The memory of the memories

Human or digital, stamped onto the streets or immortalized in art, the data of our past weaves a fabric which is an ongoing intermingling of interpretations.

Walter Aprile

Memory is to humans what water is to fish. Just for a moment let’s be like the lungfish (or the eel) and leave our element, to consider it from the outside.
There are intimate, personal memories, things which are often impossible to put into words. Then there are collective memories, sometimes historic, often invented. But all forms of memory have one thing in common: they consist of a sediment of records (which in computing would be called data) and a set of interpretations. Interpretation, however, is not something static, but a constant process of rereading and reinterpretation, which draws on the present to keep hold of, and alter, the past.
Many kinds of computing memories, from the old delay lines to the modern static RAM, need to be constantly refreshed: in this case the process of remembering is an active one of re-reading and re-writing that cannot be interrupted.
The signs of the past remain as long as we maintain the codes needed to interpret them.
But can these codes in turn also be stored in a memory? Can we create chains, sequences of packages, codes within codes? In the field of technology it is common practice to construct emulators of old systems in order to maintain their functions and contents: in every computer there are programmes which think they communicate with the outside world using a teleprinter, and there is a layer of software around them that preserves this illusion. Despite the fact that teleprinters are now literally museum pieces.
We have all experienced memory loss, both the memories we carry with us, and those which come in tangible form. Every household has a pile of floppy disks that have become illegible, for physical, technological or logistical reasons. But if we make the shift from our own lives to the wider, slower evolution of cities, what happens to memory in this context?

From a certain point of view, cities and buildings contain places and objects overtly dedicated to remembrance: museums, libraries, cemeteries, gravestones and street names. From another point of view an entire city (or construction) can be seen as a machine that records events and political, economic and social change. This operation can be performed both overtly and abstractly, like an exercise in mnemonics. Each of us can construct a memory palace using the ‘method of loci’ from the ancient classic work Rhetorica ad Herennium, which has now become a technique for memorizing cards in the casino. However we could argue that mnemonics has just taken cover, leaving its debris on the gaming table and transforming itself into one of the pilasters of the modern world: the internet. We can see the internet as a huge quantity of memory in a ductile flow, with areas of chaos, some which have solidified and others which form edifices dedicated to specific memories. There are also reconstructions and specifically constructed buildings and virtual places, but we do not yet have a satisfactory idiom for talking about these things: does a virtual building need stairs? And bannisters? Are its ceilings borne on columns and capitals? Perhaps only to the extent that these capitals stand for something, and manage to strike a chord with the visitor.

One place which tackles the theme of memory from very different angles is Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. The museum proper presents a chronological sequence of settings and fragments of another world: records, photographs, interviews with survivors, ending with the Hall of Names, looking over the hills around Jerusalem.
Obviously here memory is by no means neutral, and the message is that we are here and here we will remain. The Valley of the Communities has an entirely different impact: this open-air construction/labyrinth/memorial is a map of the Jewish communities in Europe and North Africa, with names engraved on granite. The visitor, disorientated, wanders around until he finds his hometown and silently reads the names. More implicit messages, nothing will be forgotten.

Every memory can tell a story, every memory can make history. This is particularly true of the memory of design and architectural projects: the clichéd scene of the star architect sketching out a design in lipstick on a paper napkin, which after years of perseverance becomes a hundred and ninety storey building costing a zillion dollars…all from that one napkin! Of course now we know that the whole episode was cooked up after the fact. In a more profound way, the documentation of a project, of the underlying concepts and the process of construction can be an opportunity to tell some fascinating stories, like those in Herzog & de Meuron: Natural History (ed. Philip Ursprun), and also to perform a gesture of humility and abandon the pretense that we can invent something out of nothing. The only thing that comes out of nothing are quantum fluctuations.