I find Hiroshi Sugimoto’s out of focus depictions of famous architectural sites to be an inspirational source for my project. The visual aesthetic he provides us to engage with can be interpreted as how we could potentially perceive our own memories. There is something transcendental about this work where the subject is veiled in an alternative reality. The blurry depictions create a haze over the subject but not to the point where it is completely shrouded in abstraction. This divisive distortion gives the viewer the opportunity to focus on the complete form of the architecture without being distracted by lesser details.

Source : https://www.sugimotohiroshi.com/new-page-5

***Hiroshi Sugimoto is one of the artists mentioned in the video “Memory” with host, Isabella Rossellini, assigned for Art & The Brain class research -> https://art21.org/watch/art-in-the-twenty-first-century/s3/introduction-to-memory-by-isabella-rossellini/#:~:text=Introduction%20to%20%22Memory%22Featuring%20Isabella%20Rossellini&text=The%20artists%20wrestle%20with%20complex,the%20past%20embody%20cultural%20memory.

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An article, By Emily Underwood; May. 8, 2014 

 “…Now, the first study of its kind in mice suggests that the brain may clear away that old information in the process of forming new memories.

 

For the most part, the brain stops producing new neurons—a process called neurogenesis—soon after birth. In humans, mice, and some other species, however, neurogenesis continues throughout life in a brain region that encodes memories about space and events, called the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus. In adult humans, the dentate gyrus produces roughly 700 new brain cells each day.”

“Psychologists have long considered the process of forgetting as key to a healthy mind, yet neuroscientists haven’t paid much attention to it in the past, Frankland says. “If you embrace the idea that forgetting is healthy,” then it makes sense that neurogenesis may contribute to the clearing out of old memories, he says. Although it’s pure speculation at this point, he says, it’s possible that one way that antidepressants help people with depression, a condition linked to reduced neurogenesis, “is to promote some sort of clearing or forgetting,” he says.”

Source: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/05/how-brain-deletes-old-memories

• An article published by Scientific American, Authors:  Timothy Brady, Adena Schachner, December 16, 2008

“… it’s more like a puzzle: we piece together our memories, based on both what we actually remember and what seems most likely given our knowledge of the world. Just as we make educated guesses in perception, our minds’ best educated guesses help “fill in the gaps” of memory, reconstructing the most plausible picture of wh

at happened in our past.”

The most striking demonstration of the minds’ guessing game occurs when we find ways to fool the system into guessing wrong. When we trick the visual system, we see a “visual illusion”—a static image might appear as if it’s moving, or a concave surface will look convex.  When we fool the memory system, we form a false memory—a phenomenon made famous by researcher Elizabeth Loftus…”

Boundary Extension, a study by Intraub and Dickinson:

“This phenomenon is usually interpreted as a constructive memory error—our memory system extrapolates the view of the scene to a wider angle than was actually present. “

“…is boundary extension a visual illusion or a false memory? Perhaps these two phenomena are not as different as previously thought. False memories and visual illusions both occur quickly and easily, and both seem to rely on the same cognitive mechanism: the fundamental property of perception and memory to fill in gaps with educated guesses, information that seems most plausible given the context.”

Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/perception-and-memory/