MEMORY RELEASE

Concept

(from process notes and public talk transcript)

As the title “Memory Release” suggests, our research has centered on the process of retrieval: storage locus, trigger mechanisms, release system and internal screening (the visual experience of a memory). It has also proposed there is an existing dialogue between brain and body.

So let’s visualise our researched version of the mechanics of memory: an associative trigger occurs (a smell, an image, a sound), that creates an electrical impulse in the brain which reopens a pathway, travelling through a series of connections to the physical body. There, the held past yields itself shooting straight up to the “mind’s eye” where an internal screening will follow.

Our drive was to represent that internal process through the creation of a live external nervous system: a body hangs in space, suspended from a hip harness. It has been mapped into several areas each corresponding to an energy meridian relating to an organ, which in turn represents a certain emotion. A group of infrared motion capture sensors are attached to each of those parts at the same time as the body is hanging inside a cube lined with infrared receivers. This motion capture system maps the body’s movement in real time, converting it into raw data, which is in turn processed by a computer. The latter will then convert the movement information into commands to release archived video footage (the memories) projecting it onto a screen. The goal is to create an externalisation of the cinematic experience of memory through live movement editing. As the body moves, it remembers, as it remembers, so it edits its memories.