This blog will introduce a book– Archiv Obliv, made in March 2021 by German visual designer Jakob Weber.

In The Medium Is The Massage, Marshall McLuhan mentioned that The emergence of electronic information technology paralyses people’s nerves and replaces The information that people choose to receive themselves (McLuhan and Fiore, 2008). Half a century later, data is no longer subjective, fluid and easily manipulated. The emergence of data has also radically changed how we record ourselves –Facebook, Instagram, WeChat. Our brains forget irrelevant and unimportant things, but electronic data doesn’t, and as a result, we create more data waste than we think. But digital data is not permanent. It can be compressed, manipulated, overwritten, fragmented, lost, etc.

Designer Weber has created a virtual exhibition and a book –Archiv Obliv — based on the theme of ‘digital memories’.

The authors present 100 random and meaningless data and images designed to mimic the form of archaeological fragments. He has added 50 of them to augmented reality technology, allowing viewers to view 3D images on their mobile phones to enhance their virtual space experience.

Prospective, critical, interactive. It is the feeling brought to me by this book. Through this project, the author made me rethink the meaning that data brings to us. What will our future generations know about our age in a hundred years or even a thousand years, and will they also see this meaningless data garbage? Decades from now, should I clear my chat history and carve the link to my Instagram page on a stone tablet?

Reference:

Behance.net (2021) Behance. [online] Available at: <https://www.behance.net/gallery/115547635/Archiv-Obliv> [Accessed 6 July 2021].

McLuhan, M. and Fiore, Q. (2008) The medium is the massage. London: Penguin.