Digitally Stored

Going through a mountain of art work and drawings, I’m thankful that it’s much easier to digitally store them. I treasure every scrap of art my daughters make but boy does it take up a lot of room. They are prolific artists. Boxes and boxes.

I wondered about how I’d feel about storing something digitally and then getting rid of the physical version. A few years back, I tried it on my old childhood art. It was an amazing experience to be transported back to when I made the art or how year after year into my teens I’d look at the same drawing.

Then I took a picture of it and through it in the garbage.

There was a bit of mourning but I knew that, if I really wanted to, I could make a copy of it that seemed as genuine as the original from the photo. I wouldn’t want to. It was OK and it felt great to move on.

I think of the same for cleaning up my family’s art. The essence of this art is how it looks and how it looks can be captured digitally. Why do I need the original?

If we’re a collection of our thoughts, could capturing them digitally eventually help us live on eternally in some way? We can do near perfect text to speech of us, we can mimic the essence of our language. Maybe one day our avatar will live on eternally?