"Like muscles, memories weaken with time when they are not used. Just as in the art of packing, in which what we leave out is as important as what we put in the bag, so too does the art of memory rely on the art of forgetting.

What this means for the digital age is that data is not knowledge, and data storage is not memory. When distracted — for example, by too many bright shiny things and noisy bleeping devices — we are not able to learn or develop strong reusable memories. We fail to build the vital repertoire of knowledge and experience that may be of use to us in the future. And it is the future that is at stake. For memory is not about the past. It is about the future."

"Memory: object, inference, meaning, with time becomes unfixed: unfixed memories in a sea of reconstruction, biting at the clay in lashes and unearthing lost traces turned to stone from sedimentation and compression back – forward - into a new consciousness, and another identity, to be assigned a precarious new meaning. Flood defences cannot be built without the knowledge that they will collapse, but they serve as an important symbol of a fight against the sea, which the newspapers describe as ‘cruel’, to slow the rate of change down to a timeframe that enables reflection: deep time; story; lifetime.

...

Just as the fossil record is defined by the interpretation of the material which is missing and incomplete, the spaces in-between become the story: the navigation of the missing is embodied in our own reconstructive cognitive power, and a continuous mining for material, for the most part unconscious and unspoken, at the core of what it is to know and understand the vulnerability of the landscape around us. This – the ambiguity between remembering and forgetting, the incomplete, loss, pushes us forward through so many questions of purpose, enabling reflection and critical response to new physical and digital languages in a world rapidly changing shape."

"Jonathan: Matt - I guess the obvious danger for forgetting in art making is forgetting technical skills, but maybe those become less about memory and more about habit or tacit knowledge (my sons talks about how this is related to the neuroscience of memory and learning) -- but then if forgetting allows a new imaginative space to form and therefore to be explored, then it has great potential in art making?
Ash: Personally I believe forgetting is essentially important in art making process. I never do daily practice. Every time I nearly forget how to draw, I draw better. For me art making is not a habit, it should be an impulse"