Lossy Memories

Artists: Maria de La O Garrido, Gregor Petrikovič, Antje Seeger.

Curator: Duncan Poulton, London.

Thanks to advice: Ellie Dobbs, SET, London, Frank Eckhardt, riesa efau, Dresden.

We find ourselves in a state of overwhelm. The world buzzes around us, as we become unable to cope with this too-much-reality. We increasingly rely on technology to curate and digest the mountains of material, and as such our behaviour is algorithmically shaped and reinforced by dominant systems of averaging and aggregation.

This programme considers this buzz of contemporary life through different lenses and temporal vantage points; past (Seeger), present (de la O Garrido) and future (Petrikovic). These works make us think about the exponential speed of life online, how the old piles up upon the new, and the ensuing need to constantly catch up or be left behind. Equally, we are shown how Al is already beginning to shape human memory, acting as a mediator of life and how we retell it to ourselves, truthfully or otherwise. Our memory was always manipulated through technologies (drawing, photography, film) but the creation of imaginative machines throws notions of a singular historical truth up in the air. Technology is changing the landscapes of thought and memory irreparably, but the question is do we even notice – do we even care?