frames

What happens if a machine (in this case a computer) starts to develop a dynamic and deficient memory?
What happens if it confuses or forgets about details (frames) and therefore memories are getting more and more fragmented to finally end up being completely forgotten?

FRAMES is an audiovisual installation, which was part of THE LAST METAPHOR exhibition in june 2013 in Hallein, Austria. This exhibition explores the field of human memory and technical storage. Today, machines seem to represent the allegory of the human mind. Is the computer therefore „the last metaphor“ of human thinking and function like the american psychologist Philip Johnson-Laird said?

The art of the technology is to make itself forgotten.

A machine is a human prosthetic, it’s invisible when it works but appears as soon as it’s defective (like the mouse, or the keyboard in the video). But is a machine just a prothesis and a self-amputation (Sigmund Freud/Marshall McLuhan) or an autonomous intelligence? Memories and experiences are what makes us human, but when does a machine start to develop an individual personality? Does it justify identity if it forgets and memorizes?
The human memory remembers due to association and association-chains, but therefore a memory has to be subconsciously hidden in the human brain. What happens if a machine stops to save things and in memorizing them becomes deficient and human-like. A digital memory is memorized, confused and finally forgotten. This installation therefore opposes the machine-becoming of man, and replaces it with the human-becoming of machine.

The confusion and oblivion of the machine/computer is realised with an algorithm inside of an MAX MSP Patch.

This Video shows one random cycle of this installation.

CREDITS

Concept & Production by
Jan Nahuel Jenny
Michaelias

Visuals directed and edited by
Michaelias

Sounddesign by
Joachim Prügl (Swede:art)

MAX MSP Programming by
Moritz Haberkorn (Morast)

With
Johannes Bültermann
Nael Aeneas Muñoz

Special Thanks to
Antonia Felicitas Feigl
Arno Deutschbauer
Franz Stahl
Maria Amancay Jenny
Angel Sebastian Muñoz
Michael Manfé
Sieglinde Pichlkastner
Philipp Volker Vill