reading of memory. <br />
<br />
====The Mechanization of Memory====<br />
<br />
Hegel discusses memory in two terms: “Erinnerung” and “Gedächtnis.” Erinnerung for Hegel is recollection, memory based on learning and internalization. It therefore has a relationship to the past and to a missing Other. Gedächtnis is the forgetting of meaning in favor of memorization and technologized memory, just as the technologization of speech through the act of writing represents the erasure of speech and the marking of its becoming forgotten. Gedächtnis acts as the simulacrum and mechanical reproduction of memory emptied of its original and of meaning (Ronell, 2010). Memory palaces fall under Gedächtnis, as they are a phantom crutch or prosthetic for remembering which can be easily dismantled and forgotten. The technique does reflect Erinnerung in that it calls to its missing Other which is the real house, but, because reality of the memory palace is artificially constructed, it has no relationship to the past. The associations within the memory palace are also artificial, revealing the manipulation of memory which becomes something external that can be altered and changed. Derrida writes, “What Plato is attacking in sophistics, therefore, is not simply recourse to memory but, within such recourse, the substitution of the mnemonic device for live memory, of the prosthesis for the organ; the perversion that consists of replacing a limb by a thing, here, substituting the passive, mechanical ‘by-heart’ for the active reanimation of knowledge, for its reproduction in the present. The boundary (between inside and outside, living and nonliving) separates not only speech from writing but also memory as an unveiling (re-)producing a presence from re-memoration as the mere repetition of a monument…(Derrida 109).” Paul de Man elaborates on the contradictory nature of Gedächtnis and Erinnerung, “Memory effaces remembrance (or recollection) just as the I effaces itself. The faculty that enables thought to exist also makes its preservation impossible. The art, the ''techné'', of writing which cannot be separated from thought and from memorization can only be preserved in the figural mode of the symbol, the very mode it has to do away with if it is to occur at all (de Man 102).” Here, Gedächtnis effaces Erinnerung, like mechanical reproduction effaces the original, and writing effaces speech.<br />
<br />
====Memory Palace as Afterimage and Trace====<br />
[[File:Afterimage1.JPG|thumb|left]]<br />
The effacing of Erinnerung caused by Gedächtnis also speaks to the idea of an afterimage which effaces the original image. The memory palace, is an afterimage and faint impression of one’s home which it replaces. Jonathan Crary writes that the afterimage, “…allowed one to conceive of sensory perception as cut from any necessary link with an external referent. The afterimage – the presence of sensation in the absence of a stimulus – and its subsequent modulations posed a theoretical and empirical demonstration of autonomous vision, of an optical experience that was produced by and within the subject (Crary 98).” The afterimage of the memory palace is detachable, once it is created the originary house isn’t necessary to evoke it, rather it can be evoked independently by the subject. Memory palaces, while seeming to be about semiotics, have more to do with Derrida's concept of the "trace." Derrida writes, “The trace is not a presence but is rather the simulacrum of a presence that dislocates, displaces, and refers beyond itself. The trace has, properly speaking, no place, for effacement belongs to the very structure of the trace. Effacement must always be able to overtake the trace; otherwise it would not be a trace but an indestructible and monumental substance (Derrida 156).” The trace refers to that which is no longer present, leaving only the reliced remains to be read.<br />
<br />
====Memory as Archive and Crypt====<br />
[[File:044MemoryBook200.jpg|thumb|right|]]<br />
Memory palaces are a static archive of files. Vismann writes, “The immobile tomes are their own tombs...The immobilization amounts to a musealization, creating a work of art out of files (Vismann 161-162).” The memory palace echoes this sentiment and acts more as a mausoleum than a museum. The frozen architecture of the memory palace is doubled by the frozen images within it, turning the palace into a crypt. The shaping of the memory palace into a petrified and dead picture reveals the artifice of constructed memory. Its static and spectral quality lends it to the space of the crypt and removes it from the space of the living. It is the dead memory that must be summoned by the speaker, called to as the missing Other, and resurrected into the present.<br />
<br />
====Forgetting====<br />
Memory Palaces must be practiced, otherwise they are prone to being forgotten. They are meant to be remembered for a specific event, such as a specific speech, but once the event has passed, the memory palace recedes, shatters, and erases itself into the depths of the mystic writing pad’s unconscious. The memory palace, then, is made to be forgotten. Vismann writes, “With one sharp and one blunt end, the stylus unites writing and erasing, those two fundamental chancery operations, in one instrument. Herein lies an analogy to the workings of memory: just as the Greek verb hypomnematizesthai equates filing and remembering, its opposite, exaleiphein, combines a practical act and a function of memory by referring both to forgetting and wiping off (Vismann 55).” In this sense the memory palace is obliterated and becomes buried as a trace and remnant. Memory and forgetting work as though in a circuit, the production of one is almost always the production of the other, to remember one thing often causes one to forget another less relevant thing. Vismann also discusses forgetting as enabling memory, just as the afterimage or trace enables the original image, or the second gives birth to the first. Mechanical reproduction also enables the original, revealing the necessity of the copy and the negation in order to preserve the referent. There is only so much space in the human brain, therefore acquiring new information or new memories must also imply a certain amount of forgetting.<br />
<br />
==Mnemonic Expression: Writing Secrets and Speaking the Mind==<br />
<br />
''The art of memory is like an inner writing'' - Frances Yates.<br />
<br />
While mnemonic techniques were designed for oral performance without visible written aid, they were, from a Derridean perspective, systems of representation organized by writing. Rather than utilizing writing to externalize memory, mnemonics structured texts to correlate with the (variously imagined) inner mechanisms of the psyche. Mnemonics shaped poetics via rhyme and meter, for instance, rendering the text structurally uniform so that it might be more easily remembered and spoken. Mnemonic technique thus interfaced between speech and writing, presence and trace. In the same vein, mnemonics mediated between the interior mind and the external world, articulating both. Mnemonics are thus not simply storage techniques but expression: a form of writing (or ''art'' of memory) that reveals historically deviant memories and, in attempting to control its input and output, represents the persistently black-boxed functioning of the human mind.<br />
<br />
===Mnemonics as cryptography===<br />
<br />
As a mode of mediation, mnemonics represent a curious combination of semiotics and functional nonsense. Mnemonic signs (images, places, phrases) must be nearly evacuated of meaning in order to cue—but not replace—the desired information actively attached to (or associated with) them. From this perspective, articulated above [http://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php/Mnemonics#Arbitrariness_and_the_Cake-Mix_Effect], mnemonics functioned as a storage technique comprised of arbitrary signifiers (like Roy G. Biv) rather than a communicative semantic system. The seemingly nonsensical functioning of mnemonics, however, leaves open the opportunity for obfuscation. If mnemonics could be 'objectively' coded for memory, then they could also perform as encrypted transmission.<br />
<br />
====Giordano Bruno's magic mnemonics====<br />
<br />
Giordano Bruno, a Dominican friar and peripatetic philosopher famous for his “amazing powers of recollection” (Zielinski 72) provides a historical example of the cryptographic, communicative potential of mnemonics in the late 16th century. Bruno was eventually burned at the stake during the Inquisition for his use of magic and allegiance to hermeticism: a philosophy named for Hermes and based in Egyptian astrology, which, needless to say, clashed with Christian doctrine. In The Deep Time of The Media, Siegfried Zielinski links hermetic tradition (which persisted into the Renaissance but had to be promulgated secretly) to the “subhistory” stemming from “the passion for encrypting and deciphering texts runs through the sciences” since the 13th century (Zielinski 73). He also notes that cryptography made particular demands on memory and was thus bound to mnemonic ability (83). Bruno took this relationship one step further. In his writings and teachings, Bruno endeavored to both transmit and internalize hermetic secrets through mnemonic technique. <br />
[[Image: bruno_memory_wheel.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|Frances Yates' rendition of Giordano Bruno's mnemonic wheel described in ''Shadows'' (1582).]] “The secret was the combination of the Hermetic beliefs with the techniques of the art of memory” (Yates 305) writes Frances Yates, so that these “memory systems” became “a mode of transmitting a religion, or an ethic, or some message of universal import” (387). <br />
<br />
Bruno’s system of “magic mnemonics” (Yates 223) hinged on his belief that the memorization of significant images enabled the "harnessing of the inner world of the imagination to the stars, or reproducing the the celestial world within" (215). Memory, for Bruno, was thus a dioptric medium, allowing the passage of the sublime order of the heavens into the individual psyche, "arriving at the vision within of the One light diffused through all" (230). This divine lumen, however, was guarded by catoptric technique. Bruno's mnemonic system was based the arrangement of intricate wheels of astral symbols and magic images. Bruno's first book on the art of memory is aptly titled ''Shadows'': as Yates observes, there is “Circaean mystification at the heart of this memory treatise” (247). Bruno’s mnemonic code thus had a dual function to reveal and conceal. He sought to at once unify the human imagination and the celestial order through memory, and to keep this mnemonic recipe secret, decipherable only by those who understood hermetic principles and believed in magic.<br />
<br />
===Written in wax===<br />
<br />
Wax—the inscription media associated with classical rhetoric and art of memory—was remediated in recording technology and psychoanalytic discourse at the turn of the 20th century. Through a brief comparison of modern and antique articulations of wax as the material substrate of memory, we may glimpse how the rise and fall of mnemonics is subject to the imagined materiality—and malleability—of the mind.<br />
<br />
====Antique imaginary: the obvious====<br />
<br />
