Vortrag gehalten am 27. 11. 1999 im Max-Planck-Institut fr Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin.

Peter Matussek

The Computer as Theater of Memory1

The functions of the brain are so complex and imponderable that in order to make
them at all conceivable we must seek recourse in metaphor. Such metaphors are not
constant, however, but vary with the course of history.2 Thus, for some time now, we
have been able to observe a shift in the prevalent model of the human memory: from
a repository to a theatrical stage.3 The objects of our recollection no longer seem to
us to constitute a passive inventory for deposit and withdrawal; rather, they seem far
more like actors in a succession of changing mis-en-scne.
The metaphor shift in the neuro-sciences goes hand in hand with corresponding
changes in the ways we speak about computers. In the wake of advances in
interactive applications, the function of digital technology is no longer described
merely in terms of "storage and retrieval," but rather in terms of the performativity of
images in motion. In this connection, one of the most influential books about
contemporary computer interface design is entitled Computers as theatre (1990); it's
author, Brenda Laurel, was one of the first to propagate this new way of looking at
computers.
What does it mean to conceive of the computer as theater? Is this an appropriate
form of metaphorization? Or does it tend to conceal, rather than to capture, the actual
processes? Could it be that there is even more to this metaphor than at first meets the
eye? What sorts of historical affinities does it reveal? Do older forms of theatricality

1The

issues introduced here will be explored in more depth in a research project led by the author on
the theme "The Computer as Theater of Memory." More infomation can be obtained online at
www.sfb-performativ.de/seiten/b7.html.
2Cf. Draaisma, Douwe, Die Metaphernmaschine. Eine Geschichte des Gedchtnisses (Darmstadt,
1999).
3

Cf. Bernard J. Baars, Das Schauspiel des Denkens (Stuttgart, 1998).

return in computer theater? Do they do so as the belated fulfillment of past promise,

or as a parody of their former content? And what repercussions, finally, does
construing computer memory in theatrical terms have for our image of the human
memory?
My essay will take up these questions. But before they can be answered, we must
first specify what sort of theater if it is to describe the interaction with computers
we might have in mind. The possibilities are many and various. For instance, faced
with the cabaret productions that the desktops of even serious text- and dataprocessing programs seem to have become, some users might be reminded of
vaudeville, and might deplore, with Neil Postman, the banality of "infotainment."4 In
contrast, Umberto Eco takes the "icons" of the newer user interfaces quite literally: in
the market victory of the graphical user interface popularized by Macintosh, Eco
recognizes the historical drama of the Counter-Reformation, thus prompting
questions of a religious-historical nature such as whether MS-DOS is Calvinist.5
Brenda Laurel goes one step further and proclaims Greek tragedy of the 5th and early
4th centuries BC to be the archetype of and the model for mouse-driven interaction.6
There is no irony intended in the comparison, and it is worth taking a closer look at
the foundations of the argument.
Laurel points to the Dionysian context of ancient Greek tragedy and emphasizes
its ritualistic aspect as against the cognitive aspect that we normally associate with
computers. On her account, the distinguishing character of computers consists not so
much in their representation of knowledge, but rather more in their representation of
actions in which human beings participate. She calls for a human-machine interaction
that, like the theatrical praxis of Greek tragedy, would incorporate all aspects of life,
including spiritual experiences:

Cf. Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New
York, 1985).

Umberto Eco, "MS-DOS ist calvinistisch: ber die Religion der Betriebssysteme," Spiegel-Spezial 3
(1995): 38.

Brenda Laurel, Computers as Theatre (Reading , Mass., 1991) 38.

