Save/delete

Objects and tools that we may have once considered essential often become redundant, and unwanted, especially when they are superseded by better technologies that offer bigger, better,  faster, more robust or more efficient outcomes.

The original objects shift from something of value to something forgotten. They become artefacts - evidence of what once was and the way things used to be…”aah I remember those”…They collect in the bottom of drawers, on shelves in the shed, at the back of cupboards…temporarily forgotten, overlooked… waste.

But what is redundant and forgotten, to one person can be treasure to another.  

The same is true about memory. What I remember about an event and then store in memory is not the same as what another may remember. And when my memory is recalled, the past is overwritten with new data from the present. In effect the original memory becomes superseded by its recollection.

These necklaces are made from bits of floppy disks…remember those? Once important because of their capacity to store and transfer data, now superseded...redundant.

What data resides on these? Was it important? I will never know, and now it doesn’t matter…here and now, in the present, they are beautiful things…tomorrow they may just be waste.