The Forgetting Machine is an app that slowly erases photographs and makes it possible for you to forget. Each time you view a photograph taken with the app or press the refresh button, the photograph displayed becomes slightly obscured, shifted, or blurred. The original image stored in the app becomes inaccessible and is replaced by a new original–over time this image becomes unrecognizable.
Forgetting is a radical act. In a culture that is obsessed with documentation, preservation, and circulation, forgetting becomes an act of resistance. To choose to forget is to resist collecting, archiving, and revisiting your past through photographs. The Forgetting Machine is a tool designed to inject forgetting into everyday tasks like taking a photograph or looking at old photographs. Images taken with The Forgetting Machine become unstable–they shift and disappear over time mimicking the biological reconsolidation of our memories and making space for us to forget.
Artist
Sarah Sweeney
Developers
James Armenta
Sarah Sweeney
Commissioned by Rhizome, the leading international born-digital art organization.