Cicero’s ''De oratore'' (finished in 55 B.C.E.) is among the earliest treatises describing mnemonics as a rhetorical art (Yates 17). Cicero credits Simonides with the invention of the art of memory, when, with “with almost divine powers of memory,” he “wrote down what he wanted to remember in certain places in his possession by means of images, just as if he were describing letters on wax” (qtd. in Yates 19). Yates interprets Cicero’s portrayal of the origin of mnemonics as “an inner writing on wax” (19): Simonides internalizes the wax tablet, the medium for recording speech that Phaedrus famously concealed under his cloak in Plato’s dialogue. Cornelia Vismann identifies wax as the key medium in the shift from oral to written legal and administrative culture in the West. “To synchronize speech and writing,” Vismann describes, “the speedwriters or exceptores responsible for files and protocols drew their letters in wax, which, in Quintilian’s words, puts up as little resistance to inscribing as it does to erasing” (Vismann 55). These speedwriters also assigned to take down the senate minutes, which “in search for the aura of the authentic,” “aim[ed] for [a] presentist effect” (54). Mnemonic systems were also designed to uphold these cultural values of presence and authenticity, and were analogous to wax in their ability to suture oral performance and written record.<br />
[[Image: waxtablet.jpg|left|300px|thumb|A Grecian wax tablet.]]<br />
Wax was thus the obvious material through (and on) which to describe mnemonics, which interfaced between speech and writing. The metaphor has an additional layer: as a malleable, hand-held medium, the wax tablet suggests that the memory is likewise easily manipulable by an autonomous author. Cicero renders Simonides as the authorial agent of his inner wax tablet, and thus in control of his memory. Nearly two millennia later, during the modern turn, the idea that one could rely on—let alone control—one’s memory was undercut by the development of recording technologies and the rise of psychoanalytic theories of trauma and repression. Curiously, at this historical moment, the connection between wax and memory that once portrayed both mnemonics and the inner-workings of the classical mind is again applied to the mind. This later incarnation of inner wax, however, is not subject to authorial intent, but inscribed upon by machines and the Unconscious.<br />
<br />
====Modern memory: the return of the repressed?====<br />
<br />
Two notable depictions of wax as the material substrate of memory bracket Kittler’s year 1900: Jean-Marie Guyau’s Memory and Phonograph (1880) and Sigmund Freud’s Note Upon the ‘Mystic-Writing Pad’ (1925). “What good are the poetic mnemonic techniques of rhyme and meter when wax rolls can store not only substance and tone but real sounds?” (Kittler 1992, 236), Kittler asks in ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Guyau addressed this anxiety of the inferiority of human memory and the limits of language early on by claiming the phonograph as the most exact metaphor for man’s ability to record and recite—to read, write, and speak. Notions of manipulating the memory with images, places, and signs is replaced with a techno-scientific inscription in Guyau’s comparison: “Upon speaking into a phonograph, the vibrations of one’s voice are transferred into a point that engraves lines on a metal plate…in analogous ways, invisible lines are incessantly carved into the brain cells” (qtd. in Kittler 1999, 30-31).<br />
<br />
Freud’s use of the [[mystic-writing pad]] as an analogy for the psyche also revises the idea of memory and inscription. Freud dismisses mnemonics right off the bat: “If I distrust my memory,” he begins, “I am able to supplement and guarantee its working by making a note in writing” (Freud 227). External “devices to aid memory” (228) are imperfect compared to our own sensory apparatus, however, which “has an unlimited receptive capacity for new perceptions and nevertheless lays down permanent—even though not unalterable—memory-traces of them” (228). Though he distrusts his memory, Freud echoes the ancient Greeks in imagining the psychic apparatus as a remediation of the wax tablet: the mystic-writing pad. Unlike the imagined mnemonic tablet, however, Freud’s pad is not consciously inscribed, but “receives perceptions (which are accompanied—but are not consciously manipulated—"by consciousness)and passes the excitation on to the unconscious mnemic systems” (231).<br />
<br />
Though these modern articulations of the mind destabilize the ability of human memory (assumed by mnemonics) and man’s conscious power over it (and symbolized by wax), they are haunted by the idea of control and power that they repress. Guyau and Freud participate in the same endeavor to represent the black box of the mind, reiterating the art of memory via technological and psycho-scientific metaphor.<br />
<br />
==Obsolescence and the Changing Thinker==<br />
<br />
<br />
According to Yates, the quest for improved memory through artificial mnemonic systems emerges as a critical part of our attempt to organize knowledge and impose an understandable order on a chaotic world. Mnemonics were one such attempt, and although they are very efficient at storing information in packages that allow for easy retrieval they are rarely used today, in part because it is decreasingly relevant or important to remember things. As Nietzsche observed, "our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts" ([http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ Carr]). The way we interact with information has changed drastically since a time before writing, thus changing the way we think. To cite the oft-relevant Jonathan Crary, audiences need to be trained to use new mediums and technologies (Crary 6), and it seems as though our new technologies our shaping the way we seek out, take in, and digest information. <br />
<br />
When the printing press was invented by Johann Gutenberg in the early 1450s, memory techniques started to lose their prominence. People were suddenly able to record history, genealogies, law codes and stories without committing them to memory. With easy access to computer databases and the Internet, the need for mnemonic devices is has faded even further. This shift in thinking was pointed out in a recent article published in the New York Times: "Why bother remembering the clever poem that tells the value of pi to 21 places (3.141592653589793238462) when you can look it up online and get a virtual googol of places? Why is it necessary in this information age to remember most thing, except maybe your user name and password(s)?" ([http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html Rosenthal]). Clive Thompson summed up the change in thinking even more succinctly in [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson ''Wired''] magazine: "Almost without noticing it, we've outsourced important peripheral brain functions to the silicon around us." In a time when memory was the only storage device or at least one of the most efficient, mnemonics were an obvious form of mediation, but as new technologies have become available making it simple to find almost any fact in a few quick keystrokes and a quick skimming of a web page, those old strategies have become less necessary. It is not surprising mnemonics have largely disappeared. We have found new ways to solve the problem of retaining important details. Perhaps this modern resistance to memorization masks an anxiety caused by a diminished sense of our own mnemonic capabilities (Cambor 2001) due to developments in technology and the emergence of psychoanalysis, or perhaps memory itself is a dying medium.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
* Carr, Nicholas. [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"] ''The Atlantic''. The Atlantic Monthly Group, July-Aug. 2008. Web. 10 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Crary, Jonathan. ''Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century''. Boston: MIT Press, 1992.<br />
* de Man, Paul. ''Aesthetic Ideology''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Dissemination''. New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 2004.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Speech and phenomena: and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs''. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. <br />
* Donald Phillip Verene, Vico’s Science of Imagination (Ithaca, 1981), 96-126<br />
* Fentress, James and Chris Wickham (1992) Social Memory. Oxford: Blackwell. <br />
* Freud, Sigmund. ''The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud''. Ed. James Strachey. London: The Hogarth Press, 1961.<br />
* Kittler, Friedrich A. ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.<br />
* --. ''Gramophone, Film, Typewriter''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton. ''The Art of Memory Reconceived: From Rhetoric to Psychoanalysis''. Journal of the History of Ideas, 48(3), 371-392<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton, "The new science of giambattista Vico: Historicism in its Relation to Poetics" ''Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism'', 30 (1972), 362-64<br />
* Rosenthal, Jack. [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html "Mnemonics."] ''New York Times''. New York Times Company, 17 July 2005. Web. 11 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Ronell, Avital. "Scoring Literature: The Drug Culture". (Lecture, NYU, 4/8/10).<br />
* Thompson, Clive. [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson "Your Outboard Brain Knows All"] ''Wired''. Conde Nast Digital, 25 Sept. 2007. Web. 11. Apr. 2010.<br />
* Vismann, Cornelia. ''Files: Law and Media Technology''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008.<br />
* Yates, Frances A. ''The Art of Memory''. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966.<br />
* Zielinski, Siegfried. ''Deep Time of the Media''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
==External Links==<br />
* [http://www.eudesign.com/mnems/_mnframe.htm Mnemonics] - a list of a number of standardized mnemonic devices<br />
* [http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-memory.htm How Human Memory Works] - a simple overview of the mental process<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Mnemonics&diff=8594Mnemonics2010-04-12T15:18:28Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Case Study or Trace Study of the Memory Palace */</p>
<hr />
<div><div style="text-align:center;">"'''M'''nemonics '''N'''eatly '''E'''liminate '''M'''an's '''O'''nly '''N'''emesis ('''I'''nsufficient '''C'''erebral '''S'''torage)"</div><br />
<br />
Mnemonics, or the art of memory, is today regarded as an arcane intellectual interest. It functions on the periphery of popular culture, largely through a literature of self-help designed to bolster the confidence of those insecure about their powers of recollection. If it is a useful skill, it is not an essential one in a civilization whose collective memory is securely stored in the printed word and, more recently, in digital media. Today’s archive exists in the library or the personal computer, not in the depths of a well-ordered mind. <br />
<br />
