Memory through new media art: from implantation to remembrance in a posthuman society

Through critical analysis, this paper examines the antithetic and analogous dynamics between organic and synthetic memory within Eduardo Kac’s 1997 bio artwork Time Capsule and M. Eifler’s 2020 AI artwork Prosthetic Memory. Kac and Eifler’s use of prosthetics and digital networks substitutes the human body for a dematerialized human presence. This unique combination situates new media art history as a fixture of posthuman change, incorporating corporeality, migration and augmentation. A comparative analysis between Time Capsule and Prosthetic Memory reveals mutual outcomes in which body and memory become issues of corporeality, migration impacts bodies and technology, and augmentation drives the evolution of technology and memory. Consequently, memory becomes the binding agent throughout an expanding transdisciplinary and multifaceted approach to art history. By examining the connections between bio art and AI art, we progressively trace memory’s evolutionary consequences through action, media and material. Time Capsule and Prosthetic Memory present examples of a holistic transformation of digital human memory centring on the body and mind. The issues presented in our analysis of these artworks, such as augmentation, corporeality and migration, highlight how new media art can shift the conversation about human evolution and present active examples of networks archiving the growing indivisibility of organic life and virtual data.