\u201cIn her dream she made an inventory of all the times her father had photographed her on the sly without her being immediately aware of it. All the memories were coming back. Photographs in which she is all by herself, and others with Moira. She had to note everything quickly, failing which she would forget and would have to wait for her brain to once again grant her access to this exclusive memory domain during another night of insomnia.\u201d^{1<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 1 <\/a> - Laia F\u00e0bregas, La fille aux neuf doigts<\/em>, translated into French from the Dutch by Arlette Ounanian (Arles: Actes Sud, 2010), 73.<\/span> In the novel La fille aux neuf doigts<\/em>, Laia F\u00e0bregas describes the quest of two sisters, Laura and Moira, who have been marked by a singular family practice: forbidding any use of a camera. Their parents taught them the art of taking mental pictures and of writing their impressions down on the white pages of a photo album. But now in their thirties the two sisters feel increasingly troubled, as though a part of their past was missing inside of them. Still holding on to the hope that the pictures taken unbeknownst to them exist, they begin searching for traces of their presence in the archives of the local press. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This work of fiction directly echoes a basic thesis that informs the entire work of the French philosopher Pierre-Damien Huyghe, for whom \u201clived experience no longer exists without a recording.\u201d^{2<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 2 <\/a> - Pierre-Damien Huyghe, L\u2019art au temps des appareils<\/em> (Paris: L\u2019Harmattan, 2005) and Faire Place<\/em> (expanded new edition) (Paris: Les \u00e9ditions Mix, 2009). The reader can also consult the three seminars dedicated to \u201cforms of consciousness in the age of \u00adreproduction,\u201d given by Pierre-Damien Huyghe in 2006 at the Maison Populaire de Montreuil, France: www.maisonpop.net\/spip.php?article572.<\/span> Drawing on Walter Benjamin, this thesis describes a world which has lost its centre of gravity and in which photography and other technological inventions must no longer be considered as simple capturing or viewing tools, but as recording devices: they make it possible to fix, conserve and eventually reproduce sounds, images and data. Also, for Huyghe, it is our entire life and our experience of it, far more than our relationship to images, that is shaken up: \u201cthe ancestral experience of the here and now is expanded by the more modern one of the here and there.\u201d Lived experienced can no longer be synthesized; it is scattered because it is immediately recorded, and hence potentially communicable. For Huyghe the \u00adphilosopher\u2019s task is therefore to rethink the altered operating mode of the subject, whose henceforth technologically assisted <\/em>perception disrupts ways of being, thinking and behaving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the era of everyday technologies and pervasive computing, the smartphone has become an indispensable accessory primarily due to its being equipped with extraordinary photographic and video recording \u00adcapacities. Amateur photography is no longer a restricted practice exclusively tied to family events (births, marriages, holidays), but a sort of attribute of the subject, a gesture whereby to automatically capture a moment one deems pleasant. It seems very suspect, even abnormal, nowadays to not think of taking a photograph or making a short video during moments of joy and plenty. Automated collection and inventory procedures are emerging as dominant aesthetic forms; displayed on the surface of file sharing service web pages, these functions structure our sensibility and organize our thinking. They generate congenial forms\u2009\u2014\u2009<\/em>galleries, reading lists\u2009\u2014\u2009<\/em>in which photographs and videos coexist, both autonomously and in relationship to one another. From a metaphysical point of view, this world of data could resemble that of atoms described by Lucretius in De rerum natura<\/em>; its clinamen\u2009\u2014\u2009<\/em>as a principle of encounter\u2009\u2014\u2009would be the visitor measurement and traffic increaser programs developed by a few unscrupulous engineers who work for companies that have turned amateur practices into a commodity like any other.^{3<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 3 <\/a> - For example Flickr\u2019s \u201cinterestingness.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Automatically generated collections and inventories are contributing to three major cultural phenomena. The first concerns the very character of a sensibility that is marked by exposure to poor and volatile forms, low quality sounds and images which can circulate or be rapidly reproduced. While software makes it possible to manipulate, improve and even build images with decreasing cost, well-thought-out images are actually lacking: bad pictures and photographs proliferate on the databases generated in personal computers. The second phenomenon regards the proliferation of pornographic images: the uploading of this data reveals the astounding photographic and video activity of couples who film their sexual acts. If the philosopher Charles Lalo analyzed the link between beauty and the sexual instinct in the 1920s,^{4<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 4 <\/a> - Charles Lalo, La beaut\u00e9 et l\u2019instinct sexuel<\/em> (Paris: Flammarion, 1922).<\/span> nowadays it seems to be accepted that to film one\u2019s lovemaking, barring the porn industry, is a key experience of intimacy. The third major phenomenon relates to the fact that in these anesthetic and style-less worlds it is well regarded to mix genres and talk of aesthetic practices<\/em> and artistic experiences<\/em>. This is a central point that is far from being a rhetorical artifice or a conceptual affectation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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