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Lynn Dennison is an artist on knowledge-exchange programme Arbor, which pairs artists and researchers with communities
“It’s like everything is drifting away and nothing is clear” : In Search of Lost Time - Lynn Dennison and Dr Tom Miller
These patients suffer from inflammation to the part of their brain most important for autobiographical memories: the hippocampus. Many of us enjoy reliving these types of memory as they bring back a sense of familiarity and belonging, and often happy emotions. Patients suffer from being unable to re-experience these memories, losing their own place within a shared narrative and experience. This loss of the ability to re-experience their autobiographical memories is difficult to describe, even to family members, and is not clearly visible or easily understood.
The aim of the project was to give patients the voice to describe what their internal experience of memory loss is like, using storytelling, still, and moving image, to capture, in a meaningful way, the first-person experience of having memory loss.
Through conversation, visiting specific sites important to our participants, and making images and video from these experiences, we developed material that might help to access memories or emotion.
Our four participants, Peter, Jane, Edward and Malcolm, took us on a walk around their local area where they spoke about memories they recalled from times spent in the location. They wore GoPro cameras to capture the scenes and their spoken recollections. We asked them to record five things from that days walk that they would then try to recall over subsequent conversations.
Working with the memories captured in moving and still image and audio on our first visit, we researched new ways to try to help the patients recall these memories.
Talking through memories using images and photographs of past events to trigger responses, we explored how memory loss impacts their lives.