Memory Theatre in the Digital Age

Abstract

Forgotten for centuries, they now appear more up-to-date than ever: the Memory Theatres of the 16th and 17th century. Created to revitalize the scholastically stifled memory culture of the Middle Ages and to counteract the sensory deprivation of the dawning age of print, Memory Theatres have been rediscovered by information designers and artists who develop strategies of staging data as an alternative to storing them like dead objects. The lecture will discuss the Memory Theatre of Giulio Camillo (1480–1544) and the causes for its manyfold comebacks in the digital era. The most remarkable of these causes is the inventive momentum of performative media installations. The visual strategies by which the historic Memory Theatres stimulated the imagination of their visitors find their echoes in computer art that could point the way for future models of visualising and staging information. They give examples of how to oppose the static model of 'storage and retrieval' with performative ways of knowledge presentation.