"Recall that in the Greek theatre, actors were the priests of Dionysus, the god of ecstasy and
rebirth, and during the act of performance they felt themselves to be in possession of the
god [].
I think we can someday have Dionysian experiences in virtual reality, and that they will be
experiences of the most intimate and powerful kind [].
But for virtual reality to fulfill its highest potential, we must reinvent the sacred spaces
where we collaborate with reality in order to transform it and ourselves."7

If this re-sacralization of virtual reality were to succeed, she enthusiastically

concludes, it would be a "quantum leap in human evolution."8
When one looks around on the Net, one can certainly get the impression that
Laurel's vision is not all that far from being realized. Digital amphitheaters with
names such as "Holy Mission," "Quest for the Eternals," or "Heaven's Door" offer the
visitor an experience of self-transformation through participation as "Avatar," the
Hinduistic term by which cybernetic reincarnation most commonly goes.9 Under
certain circumstances, this virtual drama can even lead to real tragedy, as in the case
of the collective suicide of cult leader Applewhite and thrity-eight of his followers,
who abandoned their "containers" as they called their own bodies in order to
catch a heavenly ride on Comet Hale-Bopp. The Internet had provided them with an
earthly living, but, at the same time, it apparently also fueled their yearning for
disembodiment. While working on projects for their web-design agency "Higher
Source," they kept a constant eye on the animated comet's tail of the Netscape
browser's logo. And in their virtual home, on their homepage at "heavensgate.com",
they announced their imminent union with the real higher source in the following
words:

Laurel 196f.

Laurel 198.

On this subject, see Peter Matussek, "'www.heavensgate.com' Virtuelles Leben zwischen

Eskapismus und Ekstase," Paragrana 6 (1997): 129147.

"If you study the material on the website you will hopefully understand our joy and what
our purpose here on earth has been. You may even find your 'boarding pass' to leave with us
[]"10

Admittedly, this was not what Brenda Laurel, a thoroughly life-affirming computer
scientist, had in mind. Yet we might have already learned from the ancient Greek
texts that ecstatic practices are not without their dangers. There, many an initiate in
the grip of Dionysian madness did not return from his altered state, or made
bloodthirsty claims on the lives of others. Even if the use of digital simulacra
generally sheds no blood, the effects are not unproblematic. And when computer kids
describe their ecstatic Avatar experiences in the terms documented by the computer
psychologist Sherry Turkle, it is only a small step from ecstasy to escapism: "'This is
more real than my real life,' says a character who turns out to be a man playing a
woman who is pretending to be a man."11
Yet, despite the ambivalences inherent in such statements, one must concede to
Brenda Laurel that Greek tragedy is not the worst model for today's computer
interfaces. We continue to consider it as the epitome of a unified culture of
multimedial participation, and look back on it enviously from the standpoint of an
impoverished, alphanumeric, high-tech civilization. Theorists of the media from
McLuhan, through Walter Ong, to Vilm Flusser have found it thoroughly
worthwhile to aspire to break away from the text-boundedness of the Gutenberg
galaxy, and finally to break through to a second orality, visuality, and tactility of the
Turing galaxy. The computer, in its function as calculating machine, may stand at the
farthest remove from the participatory experience of Greek tragedy (or, what we take
it to be); but if it should now also become the instrument of the return of that
development, then this would be only fitting.
The extent to which the comparison Laurel attempts may actually involve either
the return of historical phenomena, or only a parody of them the satyr play after the

10

Sources: www.heavensgate.com and www.highersource.com. In order to be able to give away as

many of these boarding passes as possible, the Heaven's Gate programmers embedded hidden
Internet search engine key-words in the code of their webpages. These included "Angels," "Away
Team," "Boddhisattva." "Glorified Body," "Theosophy," and "Yahweh."

11

Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (New York, 1995) 10.

