Re: TX2/Plato's Spelunking
2001.12.04 12:26
In all honesty I do not have an "equation...by which I conjure."
I recently read something I wrote on Piranesi/Campo Marzio something like six years ago, and I was surprised at how much I didn't know then, and then kind of amazed at how much I've learnt since then. I guess the point relative to your question is that "I'm working at it."
Last week I started reading Yates' The Art of Memory. The first chapter describes how the ancient Romans "taught" memory (now known as mnemonics). Briefly, there was/is this whole operation of setting up something like a (house) "plan" in your mind and then placing what you want to remember in designated "rooms". After somewhat understanding the principle, it dawned on me that the Ichnographia Campi Martii is very much such a "memory plan". I freely admit that my present retention of data relative to ancient Rome is greatly aided (if not in fact generated) by my "hands-on" knowledge of Piranesi's plan. It seems that I was actually practicing (albeit unwittingly) a type of mnemonics as I was CAD redrawing the Ichnographia.
This leads to wondering if there are other "memory places" being created out there. I'm now beginning to see the design-l archive (for example) as a quite easily accessible "memory place."
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