or do humans dream in negative strips
"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" or "Do Humans Dream in Negative Strips?" these and other questions have been preying on the mind of artist/curator Greg Deftereos, and were given a multi-dimensional probing in the recent group exhibition entitled, Mnemosyne, or Do Humans Dream in Negative Strips?1 Inspired by Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (and Ridley Scott's film adaptation Blade Runner) the curatorial theme of the show investigates our reliance on technology to construct/reconstruct memory.2 As described by Deftereos, Mnemosyne is about the relationship between memory as a variable construct, tempered by the power of recall, emotional state, and desire, and the 'fixed' evidence of memory (i .e. the photographic image).3
The subject is inevitably personal and in most cases the artists' responses were self-referential or auto-biographical. For example, Stephen O'Connell's 'then' and 'now' images of home, in his Anamnesia Archipelago relate to his early childhood spent in Vanuatu.
On entering the gallery, one was 'greeted' by Rosalind Drummond's video which haunted the space with a disconcerting squeal of children's playground antics, fading in and out of audibility. With remembrances of carefree, unaware play, the work took on a documentary element. Also recalling schooldays, Kenneth Pleban's photograph of an open empty schoolroom, acted as a generic trigger. By de-populating this space of memory, Pleban 'set the scene' which was purposefully vague and prompted cognition by asking the viewer to place or re-construct his or her own school day memories.
Inverting the subject, Moira Corby and Andrew Sully's installation, Cuckoo, invited the viewer to climb a rickety ladder propped against the wall. A small birdhouse was perched above and through its 'peep hole' a