My thesis exhibition consists of a series of mixed media paintings and sculpture derived through experimentation with materials. I have appropriated alchemical processes to describe and generate the abstract landscape. The work emphasizes process and chemical reactions and is comprised of fluid fortuitous marks, free of conscious control, that work in tandem to create deep space that invites immersion and tempts interaction. The viewer is both an integral component of the piece and a foreign sightseeing entity, removed from the known world and placed in a bizarre offshoot.

Models of memory in cognitive science and philosophy have traditionally explained human remembering in terms of storage and retrieval. This tendency has been entrenched by reliance on computationalist explanations over the course of the twentieth century; even research programs that eschew computationalism in name, or attempt the revision of traditional models, demonstrate tacit commitment to computationalist assumptions. It is assumed that memory must be stored by means of an isomorphic trace, that memory processes must divide into conceptually distinct systems and phases, and that human remembering consists in inner, cognitive processes that are implemented by distinct neural processes. This dissertation draws on recent empirical work, and on philosophical arguments from Ludwig Wittgenstein and others, to demonstrate that this latent computationalism in the study of memory is problematic, and that it can and should be eliminated. Cognitive psychologists studying memory have encountered numerous data in recent decades that belie archival models. In cognitive neuroscience, establishing the neural basis of storage and retrieval processes has proven elusive. A number of revised models on offer in memory science, that have taken these issues into account, fail to sufficiently extricate the archival framework. Several impasses in memory science are products of these underlying computationalist assumptions. Wittgenstein and other philosophers offer a number of arguments against the need for, and the efficacy of, the storage and retrieval of traces in human remembering. A study of these arguments clarifies the ways that these computationalist assumptions are presently impeding the science of memory, and provides ways forward in removing them. We can and should characterize and model human memory without invoking the storage and retrieval of traces. A range of work in connectionism, dynamical systems theory, and recent philosophical accounts of memory demonstrate how the science of memory can proceed without these assumptions, toward non-archival models of remembering.

Cette thèse interroge la transmission de l’expérience de l’inondation en rapport avec les contextes, situations et supports à partir desquels les souvenirs prennent forme et perdurent potentiellement. Sont questionnés plus spécifiquement les rôles des objets du quotidien et des artefacts mémoriels dans la construction et à la transmission de l’expérience de l’inondation. Pour répondre à cet objectif, cette thèse s’inscrit dans un champ conceptuel en psychologie sociale qui étudie la pensée sociale en contexte. Cette approche permet d’étudier l’élaboration des connaissances et leur transmission en étroite relation avec les contextes sociaux, temporels et spatiaux. Ce développement théorique permet de concevoir une approche dynamique et contextualisée des processus mémoriels. La théorie des représentations sociales est mobilisée puisqu’elle investigue la familiarisation comme un processus se réalisant en fonction des catégories signifiantes propres à la culture et à la mémoire des groupes. Afin de saisir l’objet de recherche à travers différents prismes et de confronter plusieurs points de vue sur l’expérience de l’inondation, deux méthodes sont utilisées. La combinaison d’entretiens de recherche avec des personnes ayant vécu une ou plusieurs inondations et d’une analyse de presse via la méthode Alceste, permet l’examen des savoirs mobilisés dans la représentation et dans la transmission de l’inondation, en tant qu’objet social et/ou expérience vécue. L’analyse des résultats montre que les objets sont les instruments d’une négociation de l’expérience, entre mémoire et oubli. Les artefacts mémoriels présents dans l’espace social résultent de cette négociation. Ils rappellent un événement tout en lui donnant une forme précise, contrôlée. L’événement est transformé que ce soit dans son récit ou dans son inscription spatiale pour revêtir une forme acceptable et conventionnelle. Ces objets peuvent soutenir la mémoire de l’événement et être au service de l’oubli des expériences. Tandis que cette objectivation graphique lisse la pluralité des expériences, les objets du quotidien offrent un interstice malléable entre l’oubli et la mémoire, un espace de négociation mémorielle. Ils servent de support à la narration tout autant qu’ils livrent une certaine représentation de l’événement. Leur sélection, sous-tendant des comparaisons ou des différenciations avec d’autres expériences d’inondation, permet de transmettre l’expérience vécue comme ancrée dans et selon des catégories existantes, tout en maintenant la singularité du vécu. Cette forme de transmission, articulant traces mémorielles et traces matérielles lors de la transmission d’une expérience correspond à un schéma admis et existant dans le contexte social et culturel. / This thesis investigates the transmission of flood experience in relation to the contexts, situations and entities based on which memories take shape and potentially persist. The role of everyday objects and memory artifacts in the construction and transmission of flood experience are specifically investigated. To meet this purpose, the present work falls within the conceptual field of social psychology, studying social thinking in context. This approach enables the study of the development of knowledge and its transmission in relation to social, temporal and spatial contexts. This theoretical development implements a dynamic and contextual approach to the study of memory process. Social representation theory is fundamental to this work because it investigates familiarization as a process based on creating significant categories depending on the culture and collective memory of the group. Two methods are used to capture different aspects of the object of research and compare multiple perspectives on flood experience. The combination of the research interviews of people who have experienced one or more floods and media analysis - using ALCESTE - allows the analysis of the knowledge used in the representation and transmission of the flood as a social object and/or an experience. The results show that objects are tools of the negotiation of the experience, between forgetfulness and memory. The memory artifacts in the social space are the result of this negotiation. They recall an event giving it a precise and controlled shape. The event is thus transformed into a story and its spatial inscription to have an acceptable and conventional form. These objects can support the memory of the event and serve the forgetfulness of experiences. While graphic objectivation attenuates the plurality of experiences, everyday objects provide a malleable gap between forgetfulness and memory, a space for memory negotiation. They serve as a support for the narration and, at the same time, offer a specific representation of the event. Their selection, underlying the comparison and differentiation with regards to other flood experiences, allows the transmission of past experience as if it was grounded into, and depending on, existing categories, maintaining at the same time the singularity of the experience. This way of transmission, linking together material and memory traces during the transmission of an experience, corresponds to an accepted and existing pattern well spread into the actual social and cultural context.