[-empyre-] Digitality, Authenticity, Decay, Memory

[Christian Pentzold]

Thanks every one for this inspiring discussion so far and the thoughts  
and examples you've been bringing to it.

Reading through the last thread, I was, like you, David, especially  
intrigued by Sean's statement "This being said digital mediums that by  
nature exist less as authoritative isolated objects and are more  
dependent on their relationality may allow for multiple, co-existent,  
even contradictory structures of memory" as well as by the historical  
examples you, Quinn, pointed to.

Hence, I'm still struggling to see the 'ontological' and 'practical'  
differences between the sorts of objects - digital/analogue -  
discussed so far. For sure, there are techno-logical reasons to  
distinguish between different sets of objects but in terms of personal  
and collective memories I'm still wondering what would be the critical  
difference that could mark a shift in the relations we form between  
memory and immaterial or material things.

More precisely, thinking about the relationality of objects, I would  
argue, at least by looking at the history of encyclopedic projects,  
that the whole idea that printed versions, as Ernst suggests, were  
laying down 'ultimate' and authoritative knowledge seems to be a  
somewhat idealized view on the cragged history of encyclopedic  
projects at least up to the Encyclopédie. As Collinson (1966), Darnton  
(1979), Yeo (2001) or Blom (2004) have argued, encyclopedias have  
always relied on a relational social-technical system from which they  
emerged. Regarding their content as well as material integrity they  
too rather present a relational set of pieces that do not form a  
coherent, unanimous collection.

Then, thinking about the assumed vastness of digital archives, they  
do, for sure, exceed all sorts of archives and records people (and  
machines) have been amassing so far. However, coming from individual  
and social remembering, I guess we find a discourse regarding human  
incapabilities and gargantuan archives that reaches at least back to  
early modern times. Hence, Rabelais in his Gargantua and Pantagruel  
(1532-1564) already described a need for a purge of learning in face  
of scholasticism and too many books. Pondering the heritage of  
historicism, Nietzsche in his Use and Abuse of History, then goes on  
to criticize "the repugnant spectacle of a blind lust for collecting,  
of a restless gathering up of everything that once was" so that "man  
envelops himself in an odour of decay" (Nietzsche, 1957).

