Is there an effective way to create and design different memory palaces from scratch?

[pl345]

I have used up all my real memory palaces. I don’t have any distinct mental locations anymore. I am also not the kind of person who travels a lot to visit and revisit new places and use them as memory palaces.

So I have to create memory palaces from scratch, right? But how do I do that?

My only problem is that when I try to construct a mental place from scratch, I can’t come up with a detailed place. I can’t make it distinct. When I try to visualize it, I subconsciously remember my other mental places, and consequently I would make some similarities between this new mental construction constructed from scratch and my other palaces. This would make it indistinct and can lead to a lot of confusion.

So I think I should increase my creativity to come up with new mental places. But I don’t know how. Are all your memory palaces real? If you were forced to create a memory palace from scratch, what would you do? Can you do it at all?

I also know that you might say that instead of doing this, you could use websites that offer 360° tours of luxury homes and use them as memory palaces. But unfortunately, these sites aren’t available in my country. I can use VPN, but I find using VPN inconvenient.

I am also not a fan of video games. So it can’t be an option for me.

I know that human brain is practically able to store almost infinite amount of information (at least in an average human life you can’t use all its memory no matter how you try). So virtually we can have infinite memory palaces, maybe as big as a galaxy or even whole universe, but main problem is to come up with clear design for them.

[fckgbrit]

Hello,
Are you sure yon can(t access to any site with virtual tour ?
Can you acces to youtube ?
you can watch videos of city tours or monuments, an place locis.

You can use paintings, for instance

Using paintings as palaces

Has anyone else tried using paintings to memorize things? I have been experimenting with using books of paintings to memorize poetry. I usually get about 8 loci from a single painting, depending on its size, and I put about a half-line of poetry at each locus. So each painting gives me room for four lines of poetry. Anyone done something similar? How’d it go?

[selmoicusenintadni]

Have you explored smaller memory palaces like nkasa?

[RMBittner]

Yes, @fckgbrit. I was going to suggest paintings as well. There are detailed discussions here. If there is an artist you resonate with, though, a single book of their work could be more than enough for your needs.

If you watch TV, are there settings of favorite shows that could work for you? (I’m guessing a lot of us could navigate the Friends apartments in the dark!)

Of course, your use of home interiors isn’t limited to the online world! A home-furnishings book, magazine, or catalog could yield dozens if not hundreds of uniquely designed and furnished rooms.

What about stores/shops or restaurants/cafés? Have you used your schools, doctors/dentist offices, workplaces? What about the area around where you live—the streets, sidewalks/walkways, trees, buildings, neighborhood? It is not mentioned frequently these days, but historically one’s own body was used as a memory palace, with each feature/part being a location. (You may also find useful information here in threads about “miniature memory palaces”: Miniature memory palaces - including your palm )

You’ll note, though, that I’m not answering your question: How would you create a memory palace from scratch? That’s because I wouldn’t do it. Not that it can’t be done; it just holds no interest for me. All of my palaces have personal meaning to me and I enjoy revisiting them; a fabricated location would be meaningless for me.

Bob

[Noan]

Streetview on google maps, maybe other realtor websites that offer static images instead. You can try hunting around for various ones from different countries and see if they work for you without vpn. How does realtor.ca treat you?

If I was really forced to make one up, I’d download some reference furniture and furnishings, sketch out a floor plan and rooms, and use that. Such drawings wouldn’t have to be good, they’re just scaffolding.

I might even skip that and just doodle out loose representations of the things I’m trying to memorize in the first place, it works shockingly well. A while ago I did that to map out a bit of a dream I had. With no real maintenance it’s all still there in my head.
My memory of the drawing didn’t match the actual drawing 1 to 1, but all the elements were there, and those elements easily translate into the things they represent. Placeholder marks for art

[beau2am]

@pl345

I have used up all my real memory palaces. I don’t have any distinct mental locations anymore.

I imagine that I experienced something very similar to your situation.

And it hasn’t been an issue for me since I did the exercise in the forum post I’m sharing.

If you do exactly as described in the post below, this won’t be an issue for you, not for a good while at least.

The Big List: Location Ideas & Inspiration for Memory Palace Places

Good luck! And experiment! Play!
And enjoy yourself!

Regards,
Beau

[TheHumanTim]

@pl345

main problem is to come up with clear design for them.

Even though you’re not someone who travels much, do you know enough about the kind of things that would be found in different places that you could make a list of 10-20 things that could be used as loci in a specific type of place?

Let me provide an example…

If you don’t have a specific real airport as a palace, would you be able to think of 10-20 landmarks or things that would be logically found in an airport and imagine a fictional airport that uses those things?

Here’s a sequential list of things I think I’d see as I went through a fictional airport. They don’t need to have detail yet, just general landmarks…

parking garage gate
parking space
sidewalk up to main terminal
terminal entrance with large airport sign
gift shop* (can expand this to include multiple locations within)
coffee shop* (can also expand this)
bathroom* (again could expand this)
escalator
airline counter
checked bag scale
security line
x-ray machine for bags
walkthrough x-ray machine for people
people mover to get people to their gate
row of seats at the gate
ticket taker
jetway tunnel
plane door
cockpit*
plane bathroom*
overhead bag bin
oxygen masks
seat
tray table
barf bag
plane window
wing of plane
engine of plane
cart that brings bags to plane
fuel truck
guy waving the flashlights to direct the plane to the runway
traffic control tower*
windsock
runway

There’s more than 30 loci that can be used, thought of off the top of my head, and many more if you expand the sub-locations like the gift shop, coffee shop, bathrooms, traffic control space, etc.

You can take those general locations and try to imagine as much detail as you need, but those are all fairly distinct landmarks that provide opportunities for connection with mnemonic imagery.

You can do this with other meta-locations that you are theoretically knowledgeable about if not actually experimentally knowledgeable. That thread that @beau2am posted has some great ideas for types of locations or settings that you can use as a foundation point for building these fictional palaces.

You may not have ever been inside a nuclear power plant, but you could probably think of 10 things that you might find there. Same for a cruise ship, or a moon base, or wherever.

When it comes to actually “building” the location, you could do this completely in your mind, or use physical paper and do a very basic birds-eye view of the space with simple text labels that shows where you’d place each landmark, or you could get as detailed as you want with drawings, photoshop, etc. The main thing is that you create a consistent logically flowing sequence of landmarks that you can follow easily and that you can reconstruct without too much thought. You’ll have to practice them more than a location that you are actually experienced with, but I’ve found that its really not that much different after a bit.

Good luck!

[LociInTheSky]

I’ll tell you the best way, but you may not find it useful.

Walkabout Mini Golf in VR is a sprawling hub of potential palaces. There are dozens of courses, new ones coming out every month, and they are all rich, memorable, larger-than-life environments. When I used to compete, there were only a few courses, but I did have a Walkabout palace, and there were over 100 loci on that course. If you actually like to play the game, (and it’s the best game of any kind I’ve ever played, justifying the cost of VR on its own as a game), you’ll learn the pathways like the back of your hand without even trying to. In that case, you can just map out the loci in your head. Otherwise, you can just walk (or fly) through the environments and do it that way, which is not unpleasant. The entire course is rendered at once, so you can just stroll through at your leisure

Meta is releasing or just released a newer, cheaper version of the Quest 3, further bringing down the price of the Quest 2, which is what I have. I imagine a used one should be pretty cheap now. If you have the money to spare or think having something like this could be fun, I can’t think of a better way. You could make thousands of loci here.

That said, Alex invents his palaces from scratch without real world reference. So something like this is not necessary in order to build palaces that can work well.

f