Most of the mnemonic devices and techniques that remain today are simple and standardized. They are tools for remembering sequences of information, especially for recall in testing situations. Rather than learning general mnemonic tricks, students are left with specific rhymes or sentences to remember, for example: "Roy G. Biv" to remember the colors of the rainbow; "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally" for the algebraic order of operations; and "lefty, loosey; righty, tighty" for mechanics. Despite the longevity of some of these specific mnemonics, however, they are but a mere suggestion of the much more complex and widespread mnemonic strategies of yesteryear: from the wandering rhapsody of ancient Greece who enthralled listeners with the epic tales of Homer to the philosophers of the Renaissance who constructed imaginary memory palaces to present their intricate designs of the cosmos. This dossier will explore mnemonics as a mode of mediation that stored knowledge in a world invested in the authority of the spoken word, and strove to represent and control the historically black-boxed functioning of human memory.<br />
<br />
[[File:Erinnern.jpg|right|]]<br />
<br />
==Historical Sketch of Old Works on Mnemonics==<br />
[[File:10133 vico dipintura.gif|400px|thumb|left|Cover image from Giambattista Vico's book ''The New Science''. Each symbol was mean to help the reader recall all of the ideas in the book.]]<br />
<br />
“A memory consists in the awareness, first, of the diminished intensity of an impression, second, of its increased ease, and third, of the connections it entertains with other impressions” (Kittler 1999, 31).<br />
<br />
Long before transcription existed, there have been oral records of events in history: genealogies. In medieval Iceland, administrators of the law had to commit their entire juridical system to memory (Fentress and Wickham, 1992). In Ireland, bards would study for twelve years in order to memorize over 500 stories, as well as genealogies of all the leading Irish families (MacManus, 1967).<br />
<br />
The key understanding of the nature of memory, Giambattista Vico contends in his book "The New Science" (1725), is derived from the direct correspondence between image and idea in primitive poetic language. In the beginnings of civilization, image and idea were one. Primitive peoples possessed robust memories because of the inseparable association they made between images and ideas in their comprehension of the world. They thought metaphorically, and the metaphors that they uttered were easily mimicked and remembered because they were richly expressive, grandiose, and full of wonder at the world. Vico revealed that the link between human imagination and the universe that the Renaissance Neoplatonists had sought to discover magically was in fact born historically in the development of human consciousness (Verene, 101). <br />
<br />
The source of mnemonist’s method is visible in the poetic logic of Vico’s theory of the emergence of human consciousness. That theory, too, involves the relationship between places and images, which Vico labels ''topics'' and ''tropes''. Topics were the poetic of formulae through which primitive people identified the phenomena of the world. As imaginative representations of particular aspects of realty, they provided common places or fixed points of reference amidst the flux of sense experience (Yates, 31). Considered in this context, Vico’s new art of memory becomes a retrospective search for connection between our present conceptions and the lost poetic images out of which they were born. In the logic of Vichian poetics, the new art of memory is a reconstruction of the imaginative process by which the poets of antiquity gave shape to their perception of the world. Therein the imaginative sources of our present ideas are to be found. The original topic might be linked to a palimpsest, repeatedly covered over with more abstract imagery as the human mind historically ascended the tropological gradient of linguistic expression. Vico’s art of memory was to decipher each tropological layer along the way until the original metaphorical topic, long forgotten, was recalled to mind (Hutton, 379).<br />
<br />
=== Freud's theory as a reverse mnemonics ===<br />
<br />
If mnemonics lay at the source of Romantic soul-searching (both personal and collective), the techniques themselves were only rarely the subject of introspective comment. It was left to Sigmund Freud at the turn of the 20th century to explain the role of memory in introspection in terms of a mnemonic code (Hutton, 386). In his theory of screen memories, Freud posits the constructive power of the unconscious mind to shape recollection. Forgetting rather than remembering is what we wish to do, he argues, because it is easier to live with a screen of fantasies rather than face the reality of our past. To use his terminology, memory is tendentious in that it reflects unconscious psychic intent. In this respect the Unconscious is the guardian of memory, legislating the selection of what is remembered, and what is repressed or hidden away. As an art of memory, therefore, psychoanalysis is a technique for deciphering the psychic intent encoded in screen memories (Hutton, 388). As we elaborate below, Freud's theory of the Unconscious, and of the forces of repression and trauma that affect the psyche, is incompatible with the classical lineage of mnemonics that assumes the individual's conscious control over his or her memory.<br />
<br />
==The Technology of Memory==<br />
[[File:Room 07 Fludd0002.jpg|thumb|computerized memory theater]]<br />
===How Mnemonics Work===<br />
<br />
Mnemonics may be viewed as storage devices for information in the human mind. The brain, however, is like a black box, and has been throughout human history: many of its operations are a mystery, and we are still just uncovering how it accomplishes many of the tasks we take for granted. Memory is one such process that captured the imaginations of pre-modern thinkers, and that contemporary scientists are still trying to understand. However, there are a few things that have been discovered over the years about how mnemonics function. The process of remembering is split up into different steps: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Mnemonics are involved with encoding. The best way to learn things, or encode them, is to associate them with other things. In people's mind, "apple" will often be associated with "red" and "round." By retrieving the concept of "red," the memory of "apple" will also be triggered. Mnemonics capitalize on this principle by creating more entry points to different pieces of information.<br />
<br />
At first glance, mnemonics may seem rather counter-intuitive because they require one to remember more information in order to solve the problem of remembering something else entirely. Rather than simply remembering one date, 1492 for example, mnemonics ask that you remember a poem: "In 1492 / Columbus sailed the ocean blue." More information is required in an attempt to lodge an initial piece of information in one's mind. While this technique seems rather contradictory, it works because it creates associations, or configurations of information more likely to stick in one's memory. A useful metaphor may be that a memory is a series of files. Mnemonics store bits of information in a number of different files through which to access the information.<br />
<br />
===Arbitrariness and the Cake-Mix Effect===<br />
<br />
In many mnemonic systems, the specifics of the "extra" information one learns to create associations is often entirely arbitrary and can be adapted for each individual. Much like pre-packaged cake mix, mnemonic techniques offer a basic structure, but the particular words and connections that will best work for an individual mind must be added to the formula for it to function. For example, a common strategy for remembering an ordered list is to remember the first letter of each item and put together a new sentence in which each of the words starts with one of the letters needing to be remembered, in the proper order. So if one wanted to remember biological taxonomic classifications from broadest to most specific ('''K'''ingdom, '''P'''hylum, '''C'''lass, '''O'''rder, '''F'''amily, '''G'''enus, '''S'''pecies, '''V'''ariety), one need construct a new sentence in which each subsequent word starts with the next letter in order (K,P,C,O,F,G,S,V). Each individual might have a different sentence that works best for him or her, however. So while one student might find it most advantageous to remember "'''K'''ing '''P'''hilip's '''C'''lassic '''O'''rder: '''F'''amily '''G'''enius - '''S'''pecial '''V'''alue'" another might find it easier to remember "'''K'''indly '''P'''lace '''C'''over '''O'''n '''F'''resh '''G'''reen '''S'''pring '''V'''egetables." This flexibility makes mnemonics a useful set of strategies, and the failure of these techniques is often dependent on the arbitrary information filled into the system. If someone fails to remember the order of the taxonomical classes it is usually because the sentence used is not the best for the user. Many mnemonic systems work in this manner, tailored to the individual mind. One prime historical example of this is the memory palace.<br />
<br />
==Method of Loci==<br />
<br />
A poetic, time-honored example of the method of loci may be found in the cosmology of Australian aborigines, whose ancestors are said to have sung the world into existence (Cambor, 2001). Every rock and crevice of the outback has a song associated with it, and the traveler knows their location exactly by their place in the song, the words of which corresponds to their physical surroundings. These songs have been transcribed to aid in the understanding of the geology of the continent. Across the globe, in Ancient Rome, mnemonics were used by lawyers to remember the points they wanted to make in a lawsuit. The method of loci was first formally described by Quitilian, a first century Roman rhetorician. As the historian Frances Yates describes in her book ''The Art of Memory'', the most common forms of the method of loci are memory palaces, memory theaters, and memory gardens. <br />
<br />
===Case Study or Trace Study of the Memory Palace===<br />
[[File:Fludd-the-art-of-memory-89.jpg|thumb|right|Engraving by Robert Fludd revealing memory attached to images]]<br />
<br />
Memory Palaces are methods of loci which use an imagined architecture to structure a speech based on associations of symbols. They are a spatialized remediation of association. Before memory palaces were implemented, hieroglyphs and other forms of picture writing were already using symbols to stand in for words and ideas. Memory palaces abstract this notion of association and complicate in order to allow one to remember hundreds of ideas. While mnemonics can be written down, the memory palace is completely imagined, and therefore the process and the media is black boxed within the mind of the subject, and like Iris, the message or information is internalized. This method was developed out of a human lack, and the need to remember large amounts of information. When using the memory palace, one needs only to remember the symbols, after which the encoded information becomes unlocked like the chirograph which connects to its counterpart. Memory palaces were constructed out of an anxiety for memory being lost, but in reality it is always already lost. <br />
<br />
