Phonological is a collaboration between installation artist Deborah Aschheim and composer/musician Lisa Mezzacappa, with songwriter/vocalists Katy Stephan and Michelle Amador. It is one component of a large-scale, long-term project by Aschheim called On Memory, based on her highly personal investigations of the invisible and elusive subject of her own memory.
Some neurobiologists believe that sound and speech are encoded via separate synaptic pathways in the brain, and aphasia patients can often recall song lyrics long after they have lost the ability to form sentences. Phonological is one of several artistic experiments designed to help Aschheim retain aspects of her personality and memory in the event of memory loss — a part poetic, part scientific way of backing up her neural landscape and semantic pathways into song.
For Phonological, Mezzacappa has worked with nearly a dozen musician and vocalist collaborators to compose and record twenty songs based on words Aschheim selected for their personal, practical, potent or nostalgic associations. Aschheim, who has a pronounced history of Alzheimer’s in her family, is learning the songs so she will later be able to recall the words and be able to express key concepts in the event of stroke or dementia.
The songs and sculptures from Phonological are being exhibited in a series of installations throughout the US in 2007-2008. The first five words made their debut at the Sheppard Fine Arts Gallery at the University of Nevada, Reno in September 2007.
