UPDATE `me`

The increased availability of cheap storage and content management systems (CMS) often makes us to think of data as something eternal. But digital data dies every second, making place for new bytes in a never-ending cycle. This process of destruction and construction is the dynamic canvas on which cultures and languages flow.

UPDATE `me` is an allegory of that contemporary phenomenon. It presents itself as some sort of digital, public blackboard that anyone can read, modify of erase. By contributing to the piece, the visitor has to destroy the work of other users: doing so reveals the frailty of her own creation that is, one day or another, to be replaced by that of an anonymous visitor.

By transforming an apparently stable interface into a constantly moving space that gives rise to all kinds of communication games, the software proposes a critical perspective on database technologies.

Interactive Scenario

Upon entering the homepage, the visitor is shown a piece of text enclosed in a rectangular area. She can choose to leave the text as is, modify it, or replace it with something new. When doing so, the old piece of text is utterly annihilated, without any possibility of backing up. Only the period of its existence is to be remembered, as a timestamped mark in a separate section of the website.