December 16, 2006

In Response to Criticisms of the Final Review

First and foremost, I need to work on my presentations in the future because when I present I tend to forget important things or seem to be unclear in the way that I explain certain things. I think that in the future I should write a script before each review and familiarize myself with it so that even if I don’t read from it directly my presentations will be more prepared.

The Synaesthetic Memory Map could use some refining. In response to Michael Eng’s comment that the pictures may be redundant, maybe I could refine the names of the photographs so that in combining a sensory term and a spatial term the word pairs start to describe how each sense identifies the space by the way it behaves in the space (i.e. the same sound will behave differently when it is made in different spaces). However, in response to Mark Parsons’ comment as to the grid structure of the map, I was perhaps unclear in communicating my intentions, because there are connections that technically break the grid. In creating the layer of “synaesthetic memories” there are connections that happen through a lateral and a vertical move across the grid, which in terms of vectors, is actually a diagonal move. It is the definition of one side of a triangle through the other two.

As Jeffrey referred me back to a memoir I worked on at the beginning of the semester, I am going to return to it and finish writing it to test my original intention behind it. The intention was to combine the telling of a present itinerary and a past itinerary in parallel and switch back and forth between the two narratives based on sensory experiences. The idea being that by pushing this method, the overall sense of space and place would blur between the two parallel stories.

In my desire to look at joinery, I have wanted for a while to break into this technique with a mini-project that stems from Bachelard’s discussion of the containers of memory. I have wanted to make a jointed puzzle box developed from the house in which I grew up. Over break I am finally just going to do it. Part of this will actually be writing a specific assignment that better explains what and why I am doing this. This written assignment will come in the next few days.

It seems to me that I am in a position with my research and proposals that the most productive thing for me to do now is to just start producing work within the framework of what I have established. I think that it will help to clarify what I have done already and judge its relative success.

I have also worked out a schedule for working on my project over the intercession. It can be viewed by clicking the link below.

Click for my schedule of work for the break

Click for the second submission version of my thesis book

Click for the Synaesthetic Memory Map