2-9-00

Dear Ben Davis,

The reference to The White Goddess by Robert Graves proved to be instructive

because Graves` remarks on Simonides widened the picture I had of the ancient

poet and first mnemonist. Even though I read somewhere (I thought it was

in Francis Yates' Art of Memory but I couldn`t find the passage again) that Simonides not

only invented mnemotechny but three letters of the Greek alphabet, I, until

now, didn`t attach very much importance to that fact. Actually, this fact

rounded the profile of Simonides in two ways. On the one hand, the creative

act of inventing letters corresponds with Simonides` creative and pictorial

usage of language. On the other hand, the invention of letters by someone

who also invented the art of memory - respectively who made some usage

out of the observation that human memory is partially organized spatially

- connect this art or techne to an epoch in which phonetic alphabet

and writing have transformed and changed oral societies as well as oral

memory forever. And in fact, the art of memory is ambiguous, it moves between

orality and literacy. As Walter J. Ong has shown, its bizarre and performing

imagines agentes belong to orality inasmuch as they correspond to

the acute heavy characters and acute type figures of oral memory who

were to organize and stimulate experience and memory. At the same time,

the soon introduced arrangement of the loci in a linear and sequential

order or row deposited in a building corresponds to the systematization

of language and thought by the linear alphabet.

The second reference to your publication Time and Bits: Managing Digital Continuity

has been interesting too. The abstract of the book as well

as Stewart Brand`s text Written on the Wind call to my mind the difficulties

we had running the program of Memory Theater One. To get hold of a still intact Apple

II was one thing, to get the corresponding input device, in this case paddles,

the other. In the end, a small museum that collects computer games supplied

us with the paddles. With reference to an art work and program that is

about the art of memory the irony of technical progress in computer

technology becomes even more obvious. Actually, it is a paradox that the

computer, not so long ago introduced as the ultimate and universal record

and storing device, accelerates the vanishing of information and knowledge

into oblivion. Plato`s objections against writing which, regarding the

computer, were often repeated - gain a new and unexpected dimension. To paraphrase

it with Ong again: "Those who use the computer will become forgetful because

they rely on an external source - an external source which, in contrast

to former storing devices, has proved to be extremely short-lived."

It really is high time to think about the consequences these developments have on

cultural memory and knowledge. Thus, I`ll follow your project with great

interest.

Many thanks,

Kirsten Wagner

Lübeck, Germany