"(4) What should I remember?"
July 2024. The mnemonics community is primarily interested in memory competitions: memorizing the most digits of pi, reciting the order of a stack of playing cards in the least amount of time, etc. But how broadly could mnemonics expand outside of memory competitions?
In Greek mythology, the goddess of memory (Mnemosyne) is the mother of the nine muses, including the muse of dance (Terpsichore). What is at the intersection of mnemonics and dance? Is there something in particular that you want the audience members to remember from your performance and/or performances?
The first iteration of this project is shown here on the right, created in collaboration with dancer and choreographer Kendall Ramirez. This research direction is inspired by Trisha Brown's "Accumulation" (1971) and Rachel Linsky's Zachor (ongoing).
5 minute version:
12 minute version:
"(7) I guess I'll just sit here: absorbing,"
July 2022. The research for "(7) I guess I'll just sit here: absorbing," helped me grapple with my need to feel immediately useful, which led me to question the utility of the need to feel immediately useful. What is the usefulness in being temporarily not useful? How do we continue to surprise ourselves in predicting what will be useful? What are the consequences of holding 4 pages of ideas top-of-mind "enough" to be able to recite them accurately from memory in one sitting? If there is a compositional structure underlying the finite set that is our thoughts, what are the generators of this finite set?
"(8) in some sort of conceptual limbo,"
July 2024. This is my most rigorous project so far. Where and how should I begin? I'm working as little as possible at a bar to have as much free time as possible, I'm exploring a different area of the scientific literature every 4-8 weeks, I have loads of interests across industries and disciplines with mnemonics as my center point. I'm eager to connect the dots, attentively waiting for the through-line. What is there just before the concept is formed?
This project is primarily inspired by Sam Gershman's "The molecular memory code and synaptic plasticity: A synthesis" (2023), Mike Levin's "Self-Improvising Memory" (2024) and "Bioelectric networks" (2023), Jeremy Gunawardena's "Learning Outside the Brain" (2022), staibdance's Root Theory workshop (2023) and Ararat (2023), as well as numerous other sources over the last couple of years.
"(10) watching myself search for structure,"
November 2023. This is a reflection on The Essential Tension (1977) and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) by Thomas Kühn as well as a translated copy of Paul Hoyningen-Huene's Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions (1993). At the time, I was curious about applying Kuhn's ideas on conceptual change and development into psychology. How does the human mind manage the risk of novel information? What is the fabric of a worldview? Is there a relationship between intrinsic curiosity and the allostatic regulation of this worldview?
"(2) The feelings of incoherence"
September 2023. The research for "(2) the feelings of incoherence" reflects on distance, the awareness of distance, and the subjective experience of something being out-of-place. How does the mind orient itself before tackling a new problem? This is primarily a reflection on How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell. At the time, I was also reading "Self-orienting in human and machine learning" by De Freitas et al. as well as neighboring self-orientation papers.
"(1) What are the conditions for divergent thought?"
In collaboration with movement artists Kendall Ramirez and Faith Fidgeon, the performance of "Iteration 2" lasted two hours; every 15 minutes the choreography would loop, which is when I would switch to a different writing topic. How is my perception of the choreography in loop N influenced by my memories of loops 1, 2, ..., N-1? How is my current worldview shaped by my previous loops around the sun? This research created the conditions for my deep dive into mnemonics. But it was a delicate mixture of shared grief, graduation overwhelm, and the excitement of budding friendships that created the conditions for this initial research. Trained exclusively in math and science, I never would have thought to find myself involved in such a project. What are the conditions for divergent thought?
"Iteration 2" was performed in April 2022 at the Univ. of North Carolina School for the Arts. In "Iteration 3" my role was dramaturg. Here, we tied in threads related to emotional distancing and the absurd things we do while in grief. "Iteration 3" was performed n April 2023 at the Windmill Arts Center in Atlanta.
** this video contains nudity
** this video contains nudity