Thinking Inside the Black Box: Automatic Drawings of Celestial Bodies as Memory Metaphor

Even though memories may seem like snapshots of the past stored in our minds,; modern Cognitive Neuroscience has revealed that our memories are more closely; related to fiction than autobiography. We use this fiction to create an idea of ourselves; and a conception of the world we inhabit. Yet every day we awake and rarely think to; question that what we believe as reality is an elaborately constructed elusion in our; minds. Each of the many thousands of mental processes that occur every second are; working to shape the flawed information collected by our senses. The collection of these; fictions becomes what we understand as memories. The artwork presented in this paper; attempts to unpack what memories are and how they change over time. Throughout the; process of art making, I attempted to understand a single memory, in doing so engaging; an extensive body of scientific research. This paper chronicles what I have come to call; a memory cycle. This cycle begins in a moment and is processed in working memory,; stored in long-term memory and retrieved for use, with much debate along every step of; the way. My artwork attempts to follow and document this process both artistically and; conceptually.