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THE
SENSES OF MEMORY
Senior Year Project
Below are the visual pieces from my senior year Partners in Scholarship project. In it, I created a kind of totem pole, covered in art, poetry and photography. I also designed audio and video pieces--all exploring what memory means to us on a creative level.
All pieces copyright Tad Spencer. No reproduction allowed without permission.
The Seven Masks of Memory
As I did my research/creating, I began to see patterns in the types of memory that exist (either personally or collectively). I have divided them into these seven categories, represented with masks. Why seven? In Blakean thought, the number seven is highly symbolic. It represents turbulence and trial--times of great change. Those are the times that stick with us, that become outstanding memories.
Click on the images to get a larger view.
Mask of
Memory--Waves
This represents the waves of spirit and emotion--critical times when all of our "proper judgment" leaves us, and we flow with an undefinable current. This is where psychology only scratches the surface and cannot fully explain the rush of adrenaline and (again) psychic energy. The mask is decorated in waves with distinct and detailed parts, resembling feathers (currents/waves of air) or sea waves (currents/waves of water). It is all gray, though, representing the vagueness of this enigmatic part of memory.
Mask of Memory--Broken
This mask represents anything related to failure--broken hearts, shattered dreams, ideas that went nowhere, tattered childhoods, etc. It deserves a class of its own because as humans, we naturally tend to focus on the negative, our faults, the things that weren't.
Mask of Memory--Kissed
This mask represents the strongest and most fantastic of emotions--passion and sadness. This joins the physical (the tear on the cheek, the kiss on the lips) with the emotion (love, sadness).
Mask of Memory--Rain
This mask represents memories based in beauty and awe-inspiring events. It is memories of "miracles" and fascinating parts of nature, life, intuition, and psychic energy. This combines natural science and unexplainable intuition.
Mask of Memory--Subconscious
Covered mostly in indiscernible scribblings, this mask represents the cluttered mind, the subconscious, filled with thousands of phrases, ideas, fragments, images, sounds, smells, and words. Memories hide within.
Mask of Memory--Mummy
This mask represents what one might call the "collective unconscious memory." It holds all the memory or special kind of memory we call knowledge. It is history, symbols, mythology, archetypes, scientific fact, erosion, and all things non-emotive.
Mask of Memory--Diary
This represents the everyday, the mundane, the routine, but also the secret. In it there is comfort and a sort of blind faith that things will continue on as they regularly do. It is the part of life that is taken for granted.
Infinity Revisited
