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The process of associative memory

[ by Charles Cameron — it seems — to me at least — that associative memory is at the root of creativity, and that the process, preconscious pattern-recognition, is basically aesthetic in nature ]
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There’s the present moment — in this case, today’s tweet from the RNLI above.

And there’s the memory it elicits — in this case, Hokusai‘s Great Wave at Kanagawa, with its three little boats, tiny Mt Fuji, and towering, breaking wave, from A Series of Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji:

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That’s the same process, from perception to memory, that I was thinking of when I wrote DoubleQuoting the French Revolution, and quoted Robert Frost:

The artist must value himself as he snatches a thing from some previous order in time and space into a new order with not so much as a ligature clinging to it of the old place where it was organic.

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Come to which, and moving by the same process from what’s in front of me to what I remember, here’s a DQ of Hokusai (~1760-1849) — before me now as I write this — and an image deriving from the work of Benoit Mandelbrot (1924-2010) on fractals” — which looking at the Hokusai quickly reminds me of:

SPEC DQ Hokusai fractal

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And as I look at that DoubleQuote, here at the time of writing this post, it reminds me strongly of my earlier DoubleQuote of Van Gogh and Von Kármán:

In each of these two cases, art precedes science.

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In each case, too, the associative process is the same, with some item perceived in the present calling up a past memory that is related to it — in a manner that can generally be articulated and annotated.

Such is the mechanism of a typical “move” in a DoubleQuote or HipBone game.

3 Responses to “The process of associative memory”

  1. Ornamental Peasant Says:

    For me, and I expect for Charles also, this post associates to the nightly litany of the’Shipping Forecast,’ the standard text read out at a slow measured ritual pace at the close of service on the BBC radio:-
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    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipping_Forecast
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    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06q7nk0#play
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  2. Charles Cameron Says:

    Indeed — although I remember Finisterre, which has apparently been renamed LeRoy.

  3. larrydunbar Says:

    “Such is the mechanism of a typical “move” in a DoubleQuote or HipBone game.”
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    What is it the mechanism of a “counter-move”?


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