Heads: attempted and successful recovery of data (2016)

“The video shows the artist visiting tech stores or help desks in an attempt to get the information off a computer that has given up the ghost. The issue of data loss – through planned or accidental obsolescence – is, of course, a matter of concern to many of us. In the short term, it’s bothersome. Retrieval can be time-consuming and expensive, even when it’s successful. But there are also long-term implications. In conversation, Donaldson suggests to me that we might be living in a kind of ‘future dark age’, that some of our proudest cultural achievements, those in the digital sphere, might become unknown and unknowable to people of the future.”