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memory_code [2020-12-08 15:30] – theunkarelsememory_code [2023-02-10 10:41] – theunkarelse
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-==== Memory Code ====+==== Monster Code ====
  
-A term coined by Lynne Kelley. Ways of encoding environmental, ethological and cultural knowledge directly into the environment (or objects)+//Monster// refers to imagination. //Code// refers to encoding things geographically. The name is an adaptation of //Memory Code// the title of the book by Lynne Kelley, on ways of encoding environmental, ethological and cultural knowledge and wisdom directly into the environment (or objects). Oral cultures tap into two immensely powerful forms of human memory for storing knowledge:  
 +  * monster: **our memory of character**: you may forget someones name, but you never struggle to remember someones personality. More then “thinking stones and mountains are alive” oral cultures they give their landscape character. 
 +  * code: **our memory for geography**: we may not be great at remembering list, but we are amazingly good at remembering places. Imagine your house. Almost nobody struggles to remember where the living room, bedroom, kitchen, toilet are, or even the furniture in those rooms. Modern memory champions still use this technique known as a memory-palace. Often the greek [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci|method of loci]] is pointed out as its origin, but that vastly underestimates how fundamental these principles were, stretching over tens of thousands of years of human history and across all continents. 
 +  
  
-==== Hiking with Monsters ==== +[[monstercode_intro]] and [[memory_craft]]
-Notes an a student program run by Theun.+
  
-== Session1 Fieldwork == 
-  * Intro fieldwork practice 
-  * Assignment: what place would you like to explore, how would you do it? 
-  * Assignment 4th year: How do you share that exploration with others? 
  
-== Session2 What lives here now. == 
-  * Intro Nederlands landscape. 
-  * Set up whatsapp (or otherwise) 
-  * Field assignment: find a creature that interests you, <del>how would you design a way to communicatie with it?</del>  
-  * Or what qualities does it have? How do you think it finds its way in the world? Are there talents you share? <del>Name it based on those qualities.</del> 
  
 +==== Reading notes ====
  
-== Session3 Regeneration == +=== Stephen Muecke on speaking with Paddy Roe ===
-  * Regenerative practices +
-  * <del>What would your area need? How can habitat be reinvigorated, restored?</del> +
-  * guest: Vasanth Bosco +
-  * review assignment last week +
-  * Field assignment: Take a 1 hour hike from the perspective of your animal. Try to experience the world through it’s eyes, ears, of antennae. Slow as snail, fast as a bird. Report your experience, what do you notice about the area through the animal perspective? +
-  * Design a way for others to experience the perspective of your animal during a hike. How can someone experience the world from that perspective? +
-  * <del>Assignment 4th year: How can local people become active participants in that reconnection?</del> +
-  * Research assignment: What lived in your area before? What qualities did it need / bring? What do you think is missing now? What qualities does your environment lack?+
  
-== Session4 Rewilding == +//“Not only was his (Aboriginal elder Paddy) knowledge not reproduced in books like the ones he nevertheless wanted to write with me, but it had nothing to do with authorship. Knowledge didn’t originate with individuals, and the concept of mind was irrelevant. Knowledge was on the outside; it was held in ‘living Country’. And humans had to get together to animate this knowledge.\\  
-  * <del>What would your area need? Which organisms can regenerate it?</del> +\\ 
-  * Make groups: if you look at your animals, where are opportunities for coexistence? How could this animal live there? What would be needed? Rewilding. +As Paddy and I were walking the beautiful coastline north of Broome, he would point out things, tell stories, call out to ancestors, and sing songs that belonged to particular places. The songs were important because they were inspirational (in the original Latin sense of a truth being breathed into someone). Their significance was, and is, multiple: they are handed down from ancestors; they tie human and nonhuman worlds together and animate those connections; they are mnemonic and practical, reminding people, for instance, that this is the place of yarrinyarri, the bush onion.\\ 
-  * In groups: what do each of your animals need? Where do their interests match or clash? How could such different needs be brought together? (Multispecies design) (Afterwards give example of  Aboriginal totems). +\\ 
-  * What timescale do you design for? +But how on Earth does knowledge transfer work without a concept of mind? Understanding, for Paddy, was ‘hearing’ and that was the word he used (as in, ‘that man can’t hear’), equivalent to the French entendre, which also embraces the meanings of hearing and understanding.”//
-  * Field assignment: what natural cycles are missing, disrupted? How to reconnect. (Any size, tiny ant tunnel)  +
-  * Choose an environmental process in your neighbourhood. Translate its properties into a being. +
  
