Memory: Prosthesis

The commodification of the photograph at the turn-of-the-century by George Eastman and his newly formed Kodak Corporation with the introduction of the Brownie camera, backed by a worldwide marketing campaign based on the idea of capturing memories, established photography, in particular the snapshot

photograph, as the realisation of the originary technicity of externalisation and prosthetic memory (Stiegler, 1998; Bergson, 1903).

Marketing was Kodak’s secret weapon; they used to great effect, creating new markets for photography quite separate from the traditional professional, semi- professional and informed amateur market. Kodak targeted selected markets; in 1888 he targeted the wealthy middle class, the European diaspora, with the Kodak the first truly commodified camera. In 1900 he launched the Brownie targeting families particularly children and woman.

Women were to become not only the family photographer but the family archivist and compiler of the family album. The simplicity of the photographic process was emphasised, with the Kodak girl becoming the principal symbol of Kodak advertising, accompanied by snappy slogans such as, “You press the button and we do the rest” and “Save Your Happy Memories with the Kodak.” The snapshot photograph became ubiquitous, its honest simplicity, its indexicality, provided the nearest tangible manifestation of prosthetic memory (West, 2000).

Originary Technicity: Memory, Prosthesis, Homo Pictor

family life” (Sontag, 1979, p.23). The family album became an essential feature in the drawing room of every middle-class Western family. As Sontag notes, “through photography, each family construct a portrait of itself, a portfolio of images that bears witness to its connectedness” (Sontag, 1979, p.8). Throughout the hundred and fifty, or so, years of the photographs history, the ubiquitous, banal snapshot photograph continues to exist in a variety of formats and media types, undiminished in its

verisimilitude. Within the canon of photography, it is the authentic indexicality of the snapshot photograph that ensures its place as a social record and metaphor for memory.

An important aspect of the snapshot photograph is the intentionality to record the moment without consideration for quality or art. Snapshot photography is a means of recording the truth, a means of fixing time and place in space and context. As

Michael Clarke observed, “the photograph was a vision of things seen, not imagined” (Clarke, 1997, p.187). Similarly, John Berger observed, “in twentieth-century terms, the photograph record things seen [...] the photographic image has been sanctioned as an analogue of the real.” He went on to say, “there are no photographs which can be denied, all photographs have the status of fact” (Berger & Mohr, 1995).

The feature of the snapshot photograph is its portability; the simplicity of the reproductive process allows the creation of pictures of any size, large enough to display in a frame or small enough to be secreted into a wallet or handbag to be used as an aide-memoire, a cherished memory. It is this portability of the snapshot

Originary Technicity: Memory, Prosthesis, Homo Pictor

Andy Clark and David Chalmers in their paper “The Extended Mind” pose the question “where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?” Clark and Chalmers consider the reality of Stiegler's concept, the questions of active externalism and extended cognition, considering the example of counting on one’s fingers to offload working memory, in the context of a tricky calculation, like a pocket calculator. They go on to consider the portability of the cognitive process and the decoupling from the biological brain. They ask us to think of the analogy of the old image of the engineer with a slide rule hanging from his belt wherever he goes. What if people always carried a pocket calculator or had them implanted? These questions are part of the debate as to whether any extension of the mind has to be coupled or whether it can be decoupled. They consider that coupling with the brain is a more reliable concept (Clark & Chalmers, 1998). They argue by way of an example, stating:

If the resources of my calculator or my Filofax are always there when I need them, then they are coupled with me as reliably as we need in effect they are part of the basic package of cognitive resources that I bring to bear on the everyday world. They go on to argue that these systems cannot be impugned simply on the basis of the danger of discrete damage, loss or malfunction or because of any occasional decoupling: the biological brain is likewise at risk of losing problem-solving capacities through lesion or trauma and occasionally loses them temporarily, in episodes of sleep, intoxication, and emotion, for example. As long as the relevant capacities are generally there when they are required this seems to be coupling enough. (Clark & Chalmers, 1998)

Clark and Chalmers contend that the biological brain has evolved in such a way that it seeks to enhance and compensate for deficiencies in physical and cognitive

function by the use of external resources; a reflection on McLuhan’s notion of prosthetics, as an extension of the self (McLuhan, 1994, p.7).

In the book Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment, there is a contrasting view of prosthetic memory, offered by Alison Lansberg in her

Originary Technicity: Memory, Prosthesis, Homo Pictor

essay: “Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner.” Landsberg recalls the 1908 silent film, The Thieving Hand in which a wealthy passer-by takes pity on an armless beggar and buys him a prosthetic arm. What he doesn’t know however is that the arm once belonged to a prolific thief. The arm remembers its thieving habit and snatches possessions as people walk by. Dismayed the beggar sells the prosthetic arm to a pawn shop. But the arm escapes from the shop and re-attaches itself to the beggar. The beggar is arrested and sent to jail where the arm deserts him and having found its previous criminal owner attaches itself to him. Landsberg describes this as “a prosthetic memory” meaning memory which does not come from the person's lived experience in any strict sense, being an implanted memory (Landsberg, 1995 Blackton, 1908). The analogy serves to demonstrate that memories are not

transferable.

