“flaking off” this project focuses on how we preserve audiovisual information. since the invention of photography, we have started to keep memories in different kinds of formats. after photography, hundreds of formats and media were developed to reproduce and keep all this information. today most of these analog formats are obsolete and we don’t give much importance to them because we live in a digital age, and a lot of these formats are stored in basements and attics, others were dumped, and others can be bought at flea markets. meanwhile, all of this information might be disappearing by the action of the force of nature without us noticing.
it’s not strange that bacteria and mushrooms like eating film. this material is composed of an edible jelly, like the ones that laboratories use to cultivate bacteria. a lot of films are being eaten by these. archivists and researchers are alarmed, we could lose a lot of analog visual information. since the cold war, hollywood’s movies are kept in big antinuclear storage called iron mountain inc. we can keep our analog information in digital formats as well but, what happens if the cloud disappears because of a change in the earth’s magnetic poles caused by a solar storm? will some of our visual records remain on earth when we cease to exist? how much time will our visual archive perdure?.
materials: two slide projectors, one super 8 projector, aluminium frames, magnifying glasses, leds, wood
