Following my print degradation experiments I had a chat with Marcus to get his feedback. I wanted to see what he thought about my new – “visual outcome first”, thinking through making approach and how I could take it further.
We quickly got onto the subject of how we have a preconception that the digital is perfect, flawless. However, computers are still material, parts can break and wear out. Every part of a computer is made at the same time, however different things can degrade at different timescales throwing off the whole system. It’s the same with software to a degree. With everything cloud based we don’t own anything physical, there is nothing to show for it. This good can instantly be taken away. It also made me think about planned obsolescence. Files can become corrupted there is degradation in any medium.
He mentioned the term palimpsest and talked about an artist on Instagram who took screen shot after screen shot of a post to highlight the degradation and digital impermanence. We also talked about material metaphors within the digital such as IBM’s iconography and the sexist story behind the bin and file folder icons created by men to be easy to use by female secretaries. Metaphors determine our understanding, it goes back to linguistics being a tool. We talked about the theoretical physics term entropy – “In statistical mechanics, entropy is a measure of the number of ways in which a system may be arranged, often taken to be a measure of “disorder”.
He recomended this documentary to watch:
It’s hard to gain just one thing from it, but it’s a good way to provoke deeper thinking about the subject. I will continue in my approach and develop this understanding alongside my physical experiments, they feed into one another.
Cameron Aitken Graphic Design 