Signals, stories, notches in the memory board…

I love the idea of the lukasa, or memory board. The lukasa seems to be the most minimal form of data storage possible. The trick to the minimalism is that it is fuzzy data. Some lukasas are representational, depicting tribal land for example, and others are serial notations of a story. They can consist entirely rows of different colored beads on a wooden board.

These static, crude pieces of wood, carved and decorated, go into the hands of a human being, who references basic neural structures through associations with the marks on the board, and out comes a vivid story of heroism, death, comedy, tragedy, or maybe even romance. I imagine that dancers could assist the teller by performing in tandem, illustrating the spoken words. Or if the lukasa is a representation of political power, the tiny colored dots could determine whether or not territorial infringement has occurred, whether the tribe will be at war or at peace.

Inexorably the story must undergo mutations, even with each telling by the same person, even if they have no special motivation to change the story. Mistakes and corrections are part of the fabric of gleaning meaning from signs.

Our memories work this way, recreating experience from clues in the neurons. We do not record experience like a video camera. Every time you remember something, you retell the story to yourself. Every time it changes.