tragedy is a question I will not pursue further here. What may be established,
however, is what kind of technology can accommodate the postulated participatory
experience. This technology is an interface design that allows the user to merge
completely with the events in cyberspace, as if immersed in them. Brenda Laurel
speaks laconically of a "vanishing interface." With the saying, "Whoever discovered
water [...] certainly wasn't a fish," she reminds us that a medium can offer a perfect
environment only when we do not at all recognize it as a medium.12
This may well be a fascinating perspective for adventure games. But is it also a
valid one for other forms of computer use say, for scholarly works about adventure
games? At best, we can concede this to be the case for the initial field research phase,
in which, on the pretext of scientific inquiry, unsuspecting children are robbed of
their Lara Croft CDs in order to provide the researchers with practical experience of
the "vanishing interface" phenomenon. But otherwise, we tend to find theatricallystaged elements rather disruptive of scholarly work. Certainly, to forget the mediality
of a book or computer screen is the very measure of mental absorption in research,
reading, or contemplation. However, this kind of situational forgetfulness is not
achieved through the intensified performativity of data presentation, but rather, on
the contrary, through its immutability, which leads to tunnel effects in our attention.
This is vividly illustrated in Plato's anecdote about the philosopher Thales, who fell
into a fountain while making astronomical observations. He may have felt like a fish
then, but he was surely hard pressed to enjoy the immersion experience that startled
him out of his contemplation. The situation is here the reverse of the computer
theater favored by Brenda Laurel: Our imaginative activity diminishes in direct
proportion to the increased activity on the screen. Whomever the programmers at
Microsoft had in mind when they put a smart-alecky, comic-book assistant in the
text-editing window, who starts making noises of boredom as soon as we pause to
reflect, so that we have to turn our attention to him instead of to our thoughts
whomever these programmers had in mind, it couldn't have possibly been anyone

12

Laurel 210.

who wants to use this word processing software to actually process their own words
(i.e., to write).
On the other hand, it would be a mistake to believe that any text-editing or database software could be entirely free of staged elements that shape the form of the
presented information, and thus also influence the process of its reception.
Programmers have to pull quite a few illusionistic tricks before a "page," an "index
card," or a "folder" can appear on the monitor. In this regard, the contemporary
standards for Mac and Windows environments are not historically indifferent. They,
too, can be traced back to an antique heritage although it is one that stands in
opposition to that of Greek tragedy. As Nicholas Negroponte has implied,13 there is
an affinity between Simonides von Keos, to whom the Roman rhetoricians ascribed
the invention of the ancient art of memory, and Steve Jobs, who supposedly invented
the Macintosh User Interface.14 This new interface put to new use an old insight of
the Roman rhetoric manuals namely, that the highest degree of mnemonic
efficiency is exhibited by techniques involving topographical arrangements of mental
images (loci et imagines). That the use of image-based technology might have
involved an actual historical reprise in the computer age was explicitly reflected
already by the Architecture Machine Group who developed the Spatial Data
Management System during the seventies. As Richard Bolt reports: "Intrinsic to the
ensemble of studies outlined in the proposal was a study recalling the ancient
principle of using spatial cueing as an aid to performance and memory: the
'Simonides Effect'."15 And also the Human Interface Guidelines,16 which were

13

Nicholas Negroponte, Total digital. Die Welt zwischen 0 und 1 oder Die Zukunft der
Kommunikation (Munich, 1995) 135ff.

14

In fact, the parallel between Simonides and Jobs extends to the dubiousness of both assumptions of
authorship. In the former case, the Simonides inheritance of the Roman rhetoricians should be seen
merely as a legitimating legend (cf. Stefan Goldmann, "Statt Totenklage Gedchtnis: Zur Erfindung
der Mnemotechnik durch Simonides von Keos," Poetica 21 [1989]: 4366) and in the latter case, it
was not Steve Jobs, but rather Lawrence Tesler, of Xerox PARC, who developed the foundational
elements of the Macintosh Interface (cf. Owen W. Linzmayer, Apple Confidential: The Real Story of
Apple Computer, Inc., [San Francisco, 1999] 51ff).
15Richard A. Bolt, Spatial Data Management, (Cambridge, Mass., 1979) 8.
16

Apple Computer Inc., Human Interface Guidelines: The Apple Desktop Interface, (Reading, Mass.,
1987).

