Data being #1

Data Being #1 emerges from internet cache images and audio traces that remained on a second-hand computer, transformed beyond perceptual familiarity into a shifting audiovisual presence. The images are obscured and accelerated into rapid succession, while the audio is altered into dissonant fragments, severing both from their original context. Housed within a broken monitor and surrounded by dismantled computer parts inside a plastic garbage can, the being reveals itself through flickering sequences and distorted sounds—its origins concealed, its form caught between decay and renewal.

The work draws attention to the instability of perception and memory within a particular phase of digital culture. Obscured images and fractured sounds evoke experiences of partial recall, suggesting how digital material can resemble the workings of memory itself—unstable, distorted, and prone to dissolution. The familiar becomes unfamiliar, reflecting the tension between recognition and estrangement that characterizes our encounter with residual traces.

Beyond perceptual disorientation, Data Being #1 raises questions about the ontology of digital material once severed from its initial context. When stripped of function and reference, information no longer acts as representation but instead asserts itself as presence. In this form, it hovers between categories—neither wholly technological nor human, but occupying an ambiguous space where being is constituted through fragments.

Data Being #1 reframes discarded traces not as lost artifacts but as speculative entities. In doing so, it opens a critical inquiry into how memory, identity, and digital remnants intersect—challenging us to consider the unstable boundaries of human and technological existence in a post-digital era.

Delta poetica, Data being #1, mixed media sculpture: discarded LCD monitor, electronic components, digital residue, plastic garbage can, plastic bag, 22 × 27 × 36 in, 2024