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Computers and man are polar opposite. Computers were created by humans, and now humans need computers to survive. The relationship is imperative. Analogy and metaphor have engulfed computers and software since they came into existence. We have enforced human analogy into our software and expect human traits in return, yet ‘folders’, ‘files’ and ‘desktops’ all essentially refer to the same thing, bits and bytes of pure, apathetic, binary data. There are two metaphors which stand above all others in their prominence as symbols of human characteristics with which we refer to our digital world. These are ‘Memory’ and ‘Decay’.

Memory is the metaphor most widely and commonly used in the digital world. Since the dawn of man, the word memory has denoted the human ability to recall past experiences and learnings, however with the rapid shift of our culture into the digital realm, if one was to now say the word ‘memory’ to a teenager, their thoughts would likely turn to a hard drive as much as they would to a past event they had experienced. Such is the power and pertinence of this metaphor.

Decay is a far newer and lesser-explored metaphor than memory, but one of equal importance. We are all aware of the decay that exists in our physical world, we are exposed to degradation, death and destruction frequently. We still struggle however with the concept of decay in the digital sense. We forget what we have been taught, but we do not expect our computer to forget what we have used it to create. Our physical possessions decay over time, but we do not expect this of our digital possessions. Are the little software glitches and the operating system crashes decay in the digital sense?

It is imperative that we begin to understand decay from a digital point of view, living as we do in a world that could in theory have the record of its recent history completely wiped out by a rogue Trojan horse (yet another metaphor).

In “The Art of Memory”, Frances A. Yates refers to the book “Ad Herennium”, a document on rhetoric dating to circa 86-82 BC by an unknown Roman teacher.

“When he comes to memory as an essential part of the orator’s equipment, he opens his treatment of it with the words ‘Now let us turn to the treasure-house of inventions, the custodian of all parts of the rhetoric, memory.’ There are two kinds of memory, he continues, one natural, the other artificial. The natural memory is that which is engrafted in our minds, born simultaneously with thought. The artificial memory is a memory strengthened or confirmed by training.”

One could ask whether there are now three forms of memory, with the third being ‘Digitally Artificial’. Furthermore, one could question whether the human artificial memory exists at all now, and whether it in fact serves any purpose in the modern world. This would result in there remaining only two forms of memory, yet with one of the two being very different.

In the times of antiquity, long before the invention of computers or even of literacy, scholars would employ complex techniques in order to memorize stories, speeches and events. The Art of Memory was said to have been invented by poet Simonides of Ceos whilst performing at the banquet of Scopas, a nobleman of Thessaly. The poet dedicated the first half of his chant to his host, and the latter part to the twin gods Castor and Pollux. Scopas then paid the poet only half of the agreed fee, and suggested that he demanded the rest of the payment from the gods. A little later a message was sent to Simonides telling him that two young men were waiting outside to speak to him. Upon leaving the banquet, SImonides could find no one, but during his absence, the roof of the building collapsed, crushing everyone inside to their deaths. The bodies were so heavily mangled that the relatives could not tell them apart, but Simonides was able to remember every single guest from the position at which they were seated around the table. The twin gods had paid their share handsomely. Simonides realized how essential orderly arrangement was for a good memory.

This association of memory with physical space became imperative, and techniques were established to allow one to memorize vast amounts by mentally placing images in physical spaces. The artificial memory the unknown teacher refers to consists of images and places. A ‘locus’ is a place which is easily memorable, such as a family home. The method involves pacing this locus, either mentally or physically, room by room and placing an image which is to be remembered in each room. Later, for instance when delivering a speech, the individual takes a mental journey through this locus, demanding from each room what he has mentally stored there. The images placed in each room must be as explicit and powerful as possible. Scenes that shock are most likely to be remembered, and so relating an image to, say, a scene of bloody battle works particularly well. Cicero defined two types of memory, not memory as in the style of memorizing, but memory as in the material that needs to be memorized. He defined the first as the memory of ‘things’, and the second the memory of ‘words’. Both ‘things’ and ‘words’ could be memorized using the spatial association techniques. Yet another question is posed when this idea is related to today’s society, is there now room for another form of data to be memorized? We now, surely, need to remember the bit and the byte as much as we need to remember things and words.

