Help me with my project! Art and Memory

[banthesun]

Hi, my name's Gough, and I'm entering the second year of my Fine Arts course, majoring in Painting and Drawing. We received our first project today, which is to create an artwork on the theme of Memory.

To help get my head around this concept, I've decided to ask for memories from as many people as I can, so with that in mind I'd like to ask you to:

Describe the memory you feel most telling about how your mind recollects memories.

This can be something like the first memory that comes to your head, a particularly vivid or significant one, a memory that's a lot more vivid than its significance would entail, a memory that you don't understand, or anything else that you would particularly like to share.

I realise for many people this might be something private, and if it is so feel free to choose another memory, if you want (or not provide any at all, it's your choice!). Thanks in advance for any memories provided, I'm looking forward to seeing some interesting ones!

[Crow]

I have one that is particularly vivid. Can I PM it to you?

[banthesun]

PMs are perfectly fine, if you prefer!

[Castaras]

Weirdly enough, it's going to have to be my memory of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode, Trials and Tribbilations.

It's various clips of the episode itself, but the bits which are taken straight from the original Star Trek TOS episode are slightly fuzzy and faded, whereas the newly shot footage of Deep Space Nine characters are bright and have a shiny white aura around their "outlines".

[Symmys]

I remember fireworks. It feels like I'm looking out over the lake at my grandparents' house- right over the lake and with a perfect view, instead of half-obscured by trees like every other year I've watched the fireworks there. The night sky is a very dark, very deep blue, and there's one big firework in the sky, like a thin-petaled flower, red and pale yellow and a little bit of green. The image is blurry, and fades out around the edges, so I can only barely make out some smaller fireworks off to the side. I had always sort of assigned it to my grandparents' house, because I didn't know where else I had seen fireworks, but lately I've been thinking that it's a memory from when I was two and my family went to Disney World.
According to my parents, I kept saying 'wow' while watching the show, and even after I went to bed I said it in my sleep. :smallbiggrin:

I don't know how helpful that was, but I wanted to contribute something, at least. :smallredface:

[Telonius]

I've always loved thunderstorms. I remember that very clearly from my childhood, they never frightened me. It was always comforting, one of my favorite things ever. My mind came alive, made me more creative whenever they were there. I've tried to share that with my two-year-old daughter; I think it's mainly succeeded. She loves the wind and the thunder now.

I generally have a very good memory. I've always been good at jigsaw puzzles. Watching my daughter, she seems to have inherited the skill; she remembers where all the pieces should go, rather than matching color to color. I'm the go-to-guy for random trivia among my friends. I can remember names and stories from a lot farther back then I should have been able to. Watching an episode of Fraggle Rock with my daughter - which I hadn't seen in over 20 years - I remembered most of the songs and some of the jokes.

One thing I can't remember, though - my biological mother. I was adopted when I was a newborn. My mother took me to the hospital on the morning after I was born, and I never saw her since. My (adoptive) family are wonderful people, more "real" than my biological one, and I wouldn't change anything for the world. But when I'm with my daughter, I think about that sort of thing quite a bit. I wondered what it would have been like for my mother to hold me, and it bothered me that I had no memory of that. One afternoon, I lost my temper - which I rarely do - with myself. I practically shouted that my memory works on every little useless thing, except the one thing I need.

About a month later, we'd just gotten one of those crunchy granola "put your kid to sleep" gizmos that had all kinds of nature sounds. One of them was a heartbeat. When we played that for her, she looked at it intently for a few moments, then looked at me with a big smile and said, "Issa storm!" I was totally stunned for a few moments as my mind processed that. Sound of a heartbeat is just like sound of a storm to somebody who doesn't know what a heartbeat is supposed to sound like.

I'll never know if it was just a coincidence. But for me, this is the true memory, even if it isn't the real one: my mind turned my mother into a thunderstorm, and kept that memory.

[Winter_Wolf]

Hi, my name's Gough, and I'm entering the second year of my Fine Arts course, majoring in Painting and Drawing. We received our first project today, which is to create an artwork on the theme of Memory.

I'm not sure I follow. Are you looking to make a visual representation of a memory, or to convey the idea of "memory" through your piece? And this is a single artwork, not a series? A series would certainly be easier in a lot of ways. Then again, What the Professor Wants (tm) has always been the criterion for grades. (I'm only a little bitter, I swear! :smalltongue:)

Good pick on your major/specialty, btw. I often regret not having finished out my degree.

[Elemental]

Oddly enough, the first things that popped into my head was me sitting around with my friend and we were laughing at something.
Apart from that, it's very hazy.

[Serpentine]

I have a very strange memory. For the most part, it's absolutely terrible. I mean, just the other day, I said something during a game and continued on a sentence or two when the GM said "have experience for that thing you just said!" and I could not remember what I'd said not 5 seconds ago.
I also tend to make up memories. For example, when I was little (under 10), I was telling someone about how before my parents broke up, they used to fight all the time. My sister yelled at me for saying that, because they just didn't (she told me much later that she was so angry at me because she was jealous that I had memories like that to explain what happened, while she didn't).
But on the other hand, I remember all sorts of random crap. My very first memory is of walking across a gravel driveway to the yard drinking a poppa and then squirting it all out my nose. And then there's the licence plate number in Melbourne I randomly decided to memorise more than 10 years ago just to see how long I'd remember it for (GO5374, btw).

Basically, if I want to remember something, I have to go really out of my way to deliberately remember it - or just have it be something incredibly banal.

[banthesun]

Thanks for the memories, everyone! They're giving me a lot to think about, and are really helpful!


I'm not sure I follow. Are you looking to make a visual representation of a memory, or to convey the idea of "memory" through your piece? And this is a single artwork, not a series? A series would certainly be easier in a lot of ways. Then again, What the Professor Wants (tm) has always been the criterion for grades. (I'm only a little bitter, I swear! :smalltongue:)

Good pick on your major/specialty, btw. I often regret not having finished out my degree.

Actually, it's meant to be two related artworks. They left the instruction really vauge so everyone can do something different. They seem to be expecting us to be creative about it, so that much at least is good!