Photographs as pigments and fibers in the creation of False Memory

Studies demonstrate that the structure of memory is reconstructive and vulnerable to large range of errors. Sometimes, this even leads to the development of completely false autobiographical memories (Loftus and Pickrell, 1995). A false memory is a mental experience that is mistakenly taken to be a veridical representation of an event from one’s personal past (Johnson, 2001)False memories can occur in either remembering events that never happened or remembering them significantly different from the way they actually occurred (Roediger III, H.L. & McDermott, K.B. , 1995). 

“In the dark green metal boxes containing mug shots of subjects starting with ‘T’ were hundreds of photographs of famous Russians: Tolstoy, Turgenev, etc.–but no Trotsky. They had completely wiped him out. It was at this moment that I determined to start my collection.” David King introduction of The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin’s Russia (1997) 

During my visit to Lisbon I came across some distorted images made of tiles which were an interesting example of the way the original image has changed to a new, but wrong one. The whole image is distorted by filling the gaps with wrong pieces. According to the errors in tiles, the structure of false memory can be simplified to three main parts:⦁ The original and true memory⦁ The gaps in details of the true memory⦁ The gaps filled with new details which produce false memory Original photographs can be taken as the original and reliable verification of a past event. One can use their own autobiographical photographs, since memories of childhood are more vulnerable to be false. 

Printing and scanning as a metaphor of remembering: With repeated imagination or retrieval, memorial information becomes progressively more familiar, more complete, and source discrimination becomes more difficult (Heaps, Nash, 2001).

A 10% opacity image is printed on a paper, scanned again and printed on the same paper. This process can be repeated several times until the saturation is satisfying.

In another experiment, 10 different photos from the same event are printed on one paper, each one with 10% opacity. 

Making paper by using photographs: Papers can be made of early childhood photographs. The period that we do not remember much about. As scholars argue that children cannot remember events until they can rehearse them by talking about them.

Copying the images using tapes:Put a piece of tape on a printed image. The tape with some pressure sticks to the color pigments. By removing the tape from the picture, the tape includes some small parts of the photograph’s color pigments. By putting numerous pieces of tape, one can recreate some details of a memory, or make a completely new one.

Separating the CMYK layers of images: Cyan, magenta, yellow and black colors can be separated from the images and printed separately. The idea is to make a gap between the main colors in printing and put them all together to produce a new image.

Cutting out the unfavored people:A cut-out map of unfavored people can be made and be projected by an overhead projector.