Memories of the Invisible
How do we memorise the invisible through the rooms we leave behind? Using an ancient memory system – the Memory Palace technique – you are asked to remember a list of nine words all related to climate change. Visualising your own memory palace, you mentally wander from room to room while placing associative images along your path that represent each word. Furthermore, you try to shift the often-negative connotation of climate change related words to a more positive valence by forming new connections to the words and/or possible solutions to today’s challenges. Finally, you are asked to share your imaginings and experiences in an experiential interview.
Memories of the Invisible developed as a collaboration between Helene Nymann, visual artist and artistic research fellow at the Interacting Minds Centre (Aarhus University, DK), and Katrin Heimann, assistant professor at the Interacting Minds Centre. Nymann has created a video installation reflecting on the ancient Greek mnemonic system, known as the Memory Palace technique. Her work, The Moving Memory Palace, is part of a series of works looking at both human and non-human memory systems that open up to alternative ways of remembering and imagining a sustainable future. Heimann has worked extensively on aesthetic experience and is interested in developing how precisely arts and science can contribute to a sustainable change of the individual and society, specifically around climate change. She is furthermore trained in a special interviewing technique assessing subjective experience and with this has previously worked on the topic of memory and confabulation.
Teaming up, we found that not only did we share many of the same concerns, but we also had a strong belief in the creative powers of memory. Thus, we wondered what would happen if words relating to the environmental crisis were to be addressed through this ancient memory technique. Would interviewing people using this technique help us learn about participants' thoughts and feelings around climate change?
What if we, furthermore, invited a focus on constructing positive associations and narratives in particular? Could the task animate to renegotiate spontaneous reactions? And what would the strategies for doing so be? Last, but not least, how does such an experience of focusing on, reliving, and sharing intimate experiences with others effect participants themselves?
In a nutshell, we hoped to construct a space for shared mind-wandering where the explication and exploration of our imaginative and intellectual powers could foster more sustainable futures.
Light and noise and excitement flooded the experimental space in the Blavatnik Building of Tate Modern, so it was our first task to create a relaxing space with not much more than two couches, chairs, tables, and a flat screen at hand. Once we prepared what could look like a room within a room, we were ready to remember the invisible!
Upon arrival, Tate Exchange visitors were invited to watch Nymann's video work and were informed about the Memory Palace technique. They were further invited to join us in exploring the Memory Palace technique themselves. Asked to do so in pairs, some knew each other and some did not. Before starting the task, we made them aware of our aims: We engaged them in our suspicion that human memory deploys extraordinary imaginative abilities and that these abilities might be used to reach a much-needed goal – opening up to alternative ways of remembering and living a more sustainable future. Only then did we guide the participants into their memory palaces and through the list of nine words/terms specifically related to climate change.
After completion, we invited participants to share their mental journey with us and their partners, using an interview technique inspired by micro-phenomenology. Lastly, we debriefed the experience, allowing for comparisons and generalisations among their and others' journeys – and we often saw participants continuing the discussion elsewhere. In describing their experiences to us, participants showed immense engagement and excitement, not only due to the fact of having remembered all nine words but also due to what they had visualised and experienced. They felt inspired and engaged.
In guiding participants through their individual memory palaces – in which they created positive associations in connection to climate change related terms – we were interested in what narratives, reactions, and imaginings would emerge. We wondered whether participants would shift their relation to their own inner mechanisms of remembering and imagining the present and/or future. Would the conscious and creative act of approaching such biases contribute to a dialogue around possible solutions to these problems? Would they experience a sense of trust or even spurred creativity within themselves? How would participants retell their memories, and what would happen in the sharing of these narratives? Would an experiment, which asks for a good amount of trust and intimacy, even be possible in the quite-noisy conditions of the Tate and under the circumstances that participants would not have much time to get to know us, the method, or their partners? Last, but not least, would they enjoy the experience? Did you?
Starting with the last question, we were amazingly surprised by the mental effort invested and the trust participants granted us from the very beginning. While doing the memory task, they showed high levels of concentration, often closing their eyes, only to open them upon completion. This gesture repeated itself when they consequently relived and retraced their journey in the experimental interviews. Despite the event's far-from-ideal conditions of space and time, the gesture of closing their eyes showed us that participants were able to direct their attention to the task and without hesitation share their intimate experiences with us and their allocated partner. Their expressions indeed mirrored that they took the experiment as a playful challenge and that the process they went through was positive and even amusing at times. They also seemed to really enjoy sharing their experiences and listening to the journeys of others (and reported that they did so). The task, thus, seems to be a successful tool for our purpose. It shows us that it motivated participants externally, by its quiz-like nature, as well as internally, by giving the freedom to memorise the words in any manner found stimulating, all the while, the context of the memory palace created an associative framework in which one could actually be surprised by the upcoming images. Lastly, this surprise seems to be held on the perfect level, with the chosen memory palace often being a positively associated space, such as a childhood home, which elicited the feeling of safety and nostalgia.