developed by Apple's Human Interface Group during the eighties could well have
been borrowed from the traditional teachings of rhetorical ars memoria. In addition
to the basic "See-and-Point" principle, which recalls the ancient loci et imagines, the
most important key words in the Guidelines are "Feedback and Dialog,"
"Consistency," and "Perceived Stability." In the Rhetorica Ad Herennium we read
that rote learning is most effective "when we [employ] not mute and indistinct
images, but rather ones that set something in motion" (Apple's "feedback and
dialog"); these actuating images (imagines agentes) must be "arranged at certain
fixed locations" (Apple's "Consistency"); and finally, says the Rhetorica, there must
be no opportunity for us to "accidentally be mistaken in the number of locations"
(Apple's "Perceived Stability").17 Psychological studies in the work place have
confirmed that these principles considerably increase the ease with which the use of
operating systems and software applications is learned.18
However, the Macintosh desktop was designed for a relatively small, manageable
amount of data. At its inception, the user had 128 KB RAM and 400 KB internal
"mass" storage at his or her disposal. Under these conditions, whatever one had to
arrange on the monitor's surface in terms of icons, menus, and program or document
windows, was held within the limits of manageability. Today's personal computers
with a storage capacity many thousand times larger than before, and with Internet
access to amounts of data that, printed out, would cover the entire globe pose
qualitatively incomparable challenges to creating a mnemonically meaningful
presentation.
It is evident that, considering the explosion in user-designated storage options, the
particular architecture of memory suggested by the desktop metaphor will have been
put out of joint. And if we stick to the terms of our historical analogy, we might say
that the current situation corresponds to the phase in which the classical memory
palaces of antiquity gradually collapsed under the pressure of increasing amounts of

17

Rhetorica Ad Herrenium III, XVIIf., Apple Computer 3ff.

18

Cf., e.g., Alexandra Altmann, "Direkte Manipulation: Empirische Befunde zum Einflu der
Benutzeroberflche auf die Erlernbarkeit von Textsystemen," A&O: Zeitschrift fr Arbeits- und
Organisationspsychologie 3 (1987): 108-114.

amassed knowledge. Thus, today's PC-user, faced with the overabundance of nested
memory blocks on his desktop, may feel somewhat like St. Augustine when the latter
reports of toilsome excursions through "the plains, and caves, and caverns of []
memory, innumerable and innumerably full of innumerable kinds of things."19
"When I enter there, I require what I will to be brought forth, and something instantly
comes; others must be longer sought after, which are fetched, as it were, out of some inner
receptacle; others rush out in troops, and while one thing is desired and required, they start
forth, as who should say, 'Is it perchance I?' These I drive away [] until what I wish for be
unveiled, and appear in sight, out of its secret place."20

And Augustine had even anticipated the solution to the problem a change of
perspective: from that of a fixed standpoint within the classical architecture of
memory (in which individual memories can be found as if by reading off their
location from a wax tablet)21 to that of a free movement in space. "Over all these
[memories]," he writes, "do I run, I fly; I dive on this side and that, as far as I can,
and there is no end."22 Some readers might well be reminded here of William
Gibson's "Cyberspace."23 And certainly, the staging of memory in the Confessions is
not unlike that of Neuromancer.
Indeed in the past as well as in the present, there have been parallel attempts to
actually approach this fiction in reality. The historical pivot of such attempts rests in
a kind of theater that I would like to propose here in contrast to the one suggested by
Brenda Laurel: the memory theater of Giulio Camillo.
Camillo's intention, as we can gather from his treatise L'idea del theatro24 and
from contemporary reports, was to reanimate the art of memory in the spirit of NeoPlatonism. The antique ars memoria was, despite the fact that we translate ars as

19

Augustine, Confessions, trans. Edward B. Pusey, 55th printing (New York, 1965) 174.

20

Augustine 166.

21

Ad Her. III, XVII.

22

Augustine 174.

23

Cf. Erik Davis, "Techgnosis, Magic, Memory, and the Angels of Information," Flame Wars: The
Discourse of Cyberculture, ed. Mark Dery (Durham and London 1994) 34f.

24

Giulio Camillo, L' Idea del Theatro (Florence, 1550). Cf. Giulio Camillo, L' Idea del Theatro with
Engl. trans., An Examination of L' Idea del Theatro of Giulio Camillo by Lu Beery Wenneker, diss.,
Pittsburgh, 1970.