If we ponder memory and its modern meanings we reach a crossroads. Memory now refers as much to a computer’s storage capacity as it does to that of our own brains, but the two memories are very dissimilar. Human memory is poetic, it is nostalgic and entropic. Patches come, patches go, we forget both intentionally and unintentionally and we often are unable to erase an unwanted memory. Over time our memories are altered, they develop with the individual, they become amplified and even fabricated. Each individual memorizes an event in his or her own, often very different way. Digital memory is the polar opposite. It is clean and pristine, it is simple in its binary form. It is a series of 1’s and 0’s which either exists or does not. Digital memory can be copied, replicated and backed up, time after time, each version as perfect as the very first. The bytes that comprise an image can never decay in the physical sense, they do not age. As long as they have the media to exist upon, and there is no enforced destruction (deletion, viruses, etc) they will exist in their original form. But maybe the unexpected software glitches are a metaphor for aging. Maybe a virus is to a byte of data what Cancer is to a human cell. The differences in decay in the physical sense and in the digital sense mirror the differences between memory in the human sense and memory in the digital sense. Physical decay is slow but certain, it is expected and often encouraged. Like human memory, it is nostalgic and entropic. Conversely, the decay of digital data is sudden and abrupt. Like its binary polarity, it either works or it does not.

Memory and decay exist in an inextricable relationship. Without memory, it is questionable as to whether decay exists, as there is no recollection that an object has ever existed in any other form than its current. Without decay, can memory exist? If nothing ever changes then one can never have a record of something in a previous state.

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Attempts to introduce a form of ‘digital decay’ into a series of images by directly, destructively manipulating the ASCII/HEX code in TextEdit and HexEdit. Got some lovely effects. Of course I saved a copy of them all first….

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Initial effects achieved by editing a JPEG in a simple text editor. Results are initially subtle but the horizontal linear structure of the image code is obvious. Shifting lines of code in the text editor shifts the corresponding lines of pixels in the image, pretty predictable. Shifting larger blocks of text shifts larger bands of pixels, deleting blocks creates the grey bands. A little time however and some interesting effects can begin to take shape. Editing edited code proves to be successful, and editing the edited edited code further more. I’m looking into a way of automating this process…

Exploring the same process in HexEdit, an application for the easy viewing and manipulation of HEX and ASCII code. Initial results seem similar to those previous, if a lot more colourful. Replacing characters in the code seems to shift the hue of bands of pixels, the images becoming truly ‘glitched’. The ‘find and replace’ tool proves very useful for quickly and easily replacing certain characters with others. A good 5 minutes of this code mashing and the image becomes virtually unrecognizable from its original format…

Now using TIFFs rather than JPEGs and the effects are quite different. The lack of compression means the code is structured differently, and shifting characters now changes the position and colour of larger boxes of pixels, rather than the thin bands typical of a JPEG. The effect is overall more subtle. To the point where it can be hard to decipher upon first glance than an image has been glitched at all, even though it is significantly different to its original.

Attempts to Experimenting with two images at once, one taken recently by myself and the other an excellent old tintype of these gents in their new car from Bodie Bailey.

The process consisted of glitching both images separately to a point of suitable decay, opening them as layers in Photoshop, applying a blend mode, flattening and further glitching the resulting image. An attempt is made at linking poetic, human memory to its digital equivalence.

The interest is in creating a digital form of human memory. Computers remember ones and zeros, whereas we remember emotions, feelings, smells, sounds and sights. We have sudden flashbacks where our senses take us to a past time. Most of the time we have little control over when we experience these memories.

What would happen if this was replicated in the digital world? If when you took a new image with your digital camera, every so often a trace of a previous photograph would appear, randomly…

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I took a little trip around the east end to document some of the decaying, dilapidated buildings. The back streets off Brick Lane were particularly fruitful, especially Princelet Street, a terrace of Georgian properties, of which Number 4 is still in its 18th Century condition and available to hire as a location for photography, filming and private functions.

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I’ve decided to look into the concept of ‘Digital Decay’ as my thesis project. We are all aware of physical decay as it effects every aspect of of lives – our cars break down, our shoes get holes, the paint on our walls flakes. But living in the post-digital revolution as we now are, we must consider decay in the digital sense. What will eventually happen to all this data we save, burn and store?

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