20070423
Memory Component
Inspired by new research on “grid cells” located in a memory center of the brain, and responsible for spatial orientation, the studio looks at a library as an applied system of memory components, one that is derived from the very artifacts it discusses.
The studio explores the fundamental principles of computational logic which formed the basis for the Universal Turing Machine of the 1940s and which apply to the substrate of our global brain today. Rather than staging a collection within a library and physical archive, the artifacts are understood as generators of a distinct and comprehensive system that performs on multiple levels.
The system generates an organism that is intrinsically part of the urban ecology at its site. Comprised of components, it acquires functionality through multi-dimensional growth from a material Nano scale to a Macro scale of urban intervention. It emerges as an intelligent parametric system capable of responding to a variety of architectural demands.
“The ability to find one’s way depends on neural algorithms that integrate information about place, distance and direction, but the implementation of these operations in cortical microcircuits is poorly understood. Here we show that the dorsocaudal medial entorhinal cortex (dMEC) contains a directionally oriented, topographically organized neural map of the spatial environment. Its key unit is the ‘grid cell’, which is activated whenever the animal’s position coincides with any vertex of a regular grid of equilateral triangles spanning the surface of the environment. Grids of neighbouring cells share a common orientation and spacing, but their vertex locations (their phases) differ. The spacing and size of individual fields increase from dorsal to ventral dMEC. The map is anchored to external landmarks, but persists in their absence, suggesting that grid cells may be part of a generalized, path-integration-based map of the spatial environment.” (Hafting, Fyhn, Molden, Moser, Moser)
.: Jonas 1:00 PM
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