This mode of mediation is based on location, but it itself has no location and exists as a non-space that stores imagined data. The subject that uses the memory palace becomes split and is forced to inhabit two realities as one must imagine walking through the memory palace and picking up each predetermined object while simultaneously being rooted in a physical space and delivering a live speech to an audience. The subject must navigate the memory palace like an automaton on automatic pilot but cannot get fully immersed or lost in it. Discipline of the mind and the body is necessary since the subject cannot think, but must become a machine and instrument for the reading of memory. <br />
<br />
====The Mechanization of Memory====<br />
<br />
Hegel discusses memory in two terms, “Erinnerung” and “Gedächtnis.” Erinnerung for Hegel is recollection, memory based on learning and internalization. It therefore has a relationship to the past and to a missing Other. Gedächtnis is the forgetting of meaning in favor of memorization and technologized memory just as the technologization of speech through the act of writing is also the erasure of speech and the marking of its becoming forgotten. Gedächtnis acts as the simulacrum and mechanical reproduction of memory emptied of its original and of meaning (Ronell). Memory palaces fall under Gedächtnis, as they are a phantom crutch or prosthetic for remembering which can be easily dismantled and forgotten. It does reflect Erinnerung in that it calls to its missing Other which is the real house, but it has no relationship to the past, as the reality of the memory palace is artificially constructed. The associations within the memory palace are also artificial revealing the manipulation of memory which becomes something external that can be altered and changed. Derrida writes, “What Plato is attacking in sophistics, therefore, is not smply recourse to memory but, within such recourse, the substitution of the mnemonic device for live memory, of the prosthesis for the organ; the perversion that consists of replacing a limb by a thing, here, substituting the passive, mechanical ‘by-heart’ for the active reanimation of knowledge, for its reproduction in the present. The boundary (between inside and outside, living and nonliving) separates not only speech from writing but also memory as an unveiling (re-)producing a presence from re-memoration as the mere repetition of a monument…(Derrida 109).” Paul de Man elaborates on the contradictory nature of Gedächtnis and Erinnerung, “Memory effaces remembrance (or recollection) just as the I effaces itself. The faculty that enables thought to exist also makes its preservation impossible. The art, the ''techné'', of writing which cannot be separated from thought and from memorization can only be preserved in the figural mode of the symbol, the very mode it has to do away with if it is to occur at all (de Man 102).” Here, Gedächtnis effaces Erinnerung, like mechanical reproduction effaces the original, and writing effaces speech.<br />
<br />
====Memory Palace as Afterimage and Trace====<br />
[[File:Afterimage1.JPG|thumb|left]]<br />
The effacing of Erinnerung caused by Gedächtnis also speaks to the idea of an afterimage which effaces the original image. The memory palace, is an afterimage and faint impression of one’s home which it replaces. Jonathan Crary writes that the afterimage, “…allowed one to conceive of sensory perception as cut from any necessary link with an external referent. The afterimage – the presence of sensation in the absence of a stimulus – and its subsequent modulations posed a theoretical and empirical demonstration of autonomous vision, of an optical experience that was produced by and within the subject (Crary 98).” The afterimage of the memory palace is detachable, once it is created the originary house isn’t necessary to evoke it, rather it can be evoked independently by the subject. Memory palaces, while seeming to be about semiotics, have more to do with Derrida's concept of the "trace." Derrida writes, “The trace is not a presence but is rather the simulacrum of a presence that dislocates, displaces, and refers beyond itself. The trace has, properly speaking, no place, for effacement belongs to the very structure of the trace. Effacement must always be able to overtake the trace; otherwise it would not be a trace but an indestructible and monumental substance (Derrida 156).” The trace refers to that which is no longer present, leaving only the reliced remains to be read.<br />
<br />
====Memory as Archive and Crypt====<br />
[[File:044MemoryBook200.jpg|thumb|right|]]<br />
Memory palaces are a static archive of files. Vismann writes, “The immobile tomes are their own tombs...The immobilization amounts to a musealization, creating a work of art out of files (Vismann 161-162).” The memory palace echoes this sentiment and acts more as a mausoleum than a museum. The frozen architecture of the memory palace is doubled by the frozen images within it, turning the palace into a crypt. The shaping of the memory palace into a petrified and dead picture reveals the artifice of constructed memory. Its static and spectral quality lends it to the space of the crypt and removes it from the space of the living. It is the dead memory that must be summoned by the speaker, called to as the missing Other, and resurrected into the present.<br />
<br />
====Forgetting====<br />
Memory Palaces must be practiced, otherwise they are prone to being forgotten. They are meant to be remembered for a specific event, such as a specific speech, but once the event has passed, the memory palace recedes, shatters, and erases itself into the depths of the mystic writing pad’s unconscious. The memory palace, then, is made to be forgotten. Vismann writes, “With one sharp and one blunt end, the stylus unites writing and erasing, those two fundamental chancery operations, in one instrument. Herein lies an analogy to the workings of memory: just as the Greek verb hypomnematizesthai equates filing and remembering, its opposite, exaleiphein, combines a practical act and a function of memory by referring both to forgetting and wiping off (Vismann 55).” In this sense the memory palace is obliterated and becomes buried as a trace and remnant. Memory and forgetting work as though in a circuit, the production of one is almost always the production of the other, to remember one thing often causes one to forget another less relevant thing. Vismann also discusses forgetting as enabling memory, just as the afterimage or trace enables the original image, or the second gives birth to the first. Mechanical reproduction also enables the original, revealing the necessity of the copy and the negation in order to preserve the referent. There is only so much space in the human brain, therefore acquiring new information or new memories must also imply a certain amount of forgetting.<br />
<br />
==Mnemonic Expression: Writing Secrets and Speaking the Mind==<br />
<br />
''The art of memory is like an inner writing'' - Frances Yates.<br />
<br />
While mnemonic techniques were designed for oral performance without visible written aid, they were, from a Derridean perspective, systems of representation organized by writing. Rather than utilizing writing to externalize memory, mnemonics structured texts to correlate with the (variously imagined) inner mechanisms of the psyche. Mnemonics shaped poetics via rhyme and meter, for instance, rendering the text structurally uniform so that it might be more easily remembered and spoken. Mnemonic technique thus interfaced between speech and writing, presence and trace. In the same vein, mnemonics mediated between the interior mind and the external world, articulating both. Mnemonics are thus not simply storage techniques but expression: a form of writing (or ''art'' of memory) that reveals historically deviant memories and, in attempting to control its input and output, represents the persistently black-boxed functioning of the human mind.<br />
<br />
===Mnemonics as cryptography===<br />
<br />
As a mode of mediation, mnemonics represent a curious combination of semiotics and functional nonsense. Mnemonic signs (images, places, phrases) must be nearly evacuated of meaning in order to cue—but not replace—the desired information actively attached to (or associated with) them. From this perspective, articulated above [http://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php/Mnemonics#Arbitrariness_and_the_Cake-Mix_Effect], mnemonics functioned as a storage technique comprised of arbitrary signifiers (like Roy G. Biv) rather than a communicative semantic system. The seemingly nonsensical functioning of mnemonics, however, leaves open the opportunity for obfuscation. If mnemonics could be 'objectively' coded for memory, then they could also perform as encrypted transmission.<br />
<br />
====Giordano Bruno's magic mnemonics====<br />
<br />
Giordano Bruno, a Dominican friar and peripatetic philosopher famous for his “amazing powers of recollection” (Zielinski 72) provides a historical example of the cryptographic, communicative potential of mnemonics in the late 16th century. Bruno was eventually burned at the stake during the Inquisition for his use of magic and allegiance to hermeticism: a philosophy named for Hermes and based in Egyptian astrology, which, needless to say, clashed with Christian doctrine. In The Deep Time of The Media, Siegfried Zielinski links hermetic tradition (which persisted into the Renaissance but had to be promulgated secretly) to the “subhistory” stemming from “the passion for encrypting and deciphering texts runs through the sciences” since the 13th century (Zielinski 73). He also notes that cryptography made particular demands on memory and was thus bound to mnemonic ability (83). Bruno took this relationship one step further. In his writings and teachings, Bruno endeavored to both transmit and internalize hermetic secrets through mnemonic technique. <br />
[[Image: bruno_memory_wheel.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|Frances Yates' rendition of Giordano Bruno's mnemonic wheel described in ''Shadows'' (1582).]] “The secret was the combination of the Hermetic beliefs with the techniques of the art of memory” (Yates 305) writes Frances Yates, so that these “memory systems” became “a mode of transmitting a religion, or an ethic, or some message of universal import” (387). <br />
<br />
Bruno’s system of “magic mnemonics” (Yates 223) hinged on his belief that the memorization of significant images enabled the "harnessing of the inner world of the imagination to the stars, or reproducing the the celestial world within" (215). Memory, for Bruno, was thus a dioptric medium, allowing the passage of the sublime order of the heavens into the individual psyche, "arriving at the vision within of the One light diffused through all" (230). This divine lumen, however, was guarded by catoptric technique. Bruno's mnemonic system was based the arrangement of intricate wheels of astral symbols and magic images. Bruno's first book on the art of memory is aptly titled ''Shadows'': as Yates observes, there is “Circaean mystification at the heart of this memory treatise” (247). Bruno’s mnemonic code thus had a dual function to reveal and conceal. He sought to at once unify the human imagination and the celestial order through memory, and to keep this mnemonic recipe secret, decipherable only by those who understood hermetic principles and believed in magic.<br />
<br />
===Written in wax===<br />
<br />
