858 lenses, custom software, LEDs, brass, anodized aluminium, dyed fibreboard
2,60 m (H) x 2 m (W) x 0,4 m
'Hardcoded memory' celebrates forgetting in the digital age.
The digital age and the introduction of endless, cost efficient digital data storage has changed the way we remember. In the past, analog tools set a limit to what could be recorded and physically kept - photographs faded, film footage was lost and media out-dated. This influenced both, our ability to forget but also the way we would shape our personal and collective memories over time.
Today, these ways have shifted and changed as we limitlessly externalise our memories by storing and uploading them onto digital platforms and storage devices changing not only the way we remember but also making forgetting close to impossible.
In the installation, low-resolution portraits are projected onto the gallery wall. These are generated by a hardcoded mechanical structure consisting of differently shaped rotating discs that push an LED closer to and further away from a lens, in turn, projecting 3 portraits composed of growing and contracting dots of light.
The predefined shape of the discs deliberately limits the selection and display of available images to a 1 minute loop of 3 portraits, while the structure itself is a 1:1 physical representation of each projected low resolution image, one that manifests in a physical format what is otherwise known to be the result of intagible and invisible digital data.
Exhibition history :
Comissioned by Swarovski for the exhibition
'Digital Crystal : Memory in the Digital Age'
Curated by Nina Due
Design Museum
London, UK
5 Sept, 2012 - 13 Jan, 2013