TIM BOUCHER RAW!

As part of my backstage duties as a production assistant, I have to follow along with a copy of the script during each performance, making sure that the things that are supposed to be happening at that moment in the show are, in fact, actually occurring.

Weeks into the show now, though, I no longer follow along word-by-word, like I used to. I’m able to perform other light tasks – drawing, reading, typing emails, online searches – while simultaneously keeping part of my awareness tuned into certain cues which orient me within the sequential space of the play. A certain character might utter a particular word or phrase. When they do, I’ve noticed something intriguing going on. I’m able, most times, to visualize – without referencing the actual script – on what part of a two page spread of text particular lines or phrases fall.

It’s broken up, first, into six quadrants, three per sheet. With sheets printed on both sides, I’m able generally to reference upper left, middle left, lower left, upper right, middle right, lower right with a high degree of accuracy. I’ll use these general mentally-notated orientations to skim through to find the actual line often enough to keep pace with the performance, but without overly dividing my attention from other tasks I’m engaged in. And more often than not, I’ll even remember a more granular level of detail: exact physical locations of words and phrases on a page.

And I just have them, I don’t need to think, imagine or consider. The information is just there – much like, I’ve heard, people who become extremely proficient at the use of the abacus for calculations: they are able to perform the same mathematical algorithms on a mentally-envisioned abacus as quickly or sometimes more quickly than if they were use an actual physical abacus. The techniques and information has been stored in their procedural memory, much like it has in mine with regards to orientation within a script.

I’ve also been doing some research into scientific eye tracking technologies and behavioral findings within that area of study. Finding diagrams of how the eye jumps from point to point across a passage of text is revealing in light of the phenomenon described above:

It seems the eye does not move in a smooth line across text, but uses saccades or saccadic movements, sudden ultra-fast jumps from nodes within a given visual field. It’s a bit like the way my brain, at this point, waits for and measures the passage of time according to the occurrence of specific cues within the script. My memory is jumping, spatially and sequentially, from node to node.

Now, the method by which the eye analyzes a graphical representation sheds even more light, potentially, on this process. Consider this photograph and its linear analysis depicting movement of the eye:

What you see here, again, is that the eye jumps from point to point, node to node, fixating more intensely on the areas which are perceived to be most information-rich. As highly social animals, our brains are naturally wired to look to one another’s faces for behavioral cues. There’s typically a tight inverted triangle of movement between the two eyes and the mouth.

But what about the movement of our eyes when we’re accessing memories, retrieving information or constructing something out of our imaginations? Though their work isn’t necessarily universally regarded in high esteem, the founders of NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) noticed certain observable patterns at play in the direction of a person’s eyes when accessing different types of information. They call it eye-accessing cues, summarized in the below diagram.

Not all individuals, however, have their perceptual, imaginative and memory systems patterned in this way, but they describe this as a typical configuration for a right-handed person.

Now, this subject is beginning to connect very strongly to some techniques I’ve been reading about in regard to classical memory or mnemonics. Ancient orators in Greece and Rome, it seems, especially relied on spatial and sequential internal imaginative processes to memorize and re-transmit orally large quantities of information, speeches, oration, rhetoric. The techniques themselves, of course, likely go back thousands of years prior to that with bards and epic poets whose job it was to remember and re-tell the stories fundamental to the culture in which they exist.

[...] the subject memorizes the layout of some building, or the arrangement of shops on a street, or any geographical entity which is composed of a number of discrete loci. When desiring to remember a set of items the subject literally ‘walks’ through these loci and commits an item to each one by forming an image between the item and any distinguishing feature of that locus. Retrieval of items is achieved by ‘walking’ through the loci, allowing the latter to activate the desired items.

Other systems of memory built on the spatial-sequential concepts in greater detail. Giulio Camillo, for example, crafted a mnemonic system referred to as the Memory Theatre during the late 1400’s – early 1500’s. A flattened (overheard) view of this semi-circular matrix looks like this:

Various accounts describe the structure as a building which would allow one or two individuals at a time within its interior. The insides were inscribed with a variety of images, figures, and ornaments. It was full of little boxes arranged in various orders and grades. Upon entering the Theater, the spectator will be able to discourse on any subject no less fluently than Cicero [1] as he stands on a stage looking out towards the auditorium where the images are placed among seven pillars or grades.

While dimensional-renderings depict it as a sort of mytho-symbolic amphitheatre for the storage of all knowledge:

Conceivably, though I’ve not yet read the exact method whereby one is supposed to store or extract information within the memory theatre, it would go something like what we’ve described already in relation to the automatic spatial memory built into a script for a play I’m following backstage, or the paths of motion which one’s eyes take as they build up a complete model or understanding of what is being viewed. In the method of loci mnemonic technique, it is essential that one form associative pairs between loci (places) and information stored in them, but also that one uses and re-uses a sequential route to navigate through recall of that space. The mechanism whereby this technique functions is believed to be the hippocampus within the brain: an area thought to be responsible for spatial navigation, “…the core of a neural memory system providing an objective spatial framework within which the items and events of an organism’s experience are located and interrelated.”

Musing on these subjects last night, I began to envision an updated framework within which to experiment with these concepts. The image of a sphere filling up the entirety of my perceptual field, which itself is composed of many small sub-compartments, little cubes or worlds folded unto themselves.

I wonder if, with the right attention and experimentation, a system of spatial-sequential mnemonics might be derived upon such a symbol, inwardly applied. Perhaps it could become a rich information-space navigated partly through eye movements, and partly through inner visualizations of dimensional spaces (songpaths), at some point even bridging into the physical world through eye tracking technology and similar interfaces. But the sheerly-human aspect of this inward “technology” is what intrigues me the most: not its future applications, but what it has always been used for, the recollection and transmission of our stories, our songs, our histories, our cosmologies – all with only the organs inbuilt within us since birth!

• Zodiac Symbol In Theatre Design
• On Sacred Geography & Embedded Geomantic GIS Songlines
• Unraveling Ariadne’s Thread
• Roman Room Memory Trick
• Journey Method, Mnemonic Field Reports