Wax—the inscription media associated with classical rhetoric and art of memory—was remediated in recording technology and psychoanalytic discourse at the turn of the 20th century. Through a brief comparison of modern and antique articulations of wax as the material substrate of memory, we may glimpse how the rise and fall of mnemonics is subject to the imagined materiality—and malleability—of the mind.<br />
<br />
====Antique imaginary: the obvious====<br />
<br />
Cicero’s ''De oratore'' (finished in 55 B.C.E.) is among the earliest treatises describing mnemonics as a rhetorical art (Yates 17). Cicero credits Simonides with the invention of the art of memory, when, with “with almost divine powers of memory,” he “wrote down what he wanted to remember in certain places in his possession by means of images, just as if he were describing letters on wax” (qtd. in Yates 19). Yates interprets Cicero’s portrayal of the origin of mnemonics as “an inner writing on wax” (19): Simonides internalizes the wax tablet, the medium for recording speech that Phaedrus famously concealed under his cloak in Plato’s dialogue. Cornelia Vismann identifies wax as the key medium in the shift from oral to written legal and administrative culture in the West. “To synchronize speech and writing,” Vismann describes, “the speedwriters or exceptores responsible for files and protocols drew their letters in wax, which, in Quintilian’s words, puts up as little resistance to inscribing as it does to erasing” (Vismann 55). These speedwriters also assigned to take down the senate minutes, which “in search for the aura of the authentic,” “aim[ed] for [a] presentist effect” (54). Mnemonic systems were also designed to uphold these cultural values of presence and authenticity, and were analogous to wax in their ability to suture oral performance and written record.<br />
[[Image: waxtablet.jpg|left|300px|thumb|A Grecian wax tablet.]]<br />
Wax was thus the obvious material through (and on) which to describe mnemonics, which interfaced between speech and writing. The metaphor has an additional layer: as a malleable, hand-held medium, the wax tablet suggests that the memory is likewise easily manipulable by an autonomous author. Cicero renders Simonides as the authorial agent of his inner wax tablet, and thus in control of his memory. Nearly two millennia later, during the modern turn, the idea that one could rely on—let alone control—one’s memory was undercut by the development of recording technologies and the rise of psychoanalytic theories of trauma and repression. Curiously, at this historical moment, the connection between wax and memory that once portrayed both mnemonics and the inner-workings of the classical mind is again applied to the mind. This later incarnation of inner wax, however, is not subject to authorial intent, but inscribed upon by machines and the Unconscious.<br />
<br />
====Modern memory: the return of the repressed?====<br />
<br />
Two notable depictions of wax as the material substrate of memory bracket Kittler’s year 1900: Jean-Marie Guyau’s Memory and Phonograph (1880) and Sigmund Freud’s Note Upon the ‘Mystic-Writing Pad’ (1925). “What good are the poetic mnemonic techniques of rhyme and meter when wax rolls can store not only substance and tone but real sounds?” (Kittler 1992, 236), Kittler asks in ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Guyau addressed this anxiety of the inferiority of human memory and the limits of language early on by claiming the phonograph as the most exact metaphor for man’s ability to record and recite—to read, write, and speak. Notions of manipulating the memory with images, places, and signs is replaced with a techno-scientific inscription in Guyau’s comparison: “Upon speaking into a phonograph, the vibrations of one’s voice are transferred into a point that engraves lines on a metal plate…in analogous ways, invisible lines are incessantly carved into the brain cells” (qtd. in Kittler 1999, 30-31).<br />
<br />
Freud’s use of the [[mystic-writing pad]] as an analogy for the psyche also revises the idea of memory and inscription. Freud dismisses mnemonics right off the bat: “If I distrust my memory,” he begins, “I am able to supplement and guarantee its working by making a note in writing” (Freud 227). External “devices to aid memory” (228) are imperfect compared to our own sensory apparatus, however, which “has an unlimited receptive capacity for new perceptions and nevertheless lays down permanent—even though not unalterable—memory-traces of them” (228). Though he distrusts his memory, Freud echoes the ancient Greeks in imagining the psychic apparatus as a remediation of the wax tablet: the mystic-writing pad. Unlike the imagined mnemonic tablet, however, Freud’s pad is not consciously inscribed, but “receives perceptions (which are accompanied—but are not consciously manipulated—"by consciousness)and passes the excitation on to the unconscious mnemic systems” (231).<br />
<br />
Though these modern articulations of the mind destabilize the ability of human memory (assumed by mnemonics) and man’s conscious power over it (and symbolized by wax), they are haunted by the idea of control and power that they repress. Guyau and Freud participate in the same endeavor to represent the black box of the mind, reiterating the art of memory via technological and psycho-scientific metaphor.<br />
<br />
==Obsolescence and the Changing Thinker==<br />
<br />
<br />
According to Yates, the quest for improved memory through artificial mnemonic systems emerges as a critical part of our attempt to organize knowledge and impose an understandable order on a chaotic world. Mnemonics were one such attempt, and although they are very efficient at storing information in packages that allow for easy retrieval they are rarely used today, in part because it is decreasingly relevant or important to remember things. As Nietzsche observed, "our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts" ([http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ Carr]). The way we interact with information has changed drastically since a time before writing, thus changing the way we think. To cite the oft-relevant Jonathan Crary, audiences need to be trained to use new mediums and technologies (Crary 6), and it seems as though our new technologies our shaping the way we seek out, take in, and digest information. <br />
<br />
When the printing press was invented by Johann Gutenberg in the early 1450s, memory techniques started to lose their prominence. People were suddenly able to record history, genealogies, law codes and stories without committing them to memory. With easy access to computer databases and the Internet, the need for mnemonic devices is has faded even further. This shift in thinking was pointed out in a recent article published in the New York Times: "Why bother remembering the clever poem that tells the value of pi to 21 places (3.141592653589793238462) when you can look it up online and get a virtual googol of places? Why is it necessary in this information age to remember most thing, except maybe your user name and password(s)?" ([http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html Rosenthal]). Clive Thompson summed up the change in thinking even more succinctly in [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson ''Wired''] magazine: "Almost without noticing it, we've outsourced important peripheral brain functions to the silicon around us." In a time when memory was the only storage device or at least one of the most efficient, mnemonics were an obvious form of mediation, but as new technologies have become available making it simple to find almost any fact in a few quick keystrokes and a quick skimming of a web page, those old strategies have become less necessary. It is not surprising mnemonics have largely disappeared. We have found new ways to solve the problem of retaining important details. Perhaps this modern resistance to memorization masks an anxiety caused by a diminished sense of our own mnemonic capabilities (Cambor 2001) due to developments in technology and the emergence of psychoanalysis, or perhaps memory itself is a dying medium.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
* Carr, Nicholas. [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"] ''The Atlantic''. The Atlantic Monthly Group, July-Aug. 2008. Web. 10 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Crary, Jonathan. ''Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century''. Boston: MIT Press, 1992.<br />
* de Man, Paul. ''Aesthetic Ideology''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Dissemination''. New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 2004.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Speech and phenomena: and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs''. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. <br />
* Donald Phillip Verene, Vico’s Science of Imagination (Ithaca, 1981), 96-126<br />
* Fentress, James and Chris Wickham (1992) Social Memory. Oxford: Blackwell. <br />
* Freud, Sigmund. ''The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud''. Ed. James Strachey. London: The Hogarth Press, 1961.<br />
* Kittler, Friedrich A. ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.<br />
* --. ''Gramophone, Film, Typewriter''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton. ''The Art of Memory Reconceived: From Rhetoric to Psychoanalysis''. Journal of the History of Ideas, 48(3), 371-392<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton, "The new science of giambattista Vico: Historicism in its Relation to Poetics" ''Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism'', 30 (1972), 362-64<br />
* Rosenthal, Jack. [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html "Mnemonics."] ''New York Times''. New York Times Company, 17 July 2005. Web. 11 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Ronell, Avital. "Scoring Literature: The Drug Culture". (Lecture, NYU, 4/8/10).<br />
* Thompson, Clive. [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson "Your Outboard Brain Knows All"] ''Wired''. Conde Nast Digital, 25 Sept. 2007. Web. 11. Apr. 2010.<br />
* Vismann, Cornelia. ''Files: Law and Media Technology''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008.<br />
* Yates, Frances A. ''The Art of Memory''. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966.<br />
* Zielinski, Siegfried. ''Deep Time of the Media''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
==External Links==<br />
* [http://www.eudesign.com/mnems/_mnframe.htm Mnemonics] - a list of a number of standardized mnemonic devices<br />
* [http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-memory.htm How Human Memory Works] - a simple overview of the mental process<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Gillian Younghttp://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php?title=Mnemonics&diff=8593Mnemonics2010-04-12T15:15:08Z<p>Gillian Young: /* Historical Sketch of Old Works on Mnemonics */</p>
<hr />
<div><div style="text-align:center;">"'''M'''nemonics '''N'''eatly '''E'''liminate '''M'''an's '''O'''nly '''N'''emesis ('''I'''nsufficient '''C'''erebral '''S'''torage)"</div><br />
<br />
