Vanishing Act
Collected Memory_
Carve from the fragmented past
The 'Collected Memory' art project began with more than 10 USB flash drives that were discarded, donated, or found by chance. These flash drives contained files that were once important and urgent, played a role in everyday tasks and digital transfer, yet were abandoned for various reasons. Although USB flash drives are designed as temporary and portable storage tools, their mechanism reveal a distinctly different temporality. Even when files are deleted by users, they do not vanish immediately, but remain within the NAND flash memory until overwritten by new data. The contradiction between temporary use and leftover data makes the flash drive an object with dual temporalities.
Using digital forensic tools, the artist systematically analyzes and reconstructs deleted data from these flash drives, including fragmented images, undecodable documents, and lost filenames and timestamps. With limited personal perspective and knowledge, the artist investigates these restored files and their cultural meanings. Although the data often lacks complete context, viewed collectively, they begin to form an uninteded pattern with common file formats, media aesthetic preferences, and similar digital documents.
Can we historicize these unrelated and anonymous digital fragments through archiving them? The materiality of flash drives not only reflect our personal histories but also reveal the fragmented, delayed, and dispersed nature of NAND flash memory as archival storage.
'Collected Memory_Carve from the Fragmented Past', part of Taipei Fine Arts Museum's OpenNet projects, Jung Hsu collaborates with interaction designer Hsiao Yu-Tung, to show the collected, analyzed, and restored USB flash drive and files over the past two years. Archiving the processes of her digital archaeology and cultural interpretation. The web-baesd archive will continue to be updated for 3 years.
The work was commissioned by the Taipei Fine Art Museum for Vanishing Acts, an exhibition curated by Doreen Ríos in 2025.
Artist: Jung Hsu
Web Design: Yu Tung Hsiao, Jung Hsu
Web Development: Yu Tung Hsiao
Technical Support: Robert Schnüll
Editorial Support: Feng Hsin
Translation (Spanish): Gregory THORPE BADRENA
Special Thanks
University of Art Berlin, Prof. Aberto de Campo, Taiwan Ministry of Education, Madoka Kitani, Fang Tsai, Hyungjoong Kim, and anonymous donners.
This work contains materials from online searches and files stored on a USB drive, with certain sections retaining their original wording and syntax.
The content of this work involves the investigation of personal data; in accordance with privacy and personal data protection laws, the relevant sources and sensitive information are not disclosed.