This is a degausser.

Its purpose is to truly erase data from hard drives and other magnetic media, so as to make data completely unrecoverable. It is the digital equivalent of an incinerator.

It is a memory hole.

As per C. McCrea and W. Kim:

Auge.

Chipchase.

What we think of as the material “real” of the computer – that is, the binary itself, the ones and zeros – is really a fiction. Depending on the media involved, the one or the zero is implemented as a level of relative difference in amplitude (in volatile memory) or magnetic charge (in storage). The material truth of a bit is still analog, continuous information (typically the difference between a charge of about .4 of charge capacity for a memory address and a charge of about .7 or so.)

In hard drives, the act of writing and rewriting leaves a bit of difference, a variance that can be decoded. In other words, if you write something to your hard drive that turns a bit to zero, and then turn it to 1, and then back to zero, there is actually a difference (in terms of the charge of the magnetic medium) between the first instance of “zero” and the second instance of “zero.”

It is a demanding and expensive process, but in theory, the slight differentials in the charges of the elements of the magnetic medium can be deciphered, and data that was over-written several times over recovered. There are practical limitations to this; however, while the fiction of the binary, of the pure 1 and the 0, is capable of instant oblivion, the gap between the material and the metaphor hides a surprising persistence of lost memory.

What we think of as the material “real” of the computer – that is, the binary itself, the ones and zeros – is really a fiction. Depending on the media involved, the one or the zero is implemented as a level of relative difference in amplitude (in volatile memory) or magnetic charge (in storage). The material truth of a bit is still analog, continuous information (typically the difference between a charge of about .4 of charge capacity for a memory address and a charge of about .7 or so.)

In hard drives, the act of writing and rewriting leaves a bit of difference, a variance that can be decoded. In other words, if you write something to your hard drive that turns a bit to zero, and then turn it to 1, and then back to zero, there is actually a difference (in terms of the charge of the magnetic medium) between the first instance of “zero” and the second instance of “zero.”

It is a demanding and expensive process, but in theory, the slight differentials in the charges of the elements of the magnetic medium can be deciphered, and data that was over-written several times over recovered. There are practical limitations to this; however, while the fiction of the binary, of the pure 1 and the 0, is capable of instant oblivion, the gap between the material and the metaphor hides a surprising persistence of lost memory.

Cy Twombly, Untitled, 1970

Overwriting is a different kind of oblivion – it is a kind of reluctant repression, the preservation of the sign in another mode. The earlier inscriptions are revealed by becoming forgetful of what is apparent-to-sight and looking at another level of sensation, becoming sensitive to finer and subtler levels of difference and ignoring the more obvious ones.

Cy Twombly, Untitled, 1970

Overwriting is a different kind of oblivion – it is a kind of reluctant repression, the preservation of the sign in another mode. The earlier inscriptions are revealed by becoming forgetful of what is apparent-to-sight and looking at another level of sensation, becoming sensitive to finer and subtler levels of difference and ignoring the more obvious ones.

The Archimedes palimpsest.

The Archimedes palimpsest.

The Novgorod Codex.

Que no quiero ver nada más, si no veo a ella.

Que no quiero ver nada más, si no veo a ella.