Animating the Memory Theatre

Abstract

The memory arts developed first as playback engines (as ascribed to Simonidies of Ceos), then as in-and-out inventory systems (Cicero's artificial memory systems), and later as theatres of cosmology (Camillo's Memory Theatre). Examining prescriptive texts for creating memorable images for use in these systems, Edgar compares them to the prescriptive writings on cinematic montage by Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein. Edgar posits that the dynamic creation of extraordinary images through memory-montage flips the model of the memory theatre from that of a static museum collection made for an audience, to that of a fluid medium used as aesthetic probe by an artist. Robert illustrates how he came to adapt his own approach from his classical Memory Theatre One (1985), to the dynamic early technology of Living Cinema, through the changing and cacophonous presentation of Memory Theatre Two. His current project Simultaneous Opposites allows the artist to manipulate a temporal depth of field in real time to parse and focus personal aesthetic experience.