The Memory Series thinks about the analog, the human, the subjective in relation to the digital, the objective and the algorithmic. What is the meaning of “memory” in the digital age? For humans, memory refers to subjective images of past events; for computers, memory refers to an objective capacity to store information.
The film compresses 10 human years into 10 megabytes, 1 megabyte and 1000 bits of binary information. The algorithm is working, memory is fading, images are becoming more and more abstract. The series was compressed and edited almost entirely on the command line with the open-source program ffmpeg; the original material was shot on Video8 tapes.
On the one hand, compression relates to an aesthetic of the small file format, a counter-strategy against the ever-increasing resolution, bitrate and (environmental) cost of digital images. On the other hand, it allows for the manipulation of the file itself, i.e. the material basis of the images, analogous to experimenting with analog film material and its physical composition.
