Our Memories are Tomorrow

in collaboration with Timo Wright


Abstract

»Our Memories are Tomorrow« is a photographic installation of the loss of digital memories typical to our age. As more and more of our memories are stored in digital form; digital photos, e-mails, sms-messages, chats, blogs, it becomes ever so difficult to hold and cherish these memories. Digital information is, in theory, immortal. Yet, as file formats change and media storages are vulnerable to physical faults, it is unlikely that, on a non-professional level, all of these memories will be stored in the appropriate ways. It is more than likely that huge amounts of memories will be lost for ordinary people during the next 10-20 years.

The quest of »Our Memories are Tomorrow« is to ignite a conversation of our memories. It doesn't give a tag to memories, it doesn't judge what is art, what is meaningless gibberish. In a concrete way it destroys the reference points of our memories.

»Our Memories are Tomorrow« is a two-part computer-based installation.

The first part, »Welcome and Good Bye«, consists of a still-camera and a photo-destruction program. As the visitor enters the space, the camera takes a picture of the visitor. This photo is sent to the computer that then destroys the picture.

The second part, »Our Memories are Tomorrow«, consists of 3 computers connected to six 17 inch monitors scattered around the exhibition area. Each computer is equipped with the photo destruction program. During the exhibition the computer destroys the photos mounted into the system, so that at the end of the exhibition there is no pictures left.

The photo destruction program works as follows:
A database of digital photos is made. The program takes a photo and starts to change the order of pixels seemingly arbitrarily, one by one. After the pixels have been moved enough, the program deletes the picture.


See also Timo Wright's artist profile.
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