Christian


Zitat von Davin Heckman <davinheckman at gmail.com>:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> A few years back, Empyre hosted a discussion on the "E-Ject"…  which,
> eventually, was turned into a paper for DAC:
> "E-Ject: On the Ephemeral Nature, Mechanisms, and Implications of
> Electronic Objects":
> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2xv6b6n0
>
> This has been a good thread to follow.  I wanted to comment on your
> statement: "This being said digital mediums that by nature exist less
> as authoritative isolated objects and are more dependent on their
> relationality may allow for multiple, co-existent, even contradictory
> structures of memory."
>
> This is what I am puzzling through with regards to my research on
> objects created in Flash.  Soon, people might not even know how to
> read or access important works of art from the 1990s.  This is
> different than losing something from culture because it is considered
> unimportant, or not considered at all.  Rather, we are experiencing a
> split of literacy.  On the one hand, media obsolescence is like
> Hopkins' comment on the forgetting that comes when a language and its
> community of users dies.  To the vast range of human users, swaths of
> culture die off when a medium becomes obsolete.
>
> On the other hand, as Marino notes, the code is still there (even if
> it is not readily readable to the software/platform/interface you are
> using).  In many cases, there are pre-networked digital objects that
> are locked into archives, gathering dust, decaying, etc.  But there
> are many inaccessible and dead works that can still be saved, stored,
> analyzed as code…  from a machine perspective.  The only thing I can
> think about, is the situation in the middle ages, when monasteries
> processed unknown (and even dead) languages while the larger community
> outside used a spoken vernacular to conduct its affairs (occasionally
> dipping into the world of deep coding to intervene in the deeper
> structures of codes like law and theology and record).
>
> In a way, it is a reflection of the new power dynamic in which we
> place machines and their reading practices in a central role.
>
> Davin Heckman
>
> On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 4:42 AM, Sean Rupka <srupka at gmail.com> wrote:
>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>>
>> Hi Attila and Mark,
>>
>> I think this may speak to aspects of both your posts so I will  
>> leave this here.
>>
>> Let me echo the thanks to Quinn for organize this and quickly  
>> apologize for being a bit late to the game.
>>
>> Just to riff a bit on some of your points Atilla. I think, as I  
>> understand it, I completely agree with your suggestion that memory  
>> itself, thought of as “human memory” has always been intertwined  
>> with techne, dependent on some form of prosthesis outside of  
>> ourselves to serve as referent. To this extent as well I agree that  
>> immanent to memory is it is consistently built on a lack that is  
>> compensated for through a reiteration of the relation to a past.  
>> What I mean to say, if memory is considered as a particular  
>> relation to the past, the selective nature of memory itself implies  
>> the converse as well, that every relation to a past via memory is a  
>> non-relation to an alternate past.
>>
>> How might this relate to digital objects or the digitization of  
>> information? I would raise multiple questions here that I believe  
>> my interlocutors may be better positioned to comment on.
>>
>> The relationship between memory and technological artifice has been  
>> problematic at least since the time of Plato. The externalization  
>> and perhaps expropriation of memory, the location of memory  
>> elsewhere in objects (memorials) could in fact be destructive. The  
>> openness of such objects as memorials has long been linked to  
>> discussions of their success or failure as memorials.
>>
>> The question I would raise then vis-à-vis digital objects and  
>> memory relates directly to the question of what is the digital  
>> object and from whence does its authority emanate? The idea of  
>> digital archives for example calls to (my) mind the contradictory  
>> stances of both something eternal and unchanging but as well their  
>> ultimate fragility. This fragility has been pointed out as deriving  
>> from the nature of the medium itself (the ease of its  
>> re-writeability, erasability, as well as very real possibility for  
>> the decay/degeneration or loss of information, vulnerability to  
>> changes in technology, obsolescence). Insofar as digital objects'  
>> immateriality compared to traditional objects are free from what we  
>> generally call decay, their relation to memory itself changes. We  
>> could for example say the materiality of decaying objects has  
>> traditionally been the ironic source for their identity, by their  
>> increasing 'lack' over time of what they once were we judge their  
>> authenticity, through their decay we have some referent to the fact  
>> that two times (past and present) are bridged. Digital decay I  
>> would suggest does not act in the same way.
>>
>> This being said digital mediums that by nature exist less as  
>> authoritative isolated objects and are more dependent on their  
>> relationality may allow for multiple, co-existent, even  
>> contradictory structures of memory.
>>
>> I am thinking of Ernst here when I suggest that the digital realm  
>> is dependent as much upon its relationality and its structure as it  
>> is upon concrete bits of information. To bring a quote in “Ultimate  
>> knowledge (the old encyclopedia model) gives way to the principle  
>> of permanent rewriting or addition (Wikipedia) (Ernst 2013). Here  
>> memory then could be seen as ultimately formed through its  
>> reaffirmation and changed through the shifting frequency of future  
>> iterations, searches and relationships.
>>
>> Now is this in and of itself radically new? Perhaps not. Memory has  
>> likely always been competitive. But there is something interesting  
>> in the shifting ontological nature of the digital object and that  
>> perhaps is due further investigation.
>>
>> Further though, if what is essential for a human appropriation or  
>> extrapolation of memory from digital data which in its sheer amount  
>> far exceeds the ability of any one individual to take in at any  
>> given time (thus necessitating a certain selective forgetting but  
>> as well pointing towards an interesting gap between information and  
>> knowledge that is no doubt exacerbated by such a form) how much are  
>> we externalizing memory in a technological artifice that we,  
>> somewhat unawares, become incapable of accessing largely through  
>> our inability to process such databases? Becoming crippled under  
>> the weight of data?
>>
>> Marks question here of source code as reminder seems pertinent and  
>> interesting but I need to ponder it a bit further, and I would echo  
>> his reference to Chun by quoting her from an essay I recently read  
>> (The Digital Ephemeral, 2008) “The major characteristic of digital  
>> media is memory. It’s ontology is memory…”
>>
>> I feel like this may have become a rant but these were a few  
>> thoughts I had to hopefully add to the conversation.
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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-- 
Dr. Christian Pentzold

Lecturer
Technische Universität Chemnitz, Institute for Media Research

Associate Researcher
Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet & Society, Berlin

Fon: +49-(0)371-531-38798
Fax: +49-(0)371-531-27429
christian.pentzold [at] hiig.de
www.christianpentzold.de