Edited by Pam McKinlay

Introductory Essay by Pam McKinlay

Memory and Mind is a collaborative interdisciplinary project, in which artists and scientists in conversation look at how the idea of memory is understood within different frameworks. Sentient beings, a term that is increasingly understood as at times applicable within and between species, generate and experience shifts in synaptic energy that form, erase and recreate flows of information in what we call memory. The artworks in Memory and Mind explore how changes of state have left their mark across the physiological, biochemical and geological fabric of the planet, from neural networks to earth and stone, from earth systems to living biology. Against this backdrop, the members of the collective Art+Science project 2024 explore the connections of what it is to live in a world in which being human is not the most important thing. The following essay interweaves the diverse ideas initially presented at the project’s inception with the works that emerged from the process of conversation, creative discovery and reflection.

Memory and Mind is published by Pamphlaterre Publications, 2024
ISBN 978-0-473-71508-3 Paperback
ISBN 978-0-473-71509-0 Online
© 2024 the authors
© 2024 illustrations, the artists and authors
All rights reserved.
Type layout by Joanna Wernham
Printed by Uniprint, Dunedin New Zealand

Thank you to all those who have helped to make this Art+Science Project possible with funding and support in kind from: the Dunedin School of Art and Otago Polytechnic Te Pūkenga, University of Otago, Scion, Dunedin City Council and Creative New Zealand, Curious Minds Participatory Science Platform, Tūhura Otago Museum, Stitch Kitchen, New Zealand (Int.) Science Festival. With thanks also to Jenny Rock, Bridie Lonie and Michelle Elvy for comments, suggestions and proof reading of texts.