-== Session5 Team work == +=== Biggest Estate === 
-  * <del>Based on previous lesson, work in groups on one organism. Who are the experts?</del> +Bill Gamage, //Biggest Estate on Earth//: 
-  * <del>assignment: Design a research team: what kinds of expertise are needed? (What is in it for them?)</del> +  * pg 126 every part of land, sea and sky must lie on a songline otherwise an ancestor can’t have created it and it would not exist 
-  * <del>assignment 4th year: Design a research week. Location. Team. Question.</del> +  * pg 126 repeat the song exactly because the creator ancestor is listening 
-  * <del>(Don’t design the team sitting in your classroom. Do it on location!)</del> +  * pg 126 from far away they can discuss a tree or creek and who is responsible for it 
-  * What does your area need? What natural cycles are missing, disrupted? How to reconnect. What qualities are lacking in your area? Make a list of these qualities. Give them to an other group and they will design a creature (character design, mythological being) based on those. At the end of the class we see if those Monsters fit their purpose.  +  * pg 127 shape signifies life, in death they loose shape, so all things with shape have soul  / Julian Barbour geometry is fundamental to the universe 
-  * field assignment: hike with your Monster through your area: what do you notice from the monsters perspective?  +  * pg 127 the soul passes from one chariot to another and this gives creation order, it moves through a particular set of things created by the same ancestor in the Dreaming.
-Assignment 4th year: How can the monster / creature activate local people? Or more formally: how can locals people become active participants in reconnecting environmental processes?+
  
-== Session6 Animals as guides == +==== Hiking with Monsters at Amelisweerd 2021/2022 ==== 
-  * <del>What qualities do animals need to thrive? (Elephants memory, bioindicators, animals/plants as messengers)</del> +Notes on a research program in collaboration with Sjef van Gaalen and Creative Coding Utrecht.
-  * <del>Ecologist can see this area needs… wolves. (Trophic cascades)</del> +
-  * <del>Assignment: (I give 5 animals and plants) in groups: what are the qualities of those animals?</del> +
-  * <del>Assignment after class: translate those qualities into a human being a character.</del> +
-  * <del>(In what ways does that help to think about the role of animals, in what ways does it hinder?)</del>+
  
-== Session7 == +=== Stage1: Monster Code, Landscape as Mindpalace === 
-  * Qualities of animals and plants in the long now.  +Monster Code explores techniques for encoding environmental knowledge directly into the environment itself. Imagination (monsters) and geographic memory are key pillars this builds on. Basically associating knowledge to features and hooks in the landscape, by the power of imagination and story. That power is considerable, as evidenced by the practices of oral cultures around the world, showing knowledge remaining intact over thousands of years and spanning thousands of km. People who have started practicing it report their world is filled with new layers of liveliness: you are not just walking to the bakery or office, you are walking through the history of early humans, all indigenous dragonfly species (or whatever you happen to have encoded locally). But we will start at the beginning. 
-  * Australia and aboriginals. Tending the wild. +This first phase of the research is about rapid prototyping, taking subjects and encoding them in different ways into the environment. 
-  * Assignment: memory walk +\\ 
- +Prototyping phase:\\ 
-== Session8 == +  * timeline of presidents encoded into shopping street 
-  * Memory walk field test together. +  * timeline of hominids encoded into opposite side of shopping street (each block 1 million years) 
-  * Assignment: design a multi generational knowledge system. How can our understanding and experience of the environment be shared across time? +  * mindpalace of damselflies
-  * (Floppy disc vs. songline) +
- +
-== Session10 == +
-  * Discuss the multigenerational knowledge systems.+
  
  
  • memory_code.txt
  • Last modified: 2023-02-10 10:44
  • by theunkarelse