The Technē of Memory

What is memory? How does it determine our experience and identity? To what extent does memory influence our understanding of the future? Or of time itself? How do individual memories differ from collective ones? What happens to our sense of belonging and selfhood when our memories are externalized in digital devices? Throughout the history of philosophy and increasingly in neurological studies, these questions have been central to our understanding of human experience.

This panel seeks to address these questions by thinking of memory as a process that occurs both in and outside the brain - in which tools and infrastructures, along with social and personal experiences create the conditions for what we believe we remember. It is this extended sense of mnemonic experience that allows us to look back and think ahead. This panel will also discuss how our increasing engagement with modern technē (which originally meant both art and technology) can help to define, clarify, and enhance our memories, even as the digital world threatens to overwhelm our attention and corporations offer to index our every memory.

This roundtable will also feature a presentation of Viviane Silvera's film See Memory.

Participants

Victoria Loustalot

Author, editor, & communications consultant

Victoria Loustalot is an author and editor with twenty years of journalism, publishing, and digital media experience. She has been a founding member and senior manager of groundbreaking teams at Twitter, Condé Nast, and NBC. In addition, Victoria has taught seminars and undergraduate writing classes at Columbia University, the University of Arizona, and the University... read more! »

Sam McDougle

Assistant Professor of Psychology, Yale University

Samuel McDougle earned his BA in Neuroscience and Behavior from Vassar College in 2009 and his PhD in Neuroscience and Psychology from Princeton University in 2018. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley, Sam joined Yale’s Psychology Department in 2020 as an assistant professor. Sam’s lab uses behavioral experiments, computational modeling, neuroimaging, and neuropsychology... read more! »

Daniela Schiller

Professor, Neuroscience & Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai

Dr. Daniela Schiller is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, the Nash Family Department of Neuroscience, and the Friedman Brain Institute, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Her research is focused on how the brain represents and modifies emotional memories. Schiller got her PhD in Tel Aviv University and then continued... read more! »

Viviane Silvera

Artist & filmmaker

View Papers / Presentations »

Viviane Silvera is a Telly Award–winning filmmaker and visual artist whose work bridges neuroscience, psychology, and fine art to explore how memory shapes—and reshapes—our sense of self. Her acclaimed film See Memory—crafted from over 30,000 hand-painted frames—translates scientific insight into poetic visual storytelling, illustrating how trauma fragments memory and how healing becomes possible through presence, imagination, and narrative.... read more! »

R. John Williams

Associate Professor, English, Film and Media, at Yale University

R. John Williams, PhD, is Professor of English, and Film and Media Studies at Yale University. He is the author of The Buddha in the Machine: Art, Technology, and the Meeting of East and West, and has published as well on a number of topics including religion, futurology, systems theory, psychoanalysis, and film and television. His... read more! »

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