"art," not a poiesis, but a techn. It was not meant to release the vital force (vis)
accumulated in living memories; rather, it was more like a practice of taxidermic
mounting meant to improve retentiveness. The Simonides story testifies most vividly
to this necrotic tendency: It reports of a banquet at which the remains of guests
crushed to death in their seats were easily identifiable by way of being gruesomely
fixed in their pre-assigned places. Yet the Roman textbooks of rhetoric advised the
use of imagenes agentes whose composition, on the express recommendation of the
author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium, should be left to the fantasy of the memorizer.
The Roman model thus still contained elements of a productive use of the
imagination. It was the scholastic treatises of the middle ages that curbed this
remnant of mnemonic freedom in favor of a mechanical rote learning of prayers,
virtues, and lists of objects.25 And it is here that Camillo comes in with his attempt to
reanimate the now mechanical and uncreative memoria.
For this purpose, he transplanted the arena of ars memoria from the traditional
treasuries (thesauri) and palaces of memory to the Vitruvian theater.26 The "drama"
that he produced on this stage made use of the teachings of antiquity, but dressed
them up in hermetic, cabalistic costume. Camillo also departed from the tradition in
one other aspect, in that he reversed the topography of the neo-Classical theater's
structure. The visitor stood on the stage and gazed into the amphitheater-like
auditorium, whose tiered, half-round construction was particularly suitable for
housing the memories in a clearly laid-out fashion seven sections, each with seven
arches spanning seven rising tiers. With this inversion, the efficiency of the ancient
architecture of memory could be significantly increased. Viglius Zuichemus, who
had the privilege of visiting the mystery-shrouded theater, writes to Erasmus:

25

Cf. Frances Yates, The Art of Memory (London, 1966) 114ff. This does not stand in contradiction
to Horst Wenzel's observations on the participatory character of medieval memoria in Horst Wenzel,
Hren und Sehen. Schrift und Bild. Kultur und Gedchtnis im Mittelalter (Munich, 1995).

26

Here, I pass over the objections raised against Yates' reconstruction by Julia Mummenhoff ("Das
Gedchtnistheater des Giulio Camillo," Denkrume zwischen Kunst und Wissenschaft. 5.
Kunsthistorikerinnentagung, eds. Silvia Baumgart et al., [Hamburg, Berlin et al., 1993]: 177198)
and Lou Beery Wenneker, since these are irrelevant to my argument.

"The work is of wood, marked with many images, and full of little boxes; there are various
orders and grades in it. He gives a place to each individual figure and ornament, and he
showed me such a mass of papers that, though I always heard that Cicero was the fountain
of richest eloquence, scarcely would I have thought that [...] so many volumes could be
pieced together out of his writings."27

This arrangement of astrological and cabalistic signs, allegories, and emblematic

elements was made flexible through the use of the Lullistic ars combinatoria. But
that an undreamt-of quantity of information could be contained in such a relatively
small construction (presumably, it was a cabinet in which just about two people
could stand upright28) is mainly due to the fact that Camillo conceived of his
mnemonic system as a navigable space. Its user could move through the threedimensional arrangement of his own will and vary his view between near and far
accordingly. Camillo explicates the advantages of this mobility in an analogy to a
forest, which we experience as unfathomable when we are within its plane, but which
we increasingly apprehend in its overall shape, the more our view point is raised
above it.29
The history of the newer interface technology similarly begins with a
mobilization of the memory map. A first step in this direction was the above
mentioned Spatial Data Management System. It allowed the user to switch back and
forth between different screens whose contents he could zoom toward or away from
him, creating the impression of navigating through a "dataland."30 Hypertext,
Hypercard and HTML, the original language of the World Wide Web, have
popularized this kind of navigation in two-dimensional form. For some years now,
there has been work on their expansion through 3D visualization processes: vectordriven cartographies such as Hyper-G, Xspace, or VRML, which alter the depicted
space with every movement of the mouse. Such means are used to attempt to increase
the number of memory locations without creating disorientation. This transition from

27

Yates 136.

28

This may be extrapolated from Viglius Zuichemus' letter to Erasmus. Erasmus Desiderius
Roterdamus, Opus Epistolarum des. Erasmi Roterdami denvo Recognitum et Auctum per P .S.
Allen, ed. H. M. Allen and H. W. Garrod, vol. 10 (Oxford, 1941) 30.

