From Memory Arts to the New Code Paradigm: The Artist as Engineer of Virtual Information Space and Virtual Experience

Abstract

This paper examines contemporary developments in the creation and experience of immersive 3D art projects in the context of spatial and information design. It takes into consideration historic forebears, particularly the ancient Greek art of memory, contemporary theorists, and current new media artists who are pushing code and application design to new limits. The essay specifically addresses the role of the artist as "coder" and application engineer and anticipates concerns and possible technological developments in data visualization and virtual spaces. As new media artists write their own code, current boundaries between disciplines and sectors become blurred and new aesthetic judgments become pivotal. Additionally, current management and organizational structures are challenged to confront a world that increasingly visualizes and communicates in 3D.

This century marks an acceleration in the use of new media technologies and changes in the way viewers define and interact with art produced by means of these technologies. As new media artists engage this new and dynamic paradigm, their roles, expectations, and necessary skills change. Correspondingly, computer languages and systems are expected to be flexible, adaptable, and multisensory. The creation of future platforms and applications has to take new experiential and aesthetic possibilities into consideration. In varying constellations, all of these aspects will be relevant for creating experiential and immersive data structures that are increasingly intuitive, engaging, visceral, and virtual.

For a discussion of current methods of visualizing data and its role in information aesthetics and immersive experience, it is helpful to first consider how data was organized and recalled for utilitarian purposes in earlier periods. The ancient Greek art of memory seems to be a good starting point. Based on a system that relied on organized categorization of real world artifacts and corresponding metaphorical and semiotic content, the art of memory required a clear methodology. The classical Greek method of "experience" relied on the use of internal mental construction of virtual spaces. Though mnemonic in nature, these systems were essentially complex symbolic immersive environments used to impress places and images on the mind for varied purposes of information retrieval. These objects and places (loci and imagines) would mentally be linked to a linguistic or conceptual corollary. These "mental gymnastics" mostly served the classical art of rhetoric.

Mnemonic techniques would evolve into various metaphysical and occult practices. One practice of particular interest in this context is that of Bocampagno da Signa, which he describes in the Rhetorica Novissima [1]. The book categorizes a mnemonic system for recalling business data. Published in 1235, it is the product of an offshoot of the classical art of memory tradition. Referred to as Ars Dictaminis and arising out of Bologna, it was a school that shaped the art of memory into a form of letter writing and administration. Similar to the work of Albertus Magnus, the school assumes that there is a supernatural origin to the art of memory, but still relies on a classical definition in that it ascribes the preeminent aspects of mental organization to the art of memory. Despite this classical definition, Bocompagno da Signa's work closely follows the medieval sensibilities of virtual spaces, the nature of the soul and its connection to the primordial memory of the fall from grace as well as to the temporally dislocated memory of paradise and hell. Although partially an occult practice, da Signa's work relied on the belief in a primordial spatial memory, in which all historical events, data, and information could be housed in a system of discreet hierarchies. This system of hierarchies served the purpose of engaging corporeal experience via a mentally constructed 3D space and the application of utilitarian mnemonic devices. Bocompagno da Signa's 13th-century text seems a prescient moment for those concerned with immersive data and its potential for management, with organizing aesthetics and art that explores dynamic systems.

Fig. 1.

The "Memory Wheel" in Giordano Bruno's De Umbris Idearum (1582).

Later Italian memory systems, such as the work of Giordano Bruno (De Umbris Idearum ... Ad Internam Scripturam and...