Avoiding often immediately available digitized versions of our modern experiences is nearly impossible. This is especially true for kids and teenagers whose entire life seem to be digitally documented. Digital photography provides so many images — and the access to those images is so immediate — that our actual memories or perceptions of a moment can be replaced by a digital memory in near realtime.
We’ve ceded many of our remembering duties to a hard drive in the cloud. And to a large extent, we’ve now handed over our memories of experiences to digital cameras. Our imagination-driven perception of ourself is replaced by a digital reproduction of the moment we just experienced. We now forgot the distinction between the experiencing self and the remembering self.
The digital age gives a new meaning to having a photographic memory. The experience of the moment has become the experience of the picture.
2012-2013
