There can be no doubt of the overwhelming importance of memory in our individual lives. We spend much of our waking lives remembering. Our ability to perform the simplest tasks relies on remembering what to do and how to do it. Our very sense of who we are rests largely in remembering where we've been, whom we've known, what we've done, and how we've felt. This exhibition explores these ideas and the equally important notion that memory is constantly changing and reshaping the way we understand our world. As we continually relive and reshape past experience, we also reshape the ways in which we perceive and understand ourselves and the world around us.
The exhibition, made possible by the National Science Foundation and sponsored by Bank of America, is reflective of both personal experience and new breakthroughs in cognitive science. Over forty hands-on exhibits, demonstrations, artworks, images, sounds, and even smells and tastes demonstrate and depict the fascinating subject of human memory: its biological, psychological and cultural dimensions. In the exhibition, you can play Hoop Nightmares, a wacky basketball game which temporarily alters your body's memory of how to throw a ball. In Jukebox Memories, you can find out which top tunes of the past forty years stir your memories. Test your memory for smells and tastes, spatial relationships, or even the way things feel. Find out why your memory can hold on to thousands of facts, words, pictures, and even complicated arguments and explanations, yet stumble over a simple name or phone number. Learn why legal experts have gotten more skeptical about eyewitness testimony, and why many psychologists question "recovered" memories. By experiencing the powers and limitations of your own memory within the exhibition, your can begin to understand what memory is and how it works.

In addition to the visceral experiences of memory, artists and writers present original artworks evocative of memory. Artists Paul Kwan and Arnold Iger use video and sculpture to recreate Kwan's own arduous process of recovering his memory after a debilitating stroke. Composer Bill Fontana uses a succession of sounds, both familiar and strange, to evoke memories in a specially created soundscape. SuChen Hung uses video to discover the patterns and textures of memory in everyday life through documentation of the daily routines of an elderly Chinese immigrant couple.

Note to Editors: California Science Center is located at 700 State Drive - Exposition Park, Los Angeles. Enter visitor parking at 39th & Figueroa Street; parking is $6 per car. Activities are on all three floors of the Science Center. Open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission to Science Center exhibits is free; IMAX tickets range from $4.25 to $7. For advance ticket purchase or group rates, phone 213.744-2019. For general information, phone 323.SCIENCE (323.724-3623) or visit our website at www.casciencectr.org. Both the Science Center and IMAX Theater are wheelchair accessible.