This project examines the paradox of digital preservation: while digital data appears permanent and infinite, it remains fundamentally ephemeral. Hard drives fail within 3-5 years, SSDs degrade through write cycles, with lifespans sometimes measured in months. Even archival magnetic tape deteriorates within decades, not centuries, unlike previous archival media like books or paintings. Unlike analogue media, where degradation is visible and tactile; pages yellow, photographs fade, tape warps, digital decay is more binary and catastrophic. Files often exist or corrupt entirely. The slim liminal space between existence and nonexistence is filled with error-correcting algorithms constantly fighting the accumulating errors, but ultimately fail to prevent the inevitable.

QR codes occupy an interesting and, while ubiquitous, underexplored middle ground in digital data storage. They can be read without the use of specialised machinery, unlike microfilm or magnetic tape, incorporate error correction in their very structure, and preserve data in its native digital format without translation.

My project will challenge this deterioration by translating digital data into an analogue format, specifically silver gelatine prints. Silver gelatin prints can last for several hundred years before significant deterioration occurs. In combination with the in-built error correcting mechanisms of high-level QR codes, the data could be readable for even longer. Simultaneously, an interesting tension occurs between the digital nature of QR codes and the Analogue Process of Silver Gelatine Prints. The final QR codes are then shredded and carefully reassembled between two sheets of glass, creating a physical way of encrypting the digital file. Overall, the project explores questions of permanence, accessibility, and the materiality of digital information storage.