I find sketching useful for the process of memorization itself, not just for storage, in the same way that (it seems) handwriting is more effective than typing. I think it helps the brain to focus more on the details.
The feeling of the friction of the pencil with the paper, especially if it is good paper, is part of the pleasure of drawing. It seems that digital pens are getting better at giving feedback about this friction, but I am not expert in digital pens.
Just to clarify: I use the word āminimalistā as opposed to miniature as minimalist refers to one (possibly two or three) objects as palace rather than just using something small as a palace.
These minimalist palaces could be as miniature as pair of glasses or a grand piano or a barn. The main objective is to have a lot of pieces of information hooked on them rather than one piece of information. This way, one object holds āallā the info rather than having to walk around a room of many pieces of furniture. Therefore I only have to remember one object as a palace rather than a room. I mostly only need one object as a palce for my needs.
One benefit of this approach (using 10 or more points on each piece of furniture) is that rather than a room palace holding 10 pieces of info to ten pieces of furniture, you would have at least 100 pieces of info to a room.
Again, nothing new Iām sure but this may help some to experiment in a productive way.
Itās new to me. Thanks for the time you put into explaining it.
Iāve found a lot of practical applications in this conversation which are both encouraging and fun. At the risk of being corny I have to admit this all reminds me of the first part of William Blakeās poem, The Auguries Of Innocenceā¦
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
How lovely!
Yes, itās a profound characteristic of natural things that on any scale there is a whole universe of detail. Paying attention is work. A kind of spiritual work.
This is why I am skeptical of the āWhamBamPowā approach to generating images. It depends on shock value to make you pay attention. Your brain does not like being shocked or stressed and becomes inured. They are cartoon images, thin and cheap. If one pays attention to the depth and quality of an image and all the subtle things that make it ārealā this never loses its effectiveness.
Thank you, zvuv.
You have said what I feel myself. If you slow down and really notice details, things become exceptional and memorable without the need for outrageousness. I think it is a kind of spiritual work. Gerard Manley Hopkins coined the term āinscapeā to refer to the uniqueness of each living thing. Maybe youāve come across this term. No two trees are alike. No two living things are alike. We need to be observant to notice the differences.
I find adjectives very useful in creating loci. If I create a āchairā locus and then want to create another āchair locusā thereās a lot of room for confusion. But if one is a āwicker chairā and one is a ārocking chairā, thereās no confusion.
I find itās helpful to identify particular attributes of the thing, rather than relying on placement. For example, āsouth chairā and ānorth chairā are, for me, more likely to be confused than if I can see something different about the objects themselves. Do you have the same experience?
So if thereās a south and a north chair, I try to find something intrinsic to them that distinguishes them, not only placement. If I donāt, I have to use one and let the other go.
In nature, I find more individuality than I find in factory-made products. Two chairs from IKEA may be virtually identical, but two trees, particularly if theyāre mature and not saplings, are different and attention enables me to see them as two different things.
Thank you for your contributions!
I was recently reading Frostās Poem, The Road Not Taken. In my mind itās exactly about this topic, about the richness of an actual experience compared with the man made fabrication he presents at the end.
I cannot work with a uniform set of objects. If I have a room with chambers everyone is quite individual and I put a lot of work into that. I can visualize a spatial arrangement but I canāt remember it reliably unless I have some narrative that organizes things. When I work with figures, each column has itās own color and qualities - otherwise I canāt keep things in place.
I try to breath life into my images. They smell, they make noise, they have texture, a presence. They are always things that are welcome - whose company I enjoy. I find it really helps to make up a story about how it got there. āThatās the chair Fred was sitting in when I told him the story about the talking dogā¦ā Real memories are like this. They are held in place by a web of relationships. Our brains know whatās real. Watch a movie and you will retain very little of the details of the environment. Only those things that were brought to your attention. Had you been there, smelled the place, heard the way the voices sounded in the room etcā¦
Carollyn and zvuv, I appreciate reading about your ākinder, gentlerā approach to images. I donāt share your desire to refrain from the overly violent or outrageous, but I do appreciate learning about your perspective.
Itās especially interesting in light of the Western history of memory, in which, from the Greeks and Romans on, the presumption has been that it is the violent, ribald, outrageous images that are the most memorable and, therefore, the kinds of images that memorizers should be working to develop. For me, this still rings true. But I can certainly understand that it wouldnāt for many people these days. The Greeks and Romans could not have foreseen how prevalent such images would be within mass entertainmentānot to mention the news broadcasts available on every device. You canāt say the Romans wouldnāt understand gore as entertainment (see: The Coliseum), but there is a ubiquity to it today in fictionāand a terrifying scale to it in realityāthat can be numbing. Itās good to know that such images are not required for memory work and that other kinds of images can be equally effective.
Thank you both!
Bob
Interesting.
Thank you for your understanding and open mindedness. It has been a revelation for me reading through peopleās descriptions of their visualizations and I have followed yours with interest. Of course I donāt come to tell anybody who has a working technique that heās doing it wrong. Each of us is the final judge of what works for oneself. Iām certainly not a prude about sex or violence. I think they are both deep parts of our nature. Iām definitely not implying that we shouldnāt have such thoughts, I just find them too expensive for this work. I have seen too much violence and have some PTSD.
