Memory

Memory is a Construct

At a recent virtual meeting of our fortnightly Google Hangout we had a fascinating prearranged discussion on the subject of memory being a construct.  The session began by two of the group giving a brief resume of their thoughts on the subject which was then opened up for general discussion.  The following bullet points highlight my main points from the session:

• Oxford dictionary defines memory as the faculty by which the mind stores and remembers information.
• Memory is a construct.
• We cannot trust that what we remember is true or actiually happened.
• Memory changes with every retelling.
• It is seeking to come to terms with something that we perceive happened in the past.
• If memory is a construct, perhaps we can never come to terms with it.
• Memory is very slippery.
• Memory has connotations of the past.
• We can construct any version of the past that we want to.
• Memory can be conscious or subconscious.
• It may be more interesting to look at how the present is constructed rather than the past.
• There is no present, only the past and the future.
• Our memory and identity are one and the same thing.
• Memory operates in analogue.
• Memory cannot be replayed like a video.
• Memory is malleable but can be suggested.
• Memory is affected by photographs.
• What we remember depends upon who we are talking to about it.
• Memories are frail and so, therefore, is our identity.
• A photograph is a conservation with memory.
• A photograph can provide the structure for memory.
• Read A. R. Hopwood The False Memory Archive.
• The moment we try to recreate an experience we create a construct.
• Photography and social media affect memories.
• The link between photography and memory is being loosened through the use of digital and social media.
• Digital photography is less inherently linked to memory,
• or human response to memory is changing.
• We unconsciously respond to a photograph as real.
• The evidential aspect of a photograph forms the basis of memory.
• Two people may remember the events in a photograph differently and so have different memories.
• Through social media  we generate a collective memory.
• The ubiquity of digital photography/social media is depersonalising memory.
• Before social media we had a collective memory that was mediated by the media of the day: newspapers, news programmes.
• Is there a mediation of memory today??
• Opinion divided from yes it is mediated by the software to no human mediation.  But social media algorithms are constructed by humans.
• Short term memory lasts only a few seconds.  It may be deleted or moved into the lont term memory.
• The Memory Illusion by Julia Shore.

All of these points are personal opinion and not necessarily factual.  However it was an illuminating discussion and has given me much food for thought regarding my project on my mother's Memorable Day with her father in 1930.  This was written in the mid 1960s when she was in he early to mid 40s and so her memory will almost certainly be a construct.  An will that memory be of one day or an amalgamation of more than one?  Are they solely her own memories or are they prompted by her father and family memories?  Are they prompted by photographs that have been lost to the family archive.  And how has my interpretation of her writing made it my memory?  I have recreated the journey and taken my own contemporary photographs and by selecting selected portions of my mother's text to fit my own and archive photography I have constructed my own memory of the day.  More importantly I need to use these reflections on memory to further develop my own project.