Underpinning the course is the idea that writing / creating / coding / reciting / citing any work is an act of documentation. It suggests that documentation is a form of preservation involving the transference of a human experience into a memory system that enables that experience to endure over a period of time and be made accessible to others. It differs from emulating, migrating, and collecting––all of which aim to instantiate a form of a work––in that documentation functions as a descriptive practice that both can stand apart from and augment other modes of preservation. As such, documentation can be carried out in many different ways depending on the specificity of the work and should provide as full and precise an expression as possible. Finally, it implies a recognition of value of that expression to a future audience.
The course also makes the assumption that practices for documenting works born native to the digital world differ from those born native to the physical. If indeed, as Abby Smith Rumsey suggests that memory is required for survival and impacts not only the survival of a species but of that species’ culture, then needed in this “Age of Matter,” as she calls it, are documentation practices that address the way in which memory systems can be combined and harnessed to preserve human experience.
Overarching questions for the course:
- What qualities of born digital media make documenting it different than print-based media?
- What are the various methods of documenting a work of born digital media?
- What drives the decision to document particular works?
- What can we gain from taking a multidisciplinary approach to documentation?
Day 1 Theme: Obsolescence, Memory, and Material / Digital Culture
Morning Focus: Introduction to challenges to documenting multimedia, interactive works; modes of preservation
Reading #1: Christiane Paul’s “The Myth of Immateriality”
We kick off our course with Christiane Paul’s seminal essay because it outlines the challenges to documenting born digital work that take advantage of multimedia and interactivity afforded by the digital medium. Additionally her essay also nicely encapsulates the current thinking about the modes of preservation from the perspective of new media art.
Questions to Ponder:
- Where does documentation fit within the modes Paul outlines in her essay?
- What are the differences between the way in which libraries and galleries/museums document born digital media?
- What can be gained by rethinking best practices for documentation that better fits for born digital media?
[We will also review the two publications from the Electronic Literature Organization about preservation: Acid Free Bits and Born Again Bits]
Day 1 Theme: Obsolescence, Memory, and Material/Digital Culture
Afternoon Focus: Obsolescence and the Challenges of Preserving Works
Reading #2: Abby Smith Rumsey’s When We Are No More, Chapters 1 and 10
What drives us to document and preserve? This question takes us to Rumsey’s book. In it she offers a thoughtful perspective about what is at stake when collective memory, which represents for her cultural heritage––and the chance of human survival––are lost.
Questions to Ponder:
- What may the dual system of preservation (physical and digital) be? How do we bridge the two in order to ensure durability of the physical and storage capabilities of the digital are leveraged for preserving human experience effectively?
- What are best practices for documenting born digital work that address the affordances made possible by both physical and digital memory systems?
Reading #3: Francisco Varela et al’s The Embodied Mind, Chapter 4
Following Rumsey’s discussion of collective memory, we move to Varela et al’s ideas surrounding human experience and notions about the “self.” Their discussion about mindfulness / awareness / meditation helps us gain a deeper understanding about the drive to document experiences and objects and provide an additional layer to Rumsey’s idea of survival.
Questions to Ponder:
- How can mindfulness / awareness / meditation change the way we conduct preservation activities?
- What role do the aggregates play in decision-making about which objects we preserve?
- What role does “self” play in these decisions?
Reading #4: Annet Dekker’s “On Re-Collection: New Media, Art, and Social Media: An E-Mail Interview with Richard Rinehart”
With this reading, we shift our attention back to attitudes toward preservation from among museum curators. The interview introduces Rinehart and Jon Ippolito’s Variable Media approach to preservation, a method that attends to the need of each individual work rather than imposing a blanket methodology across all works. Like Rumsey, he expresses concerns about cultural heritage, arguing that “social memory”––that is, the “long-term memory of civilizations––is predicated on “the preservation of cultural artefacts.”
Questions to Ponder:
- How is an open museum different from an open library? What processes may be similar?
- How do we manage top-down and bottom-up strategies to arrive at a balanced presentation of a particular civilization? Who gets to manage the strategies?
Reading #5: Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Interview by Markus Miessen: “The Future Is a Dog”
We end the day’s discussion about Obsolescence, Memory, and Material / Digital Culture with Markus Miessen’s interview of Hans Ulrich Obrist. Obrist’s comment about the “limited life span” of things makes us aware that attempts at preservation are as impermanent as the works we strive to save.
Questions to Ponder:
- How do Obrist’s comments about the “limited life span” of things fit with the other readings we covered today?
- What impetus lies behind the idea of “protesting against forgetting” that Obrist raises?
- What does the title of this essay suggest?