In collaboration with Tom Simmons and Dr Hugo Spiers; funded by the Wellcome Trust
www.pattern-completion.net | Research notes 2009
A collaboration between an artist, a sound designer and a neuroscientist to create an installation exploring ways in which networks of brain cells recall memories. The installation uses combinations of projected sounds and images to describe a theoretical memory process known as pattern completion.
When a memory is created activity patterns in the neurons become inscribed in their connections, leaving a trace known as an engram. It is thought that during recall this trace is restored and the original activity pattern re-established. During pattern completion the initial activity of the cells is incoherent, but via a repeated reactivation process the activity pattern is pieced together until the original pattern is complete. Sometimes it fails, leaving us unable to bring elements of the past to mind.
The installation echoes this process using sound recordings and photographic sequences captured in forests, which are fragmented, shuffled and projected into constellations of suspended glass spheres. Embodied in these spheres, the image fragments become suggestive of the places in which they were initially recorded.
The forest scenes, based on pathways, clearings and walking are purposefully empty of people and objects. The images and sounds provide cues for viewers to complete, or interpret, these landscapes with recollections of their own.
