Development Thibaut Villemont 

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Since the invention of computers, the data-storage race has been generating technological debates. The machines are obliged to keep offering more memory to enable us to preserve our own. Like a search engine, our brain uses this external memory more and more, and invents strategies to free itself from the overload of amassed information. It therefore knows where to find the details it needs, without needing to store the contents: a new way to operate our encephalon, approaching a form of artificial intelligence.

PHOTOSHOP BRAIN SYNDROME

As artists, we create images, and as curators we believe in their potential – the potential to travel, to spread and to inspire. The stroboscopic effects that flow across our screens largely produce constellations of attractive images, colours, shapes and textures; materials, artists’ names, sources and exhibition venues all intermingle.

Unlike the view of an exhibition taken by camera, that which is imprinted on our retina in our huge memory library is subject to our fleeting moods, emotional states and the vicissitudes of ageing. We mentally impose filters on these images, these memories of visits, similar to those produced by the inventors of Photoshop, the photo touch-up software produced by the Knoll brothers at the end of the 1980s and marketed by Adobe in 1990.

Our neurons, suffering from PBS, thus turn part of our brain into a kind of Adobe suite containing photo touch-up software, desktop publishing software, graphic design software all used as a crutch to our memories. Our brains now have the resources they need to transform this excess of artworks into raw materials1. Far from the kind of saturation potentially caused by the consumption of exponential numbers of images every day, artists have right in front of them a new material to be manipulated, copied, displayed, a raw material for new works.

Since IT tools were invented, the drive to store data has been central to technological discussions. Machines must be equipped with ever-increasing amounts of memory to allow us to preserve our own. Just like search engines, our brains increasingly use these external memories and invent strategies to cope with an excess of stored information. They know where to go to seek the information they need, without having to store content. This new way of using our brains is increasingly close to a form of artificial intelligence. Brains contaminated by this nervous disorder become galleries, museums, studios, palettes. As we are not doctors, much less consultants. we find it still too difficult to know what proportion of the world population is affected by Photoshop Brain Syndrome.

IOP - (Extract from Photoshop Bain Syndrome published in Augmented Photography by ECAL, 2017)

For SITUATIONS, It’s Our Playground will think about the future of the institution through the prism of the Internet and the digital using an online platform dedicated to curation. Taking the Fotomuseum Winterthur collection as a starting point, the duo will select content (online and IRL) and display its research on the evolving website. The upgrading process will happen ‘live’ on the page, meaning online visitors will be able to see the elements moving and being added in real time. New matter and images will then emerge from the curation and juxtaposition of documents.