'a small haunting' is an exploration of the thrill of opening a door and being surprised by what is behind it, a celebration of spooky season, and a brief meditation on ghosts in the machine and the things that last and decay on the internet.
this work is inspired by dead media. unlike physical objects, which can last in a state of benign neglect for years, digital media can easily fall prey to bit rot and a whole host of other failures. it's easy to think of things online or on cds/records/etc as lasting forever, but the truth is that all of these are very vulnerable. from the email addresses that you can't access anymore to the blogs that have been deleted to the photos that you backed up on an external hard drive, everthing can be harder to get to in the digital world.
the haunted house here is built out of old media. a sampling: a record (1/5 parts) of don giovanni, a deconstructed vhs tape of american gigolo, a 'now that's what i call music' cd, two mechanical keyboards and their parts, a cordless house phone, an old router.
Kelsey Socha-Bishop is a writer, artist, and information professional working and living in Western Massachusetts. her novella An Archive of Brightness was published by Lanternfish Press in 2022. learn more here.