François Boutonnet’s
Mnemosyne
offers the first consideration of the art of memory from antiquity to contemporary art, connecting it to mind mapping in digital culture. First documented in the 5th century BC, the art of memory is the art of memorizing any kind of information--from shopping lists to the Periodic Table--by mentally placing memorable images associated with each item in a sequence throughout a building. This method enables one to recall vast quantities of information by simply “walking through one’s mind.” The memory arts were associated with oratory in Rome; with meditation in the medieval era; with occultism and encyclopedism in the Renaissance; and with the birth of calculus, via Leibniz. Here, Boutonnet reflects on the link between thoughts, places and images as revealed by the art of memory, from antiquity to digital landscapes, from Giordano Bruno and Leibniz to Walter Benjamin and Aby Warburg, showing how the history of visual thinking reveals a history of human knowledge.