摘要：A haunting spectre of loss and recovery hovers over Matthew Kirschenbaum’s compelling study of the workings of digital media. Timing and circumstances account for this in part. The research began with the author’s youthful enthusiasms and finishes in the more mature moments of sobering historical events. In framing the work, he begins with a description of the staged disappearance of evidence in William Gibson and Dennis Ashbaugh’s 1992 experimental project Agrippa . The pages of that book-object were treated with photosensitive materials that would cause it to fade on exposure to light while the Gibson text was encrypted in a once-only readable format. But the closing bracket for Kirschenbaum’s project came from witnessing the task of data recovery from the black box hard drives of computers damaged in the September 11 events at the World Trade Towers. These two tales spin out in different directions, the spiral arms of forensic investigation into the social conditions of production and material workings of digital devices.
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