29

Yates 147f.
13.

30Bolt

10

a static, topographical memory space to an active, navigable one suggests the

comparison with Camillo's theatricalization of the ars memoria.
No doubt the juxtaposition of two historical moments has something of a
burlesque reductionism about it. But the parodic element had been brought into play
by Camillo himself. Thus, during his own lifetime, there were already polemics in
which his theater was held up to the great works of contemporary rhetoricians and
found lacking. As Eugenio Garin explicitly noted, the theater's construction was seen
as a mere "parody of all that the Renaissance theorists had rigorously attempted."31
Dolet and other Parisien scholars referred to Camillo unceremoniously as a
"quack."32
This might be traced back particularly to Viglius' report; for it, too, is not devoid
of ironic distance. The letter to Erasmus is tinged with something of that coy display
of one's own technical ignorance that is, to this day, the distinguishing feature of the
educated humanist. Viglius also expressly emphasizes that Camillo could speak
"Latin with difficulty," and makes clear in this erection of a language barrier that his
marveling is based more on bewilderment than on respect. And it is Camillo's
spiritual fervor that is particularly suspect for Viglius. He reports that he only
managed to secure his initiation into the arcanum by feigning great enthusiasm,
whereby he was "speaking religiously" and pretended to be "stupefied by the
miraculousness of the thing."33
The Viglius Zuichemus of our time probably writes for the culture section of a
high-brow paper, in whose employ he might also be called upon to write about
people such as Ted Nelson, creator of the neologisms "docuverse" and "hypertext."
This latter-day Viglius may also see himself, tongue firmly in cheek, compelled to
use the language of religion and to act as if captivated. Is there, then, also a historical

31

Eugenio Garin, Alcuni aspetti delle retoriche rinascimentali (Rome and Milan, 1953). Cited in
Paolo Rossi, Clavis Universalis: arti della memoria e logica combinatoria da Lullo a Leibniz (new
edition; Bologna, 1983) 119n8.

32Erasmus,
33

vol. 9 (Oxford, 1938) 479, footnote.

cited in Yates 136.

11

parallel with regard to an occult spirituality? Do similarities in mechanical function

also give rise to similar forms of bewitching fascination?
On Frances Yates' account, the historical explanation for Camillo's magic lies in
the writings of the Hermetics. In this literature, the microcosm of the human being
represents the divine macrocosm by analogy and thus transforms the human being
into the alter deus who carries the universe in his memory. There is a structural
affinity between such ideas and the digital theater of memory; notwithstanding the
incomparability of the mythological connotations or the historical contexts in which
these were valid, today's technology produces similar effects: The "Pan-Mnemism"34
of our time is nourished by the dream of a universal, encyclopedic machine. And,
according to Paulo Rossi, this dream also constitutes the central moment
distinguishing Camillo's Teatrum Mundi from the classical ars reminiscendi.35 The
above-mentioned hypertext-guru Ted Nelson has something comparable in mind:
"Universal or grand hypertext [] means [] an accessible great universe of linked
documents and graphics []. This is an idea many people now share the idea that we can
get to everything, add to everything, keep track of everything, tie everything together, that
we can have it all."36

What's at stake here is no longer mere, profane information retrieval, the

functional organization and recall of locations in the memory. What's at stake is the
spellbinding attraction of an omnipotence fantasy: having the sum total of the world's
knowledge at one's disposal. And the Lullistically-inclined spirituality of the "divine
Camillo" as he was known to his contemporaries37 had also partaken no less of
this intoxicating source. His theatrical model resituated the visitor in the position of
world creator a move that his patron, the King of France, surely appreciated.
Now, it is in the nature of the dream of a total encyclopedia that it must remain a
dream. In this respect, it is worth noting that Camillo's Idea del Theatro (which he

34

Elisabeth von Samsonow, "Zeit bei Giordano Bruno oder: Zum Verhltnis von Kosmochronie und
Mnemochronie," eds. Eric Alliez et al., Metamorphosen der Zeit (Munich, 1999) 140.

35

Rossi 118ff.