But what did participants talk about? How did they memorise the images, and what about the task to change their internal images into associations of positive valence?
The images
The data we collected indicates at least three ways that the given terms were memorised through the Memory Palace technique.
a) Participants used a room of their memory palace as a framework for their visual associations connected to the term to be memorised. For example, the term 'deforestation' elicited one participant to imagine the interior of their living room being completely replaced by a field of tree stumps.
b) Participants associated a concrete existing object already existing within the room of their memory palace with the respective term. For example, the term 'deforestation' could be connected to the oak table within their living room.
c) Participants created a new object within the room of their memory palace associated with the respective term. Interestingly, the connection between this object and the actual term could seem quite random; it could simply be a phonological link. For example, the term 'drought' elicited the image of a doughnut on the living room table, due to the phonological similarity between the sounds of the words 'doughnut' and 'drought'. While some participants reported that such associations were born out of a difficulty to come up with any imagination, others told us that this was just the most immediate idea that came to them. Noticeable to us, this type of association was the most common.
The transformations
Interestingly, participants solved our second task – to construct images of positive valence – with an ease that admittedly surprised us.
In some cases, this was due to the fact that the initial association did not ask for any transformation as it was intrinsically positive. For example, a doughnut might have intrinsically positive connotations. Similarly, the oak table one participant associated with deforestation was reported as a 'beloved piece of furniture that would not exist without deforestation'. Such reasoning obviously bears some shortcomings (not all wooden furniture implies deforestation), which, however, were not at all of importance for the given task.
The biggest transformative effort was required for associations of type a) – and sometimes type b) – that spontaneously led to an image of negative valence that was of a very different kind. For example, 'plastic garbage', led several participants to directly translate the word into scenes of an overflowing plastic garbage can in the kitchen, leading to a negative response as they became annoyed by it literally trashing and smelling in the kitchen. In another example from the given words, the word 'deforestation' led to an image of a deforested rainforest, causing much more grave concerns about the state of our world and the environment.
Respectively, the solutions were also of a quite different nature. For 'plastic garbage', a positive valence was reached by imagining a personal action, such as bringing the virtual garbage to the recycling bin, a thought that left the participant with a feeling of satisfaction. On the other hand, images of a deforested rainforest were turned positive by several participants thinking of a solution executed by others, such as reforestation projects that they had heard of through media or that they had personally visited. There were also slight indications that the feelings caused by the latter kind of larger-scale solutions were slightly more mixed (such as respect for the project but also fears that the efforts were not enough), but with this kind of transformation being much rarer in the data, we had too little evidence to be sure of this. Most surprisingly to us, it was very rare that participants came up with a creative new solution for an encountered negative association – with the exception of some participants imagining building an artistic sculpture out of plastic garbage, although this was reportedly inspired by having seen artworks made from garbage.
First interpretations and further ideas for development
To conclude, thus, our experiment showed the task as highly motivating and leading to vivid associations of very different kinds. However, most experiences were focused around the memorisation aspect of the task, while the creative solution aspect of the work was put in the background.
It was therefore our suspicion that this might be due to the Memory Palace technique enforcing the memorisation part of the task, thus motivating participants to go for the most effective association rather than to spend much energy focusing on associated feelings and further transformations. To test if this was indeed so, we ran a modified experiment at Aarhus University a few weeks later, in July 2019. In this version we omitted the memory palace framework, purely giving participants the climate change related words, asking them to attend to their associations and – if necessary – to turn them into something of positive valence. Indeed, reports differed considerably. To give just a quick impression, firstly, not having the architectonic framework and structure of the memory palace technique allowed for more abstract and freer associations. These ranged from vivid and complex memories of climate change related phenomena known from media coverage, to imaginations of plastic garbage piling up in one’s personal mental inner space, leading to feelings of suffocation and despair. Secondly, most of these associations were very negative in valence, with participants simply unable to find a solution to transform the negative connotations. Thirdly, attempts at transformation again included solutions known from media or personal experience, however, and maybe most interestingly, these attempts reportedly did not lead to a positive valence very often. On the contrary, reasons why they found that their solutions were not satisfactory seemed to come up repeatedly, leading participants to experience raising frustration and even hopelessness as well as the feeling that the task was unfeasible – which altogether creates a very different picture than the first version of the experiment.
To know more on this workshop and the MOVING HUMANS event in collaboration with the EER group follow link.
To know more about the artwork Ars Memoria: Memes for Imagination look here.