Carol Rifelj Lecture Series: The Story Behind "Witness Marks: Anatomy of a Memory"

“Witness Marks: Anatomy of a Memory” is a multi-media installation, premiering at the Kent Museum, in Calais, VT, in September, in which I explore how we create, store, and access memory. While there have been theories of how the brain works for millennia, we only have accurate imagery of brain structures based on dissection spanning from the 1860s (drawings by scientists Deiters, Golgi, Bevan-Lewis, and Dejerine, to name a few), to Ramon y Cajal’s drawings of neurons (1899 – 1930s), all the way to the colorful and beautiful photo imagery of neuronal circuits generated by supercomputers. But what do scientific portraits of the brain tell us about the inner workings of the mind and the inner workings of personal perception and human nature? As a visual artist I have been exploring this question by asking: is there a way to both honor the inherent natural structure of neuronal pathways – the physical side – while capturing some of the richness of human perception? My metaphorical portrait of a memory includes 60 small panel paintings installed in a pattern and setting that evokes neuronal structure/function. The installation is bathed in a commissioned electronic music soundscape, imagined, felt and built by electronic music composer, Dr. Peter Hamlin, Christian A. Johnson Professor Emeritus of Music, Middlebury College.