Mnemonics, or the art of memory, is today regarded as an arcane intellectual interest. It functions on the periphery of popular culture, largely through a literature of self-help designed to bolster the confidence of those insecure about their powers of recollection. If it is a useful skill, it is not an essential one in a civilization whose collective memory is securely stored in the printed word and, more recently, in digital media. Today’s archive exists in the library or the personal computer, not in the depths of a well-ordered mind. <br />
<br />
Most of the mnemonic devices and techniques that remain today are simple and standardized. They are tools for remembering sequences of information, especially for recall in testing situations. Rather than learning general mnemonic tricks, students are left with specific rhymes or sentences to remember, for example: "Roy G. Biv" to remember the colors of the rainbow; "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally" for the algebraic order of operations; and "lefty, loosey; righty, tighty" for mechanics. Despite the longevity of some of these specific mnemonics, however, they are but a mere suggestion of the much more complex and widespread mnemonic strategies of yesteryear: from the wandering rhapsody of ancient Greece who enthralled listeners with the epic tales of Homer to the philosophers of the Renaissance who constructed imaginary memory palaces to present their intricate designs of the cosmos. This dossier will explore mnemonics as a mode of mediation that stored knowledge in a world invested in the authority of the spoken word, and strove to represent and control the historically black-boxed functioning of human memory.<br />
<br />
[[File:Erinnern.jpg|right|]]<br />
<br />
==Historical Sketch of Old Works on Mnemonics==<br />
[[File:10133 vico dipintura.gif|400px|thumb|left|Cover image from Giambattista Vico's book ''The New Science''. Each symbol was mean to help the reader recall all of the ideas in the book.]]<br />
<br />
“A memory consists in the awareness, first, of the diminished intensity of an impression, second, of its increased ease, and third, of the connections it entertains with other impressions” (Kittler 1999, 31).<br />
<br />
Long before transcription existed, there have been oral records of events in history: genealogies. In medieval Iceland, administrators of the law had to commit their entire juridical system to memory (Fentress and Wickham, 1992). In Ireland, bards would study for twelve years in order to memorize over 500 stories, as well as genealogies of all the leading Irish families (MacManus, 1967).<br />
<br />
The key understanding of the nature of memory, Giambattista Vico contends in his book "The New Science" (1725), is derived from the direct correspondence between image and idea in primitive poetic language. In the beginnings of civilization, image and idea were one. Primitive peoples possessed robust memories because of the inseparable association they made between images and ideas in their comprehension of the world. They thought metaphorically, and the metaphors that they uttered were easily mimicked and remembered because they were richly expressive, grandiose, and full of wonder at the world. Vico revealed that the link between human imagination and the universe that the Renaissance Neoplatonists had sought to discover magically was in fact born historically in the development of human consciousness (Verene, 101). <br />
<br />
The source of mnemonist’s method is visible in the poetic logic of Vico’s theory of the emergence of human consciousness. That theory, too, involves the relationship between places and images, which Vico labels ''topics'' and ''tropes''. Topics were the poetic of formulae through which primitive people identified the phenomena of the world. As imaginative representations of particular aspects of realty, they provided common places or fixed points of reference amidst the flux of sense experience (Yates, 31). Considered in this context, Vico’s new art of memory becomes a retrospective search for connection between our present conceptions and the lost poetic images out of which they were born. In the logic of Vichian poetics, the new art of memory is a reconstruction of the imaginative process by which the poets of antiquity gave shape to their perception of the world. Therein the imaginative sources of our present ideas are to be found. The original topic might be linked to a palimpsest, repeatedly covered over with more abstract imagery as the human mind historically ascended the tropological gradient of linguistic expression. Vico’s art of memory was to decipher each tropological layer along the way until the original metaphorical topic, long forgotten, was recalled to mind (Hutton, 379).<br />
<br />
=== Freud's theory as a reverse mnemonics ===<br />
<br />
If mnemonics lay at the source of Romantic soul-searching (both personal and collective), the techniques themselves were only rarely the subject of introspective comment. It was left to Sigmund Freud at the turn of the 20th century to explain the role of memory in introspection in terms of a mnemonic code (Hutton, 386). In his theory of screen memories, Freud posits the constructive power of the unconscious mind to shape recollection. Forgetting rather than remembering is what we wish to do, he argues, because it is easier to live with a screen of fantasies rather than face the reality of our past. To use his terminology, memory is tendentious in that it reflects unconscious psychic intent. In this respect the Unconscious is the guardian of memory, legislating the selection of what is remembered, and what is repressed or hidden away. As an art of memory, therefore, psychoanalysis is a technique for deciphering the psychic intent encoded in screen memories (Hutton, 388). As we elaborate below, Freud's theory of the Unconscious, and of the forces of repression and trauma that affect the psyche, is incompatible with the classical lineage of mnemonics that assumes the individual's conscious control over his or her memory.<br />
<br />
==The Technology of Memory==<br />
[[File:Room 07 Fludd0002.jpg|thumb|computerized memory theater]]<br />
===How Mnemonics Work===<br />
<br />
Mnemonics may be viewed as storage devices for information in the human mind. The brain, however, is like a black box, and has been throughout human history: many of its operations are a mystery, and we are still just uncovering how it accomplishes many of the tasks we take for granted. Memory is one such process that captured the imaginations of pre-modern thinkers, and that contemporary scientists are still trying to understand. However, there are a few things that have been discovered over the years about how mnemonics function. The process of remembering is split up into different steps: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Mnemonics are involved with encoding. The best way to learn things, or encode them, is to associate them with other things. In people's mind, "apple" will often be associated with "red" and "round." By retrieving the concept of "red," the memory of "apple" will also be triggered. Mnemonics capitalize on this principle by creating more entry points to different pieces of information.<br />
<br />
At first glance, mnemonics may seem rather counter-intuitive because they require one to remember more information in order to solve the problem of remembering something else entirely. Rather than simply remembering one date, 1492 for example, mnemonics ask that you remember a poem: "In 1492 / Columbus sailed the ocean blue." More information is required in an attempt to lodge an initial piece of information in one's mind. While this technique seems rather contradictory, it works because it creates associations, or configurations of information more likely to stick in one's memory. A useful metaphor may be that a memory is a series of files. Mnemonics store bits of information in a number of different files through which to access the information.<br />
<br />
===Arbitrariness and the Cake-Mix Effect===<br />
<br />
In many mnemonic systems, the specifics of the "extra" information one learns to create associations is often entirely arbitrary and can be adapted for each individual. Much like pre-packaged cake mix, mnemonic techniques offer a basic structure, but the particular words and connections that will best work for an individual mind must be added to the formula for it to function. For example, a common strategy for remembering an ordered list is to remember the first letter of each item and put together a new sentence in which each of the words starts with one of the letters needing to be remembered, in the proper order. So if one wanted to remember biological taxonomic classifications from broadest to most specific ('''K'''ingdom, '''P'''hylum, '''C'''lass, '''O'''rder, '''F'''amily, '''G'''enus, '''S'''pecies, '''V'''ariety), one need construct a new sentence in which each subsequent word starts with the next letter in order (K,P,C,O,F,G,S,V). Each individual might have a different sentence that works best for him or her, however. So while one student might find it most advantageous to remember "'''K'''ing '''P'''hilip's '''C'''lassic '''O'''rder: '''F'''amily '''G'''enius - '''S'''pecial '''V'''alue'" another might find it easier to remember "'''K'''indly '''P'''lace '''C'''over '''O'''n '''F'''resh '''G'''reen '''S'''pring '''V'''egetables." This flexibility makes mnemonics a useful set of strategies, and the failure of these techniques is often dependent on the arbitrary information filled into the system. If someone fails to remember the order of the taxonomical classes it is usually because the sentence used is not the best for the user. Many mnemonic systems work in this manner, tailored to the individual mind. One prime historical example of this is the memory palace.<br />
<br />
==Method of Loci==<br />
<br />
A poetic, time-honored example of the method of loci may be found in the cosmology of Australian aborigines, whose ancestors are said to have sung the world into existence (Cambor, 2001). Every rock and crevice of the outback has a song associated with it, and the traveler knows their location exactly by their place in the song, the words of which corresponds to their physical surroundings. These songs have been transcribed to aid in the understanding of the geology of the continent. Across the globe, in Ancient Rome, mnemonics were used by lawyers to remember the points they wanted to make in a lawsuit. The method of loci was first formally described by Quitilian, a first century Roman rhetorician. As the historian Frances Yates describes in her book ''The Art of Memory'', the most common forms of the method of loci are memory palaces, memory theaters, and memory gardens. <br />
<br />
===Case Study or Trace Study of the Memory Palace===<br />
[[File:Fludd-the-art-of-memory-89.jpg|thumb|right|Engraving by Robert Fludd revealing memory attached to images]]<br />
<br />
Memory Palaces are methods of loci which use an imagined architecture to structure a speech based on associations of symbols. They are a spatialized remediation of association. Before memory palaces were implemented, hieroglyphs and other forms of picture writing were already using symbols to stand in for words and ideas. Memory palaces abstract this notion of association and complicate in order to allow one to remember hundreds of ideas. While mnemonics can be written down, the memory palace is completely imagined, and therefore the process and the media is black boxed within the mind of the subject, and like Iris, it is the internalization of a message or information. It was developed out of a human lack, and the need to remember large amounts of information. When using the memory palace, one needs only to remember the symbols, after which the encoded information becomes unlocked like the chirograph which connects to its counterpart. Memory palaces were constructed out of an anxiety for memory being lost, but in reality it is always already lost. <br />
