"Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees."
- Robert Irwin*
I've always liked the quote, and enjoy the idea of becoming as aware of the way we look at things as we are of what we're actually seeing. Its a concept that has floated to the surface many times over the course of the last semester, but this week, as my two home towns begin to overlap each other, I have seen this idea of Irwin's in a new way.
One of my primary "jobs" over the next couple of days is to gather a collection of images to put onto a digital frame, which will ultimately become a Christmas gift for my paternal grandmother, Mina, who is 87. Not only am I to gather them, put them in some sort of order, and format them for the 16:9 aspect ratio of the screen, but it is also important that I add in an easily-readable system of captions.
Captions like:
"Katy. Your granddaughter."
"Easton, your great-grandson."
My grandmother is in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's Disease. For her, forgetting the name of the thing she sees is a daily occurrence, and has nothing to the perception of art, or with a willing phenomenological experience of the world around her. It frustrates her, that she can't bring the words she clearly used to know into the part of her brain where she can speak them. Memories of her childhood and early adulthood are strong and clear, but the conversation she had an hour earlier is gone forever. Her socializing instinct is still strong, but in her condition that means she initiates the same conversation again and again.
What happens to your understanding of place when you literally cannot remember it?
* I have seen this quote a few times in the last few months. Once in my friend Elana's most excellent thesis presentation, and again in some of the phenomenology reading associated with my Network Landscapes class this past semester. As an artist, Irwin is interested in the way we perceive space, and my favorites of his of work attempt to shift the way viewers are experiencing the environment around them using light and color.
- Robert Irwin*
I've always liked the quote, and enjoy the idea of becoming as aware of the way we look at things as we are of what we're actually seeing. Its a concept that has floated to the surface many times over the course of the last semester, but this week, as my two home towns begin to overlap each other, I have seen this idea of Irwin's in a new way.
One of my primary "jobs" over the next couple of days is to gather a collection of images to put onto a digital frame, which will ultimately become a Christmas gift for my paternal grandmother, Mina, who is 87. Not only am I to gather them, put them in some sort of order, and format them for the 16:9 aspect ratio of the screen, but it is also important that I add in an easily-readable system of captions.
Captions like:
"Katy. Your granddaughter."
"Easton, your great-grandson."
My grandmother is in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's Disease. For her, forgetting the name of the thing she sees is a daily occurrence, and has nothing to the perception of art, or with a willing phenomenological experience of the world around her. It frustrates her, that she can't bring the words she clearly used to know into the part of her brain where she can speak them. Memories of her childhood and early adulthood are strong and clear, but the conversation she had an hour earlier is gone forever. Her socializing instinct is still strong, but in her condition that means she initiates the same conversation again and again.
What happens to your understanding of place when you literally cannot remember it?
* I have seen this quote a few times in the last few months. Once in my friend Elana's most excellent thesis presentation, and again in some of the phenomenology reading associated with my Network Landscapes class this past semester. As an artist, Irwin is interested in the way we perceive space, and my favorites of his of work attempt to shift the way viewers are experiencing the environment around them using light and color.