Technology has failed me as an artist so many times that it would be foolish to continuing relying on electronics. We’re all a bit trapped in the modern age, if feel included in, or keep up with, opportunity and enterprise. My biggest challenge with technology as an artist, who also makes content for my website and social media platforms, is storage of digital files. My social media pages are slowly growing with picture and video content as my digital files behind the scenes are stacking up even faster. I have several phones and one computer with thousands of pictures and videos between them of my art process and life. When transferring those images from something tangible, like a USB, sim card, or the devices’ hard drives, to something intangible like Google storage, it’s a huge risk. I have corrupt USBs that can never be recovered and some that have been brought back to life after getting wet. There was a time when I thought I was doing the responsible thing by moving digital files to cloud storage, but one missed Google payment of just three dollars and all of my files disappeared. Clouds are just as risky as a wet USB or a broken phone when choosing digital storage in terms of loss of files and memories. Years of my documented life and art were gone in two pathways to oblivion.
PBS just lost access to 70yrs of archival materials because the datacenter that holds these digital files went out of business. In addition, datacenters seem to destroy physical documentation as part of their process. This kind of data is hosted or stored in the cloud and cloud storage requires servers…servers require datacenters. Datacenters store the servers that host the clouds where our files are kept among other functions.
Datacenters claim to require huge amounts of water, emit vibrations that seem to cause harm to animals, and hog electricity grids taking power from homes and businesses. Tangible digital storage is as bad for the planet from plastics to mining precious materials for devices. There is no escape from blighting the Earth when humans generate digital material.
However, I’m only human and I have a selfish urge to hoard evidence of my life and art in digital form.
However, I’m only human and I have a selfish urge to hoard evidence of my life and art in digital form. To reduce the need for datacenters, and their subsequential destruction to the environment, I can play a small part by reducing my digital footprint. I grew up during the trajectory of floppy disks to CDs to USBs to hard drives to the cloud. It is possible to safely store my stuff with a mixture of tangible objects and cloud.
It’s time to get back up with a new plan and mindset about documenting my art journey and my one life. I intend to move away from fickle USBs because they are only meant for temporary use. I want to focus on digital hard drives and reliable cloud storage from credible companies. This Squarespace website alone has served as an apt archive keeping my images and writing safe for years, whether I miss a payment or not. This has made me very unsatisfied with Google and I see myself migrating from their services over time. I have printed several documents and images over the years from my digital files as an analog backup and I’ll continue doing that. Filing my documents and labeling my photographs is an ongoing task, but they are a mutual insurance to the risk of digital-born material. Social media is so ephemeral that I see myself swiping the slate clean on a few platforms to reduce cloud storage. I want to do my part in reducing cloud storage and choosing more wisely what is kept there, and which services are best, to reduce the need for destructive data centers in my state.
Have a Pleasant Day!
-Rae