<br />
This mode of mediation is based on location, but it itself has no location and exists as a non-space that stores imagined data. The subject that uses the memory palace becomes split and is forced to inhabit two realities as one must imagine walking through the memory palace and picking up each predetermined object while simultaneously being rooted in a physical space and delivering a live speech to an audience. The subject must navigate the memory palace like an automaton on automatic pilot but cannot get fully immersed or lost in it. Discipline of the mind and the body is necessary since the subject cannot think, but must become a machine and instrument for the reading of memory. <br />
<br />
====The Mechanization of Memory====<br />
<br />
Hegel discusses memory in two terms, “Erinnerung” and “Gedächtnis.” Erinnerung for Hegel is recollection, memory based on learning and internalization. It therefore has a relationship to the past and to a missing Other. Gedächtnis is the forgetting of meaning in favor of memorization and technologized memory just as the technologization of speech through the act of writing is also the erasure of speech and the marking of its becoming forgotten. Gedächtnis acts as the simulacrum and mechanical reproduction of memory emptied of its original and of meaning (Ronell). Memory palaces fall under Gedächtnis, as they are a phantom crutch or prosthetic for remembering which can be easily dismantled and forgotten. It does reflect Erinnerung in that it calls to its missing Other which is the real house, but it has no relationship to the past, as the reality of the memory palace is artificially constructed. The associations within the memory palace are also artificial revealing the manipulation of memory which becomes something external that can be altered and changed. Derrida writes, “What Plato is attacking in sophistics, therefore, is not smply recourse to memory but, within such recourse, the substitution of the mnemonic device for live memory, of the prosthesis for the organ; the perversion that consists of replacing a limb by a thing, here, substituting the passive, mechanical ‘by-heart’ for the active reanimation of knowledge, for its reproduction in the present. The boundary (between inside and outside, living and nonliving) separates not only speech from writing but also memory as an unveiling (re-)producing a presence from re-memoration as the mere repetition of a monument…(Derrida 109).” Paul de Man elaborates on the contradictory nature of Gedächtnis and Erinnerung, “Memory effaces remembrance (or recollection) just as the I effaces itself. The faculty that enables thought to exist also makes its preservation impossible. The art, the ''techné'', of writing which cannot be separated from thought and from memorization can only be preserved in the figural mode of the symbol, the very mode it has to do away with if it is to occur at all (de Man 102).” Here, Gedächtnis effaces Erinnerung, like mechanical reproduction effaces the original, and writing effaces speech.<br />
<br />
====Memory Palace as Afterimage and Trace====<br />
[[File:Afterimage1.JPG|thumb|left]]<br />
The effacing of Erinnerung caused by Gedächtnis also speaks to the idea of an afterimage which effaces the original image. The memory palace, is an afterimage and faint impression of one’s home which it replaces. Jonathan Crary writes that the afterimage, “…allowed one to conceive of sensory perception as cut from any necessary link with an external referent. The afterimage – the presence of sensation in the absence of a stimulus – and its subsequent modulations posed a theoretical and empirical demonstration of autonomous vision, of an optical experience that was produced by and within the subject (Crary 98).” The afterimage of the memory palace is detachable, once it is created the originary house isn’t necessary to evoke it, rather it can be evoked independently by the subject. Memory palaces, while seeming to be about semiotics, have more to do with Derrida's concept of the "trace." Derrida writes, “The trace is not a presence but is rather the simulacrum of a presence that dislocates, displaces, and refers beyond itself. The trace has, properly speaking, no place, for effacement belongs to the very structure of the trace. Effacement must always be able to overtake the trace; otherwise it would not be a trace but an indestructible and monumental substance (Derrida 156).” The trace refers to that which is no longer present, leaving only the reliced remains to be read.<br />
<br />
====Memory as Archive and Crypt====<br />
[[File:044MemoryBook200.jpg|thumb|right|]]<br />
Memory palaces are a static archive of files. Vismann writes, “The immobile tomes are their own tombs...The immobilization amounts to a musealization, creating a work of art out of files (Vismann 161-162).” The memory palace echoes this sentiment and acts more as a mausoleum than a museum. The frozen architecture of the memory palace is doubled by the frozen images within it, turning the palace into a crypt. The shaping of the memory palace into a petrified and dead picture reveals the artifice of constructed memory. Its static and spectral quality lends it to the space of the crypt and removes it from the space of the living. It is the dead memory that must be summoned by the speaker, called to as the missing Other, and resurrected into the present.<br />
<br />
====Forgetting====<br />
Memory Palaces must be practiced, otherwise they are prone to being forgotten. They are meant to be remembered for a specific event, such as a specific speech, but once the event has passed, the memory palace recedes, shatters, and erases itself into the depths of the mystic writing pad’s unconscious. The memory palace, then, is made to be forgotten. Vismann writes, “With one sharp and one blunt end, the stylus unites writing and erasing, those two fundamental chancery operations, in one instrument. Herein lies an analogy to the workings of memory: just as the Greek verb hypomnematizesthai equates filing and remembering, its opposite, exaleiphein, combines a practical act and a function of memory by referring both to forgetting and wiping off (Vismann 55).” In this sense the memory palace is obliterated and becomes buried as a trace and remnant. Memory and forgetting work as though in a circuit, the production of one is almost always the production of the other, to remember one thing often causes one to forget another less relevant thing. Vismann also discusses forgetting as enabling memory, just as the afterimage or trace enables the original image, or the second gives birth to the first. Mechanical reproduction also enables the original, revealing the necessity of the copy and the negation in order to preserve the referent. There is only so much space in the human brain, therefore acquiring new information or new memories must also imply a certain amount of forgetting.<br />
<br />
==Mnemonic Expression: Writing Secrets and Speaking the Mind==<br />
<br />
''The art of memory is like an inner writing'' - Frances Yates.<br />
<br />
While mnemonic techniques were designed for oral performance without visible written aid, they were, from a Derridean perspective, systems of representation organized by writing. Rather than utilizing writing to externalize memory, mnemonics structured texts to correlate with the (variously imagined) inner mechanisms of the psyche. Mnemonics shaped poetics via rhyme and meter, for instance, rendering the text structurally uniform so that it might be more easily remembered and spoken. Mnemonic technique thus interfaced between speech and writing, presence and trace. In the same vein, mnemonics mediated between the interior mind and the external world, articulating both. Mnemonics are thus not simply storage techniques but expression: a form of writing (or ''art'' of memory) that reveals historically deviant memories and, in attempting to control its input and output, represents the persistently black-boxed functioning of the human mind.<br />
<br />
===Mnemonics as cryptography===<br />
<br />
As a mode of mediation, mnemonics represent a curious combination of semiotics and functional nonsense. Mnemonic signs (images, places, phrases) must be nearly evacuated of meaning in order to cue—but not replace—the desired information actively attached to (or associated with) them. From this perspective, articulated above [http://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php/Mnemonics#Arbitrariness_and_the_Cake-Mix_Effect], mnemonics functioned as a storage technique comprised of arbitrary signifiers (like Roy G. Biv) rather than a communicative semantic system. The seemingly nonsensical functioning of mnemonics, however, leaves open the opportunity for obfuscation. If mnemonics could be 'objectively' coded for memory, then they could also perform as encrypted transmission.<br />
<br />
====Giordano Bruno's magic mnemonics====<br />
<br />
Giordano Bruno, a Dominican friar and peripatetic philosopher famous for his “amazing powers of recollection” (Zielinski 72) provides a historical example of the cryptographic, communicative potential of mnemonics in the late 16th century. Bruno was eventually burned at the stake during the Inquisition for his use of magic and allegiance to hermeticism: a philosophy named for Hermes and based in Egyptian astrology, which, needless to say, clashed with Christian doctrine. In The Deep Time of The Media, Siegfried Zielinski links hermetic tradition (which persisted into the Renaissance but had to be promulgated secretly) to the “subhistory” stemming from “the passion for encrypting and deciphering texts runs through the sciences” since the 13th century (Zielinski 73). He also notes that cryptography made particular demands on memory and was thus bound to mnemonic ability (83). Bruno took this relationship one step further. In his writings and teachings, Bruno endeavored to both transmit and internalize hermetic secrets through mnemonic technique. <br />
[[Image: bruno_memory_wheel.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|Frances Yates' rendition of Giordano Bruno's mnemonic wheel described in ''Shadows'' (1582).]] “The secret was the combination of the Hermetic beliefs with the techniques of the art of memory” (Yates 305) writes Frances Yates, so that these “memory systems” became “a mode of transmitting a religion, or an ethic, or some message of universal import” (387). <br />
<br />
Bruno’s system of “magic mnemonics” (Yates 223) hinged on his belief that the memorization of significant images enabled the "harnessing of the inner world of the imagination to the stars, or reproducing the the celestial world within" (215). Memory, for Bruno, was thus a dioptric medium, allowing the passage of the sublime order of the heavens into the individual psyche, "arriving at the vision within of the One light diffused through all" (230). This divine lumen, however, was guarded by catoptric technique. Bruno's mnemonic system was based the arrangement of intricate wheels of astral symbols and magic images. Bruno's first book on the art of memory is aptly titled ''Shadows'': as Yates observes, there is “Circaean mystification at the heart of this memory treatise” (247). Bruno’s mnemonic code thus had a dual function to reveal and conceal. He sought to at once unify the human imagination and the celestial order through memory, and to keep this mnemonic recipe secret, decipherable only by those who understood hermetic principles and believed in magic.<br />
