There's a question I keep returning to lately: how do we know something is real?

There's a question I keep returning to lately: how do we know something is real? Not real as in 'not fabricated' — that question is exhausted, and the answer is increasingly that nothing is. Real as in: it has weight. It asks something of you. It changes the shape of your afternoon. I used to think provenance was the answer. Made by a human means real; made by a machine means hollow. But that line dissolved years ago and I am not sure I miss it. A photograph taken by an algorithm of a place no o