Palimpsest: something wiped clean and reused. The term was usually reserved to describe ancient parchment that was scraped bare to be written upon multiple times. The term goes beyond general recycling: they include the romantic possibility of hidden, lost messages in the faint remainder of the previous image. It happens with paintings, storefronts of all kinds, advertisements, famous voices, and even digital media. Digital media, however, is far more permanent when erasing, so palimpsests may be going the way of a lot of classic media...although, a client I work for regularly loads her plain-paper fax machine with the back-sides of old sales reports: a palimpsest for the modern day.
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