‘I’ll tell you though, back in March when I found myself pacing the ICU, I realized that what matters most is just asking the questions- and recording the answers- while you still can.’
The device didn’t respond as usual. A sound as if glass scraped the inside the chrome shelled computer. My heart sank. Or rather, a pit formed in the center of my stomach. I felt an urge to excuse myself to the nearest restroom. An entire hard drive of data failed that day. Destruction is a form of change, as avant-garde contemporaries of the time contend.
Breur’s experimental cameraless photography involves manipulating photographic paper by introducing chemical substances like alcohol, or in this case, fire. His repertoire of tools also includes razors and power sanders. Using such everyday materials and simple techniques, Breuer’s abstract works upend the function of the photograph as a record of a moment, shifting the focus instead to process and materiality.
Digital legacy means a little more than retaining images from every day of every year. Old work, like unkempt laundry hangs around. If you cannot move forward from the past, you cannot go on to new places. Fit for manga, facts for life, the arts impart something, something else. If you like anything, you know what I mean. Maybe no one else quite understands, but chicken tenders and tartar sauce tastes just right. There were parts to it- this digital legacy. First, technology can capture our important life stories. We decide upon the process. The second, an art all the same, concerns how your accounts, files and folders can make it into someone else’s hands- sharing materiality.
The choices vary by vocation. Yours might be different. The photographer’s checklist looks like this, then:
- Take inventory of your digital assets.
- Record your stories.
Corrupted files could abstract the art. The method to record stories wants a few things. Ease, obviousness like a green light, attraction to simplify matters. That worn laundry, old work- clean ‘em out to bring ‘em in. Each pair of kicks chucked meant a cool cop coming up. The hard drive failure stopped me like a bomb cyclone. Cold. New gear was smoother on one condition. Go slowly, but never backwards.
Post Summary
- I lost a hard drive and all of my photography thanks to hard drive failure. Poor care habits led to the tech issue in the first place.
- Creative destruction as an artistic device is different from damaging behaviors. They follow similar principles, though.
- A digital legacy ranges from inheritors to your will to recording your stories for posterity. Maintenance of my digital assets takes time, but habits help.