36

cited in Robert E. Horn, Mapping Hypertext: Analysis, Linkage, and Display of Knowledge for the
Next Generation of On-Line Text and Graphics (Waltham, 1989) 259.

37

Yates 135.

12

dictated shortly before his death, with decades of construction work behind him) was
formulated in the future tense as if the actual theater of memory was still to be
built. Incompletability is here no shortcoming, but rather a surplus; it does not
mitigate, but rather intensifies the mystery. The World Wide Web, too, owes its aura
as pan-mnemistic docuverse to the sfumato of a diffuse presentation of data, whose
incompleteness stimulates us to act on hunches and intuitions, and thus produces that
feeling of exuberant spatial experience with which passionate web-surfers are filled.
The necessarily limited frame of the monitor only augments this experience through
its peephole effect; it feeds the voyeuristic fantasy that there is still something
infinitely more thrilling to discover than what is actually before one's eyes. The Idea
del Theatro also leaves much in the dark. It's "revelation" begins with a reference to
the significance of silence in the face of divine secrets. And no doubt, Camillo's
mystique only profited from the fact that he divulged just bits and pieces about how
his theater was made.38
There are numerous other points of comparison, but the parallels already cited
should suffice to provide the background against which the principal differences
might now emerge. These, namely, rest on an overabundant realization of the idea of
Camillo's theater by means of digital 3D visualization techniques. What differentiates
Camillo from today's cybernauts and sheds light on the possibly untapped potential of
the digital theater of memory is the fact that his data construction always appears as
theater. The sites and images of his model are not meant to fascinate in an
unmediated way, but should rather be reflected on as staged objects. They are
imagines agentes, active, actuating images, not because their specific function is the
"painting of an entire scene," but rather because the imagination is stimulated
through their agency.39 Camillo expressly emphasizes the matter that concerns him:

38

Cf. Yates 140.

39

The Rhetorica ad Herennium III, 37 makes clear that they are called "imagines agentes" because
they are striking images that stimulate the mind rather than being "mute and indistinct" ("non
mutas nec vagas") and not, as Schmidt-Biggeman writes, because it is their specific function to
"paint an entire scene" (Willhelm Schmidt-Biggeman, "Robert Fludds Theatrum memoriae," Ars
memorativa. Zur kulturgeschichtlichen Bedeutung der Gedchtniskunst 1400-1750, eds. Jrg
Jochen Berns and Wolfgang Neuber [Tbingen, 1993] 157; see also 156).

13

"to find, in these seven comprehensive and diverse units, an order that keeps the
mind keen and shakes up the memory."40 In contrast, the technical activation of
images by means of computer animation does not lead to reflection but is instead
perceived passively, in a reflex-like manner; instead of shaking up the memory, it
conditions it. Camillo's theater presents itself as an enclosed space, and, precisely for
that reason, incites one to transcend it. On the other hand, the forms of 3D
visualization, which give the illusion of endless space, prevent the data-traveler from
realizing that the trajectory of his transit is fixed and thus undermine the desire for
transcendence.
This fundamental difference in reception despite a superficial similarity of
presentation was brought about as a consequence of an earlier technological
transformation, which makes itself manifest on hand of the change in panorama
technology at the beginning of the 19th century. As Jonathan Crary emphasizes, a
decisive turnabout in the techniques of observation takes place at this time: In the
older panoramas (such as the famous London one of 1791), the visitor walked about
inside; in the diorama of 1823, the observer stood at a fixed point, and the panoramic
image revolved around him.41 Thus, the activity of the recipient was literally brought
to a standstill that is to say, transferred over to the apparatus. An analogous
phenomenon can, in my assessment, be traced in the difference between the memory
theaters of the Renaissance and the animated virtual reality scenarios of today's
computer interfaces. In Camillo's theater, the visitor similarly went inside and
actively moved within the collection of memories, while the computer navigator,
armed with his mouse, is condemned to immobility before the screen. In contrast to
Crary, however, I see this difference as being purely metaphorical. It is not necessary
to set the body in motion in order to mobilize the mind (that the Peripatetics
philosophized ambulando is commonly known to be a rumor). It is not necessary to

40

Cited in Mummenhoff 182 (English version follows the German translation). The formulation that
the memory should be "shaken up" (originally, percossa) underscores the self-relexive character of
this remembering in the sense of Platonic anamnesis, which also goes hand in hand with a
concussive experience, namely that of aporia.

