11-24-99
Kirsten -
I had been at the MIT Center for Advanced Visual Study (CAVS) as a Fellow
in 1984 and there was a great interest at the time in using videodisc
technology as a way of visually mapping space. The Architecture Machine
Group at MIT was the group that Nicholas Negroponte and Patrick Purcell
created to use videodisc as a medium both as visual repository and recall
mechanism. The Architecture Machine Group was the beginning of the MIT
Media Laboratory. I don't recall ever hearing much about memory theater at
that time in regard to the Architecture Machine Group. In my own work and
research at the CAVS I worked with both videodisc and slow-scan video which
allowed images to be digitized transmitted over the phone lines at very
slow rates. We used this technology to set up visual conversations with
other art and technology groups in the US and Europe (Documenta). The
intellectual basis of that work was focused on the power of the image to
both communicate interests and tell stories. Yate's Art of Memory was one
of the texts that was quite relevant to those pieces and I referred to it
quite a lot in those days. When I saw Edgar's memory theater in 1985 it had
a resonance with other pieces I had done and he too was using Yates as a
reference as well as Roland Barthe and others. So Robert and I had those
references in common. I agreed to write the review of his Memory Theater
because I had the same background and interests in language (text and
visual), space, and memory. In 1984, the CAVS was headed by artist Otto
Piene who had done a good deal of work on multimedia opera and celebration
pieces that involved search lights, inflatable sculpture, and other kinds
of environmental art. There were all kinds of art/theater pieces so the
notions of memory theater were in a lot of work at that time at MIT. I have
no doubt that the reason I was asked to be a fellow at the MIT CAVS was
because of my interests in those intersections of art, architecture, and
technology. I think it was a very interesting time when ideas from McLuhan,
Yates, Barthe and others were being synthesized by technology. As I re-read
my review I am struck by how far we have come with those ideas and how
neglected the recognition of them actually is today. The Internet is a
memory theater and it has fulfilled all of the prophesies of interactive
art and technology on a global scale. I later taught at the Media Lab in
1987 two courses in the Visible Language Workshop - HyperVision and
HyperSense - which were courses that were based on using recordable
videodisc (this is before recordable CD ROM remember) and Apple's then new
concept of HyperCard. Students would build visual pieces on videodisc and
then link the images to text or graphics to create temporal spaces. It was
a very popular class at the time because the Media Lab was very oriented
toward technical achievement rather that intellectual exploration and
students really wanted to understand what they were creating. In that
regard, I may have introduced some of the ideas of memory theater to the
Media Lab in a more direct way. Certainly a lot of people were making the
same connections at that time.
I made a complete transcript of the article on Robert Edgar and put it on
my MIT Web site (http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/davis/home.html). I had a
lot of fun re-reading it and have asked Robert to react to it so that I can
put something up about looking at those issues again after 14 years. Thank
you for bringing all this up and I look forward to hearing from you. I put
up some new material on the site as well which may be of interest including
a Millennium Lecture by Negroponte that I sponsored at the Getty Center.