CONVERGENCE 6
DCART Exhibition 2023
FRAYED ENGRAM
Laser cut and engraved plywood, acrylic paint, cardstock
33”x 24”x 2.5”
Julia Roberts * Gabriela Vélez Largo
Artwork
Art Statement
The Frayed Engram is an art installation based on the tight relationship between attention and episodic memory formation. When we pay attention to our surroundings, we are more likely to remember them, and specific events may become prominent memories in our minds. However, when our attention drifts away, only fragments of an event may be consolidated. If we could pinpoint the physical storage of memory in the brain it would be called the engram. The engram holds our consolidated memories but contains frays here and there, resulting from attention lapses. A net is a strong and noble artifact, historically speaking it has been used as means to survival and in the same way the engram is a part of our survival by intertwining everything important into one place. The Frayed Engram is the story of an unidentified person’s life illustrated through a series of significant and not so significant (frayed) events. Vélez Largo and Roberts have chosen multiple events that are common components of the human experience. Through the visual cues of each memory cluster, we can examine which memories have been ingrained into the mystery person’s engram or been frayed through the lack of attention allocated in their journey.
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L’Engram effiloché est une installation artistique basée sur la relation étroite entre l’attention et la mémoire épisodique. Lorsque nous prêtons attention à notre environnement, nous sommes plus susceptibles de nous en souvenir, et des événements spécifiques peuvent devenir des souvenirs marquants dans notre esprit. En revanche, lorsque notre attention dérive, seuls des fragments d’un événement peuvent être consolidés. Le stockage physique de la mémoire dans le cerveau est appelé l’engramme. Ce dernier contient nos souvenirs consolidés, mais aussi des effilochements ici et là, résultant de nos pertes d’attention. Un filet est un artefact solide et noble, historiquement parlant il a été utilisé comme moyen de survie et de la même manière l’engramme fait partie de notre survie en entrelaçant tout ce qui est important en un seul endroit. L’Engram effiloché est l’histoire de la vie d’une personne énigmatique, illustrée par une série d’événements significatifs et moins significatifs (effilochés). Vélez Largo et Roberts ont choisi de multiples événements qui sont des composantes communes de l’expérience humaine. Grâce aux indices visuels de chaque groupe de souvenirs, nous pouvons examiner quels souvenirs ont été intégrés dans l’engramme de la personne mystérieuse, ou ont été effilochés en raison du manque d’attention accordé à son parcours.
Biographies
Julia Roberts
Julia Roberts is a Montreal-based artist and 3rd year Design student at Concordia University. She studied professional photography at Dawson College before moving to Paris to continue building her portfolio. She returned to Canada in 2020 to pursue an undergraduate degree in Fine Arts majoring in design. Throughout her years in design she built a wide range of skills from book binding to welding and most recently net-making. She has found herself drawn to any medium where she can create and manipulate a variety of materials.
Julia Roberts est une artiste établie à Montréal et étudiante en troisième année de design à l’Université Concordia. Elle a étudié la photographie professionnelle au collège Dawson avant de déménager à Paris pour continuer à construire son portfolio. Elle est revenue au Canada en 2020 pour obtenir un diplôme de premier cycle en beaux-arts, avec une spécialisation en design. Tout au long de son parcours, elle a acquis un large éventail de compétences, de la reliure à la soudure et, plus récemment, à la fabrication de filets. Elle se sent attirée par tout médium où elle peut créer et manipuler une variété de matériaux.
Gabriela Vélez Largo
Gabriela Vélez Largo is a MSc student in the Integrated Program in Neuroscience at McGill University. Originally from Cali, Colombia, she grew up in Quebec City and moved to Montreal to undertake her higher education studies. Vélez Largo has a keen interest in cognitive neuroscience and investigates the relationship between attention and episodic memory. Alongside her research interests, Vélez-Largo has a passion for photography, poetry, writing, and dance. She considers creativity represents one of the most extraordinary faculties of the human brain.
Gabriela Vélez Largo est étudiante en maîtrise dans le programme intégré en neurosciences de l’Université McGill. Originaire de Cali, en Colombie, elle a grandi à Québec et s’est installée à Montréal pour entreprendre ses études supérieures. Vélez Largo s’intéresse vivement aux neurosciences cognitives et étudie la relation entre l’attention et la mémoire épisodique. Parallèlement à ses recherches, Vélez-Largo se passionne pour la photographie, la poésie, l’écriture et la danse. Elle considère que la créativité est l’une des facultés les plus extraordinaires du cerveau humain.
Science
Episodic memory refers to the ability to encode and retrieve past events in rich spatiotemporal details, allowing us to travel mentally and consciously into our past [1]. Episodic memory largely contributes to the sense of self, and it allows one to create behavioral memory-based predictions, plan for the future and build stronger social networks [2, 3]. The hippocampus, located in the medial temporal lobe of the brain, is a key region for episodic memory formation. According to the model of hippocampus-dependent memory, episodic memories are transferred from the hippocampus to the neocortex for long-term storage [4]. The physical storage of memory within the brain is conceptualized as engram. Multiple studies have come to a consensus that memory engram is composed of specific assemblies of synapses between dendritic spines, which are formed or modified during memory acquisition, and these changes may persist throughout life [5]. There exists a wide variability among individuals to form episodic memories, and the ability to sustain attention during encoding may play an important role. In fact, the ability to recall an item and its associative context information (e.g., the red car was parked on the right side of the street), is significantly impaired by experiencing lapses of attention and mind wandering during the encoding phase [6,7]. The present proposal aims to illustrate that the process of episodic memory formation and storage is vulnerable to attention failures. To address this, we propose to represent the memory engram on a big scale, to illustrate the hypothetical ability to store infinite memories. Within the engram, we desire to display clusters of memories that could be interconnected. To illustrate the hindering effect of attentional lapses on memory formation and storage, we aim to represent it through irregularities either in the engram and in the memory clusters.
References
1. Tulving, E., Episodic Memory: From Mind to Brain. Annual Review of Psychology, 2002. 53(1): p. 1-25.
2. Schacter, D.L., D.R. Addis, and R.L. Buckner, Remembering the past to imagine the future: the prospective brain. Nature reviews neuroscience, 2007. 8(9): p. 657-661.
3. Davidson, P., et al., Memory as Social Glue: Close Interpersonal Relationships in Amnesic Patients. Frontiers in Psychology, 2012. 3.
4. Marr D. Simple memory: a theory for archicortex. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 1971;262(841):23–81.
5. Poo, Mu-ming, et al. "What is memory? The present state of the engram." BMC biology 14.1 (2016): 1-18.
6. deBettencourt, M.T., K.A. Norman, and N.B. Turk-Browne, Forgetting from lapses of sustained attention. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2018. 25(2): p. 605-611.
7. Maillet, D. and M.N. Rajah, Assessing the Neural Correlates of Task-unrelated Thoughts during Episodic Encoding and Their Association with Subsequent Memory in Young and Older Adults. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2016. 28(6): p. 826-841.