41Jonathan

Crary, Techniken des Betrachters. Sehen und Moderne im 19. Jahrhundert (Basel, 1996)

117f.

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do away with sitting still in front of the screen in order to achieve mental mobility in
Camillo's sense and besides, the bodily movements of the user come into play again
in the newer "cave" installations. What is decisive is the orientation of inner
movement. With computer animation, it is directed unambiguously at the
consumption of an object; in Camillo however, the self-reflexive contemplation of
the object by a subject also involves a rebound movement back to the subject. This
reflexivity is made evident in Camillo's inversion of the theater structure, which
places the objects of memory in the tiers, where they simultaneously return the gaze
of the observer while he stands on the stage and constitutes the center of intellectual
activity. This inversion of the classical Vitruvian theater means that Camillo had
already effected a reversal of the very transformation that Crary pinpoints as only
having first taken place with the diorama. Thus, Camillo stands at a critical distance
not only to the traditional memory architectures of the ancients, but also to the
systems of memory theater developed immediately after his from Zwinger's
Theatrum vitae humanae (1565) and Quicchebergs Inscriptiones vel tituli theatri
amplissimi (1565) through Pierre Boaistuau's Theatrum Mundi (1581), Lomazzo's
L'Idea del Tempio della Pittura (1590), Bodin's Universae Naturae Theatrum (1597)
and Alsted's Theatrum Scholasticum (1610), to the Theatrum orbi in Robert Fludd's
Ars memoriae (1697).
Does this turnaround make Camillo's memory theater a viable model for turning
the digital staging of information into a self-reflective form? There have been
occasional attempts in artistic as well as in scientific experimental research, that
suggest this for the most part implicitly, but at times also in an explicit play upon
Camillo.42 They indicate that an anamnesis of computer-presented data is encouraged

42

In this field of reception, the transition from analog to digital media may be seen as a repetition of
the "panoramic turn." Pre-digital projects like Bill Viola's video installation The Theatre of Memory
(1985) or the installation exhibit Memoriatheater by Mikael Thejll (1993) create staged spaces that
call on the recipient to move around on his own initiative. In contrast, computer simulations such as
Robert Edgar's Memory Theater One (1985) or the Memory Theater VR by Agnes Hegeds (1997)
propell the amphitheatrical space around a fixed viewing point. Net art e.g., the Camillo
installations of Emil Hrvatin (www.ljudmila.org/camillo/front.htm) appears to take up an
intermediary position between the two models of reception: on the one hand, it operates with
illusionistic, computer-animated elements that move around on the monitor before the fixed gaze of
the beholder; on the other, it counteracts this illusion of movement with a data presentation whose

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not, as postulated by Brenda Laurel, when the interface vanishes, but rather, on the
contrary, when it is mirrored back to the observer.
What could this mean for the concrete praxis of the way information is staged in
the future?
Camillo's example cannot help us any further. No records of what the Theatro
actually looked like have survived. It may be that it's construction was never
completed, which would have been entirely in accordance with Camillo's intentions.
Only as long as he continued to work on its expansion, to endeavor constantly to
overhaul its architecture and iconology, could he have given himself and others the
feeling of being on the trail of the secret of the alchemistic transformation of memory
into recollection.

flat, consciously pronounced forms demand a self-motivated, autounomously selective act of reading
and beholding. And so it seems that it is hyper-media such as the World Wide Web that are destined
to carry out the "epicisation" of performative modes that Brecht had invisioned for the traditional
theater. (That such tendencies toward "epic" forms are not unknown in the recent history of art can
be seen on hand of a suggestive example: Anna Brailovsky, "The Epic Tableau:
Verfremdungseffekte in Anselm Kiefer's Varus," New German Critique 71 [1997]: 115-141.)

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