project 2

I've been thinking a lot about progress lately. This might not have to do with memory, but I believe that there are some ties.

More specifically, I've been thinking about the relationship between progress and history.

There are many different kinds of progress and if asked, I don't believe that two people would have the same answer. However, I do believe that there is some general understanding that progress generally refers to some sort of forward motion, or advancement. Progress usually has some sort of positive connotation, not generally referred to in a negative way. There is scientific progress, technological progress, and social progress. Then there is the term "progress trap", which I found to be generally associated with environmental issues. "The progress trap" occurs when societies unintentionally create problems, through their own innovation, that they do not possess the means to solve, in turn impeding or preventing further progress.

Now, history and progress is the thing that really gets me. If progress is a forward, linear motion as so often perceived, showing improvements and advancements through time, then how is it that we often hear the old saying, "history repeats itself." Granted, Western culture, as well as other cultures have advanced greatly in the way of technology and science, but historical progress? I believe this has to do with society. It is seen in fashion, in politics, in the arts, a hearken back to some older time. When did society stop progressing? I am not saying that there was never advancement in society. Every 20 or so years things seem to repeat...wars, stock market crashes . Is this inevitable, predestined? Maybe it's just that people can only see what has been laid out for them and follow the paths of their ancestors, only doing what has been done in the past. Taking something old and branding it "new and improved".

Perhaps, 20 years is a long enough time that people have kept all of the fond memories that they have stored of a time period and discarded all of the unwanted ones. Sort of how "oldies" stations play the hit songs of whatever decade they chose and not the ones that didn't really make it, leading parents to tell their children, "our music" was so much better than yours.

Perhaps people need to reevaluate their idea of progress. Either that it is something that moves cyclically, rather than linearly, or to act on the definition already in place of progression. To improve, create something new, something better, perhaps steering the wheel of history, rather than riding it.

As the deadline for our project draws nearer, I've been thinking a lot about the word memory and the different types of memory that exist. Of course, we have been comparing the human memory to technological memory, but I've been thinking more about perspective and more specifically dreams.

Perspective on a memory can vary over time and from consciousness to subconsciousness.  Dreams are basically a memory that is altered by our subconscious.  Whatever we want that memory to mean to us is how we view it in our dreams.  A dream can be a memory, exactly how we experienced it, or can exist in fragments, as a catalyst of events for the rest of the dream.  

There are also memories that we choose to forget and those that reoccur, whether we want them to or not.  There are also the memories that we forget and are triggered, maybe many years later by our senses.  I experienced this recently at an arboretum on Long Island.  I had completely forgotten I had been there as a child.  As I walked the trails, I had no recollection of the day until I walked through a house onto a wrap around porch that looked out onto the Connetquot River.  I was suddenly 6 years old again.  When I walked through the branches of the giant willow tree, among the hundreds of carvings, I saw a heart, bearing the names of my aunt and uncle, who had accompanied  me to the arboretum that day.  This gave my vague memory validity.

This also brings me to another point.  If a memory changes over time, then what validates it?  Another person's account of the story, a scene, a picture, a sound, a smell?  Things that can validate a memory could also be the same things that can discredit it.  How often do people argue over details of a specific event?

There are also big events that impact a wide range of people, such as the assassination of JFK or 9/11.  Everyone has a different memory of the event that they can specifically recall.  Often, people are asked "Where were you when...?"  Showing that memory has a specific place in our lives, in society and in history.

Can we call this a variation on a memory?  A collective memory that varies from person to person.

I hope to develop these ideas a little more as we delve further and further into this project

2nd entry

I'm running a little behind on my blog entries, so I'm going to get a lot into this one. The first thing I'd like to comment on is our experiment with Cisco a couple of weeks ago. I think that the communication system is great for the purpose it it was invented for. I can see that it can be very useful for board meetings and things of that nature. The latency isn't very bad when you compare it to things like skype or ichat, however we were only about 2 blocks away from eachother during this experiment. I don't know what the latency would be like across the country or throughout the world. The downside to the Cisco communication system is that it is extremely costly to set up and use. There is a great deal of equipment that is needed that a small business or school, as portrayed in the tv commercial, would not be able to afford. For our purposes, if we had a system set up in the blackbox theatre it could be a good system of communication. It would be even better, if we could set up multiple cameras for use with the Cisco system. I realize that this is new, and just as all technology, it will take a while to come out with something less expensive, and more accessable to the public. If Cisco, or another company could come up with the same technology that is less expensive or maybe even portable, like an upgraded version of skype, I think it would do very well.

Now for my second point,

I visited the Guggenheim last week and saw the exhibit that Prof. Gilbert had mentioned, Memory by Anish Kapoor.  The exhibit was amazing. It consisted of a giant, almost egg-shaped, steel structure.  There were three possible viewing points to see the structure, however the entirety of the structure could not be viewed from any such point.  This forces the viewer to put the entire structure together in their mind, not the way that it actually looks, but obviously, the way that they remember it.  

Another interesting piece I saw at the Guggenheim, is a sort of human-interaction piece by Tino Sehgal entitled "This Progress".  When I entered the building with friends and walked toward the rotunda ramp, We waere greeted by a young girl who asked us to define progress.  We walked up the spiraling while I was searching for a definition, then she disappeared and I was greeted by a girl who was about 20.  She lead us to refine our definition as we walked on until we met a man who I presume was in his 30's and the girl disappeared.  He asked us if we felt that we were getting more boring as we grew older.  He too disappeared and a woman in her 50's walked with us to the top of the ramp and told us a story of a man who planted vegetables in the planters of an office building.  He harvested the vegetables and gave them to homeless people that he found on the street.  The strangest fact of all of this, was that no one in the building had noticed.  The woman then told us the title of the piece, This Progress. 

This lead me to think about "progress" in terms of technology.  The first instinct that we had when we first asked "What is progress?" was to think in terms of inventions or to things moving linearly, generally in a positive direction.  By the end, the term became more ambiguous.  

I thought about our class.  Although, the framework of the course is to learn technology, the purpose of the technology is to interact on a very human level.  We are attempting to communicate and to collaborate using specific technology (something new) to perform in the arts (something old).