Fragments

February 15th, 2019 _ Critique of terminology on “Digital Memory”

 

I once had a dream which follows like this. I was in my bedroom and I had a car engine on top of my bed in the middle of the room. I first inspected it, for it was brand new and all its aluminum parts were shining. Then I found its pull-trigger and began to pull it in an attempt to start the engine, to hear its engine rolling. After a couple of failed attempts, I observed an oil leak on my bed, which shortly after caught on fire. I picked a towel from the closet and tried to stop the fire underneath the engine, but all attempts were in vain. I lifted the engine and propped it on the wall just so I can strike it better with my dry towel. The fire was getting bigger and a fear started to catch hold of me. It was a fear of criticism coming from my parents. What are they going to say when they come home after work and see that I burned the house down? It paralyzed me. For I had no plausible justification. Then I woke up and taught to myself about how absurd this taught about the criticism of my parents was, for I was inside of a house where a fire was burning, paralyzed.

Make as you wish about this dream, I’m not even sure why did I decide to start my writing this way. One thing is certain. The terms digital and memory have nothing to do with each other. A dog can be friendly, obedient, aggressive, but one thing that he for sure can’t be, is intellectual. The same goes for digital, which is comprised of all sorts of algorithms and complex mathematical codes, but one thing is for certain – it doesn’t have memory. Yes, it stores information, but this is perhaps the only similarity that it has to memory. In that sense, one can say about the pen with which one writes that it is human, for they both can change the formal appearance of a piece of paper. The pen, guided by the hand, marks traces of ink on the paper, but the human hand can also create origami out of that same piece of paper. The same goes for digital memory and human memory, the difference comes in the way they operate. And this is why the term digital memory should be taken out of circulation, for the digital’s sole purpose is to store information, whereas human memory, while it stores information, it does so through complex associations and analogies to its environment, which while retaining that information in the brain, they immediately adapt to the plethora of previous information, which further generate and multiply at infinite to create new information. As if a virus would penetrate a digital archive and would make its data-base copy itself endlessly, but in this case, it would be suddenly stopped by the memory cap of the hard-drive.

Let’s take a look at an example. Say one goes to listen to a live symphonic orchestra at the San Francisco Opera Symphony, to listen to Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8 in G Major. Now, I certainly don’t possess the musical terminology to discuss the interpretation of the music, but that’s not even the purpose. My focus is to discuss the sensorial experience of going to a live event and the memory of it, and then compare it to the experience of listening to an online digital copy of the same event. Well, first of all in the first example one goes through the whole hustle of buying a ticket, of dressing up, going to a specific location where its architecture is specifically designed and engineered with the sole purpose of having live events performed inside (in this case, symphonic orchestra). The reverberations of the walls are modeled by artists and engineers to create the best experience possible so that the violin of the key player sounds as the conductor interpreted Dvorak’s music sheet. As a spectator, you hear all those. Better as, you feel all those small inflections when the music bounces off the walls and comes at you from all directions. You are part of it, your ear drums shiver as the voracious players assault with their bows the bass, with their drum sticks the drums and with their elongated fingers the claps of the piano. Words fall short in here, for how can one capture the memory of a live symphonic orchestra with words. It’s superfluous to even try. Even human memory is fragile in remembering the complexity of an event such as a symphonic orchestra. But, the human memory in this case, remembers the whole of that experience, of being there, the people that sat next to you and all their pious gestures, the smell of the amphitheater, the texture of the chairs, waiting in line to get the tickets, the excitement of attending a social event. That’s what human memory is comprised of.

Now, to turn to the digital, we have to imagine ourselves watching, say on YouTube, from the comfort of our living room, the same event, on a laptop. An audio-visual file, the digital memory of a camera, which got uploaded and hence archived on the internet, allowing everyone to access it from their personal computers. The camera has its dynamic range limitations, as well as the screen has its own in order to project what the camera has recorded. The audio, well, maximum 24 bit and 48000 kbps. Its dynamic range limitations (for both sound and video), while it might offer a better view of the players due to some telephoto lenses and well-placed microphones in the theatre, take away all the seating inconveniences, still cannot reproduce the smell of the theatre and the shivering of the eardrums which resonates with everyone in the amphitheater. It is an archive, an audio-visual digital archive, and those are its limitations. To attribute to a file the title of memory, well, as I said before, a dog can be either friendly, obedient, or aggressive – but it cannot be an intellectual. In the same manner, this link between the terms of digital and memory is inaccurate, for the digital can only store, whereas memory creates. Digital is but a tool for the memory, a good archival source, but without the human, there’s no one to explore that source. 

