PROGRAM TWO: MEMORY
ERRORS
Digital reliance on the expanse
of virtual memory is accompanied by the frequent receipt of computer messages
indicating “memory errors.” Errors’ interruption of the digital reserves of
information accentuates what Thomas Hobbes lamented long ago as the fragility
or “decaying sense” of memory. Error and loss have become so naturalized as
a constitutive element of computer interaction that users are encouraged by
software designers to displace their anxieties over the fragility of memory
with their resigned recognition of error as but a predetermined digital code
(error type 11...). This Program capitalizes on the tenuous memory reserves
of digital representation to reinvest the complex affect of the personal in
the fragile fabrics of the social. It aligns the cultural importance of memory
with the inherent masochism of its fragility. While the affect of instability
is offset by the sure ballast of historical imagery and cultural narrative,
it is simultaneously fostered and amplified by the very representational procedures
that sustain both narration and visualization: imagination, fantasy, and fiction,
as well as the social categories of identity, mass culture, and religious heritage
that lend to memory its shape and context.
ad319 (Nan GOGGIN, Joseph SQUIER,
Kathleen CHMELEWSKI), Body, Space, Memory, 1997 (USA)
Christina CASANOVA, Let's Tell Lies,
1999 (Spain )
Megan HEYWARD, I Am A
Singer, 1997 (Australia)
Adriene JENIK, Mauve Desert,
1997 (USA)
Arlene STAMP, Modern Mother, (Canada)