What was gathered from the reservoir?

Intro

When I video call or text with friends or family, I can’t help but catch myself staring off into the screen at times, thinking about the interfaces that mediate our conversations. I tune out because I need a moment to process that this exchange of thoughts and words is being represented as a string of characters and symbols; that this live image is being recreated and presented to me as a complex assemblage of pixels that constantly reconstruct the movements of the person at the other end of the video call. In these moments I feel so saturated in this need to reconcile this intangible border that allows me so little but also so much of the people I care about. I am often told that I am inconsistent at digital communication, which is a criticism that I don’t disagree with: I am constantly floored by this feeling.

A similar awe resurges in me as Matt Nish-Lapidus and I endeavor to work with the cascading, seemingly endless sea of text that encompasses Lapidus’ I’m Feeling Lucky. Originating from an existing dataset of random image recognition relations, Lapidus has constructed an engine that automates .jpg assemblages upon clicking any one of the 15000+ hyperlinks present on the wiki page. A simple premise, yes, but Lapidus and I bond over the understated, poignant intricacies that this dataset presents; the overwhelming effect this quantified mass of links has on us as we see a composite of the world shown back at us. As we dive into its abyss, we search for anything we can use to make sense of our experiences with intimacy and relationality as they shift during times we’ve never known before.

We stand at a point subject to change

We reconsider how to use the index