The capacity to record our daily experiences in memory allows us to extract knowledge and rules about the world around us. Neuroscience is revealing how information encoded in the brain during waking experience is initially unstable, and has to undergo a complex process of consolidation if long-term memories are to form. This process reveals the full processing potential of a brain in action. In reducing it, however, to the abstract language of neural activity, our sense of memory in its everyday use is easily lost. What might the neuroscience of memory look when brought back into the world of experience?
Memory Tower is a full-immersion virtual reality installation based at the Duke Immersive Virtual Environment (DiVE) at Duke University in the US. The piece explores the relationship between the lived experience of memory and the biological mechanisms underlying memory encoding and consolidation. The nature of autobiographical memory formation and consolidation during sleep is reflected through the use of historical architectural motifs. These serve as visual metaphors for the content and structure of memory traces and the neural operations in which they are involved during sleep states. Through creating a rich cityscape that encompasses the episodic/semantic and spatial facets of our daily experiences, the work aims to extend beyond a reductionist description of memory content and to acknowledge notions of collective human experience and history. At the heart of the Memory Tower, therefore, is not only a scientific narrative about sleep’s role in memory consolidation made visible through the cultural lens of architecture, but a deeper investigation into our own unique and irreducible experiences with sleep and memory.
Publications and Presentations
Senior T. J. (2014). Der Weg zum Memory Tower. In “ArteFakte. Wissen ist Kunst – Kunst ist Wissen. Reflexionen und Praktiken wissenschaftlich-kuenstlerischer Begegnungen“, edited by Parzinger, H., Aue, S., Stock, G. Eds.), 255-256. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.
Senior T. J. (2012). Presentation at Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften: Salon Sophie Charlotte: Wissen ist Kunst – Kunst ist Wissen (Berlin, Germany)
Senior T. J. (2012) Memory Tower. Presentation at CHAT Festival (Duke University, US)
Senior T. J. (2011). Memory Tower. Presentation at Aboagora symposium – Rethinking enlightenment (Turku, Finland).
Senior T. J. (2011). Memory Tower. Subtle Technologies Festival (Toronto, Canada).
Senior T. J. (2009). Memory Tower. Presentation at SIGGRAPH: 36th International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (New Orleans)
Senior T. J. (2010). Presentation at Lighthouse venue (Brighton, UK)
Senior T. J. (2010). Presentation at New Media Institute Frankfurt (Frankfurt, Germany)
Senior T. J. (2009). Presentation at John Hope Franklin Centre (Duke University, US)
