Angst at the Digital World

As an artist, I have spent the last 13 years of my life as a photographer. Film, darkrooms, smelly chemicals, stained clothes and all. The aspect of analog photography that has become DEEPLY ingrained in me is the archival nature of the medium (black & white and polaroid, that is). I would go so far as to say that I am obsessed with things being archival––i.e. they will last, in good condition, for 100+ years. I will not wall-paper our home, ever, for this reason.

But digital media is not archival. I can be sitting in the same room with files that I have lovingly saved on a hard drive, but the files are lost forever because the hard drive will mount on no computer. Did I DO anything to lose the files? No. Was there a fire in my house? No. Time happened. Corruption happened. And don’t think that backing everything up on DVDs will save the day, because they can be corrupted too. They won’t tell you they’re about to do it. My only hope is to print out everything I create, which completely defeats the purpose of going digital. So then really, what’s the point??

Art & Craft, Life | June 12th, 2009

6 Responses to “Angst at the Digital World”

  • Mama Dalton at 8:31 pm on June 13th

    I have just lovingly spent a few hours with a few relatives pouring over a tiny photo graph taken sometime in the early 20’s as nearly as can be ascertained. I KNEW that if I took it to the reunion that Papa Norman and I attended today, that someone there would know, they would just KNOW, and could tell me who these people, these children, and this older woman were….and

    they knew…and they told me…

    and, just like his Great Grandmother before him, I held in my hand, the only picture Papa Norman will ever have of HIS father as a shy young boy…and of his Great Grandmother Lillie England who raised him, and his two brothers and sister as her own, after his parents died in the flu epidemic of 1920. And therefore, it is also the only picture our son will have of his Grandfather as a child, or of his Great Great Grandmother.

    Somehow, THAT is archival to me…I must be able to hold in my hands what has been held by generations before me, and still make every effort to MAINTAIN it for the next generation to come after.

    We can PRESERVE many things to keep them from being destroyed, and we should continue to do this, I suppose. But when we can only SEE them, and loose the right to touch (or risk loosing it all to the ether of the cosmos), something very, very precious is lost in the process….

  • Mandy at 12:15 pm on June 18th

    Sort of like books. I mean, I will always prefer to turn the pages of a book even though I can get thousands of books on a Kindle or read them online. I think that the tactile photograph will never truly be lost because of its tangibility. And no matter what new technology arrives, there will always be the few who like the romance of the old way. Take, for example, those who make paper out of papyrus or artists who still produce daguerreotypes and other alternative process photographs.

  • Anthony at 1:58 pm on June 18th

    We are, the whole lot of us, one fateful solar flare or random cosmic event away from losing pretty much everything that we have been working on for over a decade.

    I sense a coming shift back to analog in the winds of zeitgeist. People are rediscovering the true satisfaction of working with their hands and only having ONE copy of what they worked on. Grease and dirt are good.

    Also: gardening. All good things grow.

  • Chris Bowler at 2:00 pm on June 18th

    I completely understand your sentiment Mandy. I don’t care much for all the stuff on my computer, with the exception of all the pictures from the past 6-7 years. I can’t imagine how it would feel to lose them all—not to mention what my wife would do to me.

    I definitely worry that I’ll lose the files at some point, not because of a lack of backup, but due to file degradation or technology moving faster than I can/want to keep up with it.

  • Crystal Keilers at 3:55 pm on June 18th

    Are you sure you and Anthony aren’t blood relatives?

  • Mama Dalton at 7:56 am on June 19th

    Hey Crystal…If we go back far enough…we are all related aren’t we? It’s nice that we, at least, agree that some physical things need to be perhaps kept simply because they are unique in themselves and in their specific form in that they can be manipulated and held and cherished…even if, over time, they eventually, might, degrade. I just want to hold them.

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