With witnessing agnosia, I explore the question of what the effects of our habits are in relation to the new push of digitalization in terms of conventional use of smartphones, social media and apps. More deeply, I am concerned with how we humans are changing and have changed as machines have taken over thinking in many ways. Through the increased appearance of machine algorithms and the accompanying exercise of power by companies that use them, the loss of individual thinking can be observed. The motivation to deal with this topic lies in the observation of the self-experienced change of one's own generation and the fact of questioning one's own behavior. We often find ourselves in a trance-like state when using our smartphones. As if hypnotized, we forget to concentrate on our very own human needs. The actual activity suddenly fades into passivity. The suggestion of active use arises, which can in fact quickly turn into an unconscious passivity of the user.

The word agnosia functions here in its meanings as a neuropsychological symptom, which is defined as a disorder of cognition, as well as in the philosophical sense with its meaning ignorance or work of forgetting. In analogy to my interest, I adapt the word on the one hand as a metaphor for the loss of individual perception of reality and the loss of one's ability to interpret and make decisions. On the other hand, the meaning in a philosophical sense is very applicable to the situation I finds myself in at the moment - "We are in the process of algorithms doing the work of forgetting or being part of the construction of forgetting." Witnessing Agnosia is thus emblematic of my realization of witnessing the transformation of a generation that is losing crucial self-determination skills. By stringing together sound excerpts, which I extracted from found video material, a sound collage and a recycling process of old data into a new context of meaning emerges.