A response to “Will There Be Condominiums in Data Space?” by Bill Viola

In the 1981 article, Viola compares a computational system to a mnemonic brain. The ability to remember all the information inputted (through technology) could seemingly be considered as a desired ability for human beings, but in reality the result of remembering endlessly the banal and mundane of everyday can be detrimental, leading to lack of sleep, psychosis, and even willful death. The commonly unacknowledged skill is actuallyforgetting…

With the ability to record everything, a memory saturation bombing occurs, an information overload. “Life without editing is simply boring” states Viola, and offers to regard memory as a filter the brain uses to constantly edit the information coming through our senses, much like video editing, as opposed to going through the whole recorded raw material.

The idea is mapping the conceptual structures of the brain onto technology, an artificial organization of the Data Space (computer), imitating the associative way the brain works, both fluid and temporal as opposed to the permanent conventional hardcopy. Instead of a linear path, viewing becomes exploring a territory, traveling through a data space, zooming in where the user decides as he would do in an associative non linear path. In this process the user state switches from an observer to a participant. A smart program will allow the participant to navigate through  the data space, moving from one place to another by interest, leaving areas of information that may or may not get registered by the user.

Applications, like computers are tools in the hands of the user, only reflecting the user himself.
To develop the idea of mapping of the brain,misunderstanding could be considered a tool to spark ideas. Somewhat like the Rorschach inkblot, a creative effort by the user is stimulated.
As a foreigner I find myself making an greater effort than the native language speakers to understand “records” (ideas, concepts, stories, jokes, etc.), an effort that many times takes me to different places than the ones intended, which then leads to assumptions that lead to wrong but occasionally interesting conclusions that are completely new and based on an attempt of explaining something unconnected.