Riddle’s in Osmos Issue 29
New memories start here…
Studies have shown that our strongest memories are constructed from the ages of ten to thirty. Some of us begin to lose those memories sooner than others-like my mother, who was recently diagnosed with Lewy body dementia. After she mentioned she was bored at home, we began searching for memory care in the area and came upon a “town.”
Set builders from an opera scenic studio designed an immersive and nontraditional reminiscence therapy center to bring its participants back to a time when their memories were the strongest. The warehouse-sized adult daycare is called Glenner Town Square, whose time warp interior replicates a small city center from the era that the participants grew up in circa 1953 to 1961, it’s complete with a diner, library, pet shop, barber, newsstand, theater and much more. The population has involuntary identity loss due to dementia, but memories that may be inaccessible in the community members 21st-century environments have the opportunity to be unlocked in the anachronistic mise en scène.
As we toured the town square, we realized they weren’t simply passing time, but that they were given the freedom to explore a parallel timeline entirely. A third space where their loved ones could drop them for the day —where they reawaken the RAM of their own encoding. Suddenly, we were tourists in someone else’s yesterday. We felt compelled to capture memories untethered from memory, so as soon as we got home we sent an email to the front desk offering to donate disposable cameras for each participant to use during their time there.
The camera supplanted the responsibility to remember, a 27-exposure external storage device, a tool to transform forgetting into a kind of freedom. Through the chemical journeys of Dopamine, we forget that we’ve forgotten, meeting the minds in the present day to create Hopeamine. Somewhere berween yesterday and today, this is a selection of the memories we reccived back.
Through the chemical journeys of Dopamine, we forget that we’ve forgotten, meeting the minds in the present day to create Hopeamine.
Come join us Saturday November 22nd at 365 Canal Street (5th Floor) from 4 to 8pm. Test out the Reality Works® DSE protocol with nurse practitioner, Josselyn.