This whole confusion between storage of information (which is what the digital is) and memory (which besides storing information, has the ability to create information) must be made clear. There is no such thing as digital memory, besides, of course, the storage capacity of the hard-drives, and even that is a bad personification. That’s why people with a little bit of romantic sensitivity left in them call them storage devices. Memory belongs to humans and humans only. One cannot confuse between a cook and the ingredients that he uses.

February 18th, 2019 _ Quotes

 

Cinema is the only place where memory is a slave. – Jean-Luc Godard, from Histoire(s) du Cinéma

Data storage is not memory. – Abby Smith Rumsey

These four terms: reading – trace – decipherment – memory, define the system that usually makes it possible to snatch past discourse from its inertia and, for a moment, to rediscover something of its lost vitality. – Michel Foucault (The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language)

March 4th, 2019 _ Notes on the essay

 

This essay will be structured like a journal. With dates that will function as entries. Each entry will be written in a different style and all of them will be stitched together in a single page. Like a playground of simultaneous thoughts and approaches to writing.

March 12th, 2019 _ Notes on Memory

 

Last night I felt paralyzed. I haven’t had the thought of writer’s block in a while. Yet, last night it came to me and it was frightening. In a couple of weeks we have to present our idea about what project we want to pursue for this journal issue. The topic? Memory in the Digital Age. And it’s a film studies journal. And it is supposed to be some sort of a creative criticism paper. Although, to call it paper makes it sound too formal. Article? Hard to say. In any case, what frightened me was the fact that I have no topic, nor any idea about what am I going to write about. I thought about publishing my notes gathered throughout the semester. As a diary. Is that criticism? Well, certainly not in the traditional sense. But what is criticism? I thought about the word political; in general, criticism has a sort of a political edge. Yet, what does it mean for something to be political? Can music make a political statement? Well, it certainly can, and it has. Two summers ago, when I was at a summer arts camp at Fresno State University, and I remember there was a class led by an Afro-Brazilian and a Cuban singer, about drums. They were talking about the rhythms of their music, how they got passed down from generation to generation, from their ancestors who were brought to Brazil from Africa and were enslaved on plantations by their colonizers. The colonizers took their drums and all of their instruments away, and yet, they managed to sing with whatever they found available, because the rhythm was inside of them, engraved in their DNA. And they’re still singing it. This is the way in which they keep the memory of their ancestors alive, their stories and their tradition. With their drums.

Yet for myself, I’m not sure. Memory is something personal, is what gives an individual his identity. In a lecture, Abby Smith Rumsey was talking about the idea of what it would mean to wake up one day and have no memories at all. You wouldn’t know where you are, you wouldn’t know who you are, you wouldn’t know anything about your surroundings or what’s going on around you. Like in the beginning of Terminator when Schwarzenegger falls on Earth, naked? Luckily, he had that half robotic eye which gave him guidance as to what was going on around himself. Unlike Schwarzenegger in Terminator, humans don’t have that. Humans have memory. And yet, in a digital age, in what ways is our memory different than, say, during the Renaissance? Or, how is it different than before writing existed? For certain, it is different. As Walter Benjamin says, our whole mode of perception and communication has shifted dramatically due to technological advancements. Especially nowadays when everybody has access to a computer. But what does this shift do to our memory? Does it mean that before, during the pre-writing era, we used to communicate simply through the use of our body language and sounds, which we’ve associated axiomatically to the outside world, hence, through repetition, we came to remember them, therefore developing the first forms of communication? And then, as writing was introduced, we started to think in terms of words and concepts, which again, had to resemble some sort of a connection to the outside world – but at the same time, that connection stopped being a necessity, therefore abstract thinking and rhetoric developed? While now, in the digital age, those images that the pre-writing era people used to point at, associate with sounds and repeat till they would learn them, we’ve managed to capture in a photograph. Therefore, we are somewhat like our ancestors. The idea of “show, don’t tell” almost makes language seem vulgar, too on the nose. It’s cinema, it’s the image. Look – look. Just look, it’s all in the image.