Movies have been a favourite medium for rehearsing the notion of the photograph or snapshot as prosthetic memory. The film Memento provides an example of the nature of prosthetic memory in action. In her paper, “Does Philosophy Meet Film in Plato’s Cave? Or at the Pharmacy? Reflections on Memento”, Joanne Faulkner offers a philosophical deconstruction of the film. The film's main character, Leonard Shelby sufferers from Retrograde Amnesia74 _{the combined outcome of seeing his wife}

murdered and a head injury. As a result, he cannot recall memory prior to the onset

74_{Retrograde amnesia is a form of amnesia where someone is unable to recall events that}

occurred before the development of the amnesia, even though they may be able to encode and memorise new things that occur after the onset.

Originary Technicity: Memory, Prosthesis, Homo Pictor

of the condition or form new memory. To cope with the condition he resorts to various form of prosthetic memory. He uses Polaroid photographs, Post-it Notes and all manner of written notes. Later, when an aide memoire is confirmed as the truth it is converted into a tattoo on his body, as an indelible aide mémoir.

Faulkner considers that: Shelby, like Theuth,75 _{places all his faith in his `writing}

invention`, his system of note taking, that provides him with the order required to act. Faulkner recalls a line from the film in which Shelby says, “You learn to trust your own handwriting.” She suggests his notes are advice past to ones-self from a previous-self: the only person he trusts not to manipulate him. But as King Thamus warns, and as we find later in the film, writing corrupts absolutely, as Shelby’s handwriting cannot protect him, even from himself (Nolan, 2000). My interest in the analogy provided by this movie is in the use of photographs as an aide memoire and Shelby’s intuitive understanding that they offer an authentic alternative to original memory, a reflection on the photographs inherent indexicality. The notion of writing combined with images as prosthetic memory in these filmic parodies is analogous to the family snapshot album with its mix of photographs with notations and captions. “I don’t know why a replicant would collect photos – maybe they were like Rachael, […] they need memories.” These words were uttered by the character of the Bounty Hunter, Dick Deckard, played by Harrison Ford in the Ridley Scott, 1982, cult classic

Originary Technicity: Memory, Prosthesis, Homo Pictor

film, Blade Runner (Scott, 1982). The opening quotation and aspects of the narrative from this film providing a useful segue into a classic metaphor that illustrates the notion of snapshot photographs as prosthetic memory.

The film is based on the original book by Philip Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. The story set in 2021, depicts a world in which many life forms have been replaced by replicants, duplications of almost forgotten originals (Dick, 2007; Scott, 1982). The replicants have no personal or cultural memory. In the film, photographs represent one of the last remaining connections with the illusion of memory. The character Rachel believed to be a replicant, carries in her handbag photographs of a “mother and child” which she takes to be presumptive proof of her being the product of a natural human, rather than laboratory birth. “Look,” she said, “here is me with my mother” but Deckard tells her, “not your memories, but someone else’s” a “synthetic memory system, as fraudulent as a faked photo.” Rachel departs disillusioned. Deckard flips through another set of “old photographs” taken from another Android. They contain a mixture of what appear to be original photographs and also photographs taken by Androids of each other. He also peruses his own collection of family photographs spread out before him; some are faded, brown and curly with age and usage. These photographs are believed to be real, true memories of the past, of things that actually happened. Decker’s photographs represent pure nostalgia, they are symbols of a life already lived. Replicants are programmed to collect photographs, any photographs because they need memories in order to

Originary Technicity: Memory, Prosthesis, Homo Pictor

What do these movies contribute to the argument that snapshots are prosthetic memory? Paul Smart in an analysis of Memento, in the context of extended memory, draws the following conclusion; memory is constituent of who we are, as an

extension of cognitive representation, helps to make us who we are. Both of these films reveal an aspect of cognitive function in relation to mnemonic technologies that I had not previously considered.

My FDAS photograph prompted vivid recall of the place where the snapshot was taken and of related memories of the time and place but it did not prompt me to remember the snapshot being taken. Why should this be? Is it because the memory is not there to be recovered or is the memory there but cannot be recalled? Is it that photographs only serve as a source of memory if the photograph is of the event? In the case of my photograph, if the photograph had been of my father taking the photograph, would I have remembered the event? To put it another way, we

remember what the photograph depicts but not what the photograph is. It is as if we are outside looking in rather than inside looking out. In both of the movies referred to earlier, access to photographs does not guarantee remembering.

In this section, I have explored the notion of the snapshot as a metaphor for memory and a manifestation of Stiegler’s concept of exteriorization as prosthetic memory. Whilst it is clear that the snapshot has a mnemonic function as an aide mémoir the snapshot is no more reliable as a metaphor for memory than memory itself. The construction of narratives from the memories trapped in these snapshots imparts snapshots with a similar mythical quality to storytelling. Fragmentation, uncertainty and frailty of memory are something I endeavour to portray in the practice element

Originary Technicity: Memory, Prosthesis, Homo Pictor

of the study.