Type Specimen progress

My idea was to do a type specimen that integrates the proust excerpt with science explanations. It's taking so long though just to gather and consolidate information that I'm feeling overwhelmed. I blocked out a couple spreads, hoping that once I actually start putting something down it would start coming together.

I eventually want to incorporate stitching or weaving pieces together (to simulate the construction of memory) in the actual construction.

Here are a couple of screen-shots of what i was working on:


I wanted it to be very rectilinear and simple but it's not doing it for me yet.

Research

figured i should offer some proof that, contrary to my blogging activity, i have been doing a lot of work this week. i keep trying to focus on the specimen but get caught up with trying to figure out more about my topic. difficult to apply the NYT exercise in this case but did find a couple relevant articles:

brain researchers open door to editing memory
describes an experiment (similar to one in 2000 by LeDoux et al at NYU) that basically shows that by inhibiting the production of a certain protein necessary for maintaining long-term memories while the memory is being recalled, the memory itself is destroyed. The drug could theoretically be used on sufferers of PTSD to help relieve them of the burden of painful memories. Yes, very eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, which i just now re-watched (a nostalgic and memory-evoking activity in itself - i haven't seen the movie in years but when it came out it was a very big deal for me. i think i saw it like 7 times in theaters. i've been noticing that the process of doing this project has become very meta).

the nose, an emotional time machine
Rachel Herz of Brown has been doing experiments on the link between smell and memory. Even titled one of her articles "testing the proustian hypothesis." The olfactory cortex is located within the limbic system and amygdala, which processes emotional reactions. Now this is the part i'm still trying to figure out - what about HEARING? particularly, music. at least in my experience, while smells and tastes give me a creepy but vague deja-vu experience that is sometimes hard to pin down, certain pieces of music are like time machines. not only do i FEEL like i did however long ago, but i am transported to a very specific place - i can see what i saw, remember what i was doing, presumably at the time the music most affected me. the scientists who keep talking about smell and memory say how the association is so much stronger than the way all the other senses are processed completely skip over this phenomenon which seems...negligent. after all, when alzheimer's patients have forgotten their entire autobiographies they can still remember songs they knew in childhood. i just bought oliver sacks' book on 'musicophilia' so hopefully that will clear some things up.

for the brain, remembering is like reliving
again, this is a follow-up on the ledoux/nader experiment, which showed that when you remember something you are actually re-creating it in the brain. which is why the more you remember something the less accurate it actually becomes, since it is consistently re-shaped by the context in which you are recalling the memory. this article is in response to an experiment that actually recorded brain cells in the process of summoning a memory - they are in the same neurons that were stimulated when the event was originally experienced. no wonder our memories can get so distorted, and when we suddenly remember something we hadn't thought of in forever, it seems especially real. perhaps that's also why when we soon after repeat the stimulus that set off the this surprise memory, it loses its power.

your brain and your memory in 3D
which is actually a reference to this national geographic article
interesting, but doesn't provide me with much actual information. discusses 2 people with extreme memories - one who remembers every detail of every day of her life, the other can only remember the last 7 seconds.

the quest to forget
another article on the bioethics of selective memory-erasing.

fonty font font

screen captures of my experiments:

swipe poster

SWIPE

so based on what I pulled, it seems i'm going for some kind of nostalgic, frenchy, old science notebook look.

Topic Musings, Part II

This is going to need a lot more research to gain focus/clarity/complexity, but this is the idea I'm entertaining right now:

This is by no means an original enterprise (hopefully I'll find an angle that is) but how about I combine the science thing with the proust thing (and, zomg, the food thing too - madeleine study! but let's not get carried away just yet...)? Something along the lines of investigating the neuroscience/psychology behind proust's madeleine and involuntary memory. again, this has been done before. but we'll see what further exploration produces. one source says that only smell and taste are directly connected to the hippocampus (center for long-term memory) while the other senses (sight, touch, hearing) first go through the thalamus, which processes incoming stimuli and is associated with consciousness (or something) and are therefore less reliable when it comes to accurate recall. but then, my own proustian madeleines are strongest with music so what's that about? we shall see.

we shall see...

/UPDATE/

I just had a thought. Tomorrow morning I have to go to central park to watch my friend run 18 miles, after which I will be uncharacteristically north of midtown. So I could theoretically visit my ol' college campus for the first time since 2007 (gah!) and both take advantage of the library's resources and trigger my own P.M. (kinda. okay it's not really the same thing at all but it's still confronting a memory after a long time - just let me pretend it's relevant or I'll be too afraid to go). I duno, worst comes to worst I can find the million filled stamp cards I have but never turned in for free coffee.

Rambling (Topic Brainstorming)

OK! I'm back for another semester with Gen, and we are choosing a topic to govern the next few projects. This week kind of got away from me and I realize it's way too late to still be nailing down a subject, but here I am, so let's just plow through.

One of my first thoughts for a topic was food-related. Food is probably one of the top 3 most purely pleasurable things in my life. I'm going through this rebellion phase with it, though. I grew up literally one block from Alice Waters, so she's pretty much been doctrine for me my whole life. And now in the midst of this whole food activism movement with sustainability and slow food and the locavore thing and buzzword buzzword buzzword, I'm feeling a bit conflicted. I realize that this kind of rebellion comes from impulses of reclaiming ownership and identity. I fully support all the ideas of Alice's food revolution and they have been a part of my identity since before I was old enough to have real opinions on these things. So it seems almost petulant to say but now that it's become co-opted away from me by this Movement i think i feel the need to reclaim my own sense of identity by separating and distinguishing myself just a little. The Movement has taken on this superior, dogmatic, self-righteous, elitist tone that really irritates me right now and I find myself retreating to the hedonistic, indulgent side of food that centers on the pleasures of it rather than the politics. But ANYWAY. In a way it's too personal and too topical at the same time so I don't think I want to work with it now.

I had also thought about doing something with the sense/memory trigger phenomenon, since the power and intensity of it has always fascinated me, but Proust already wrote that thing about the madeleine and if I were to do something with it it would probably come out as more of a fine art project than design.

So idea number 3. I love biology. Wouldn't want to be a biologist. But I love biology. What better way to engage in interesting fields you would never actually participate in than through graphic design? And biology produces a lot of information that requires visual organization/representation. And I really dig charts. This all sounds pretty good. So now I'm going to go think about this some more and figure out something specific.

(When did it become this late in the afternoon??)