 

 

March 13th, 2019 _ Notes on Memory in the Digital Age _ Style and Formatting

 

For the way in which my “paper” will be presented, of which the title I believe should be Notes about Memory in a Digital Age, I imagine it to comprise all of the notes that I’ve been gathering and will gather throughout the semester, sorted as a diary, with dates and perhaps small chapter titles, that will stay on the screen only for a certain amount of time, in a way in which one doesn’t get the chance to read everything if the notes are extensive, or, if the notes are shorter, then the reader has the time to read them multiple times. But nonetheless, all of them should stay on the screen for the same amount of time, that is, each daily note gets only, let’s say, a minute and a half (the exact time is still to be decided). In this way, the idea of ephemerality applied to reading, and certainly an element of memory, will be brought to the forefront. When as people, we are recalling a memory, not all of the details are clear. Certain things are clear, vivid, while others are more obscure, we remember only bits and fragments of them. Hence, this aspect of memory will be incorporated in the way the paper is structured and stylized. I am also considering some sound design to go with it, although as of now I am not quite sure what it will be. Some sounds of scribbling something on a paper, some sound of paper, something that would resemble the four seasons maybe? Again, the sounds should be structured in very specific way – if there are four seasons, they should be equally spread throughout the paper. Same for the background images, they should shift at the same time as the sound shifts, although I would be open to juxtaposing different seasonal sounds to images of rather different season, in a way to create a contrast between them. All the sounds and the images must be subtle and not draw attention to themselves. Perhaps the images can be faded and even blurred a bit, even abstract, as to not point to anything in particular, but just to invoke a certain color pallet that would chromatically point to the four seasons. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons also came to mind, although I’m not quite sure how to incorporate his music into the paper without having it take over the piece. The text itself will have to be somewhat elevated from the background, somewhat like a bas-relief. Should the reader get the option to pause and read the full text if he wishes to do so? Perhaps, but it should be indicated in the project description that to experience the essay as intended, he’s encouraged not to pause. Also, the paper should be built into the website and not created as a video file. This is very important.

March 20th, 2019 _ Questions about Archives in a Digital Age

 

For today, I have no answers. Merely a series of rhetorical questions, without any expectation for a response.

First off, what does it mean for a media file to become an archive? Does it just need to be uploaded to the internet and become part of a database? Take for example a film. Shot, edited, all together a film, already released, and now exhibited on an online streaming platform. Does that make it automatically an archive? Or is there a time requirement for something to be considered an archive? If so, how can that time be quantified in a digital age? And where is the distinction drawn between a film that has just been uploaded on the internet, hence turning into a file stored in a database, and a film, that is considered as part of an archive, to become reconditioned, distributed and exhibited on large scale? In other words, what is this very process of “becoming” an archive consist of and what does it mean? Certainly there cannot be a single answer to this question, but it is certainly important to reflect on in this day and age where the production of media is at a historical peak (this sounds pompous, for of course it’s at a historical peak since for in the past couple of decades reality turned into sounds, texts, and images). At the same time, leaving aside the process of becoming, what is the difference between a mere file on the internet and an archival document? What are the principles of labeling? Certainly, the question of timecannot be put out of consideration here – for the very notion of an archival document has imbued in it the notion of time, of a certain relevance. For something to be archived, it must first of all have a larger cultural significance, and there must be some time that passes over it, time in which it must prove that it is able to up-hold its importance, raise and sustain its relevance across generations. For, if not, what else is an archival document?

On the other hand, what is the use of an archival media file, be it a film, an article, or an essay, if it is not exhibited in the present time? Can we even talk about an archive that sits at the periphery of the internet without anyone accessing it? It may certainly be an archive if it exists, stored on a storage facility somewhere. But doesn’t then the very purpose of the archive become futile, a mere dumpster of files and artefacts? Certainly, exhibition is an important part in order for an archive to exist as part of the collective memory of a people. Now the question turns towards what does it mean for something to be exhibited? Is it all an algorithm, and if so, what are the biases implied in exhibition algorithms? For films that are considered archives in particular, certainly not all of them can be exhibited, but when the selection process is conducted, what are the criteria’s that are being considered? What role does the way in which they are distributed plays in creating the collective memory of society? Is it the same thing for a film to be distributed on an online streaming platform as it is to be distributed on a DVD/Blu-ray disc or in the theatres? What about film festivals?