The first time I tried memory techniques, think it was Lorraineās book I got some quick results but stalled. I couldnāt make the images permanent and I couldnāt do any volume of material and I disliked drilling - which is unusual for me. Many years later, after a serious illness had devastated my cognitive powers, I tried again and realized that I didnāt like these images and that was the problem. It was like eating junk food - one or two candy bars was OK but ten was nauseating, I didnāt want any more now or ever. And of course my brain dumped all this junk as soon as I wasnāt paying attention. Then I decided to look at what my mind did like to engage with and hold onto and that proved very fruitful.
What fascinating comments. It shows how much personalised images are preferable to attempts at images used by everyone. I am doing some schools lectures and workshops and think that it is really important that I donāt rush and so encourage the students to come up with their own images.
To return to Bruegel from quite a way back now, I have now marked all of the locations on Childrenās Games and finalised my list of classical composers. Now to start encoding. And listening to the music!
Thatās wonderful, Lynne! I noticed there is a company that makes a jigsaw puzzle of some of Bruegelās paintings and I thought that might interest you. You could get such a puzzle, or perhaps better yet, you could imagine that you have such a puzzle and, as you move around the painting, you could imagine that you are actually handling puzzle pieces and placing them down. I think this could be an interesting tactical dimension to consider.
Good luck and please keep us posted! Your adventure is fascinating.
Thank you very much for the amazing example. I am used to big big loci, now I am inspired to have some fun with the minuscule Beauties of life too
Completely agree. The engagement, the tactile sensation of the point on the paper, the odor, the quality of the paper itself, they all enrich and strengthen the attachments.
I used to wonder if I was spending too much time with the drawing since it takes a lot longer than a completely imaginary vision but then thereās substantial work left to really plant the image, with a drawing, itās mostly done in the process.
One thing about this kind of sketching is that I can indulge my appetite for detail. In composition one is taught to be restrained with details - this feels something like a guilty pleasure. 
Iāve learned a lot from this discussion. I really liked @maxoās sketch. For fun, here is one Iāve just finished up. It represents the Javascript Object class, an abstract structure with many small moving parts. This is mostly āmatureā knowledge. I know this entity and Iāve used most of itās amenities but I waste a lot of time checking details and sometimes have failed to use options simply because I forgot they were available.
It is very densely packed even at a glance. The chambers are packed together and stuffed with information. Each one of those legends will get its own little sketch where itās details are encoded. There has been some discussion about the separation of memory chambers. This is very important. The traditional advice, according to @RMBittner is to put large distance separations between them. Here I have given each room a character or a theme. The Lock chamber is for access control. The basket for all the āgetā methods and the snake keeps all the āisā methods ( hissss to you too!) This provides enough distinction for me. Alligators are prototypes and stone buildings have to do with āobjectsā
In this case, as I said, I knew the material and had a good plan for organizing it. Sometimes with new material, I find after a while that my little āsceneā is not the best representation and I redraw it. All of this provides very strong reinforcement of the material.
Itās important that I enjoy this. I get to be a teenager again and play with dragons, gold. I have a stories about it. Itās rather personal. Itās important that it be so, but I wouldnāt show you all my sketches
I think color would be a real advantage but I donāt want color in my drawings. You can do cartoons, stick figures, copy & paste clip art - the style or the level of technique is not important except that you should enjoy looking at it.
If you havenāt tried this kind of technique, you may find at first that itās a lot of work and you want to throw the results away. Be patient. You get a feel for it over time.
This time the gray scale came out a bit too black. Itās not as harsh as this photo. Still learning
Fully understand the way the work of memorization is done in the process of doing the art. And the āguilty pleasureā. Thatās exactly what it feels like. Barely work at all.
I have been thinking about this thread a lot. And zvuvās addition and image has got my mind racing about creating more imaginative art than I have been doing to date. So exciting. I want dragons!
I think the reason this works so well is that to create the images you have to do a mode shift - change the format from words to something else. You can write words out in a mind map without totally engaging with them, but to create an art work based on the ideas, you have to concentrate on the concept that you are trying to represent, hence focus more deeply and for longer. Hence better understanding and memory. This is my current hobby horse.
Thank you!
Your drawings are so beautiful and perfect. Amazingā¦
I completely agree with that assessment. After a while, any simple encoding scheme becomes mechanical and the images lose their vividness, like cliches. If you make something out of the material, take the wet clay, squeeze it through your fingers and transform it into something thatās your own, you build a very strong connection.
Iāll go back and fool with it some more at a later time - that adds reinforcement.
To me this has a āLukasa likeā feel to it. A big advantage of a sketch is ease of storage, filing paper or computer images.
I have yet to make a Lukasa but the first time I saw a picture in one of your posts, it had a very familiar, friendly feel to it. I felt like I understood it immediately.
Thank you for your kind words.
