PictureBook – ‘Memories Burn – Mnemosyne’ By Benamon Tame

‘Memories Burn – Mnemosyne’ – ©Benamon Tame

Her concentration was broken and the moment was lost
Another time, another life faded and the strangeness of the Lost Toy Room asserted itself
once more.Shades of autumn and the dusty haze of time worn thin.
Laying down the worn image she raised her china hand to her face and traced the cracked
lines that crept from her eyes.
Mnemosyne shivered and beneath her finger her eye broke, shattering like a fallen
christmas bauble to cascade down her face as ashen tears.
She paused to consider the price she had already paid, but the pictures called…

Mnemosyne was a quiet toy who had been a friend to Muse until she had been broken by the games of the other toys. Fearful she would suffer the same fate, she kept herself away from the main hall and in her wanderings came across a small trunk of photographs. As she looked through them she started to feel them. She stopped at one and the more she stared the more she felt herself fall into in the image, it was as if she was part of it, watching it being taken and feeling the moment of life of all those in the room. Hours passed as she explored the frozen glimpse she had found herself in and only came out of the trance when she accidentally dropped the photograph. Taking her hoard of images she hid herself in one of the side halls. Mnemosyne became addicted to the fragments and over time the exposure has started to affect her, not only her mind but also her body. At first it was a small crack upon her cheek she noticed between changing images but as time passed the crack became larger and was soon joined by others. Fearful of damaging herself further, Mnemosyne tried to stop but it was already too late and she no longer had the will to stop herself, the Toy Room could not offer a sweeter alternative and she gave herself to the daguerreotype pools to share in lives that could never be hers.

‘Her Porcelain Soul still beheld’ – ©Benamon Tame

When Babel found out about Mnemosyne He went to her with the intention of finding a away to take her skills to add to his own visions.But by the time he found her she had already started to show side effects, the porcelain around her eyes was aged and cracked and one eye had already broken. Babel would not expose himself so now he feeds her pictures, rationing them out and studying her responses. Is it the effect of the film or the emotions and memories that ravage her, he does not know as yet

‘Memories Burn. Typewriter Remix’ – ©Benamon Tame

Mnemosyne is named after the ancient greek Titaness who was the Goddess of memory and mother to the Muses. My inspiration for building a piece around the idea of photographs was partly due as a set up to another piece I am doing with Babel but also because of the recent Kickstarter by Nate Park from iPhoneArt.com to promote their new prints inspired by Daguerrotype and Ambrotype. As an aside, Mnemosyne was also the name of a vision drug in Wild Palms which is one of
my favourite TV series.

‘Mnemosyne1’ – ©Benamon Tame

In constructing the image, all the photographs were taken off the internet and then printed on card. The open case in her hand is an authentic daguerreotype. The images were pinned to the wall and then placed on the floor and the shots merged using Juxtaposer. Still in Juxtaposer, I enlarged the head which distorted the image but also allowed the damage to the eyes to be seen better. The slight tilt also gave the doll a more animated appearance. Using Blender I added the cracks to her eyes by blending one of my stock texture images of a broken wall. More texture was added using Iris Photo Suite and Snapseed. The final edit and fine tuning was also completed in Snapseed. Lo-Mob, Labelbox, Phonto and ScratchCam were also used in creating the Typewriter remix.

‘Mnemosyne2’ – ©Benamon Tame

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