SUBJECT:
Everyone's talking about space. The last ten years or more has seen a "spatial turn" in the arts, humanities and social sciences, with research turning to examine the utilization of space in the production and reception of self and society. At the same time, networks and mobile technology have made possible some of the dreams of "pervasive computing" in Computer Science and Engineering. When computing can happen anywhere, the metaphorical space of the network becomes real, and design of user experiences has to consider factors once limited to architectural design.
The experience and construction of space inevitably involves memory and history, as through use we build subjective and collective memories. We "store" memories in space through the way we attach events to locations, but also are taught to recall memory spatially through the organization of cognitive "memory palaces." With the addition of embedded computing, sensing, and surveillance, spaces acquire literal possibilities for storing and retrieving information.
We will explore, through projects and readings, some of the ways in which space is "produced," how memory and history functions in the creation of shared space, and how design can address the storage of new memories, or the retrieval of old ones. We will take as our laboratory the building that hosts the course, the Thomas M. Siebel Center for Computer Science.
MEMORY PALACE:
The Memory Palace is a mnemonic device, with roots in the ancient notion of Method of Loci, in which an architectural structure, often a prominent public building, is used to organize memorization. Quoting from Wikipedia: "To utilize the method, one walked through the building several times, viewing distinct places within it, in the same order each time. After a few repetitions of this, one should be able to remember and visualize each of the places in order reliably. To memorize a speech, one breaks it up into pieces, each of which is symbolized by vivid imagined objects or symbols. In the mind's eye, one then places each of these images into the loci. They can then be recalled in order by imagining that one is walking through the building again, visiting each of the loci in order, and viewing each of the images that were placed in the loci, thereby recalling each piece of the speech in order."