Research, writing, and Digital failure
Starting more paintings than finishing them, I have realized I am not in the spot to paint yet but keep researching and fleshing out more ideas. I’m reading more short stories and furthering the connection between the liminal and technology.
I have been reading short stories from Harlan Ellison and watching interviews about how he talks about art and making connections to life in his form of ‘contemporary fantasy’ writing. It reminded me of Marshall McLuhan and the discussions we had in my Printing Press to AI ‘lecture’ class. I want to read McLuhan’s Understanding media along with Ellison the glass teat and see what takes they have. Along with paring with short horror stories from Ellison as well as other short stories I picked up from a horror literature class. I feel this will help me say in the text portion of some of the painting ideas I have.
As for my own digital failure, I have accepted my mistake of dropping my hard drive while getting my workspace set up and would not connect to my laptop. All my photos (hopefully) were stuck on this brick I had no way to access. That was my first mistake storing all of my digital information, basically my life and lifes work in a digital sense, on one external drive with backups in theoretical various other hard drives that I would probably not be able to gather all/if any in the same way again.
Still feeling artificial, when I realized what was happening it felt as if a part of me had died yet certainly artificial while still being rational; after all, i still have my memory on everything I have done and seen. Some of the photos were mostly just references or pictures of my physical work so I hadn’t truly lost them - it would just be a pain to re-shoot them. but the other half were family photos, various trips/memories, downloaded media and music, and forces of love that not only showed the humanity through my entire life but also an accurate representation of past memories that with time will always be altered but with photos live forever.
I do not know yet what the outcome of the drive will be. Either way, I will change how I store information moving forward and multiples. In one way or another, either all at once or through many different hard drives, Ill still recover some of my photos and prioritize improving my physical media collection as I can. It will be a Halloween to remember.