<br />
===Written in wax===<br />
<br />
Wax—the inscription media associated with classical rhetoric and art of memory—was remediated in recording technology and psychoanalytic discourse at the turn of the 20th century. Through a brief comparison of modern and antique articulations of wax as the material substrate of memory, we may glimpse how the rise and fall of mnemonics is subject to the imagined materiality—and malleability—of the mind.<br />
<br />
====Antique imaginary: the obvious====<br />
<br />
Cicero’s ''De oratore'' (finished in 55 B.C.E.) is among the earliest treatises describing mnemonics as a rhetorical art (Yates 17). Cicero credits Simonides with the invention of the art of memory, when, with “with almost divine powers of memory,” he “wrote down what he wanted to remember in certain places in his possession by means of images, just as if he were describing letters on wax” (qtd. in Yates 19). Yates interprets Cicero’s portrayal of the origin of mnemonics as “an inner writing on wax” (19): Simonides internalizes the wax tablet, the medium for recording speech that Phaedrus famously concealed under his cloak in Plato’s dialogue. Cornelia Vismann identifies wax as the key medium in the shift from oral to written legal and administrative culture in the West. “To synchronize speech and writing,” Vismann describes, “the speedwriters or exceptores responsible for files and protocols drew their letters in wax, which, in Quintilian’s words, puts up as little resistance to inscribing as it does to erasing” (Vismann 55). These speedwriters also assigned to take down the senate minutes, which “in search for the aura of the authentic,” “aim[ed] for [a] presentist effect” (54). Mnemonic systems were also designed to uphold these cultural values of presence and authenticity, and were analogous to wax in their ability to suture oral performance and written record.<br />
[[Image: waxtablet.jpg|left|300px|thumb|A Grecian wax tablet.]]<br />
Wax was thus the obvious material through (and on) which to describe mnemonics, which interfaced between speech and writing. The metaphor has an additional layer: as a malleable, hand-held medium, the wax tablet suggests that the memory is likewise easily manipulable by an autonomous author. Cicero renders Simonides as the authorial agent of his inner wax tablet, and thus in control of his memory. Nearly two millennia later, during the modern turn, the idea that one could rely on—let alone control—one’s memory was undercut by the development of recording technologies and the rise of psychoanalytic theories of trauma and repression. Curiously, at this historical moment, the connection between wax and memory that once portrayed both mnemonics and the inner-workings of the classical mind is again applied to the mind. This later incarnation of inner wax, however, is not subject to authorial intent, but inscribed upon by machines and the Unconscious.<br />
<br />
====Modern memory: the return of the repressed?====<br />
<br />
Two notable depictions of wax as the material substrate of memory bracket Kittler’s year 1900: Jean-Marie Guyau’s Memory and Phonograph (1880) and Sigmund Freud’s Note Upon the ‘Mystic-Writing Pad’ (1925). “What good are the poetic mnemonic techniques of rhyme and meter when wax rolls can store not only substance and tone but real sounds?” (Kittler 1992, 236), Kittler asks in ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Guyau addressed this anxiety of the inferiority of human memory and the limits of language early on by claiming the phonograph as the most exact metaphor for man’s ability to record and recite—to read, write, and speak. Notions of manipulating the memory with images, places, and signs is replaced with a techno-scientific inscription in Guyau’s comparison: “Upon speaking into a phonograph, the vibrations of one’s voice are transferred into a point that engraves lines on a metal plate…in analogous ways, invisible lines are incessantly carved into the brain cells” (qtd. in Kittler 1999, 30-31).<br />
<br />
Freud’s use of the [[mystic-writing pad]] as an analogy for the psyche also revises the idea of memory and inscription. Freud dismisses mnemonics right off the bat: “If I distrust my memory,” he begins, “I am able to supplement and guarantee its working by making a note in writing” (Freud 227). External “devices to aid memory” (228) are imperfect compared to our own sensory apparatus, however, which “has an unlimited receptive capacity for new perceptions and nevertheless lays down permanent—even though not unalterable—memory-traces of them” (228). Though he distrusts his memory, Freud echoes the ancient Greeks in imagining the psychic apparatus as a remediation of the wax tablet: the mystic-writing pad. Unlike the imagined mnemonic tablet, however, Freud’s pad is not consciously inscribed, but “receives perceptions (which are accompanied—but are not consciously manipulated—"by consciousness)and passes the excitation on to the unconscious mnemic systems” (231).<br />
<br />
Though these modern articulations of the mind destabilize the ability of human memory (assumed by mnemonics) and man’s conscious power over it (and symbolized by wax), they are haunted by the idea of control and power that they repress. Guyau and Freud participate in the same endeavor to represent the black box of the mind, reiterating the art of memory via technological and psycho-scientific metaphor.<br />
<br />
==Obsolescence and the Changing Thinker==<br />
<br />
<br />
According to Yates, the quest for improved memory through artificial mnemonic systems emerges as a critical part of our attempt to organize knowledge and impose an understandable order on a chaotic world. Mnemonics were one such attempt, and although they are very efficient at storing information in packages that allow for easy retrieval they are rarely used today, in part because it is decreasingly relevant or important to remember things. As Nietzsche observed, "our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts" ([http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ Carr]). The way we interact with information has changed drastically since a time before writing, thus changing the way we think. To cite the oft-relevant Jonathan Crary, audiences need to be trained to use new mediums and technologies (Crary 6), and it seems as though our new technologies our shaping the way we seek out, take in, and digest information. <br />
<br />
When the printing press was invented by Johann Gutenberg in the early 1450s, memory techniques started to lose their prominence. People were suddenly able to record history, genealogies, law codes and stories without committing them to memory. With easy access to computer databases and the Internet, the need for mnemonic devices is has faded even further. This shift in thinking was pointed out in a recent article published in the New York Times: "Why bother remembering the clever poem that tells the value of pi to 21 places (3.141592653589793238462) when you can look it up online and get a virtual googol of places? Why is it necessary in this information age to remember most thing, except maybe your user name and password(s)?" ([http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html Rosenthal]). Clive Thompson summed up the change in thinking even more succinctly in [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson ''Wired''] magazine: "Almost without noticing it, we've outsourced important peripheral brain functions to the silicon around us." In a time when memory was the only storage device or at least one of the most efficient, mnemonics were an obvious form of mediation, but as new technologies have become available making it simple to find almost any fact in a few quick keystrokes and a quick skimming of a web page, those old strategies have become less necessary. It is not surprising mnemonics have largely disappeared. We have found new ways to solve the problem of retaining important details. Perhaps this modern resistance to memorization masks an anxiety caused by a diminished sense of our own mnemonic capabilities (Cambor 2001) due to developments in technology and the emergence of psychoanalysis, or perhaps memory itself is a dying medium.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
* Carr, Nicholas. [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"] ''The Atlantic''. The Atlantic Monthly Group, July-Aug. 2008. Web. 10 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Crary, Jonathan. ''Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century''. Boston: MIT Press, 1992.<br />
* de Man, Paul. ''Aesthetic Ideology''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Dissemination''. New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 2004.<br />
* Derrida, Jacques. ''Speech and phenomena: and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs''. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. <br />
* Donald Phillip Verene, Vico’s Science of Imagination (Ithaca, 1981), 96-126<br />
* Fentress, James and Chris Wickham (1992) Social Memory. Oxford: Blackwell. <br />
* Freud, Sigmund. ''The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud''. Ed. James Strachey. London: The Hogarth Press, 1961.<br />
* Kittler, Friedrich A. ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.<br />
* --. ''Gramophone, Film, Typewriter''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton. ''The Art of Memory Reconceived: From Rhetoric to Psychoanalysis''. Journal of the History of Ideas, 48(3), 371-392<br />
* Patrick H. Hutton, "The new science of giambattista Vico: Historicism in its Relation to Poetics" ''Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism'', 30 (1972), 362-64<br />
* Rosenthal, Jack. [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/magazine/17ONLANGUAGE.html "Mnemonics."] ''New York Times''. New York Times Company, 17 July 2005. Web. 11 Apr. 2010.<br />
* Ronell, Avital. "Scoring Literature: The Drug Culture". (Lecture, NYU, 4/8/10).<br />
* Thompson, Clive. [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson "Your Outboard Brain Knows All"] ''Wired''. Conde Nast Digital, 25 Sept. 2007. Web. 11. Apr. 2010.<br />
* Vismann, Cornelia. ''Files: Law and Media Technology''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008.<br />
* Yates, Frances A. ''The Art of Memory''. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966.<br />
* Zielinski, Siegfried. ''Deep Time of the Media''. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.<br />
<br />
==External Links==<br />
* [http://www.eudesign.com/mnems/_mnframe.htm Mnemonics] - a list of a number of standardized mnemonic devices<br />
* [http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-memory.htm How Human Memory Works] - a simple overview of the mental process<br />
<br />
[[Category:Dossier]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Spring 2010]]</div>Gillian Young