Palinopsia

In the age of digitalization, the endless stream of images stored in the cloud fills the gaps of what might be forgotten. In Palinopsia , Michaela Putz has delved into these implications of technology, virtual image storage, and memory. The artist’s own image archive, from different phases of her life and stored on computers and smartphones, serves as her raw material. In a kind of digital retrospective, these are photographed and documented directly from the screen, with fingerprints and dust residues on them also being recorded, as well as the mouse pointer and digital artifacts that are created by zooming in on the images. Sometimes they are digitally retouched and smudged, other times they have been taken multiple times with the smartphone camera, making them pixelated, slightly dissolving the original image. In this way, the works aim to visually probe the gaps between human and digital memory, bringing together digital images made of raw data with the ephemerality and imprecision of human memory. Making a publication with these images not only allows us to establish a connection between them, but also to reflect on the way we process analog and digital images. Even though digital images appear to be just data, they are constantly being touched: We erase and swipe them, zoom in and tap on them across the screen. The book attempts to take these different qualities into account and to connect the digital and analog processes of looking at images from our past.