Now, of course, the question of the promotion of the archive comes into play. How are archives promoted and who’s responsibility is to promote them? Is it the author’s responsibility? Well, what about films that are made by authors who are no longer among us? Does is it then become a shared responsibility? If so, shared among whom and based on what criteria? Certainly, a discussion about the copyrights holder/s of a given film is important here. But what about the other end, that is, of exhibition and distribution? Based on what criteria are films bought and exhibited? Is it solely based on promotion or is it also based on cultural significance? Or, in this case, to what extent is the process of promotion and cultural significance similar and to what extent is it different? Now again, the question turns upon the meaning of cultural significance. What does it even mean for something to be considered of cultural significance? Or, to put it in a different way, what does it mean for something to be of cultural insignificance? What is the rationale underneath this binary distinction? Can something be regarded as significant if it doesn’t exist in the collective memory of society, that is, if it merely exists in a corner of an archive, never exhibited, promoted or distributed in the present?

 

April 11th, 2019 _ On memory

 

Certainly, memory is subjective, for how else could it be. Also, it is subject to change over time for each person in part, whether one forgets part of a memory or whether one recalls more parts of it. But the thing is, memories themselves, that is, each individual memory, are also different, they are of a different degree. Some are stronger and more vivid than others, and those stick with individuals longer, are more poignant. Whereas others that don’t carry an emotional weight or any other sort of an impact on the individual, tend to wash away quicker.

What about the speed with which memory functions? What if one slows down or fasts forward a memory, how does that shape the way in which we relate to memories? To pick a vivid memory from one’s imagination and slowly experience it, frame by frame, as it rolls through the mind’s eye, one picture at a time, vivid, clear. Then speed it up a bit, shift the perspective of the memory from which one envisions it, pick it up from the same frame where the image was slow and move with it, sliding the mind’s eye towards its surface, lingering on it with utmost curiosity and innocence, as a child, fascinated by the smell that the memory evokes, its colors, the things one finds in it.

April 13th, 2019 _ Aphorisms on Criticism, Memory, and The Digital Age.

 

If a piece of art is said to represent a mirror of a society, or of its author, then criticism is a mirror of a mirror.

The distinction between society and an author is sharp, but they’re not as distinct as it might seem.

The hypocrisy of memory is that it stinks.

The digital age is made of bits of electronic circuits that blurs the distinctions between countries and carves down the spaces between people.

The possibility of something is not the actualization of something.

Memory in the digital age is like a wet sponge, soaking with information and paying attention to none.

Not even memory is what it was in the digital age.

In the digital age, people don’t forget or remember more than in the pre-digital, they just stop paying attention. It’s a new form of amnesia. A digital amnesia.

The interesting thing about the digital age is that it has no age. Or, better said, it manages to live simultaneously in multiple ages, hence, any notion of an age of a society as we used to think of in the past pales in comparison with the age of world wide web.

April 28, 2019 _ A Hypothesis on Memory

 

John and Mary played a game of ping-pong ten years ago. Their son, Danny, recorded the game on a cell-phone camera.

Now, ten years later, John and Mary and Danny are watching clips and photos from their past and they get across the recording of their ping-pong game.

When they get to the end of the recording, they realize that the video of their game is incomplete. John remembers that he won that game, Mary remembers that she won that game, and Danny starts laughing.

May 4th, 2019 _ Computers and Humans – Data Storage and Memory

 

I kept thinking about this distinction between the digital and the human. About data storage and human memory. Looking at it from a Saussurean perspective, of language as a system of signified and signifier, the distinction cannot be more apparent. For example, I will associate here the word digital (as signifier) with a computer in the most common, everyday sense of the word: a personal computer (signified). For human (as signifier), once again, I will regard it as what I myself consider as human, that is, every living person on the planet Earth that embodies the physical characteristics of the human race with all of its variations (signified). Now, looking at it from this perspective (at the signified), the digital and the human cannot be more distinct. Perhaps the best example to illustrate this would be in the case of violence. If one takes a computer and throws it on the wall, depending on the force with which it is thrown, it will most likely physically shatter or break into pieces. If we apply the same action to a human being, say one gets punched in the face or abdomen, or that one gets hit by a car, beyond the physical damage that occurs to the body of that person, there will also be a sense of physical pain. In this case, it is this feeling of pain which distinguishes the two. However, on this same level, we can observe how when dealing with a physical impact, both the human and the computer obey the law of physics. Of course, perhaps a computer cannot bleed, but for the sake of the argument, I believe that everyone can agree that if observed from a neutral perspective, both would have some sort of a physical response to the impact: the computer would shatter, the human would bleed or have some wounds or bruises – certainly, these are just examples and they can vary depending on the force of the impact.

