Remixing Memory in Digital Media

Abstract

Since the advent of Photoshop, digital remixing has introduced the practice (and acceptance) of unlimited copying, which brings into question the legitimacy of authorship and an ongoing issue of memory. As Galloway proposes a notion of machines remembering in ways that are not affected by ‘the imprecision of human (social/cultural) memory’ (Galloway, 2003), then remembering processes employed by machines are not unlike the synthesis of manipulation located at the core of postmodern culture throughout the late twentieth century. To use such practice in context of documentation brings into question the validity of history and the memorialised past that further poses a larger issue: which version of the past are we articulating?

When I was in Rome in the fall, I became more preoccupied than normal by the idea that machines might unforgivingly record and store all memories. What would we do if certain words or events were not allowed to pass? How would we, how could we, face the present, the future, ourselves and each other without the imprecision of human (social/cultural) memory? Can we even say that what machines remember is what we normally call our memories?

(Galloway, 2003)