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The Hermann Ebbinghaus Shelf

The Hermann Ebbinghaus Shelf

The Hermann Ebbinghaus Shelf

This shelf is a surface of 15 meters length and can be produced in even longer versions. It is designed to show a linear setting of continuous information positioned in order to propose a reading experience. The Hermann Ebbinghaus Shelf is conceived as an elaboration of the principle of the "spaced effect" and the "decline of memory retention in time", both concepts resulting from studies on memory proposed by Hermann Ebbinghaus.

In contrast to Hermann Ebbinghaus' proved idea – that more active recall with increasing time intervals reduces the probability of forgetting information – the homonym shelf is designed to assert the performance of a mass of linearly provided information, in order to challenge a certain failure of memory. It prioritizes the structure in relation to the content as well as an aesthetic of excess more than a presentation of distinct objects.

The Hermann Ebbinghaus Shelf provides no visual pause between the elements, objects, and documents shown, and places them in neutral juxtaposition on its surface. Hermann Ebbinghaus is also the creator of the forgetting curve which hypothesizes the decline of memory retention over time. The forgetting curve shows how information is gradually lost when there is no attempt to retain it. The Hermann Ebbinghaus Shelf also acts in an opposite way to make given information homogeneous, acting as a provocation to the direction of forgetting more than as a structure for remembering; in this sense the shelf serves as acting in an opposite direction to the Gustave Le Bon table which insists on the glorification of whatever shown on its surface.

The Hermann Ebbinghaus Shelf serves also to reinforce the concept of memory loss prominent in the era of the World Wide Web, in which life is performed as a permanent elaboration of data. The Hermann Ebbinghaus Shelf suggests that its long material surface for linear, pauseless reading, produces a structure of information that will necessarily be forgotten in its totality but perhaps remembered more as an aesthetic pulp created by a population of juxtaposed matter. The imposing presence of the long object is meant to seek attention, making the structure of the information easier to remember than the content it is meant to provide.

The Hermann Ebbinghaus Shelf homogenizes a sequence of information into the gesture of a single line. In parallel, the Hermann Ebbinghaus Shelf defines the general character of an empty object – proposed as realized constructions – for structuring an experience of showing, more than for producing specific meaning.

The Hermann Ebbinghaus Shelf

The Hermann Ebbinghaus Shelf challenges an aestheticization that is meant to transform its content to a characteristic presence of its bearer. At the same time it functions as a new formation of a mental pulp produced by a juxtaposition of different elements. Stabilized by a set of simple single poles functioning in tension between the floor and the ceiling of a hall, it serves also as an analogous homage to the wooden works of Franco Albini.

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