Now certainly, this brings up certain similarities and differences between the human and the computer. However, I don’t believe these to be satisfactory, for they stay on a physical level. 

I will then turn back to the distinction which I have drawn in an earlier entry about data storage and human memory. Why are these so distinct? What makes human memory so separate from data storage? Here, I think that the inflexibility and precision of data is what stands at the core of this separation. And yet, if we think of data storage, say, in the case of a computer we think about its hard-drive that can be accessed through the interface of whatever operating system the computer has; well – it’s really a collection of files that the owner of the computer created or accumulated one way or another. In this sense, a personal computer becomes almost as an extension of its owner. A computer, at least in the case of laptops or other type of personal computers, doesn’t have a function on its own, except when it is used by a human being. Certainly, there can be algorithms or whatever else that one can write for computers in order to perform certain tasks, but even those algorithms are written by humans to fulfil those tasks. Now, how is this different than human memory? What is it that is so distinct about human memory that data storage or algorithms cannot achieve? Well, in this case I believe the distinction is found at the level of structure. Data storage and hard drives are strictly mathematical systems which are organized within a given set of precise rules. A document whose size is that of a megabyte, unless altered by a human, it will always stay like that. Human memory on the other side is much more fluid. Now I don’t know to what extent it changes over-time and under what circumstances does it change. It certainly does, but it’s difficult to say how and in what way it changes. On top of that, to discuss about human memory in broad terms, as a unified thing which operates the same for every person, I believe is redundant. What do we mean when we talk about human memory – do we refer to one single memory of an individual? And then, how can that be separated from the other memories? How do we even manage to draw that distinction between when one memory begins and when it ends? Certainly, when we think about files on a computer, it is easy to distinguish between two separate ones. But in terms of individual memories, what is it that creates the distinction between one memory and another? Well, it’s the human brain, and I believe there is a certain amount of irrationality, of unpredictability that humans possess which cannot be graspable, which escapes and evades the hard-wired structure that constitutes data storage. In this sense, going back to the initial distinction between the human and the computer, I believe that computers, which we shouldn’t forget, are the creation of the humans, are, very much like any other work of art, a reflection of its creator, a mirror. However, as any reflection, they cannot grasp the full picture, and in this case, I find computers to represent the rational, mathematical, organizational, in general, everything that is often associated with an ordered way of things. On the other side, while certainly the above mentioned are part of the humans, for they are the ones who created computers, there is that level of spontaneity, of unpredictability (although certainly there are algorithms that can be unpredictable, I believe the unpredictability of humans is different than that of an algorithm, mainly because it’s very definition lies not in a pre-determined aleatory code, but in a certain immediacy in response to its environment), of being present in space, even of making mistakes. Perhaps, especially of making mistakes. Humans have this capacity of being stupid, and, as this quote often attributed to Einstein says, “two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not yet completely sure about the universe”. Indeed, we can certainly conclude from this that human stupidity, on the one hand, it exists and is infinite, and on the other hand, with regard to the computers, it doesn’t apply. For, in this case, how can computers be stupid? They simply are. Whereas the human potential for stupidity is unique for our species. To say about a computer that it is stupid would mean to personify that computer, which of course everyone knows that a personification serves as a figure of speech that attributes human characteristic to non-human beings.

In this case, and now to conclude, yes, computers and data storage have quite a lot in common with humans and memory. I believe now that the distinctions are fairly clear, as well as the similarities. Can these be expanded? Perhaps, but as of now, the demarcation line becomes human stupidity. In this sense, at best, computers and data storage can be seen as an extension, one which both reflects and aids human activities, one which can replicate certain human thought processes, but one that ultimately falls short when it comes to human stupidity.

May 12th, 2019 _ About Fragments

 

At some point while struggling to decide on a topic, I’ve realized that I don’t really have something to write about, or, for that matter, that I’ve had too many ideas and couldn’t decide on a specific one. At that moment, I’ve had a couple of scattered thoughts written down, which I have gathered regularly in an attempt to figure out a topic. Inspired by Sartre’s novel, Nausea, I’ve decided to keep going with writing down my thoughts, and then combine all of the writings into a diary structure. Hence, this page is comprised of a series of stream-of-consciousness entries, organized by the dates in which they were taken, each one of them is inspired by different authors and writing forms, all revolving around the theme of memory in a digital age.