Memory

The challenge of contemporary situation – especially witnessed in urban India – is related to the nature of memory. In other words, nature of memory indicates how we perceive ourselves as human beings and how we define our role as related to the environment. When people talk of ‘change’ (and the anxiety surrounding it), I am proposing that they are indicating a sense of disconnection. Disconnection with other people, with surrounding environment and with themselves. This is creating turmoil. The feeling of disconnection and disorientation is connected with Time - the interrelationship and sequencing of our thoughts to make sense of our world – it deals with perception. Therefore, in order to decode memory and its effect on our sense of perception, we need to understand what informs our thoughts and how we choose to sequence them and how these in turn generate a perception of the environment. 

Let’s look at the fundamentals firstly and then see the contemporary situation. Memory means attachment to our existence. The necessity of survival is an intrinsic impulse that we carry once we are born. With survival, we identify ourselves strongly with our body and mind. Body is a receiver of environmental stimuli – this shapes our basic orientation/ response in a given space (or place or climate). In sophisticated terms, it means clothing and shelter for protection. Body also means hunger – thus, we are compelled to act in order to secure food. Most of the activities involving food, shelter, clothing used to be communal (one could not do anything all alone) and that has shaped our individual and collective memories for centuries. Religiosity, community/ society, culture – all are our experiences that were formed automatically by being involved in the struggle for survival. If we try to review the nature of memory that seems to be created in such times – it has a strong component of environmental awareness, social experiences, cultural nuances – in other words – it is empathetic in nature. Ideas of respect, sensitivity, sustenance are a result of such lived experiences. The other character of memory in such times is inter-relationship (or wholesomeness) of a given situation. I know that the mango tree and the seasons, and the flora, fauna, myself, shelter, clothing, architecture are all interconnected and dependent. The ‘environment’ is ‘me’ and ‘I’ am the ‘environment’ – physically and psychologically too. In terms of expression also, utility, art and architecture are not really separate. The understanding of Time (as a part of memory) is also not linear, but interconnected with different phenomena and can be cyclic, or repetitive or just plainly ‘constant’. In other words, Time has lesser effect on collective consciousness. Hence, ‘sequencing’ of our thoughts is informed by cyclic processes observed in Nature, our age and collective wisdom (history + philosophy). The character of architecture, is local – born out of adaptation to local challenges of materials and skills. Space maybe communal, multifunctional and incremental. Privacy may even be non sophisticated. In a nutshell, the ‘pace’ of life appeared slow and one existed  - just like – anything exists in the universe (dependent on everything else).

Contemporary onslaught of digital world has disconnected this fundamental awareness of ‘us’ with the ‘environment’. The nature of experiences itself are now informed by virtual world itself – how can we even know the natural environment that used to shape our thinking? In other words, by continuously consuming digital experience, we operate and are dictated by the virtual reality and we don’t seem to perceive the “real” world or the context it presents to us. Perhaps the word ‘context’ (that used to mean existing environment or situation as we have perceived through our senses) now means a fragmented virtually created world view that has got nothing to do with the “local situation”. These fragments of virtual reality – fluid and constantly changing are altering our structures of thoughts and sequences and interconnections. If what is offered to you is fragments of different spaces and times, which is unrelated and random, and if you are continuously engrossed in consuming such data, what are you becoming as a character? If such fragments change fast that you have no time to interconnect different bits and pieces then what about your perception of Time? IS Time fragmented (and not interrelated or cohesive or wholesome?) If Time is fragmented, will that fragment your memory too? Will you become fragmented/ fractured? If everything appears “fragmented”, everything is reduced to some kind of “data” to be consumed and thrown away. Thus, we see each other only as “data”, or any kind of an experience is just reduced to “data”. The link between data and context now is not necessarily connected – but may represent a tremendous gorge. Our character thereby may become fluid, superfluous, erratic. 

Fundamentally, “memory” is all about anchoring oneself to the reality of existence and having a wholesome picture of life. In its highest state, such anchoring may lead a chosen few to a state of Enlightenment. As described above, the fluidity of virtual world and its fragmentary nature and its rapid change is not giving us sufficient time to create memory. We remain unanchored and with it, will loose out on the need to survive! 

Therefore, there is a need to create “anchoring” experiences.