“Building Memories: A Reconstructive Process”

Artist: Sasha Opeiko, Art and Visual Culture, Western University.

Scientist: Julie Dumont, BrainsCAN, Western Research, Western University

Memories are central to our understanding of the world and ourselves. However, our episodic memories are not faithful records of actual events. Research shows that instead of a record player, circuits in the brain re-construct our past experiences to allow us to travel mentally back in time. As a result, our memories are liable to interference and forgetting. One hypothesis is that the brain stores “mental snapshots” of the associations of items within a scene, and episodic memory is created by playing through these snapshots sequentially (Gaffan & Harrison, 1989; Aggleton et al., 2009).

Building Memories: A Reconstructive Process seeks to visually reproduce our understanding of memory formation in the brain. Roots are complex organic structures that generate growth and adaptation. As a metaphor, roots were chosen to simulate the complex neural networks in the brain. A bundle of roots was photographed from all perspectives to represent the objective reality of the event. 300 snapshots were taken of the root structure and fed into an image learning algorithm. The beginning of the video shows some of these snapshots flashing rhythmically and easing into the AI generated video. Just like the circuits in the brain, the AI model tries to reconstruct memory from snapshots. Each AI generated image morphs into the next, constantly building parts of images that were deconstructed and then restored in new formations. The results may not be a faithful reproduction of reality, but a hypnotic and mesmerizing visualization of memory and the stories of our lives.

This art is intended to be viewed as a video. Please click here to see the complete piece if the video below won’t play.