OHD_SSH_0142 Cultural Advice
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Tag Archives: Archive
OHD_RPT_0137 First Year thoughts summary
OHD_RPT_0134 No Man’s Land
A brainstorm document about an alternative GLAM space. It was interactive but that made it too big to upload.
OHD_RPT_0132 Play this (at the British Library only)
This document is a deep dive into the National Trust Sound Archive at the British. It is a rather large document so I had to spilt it into two halves.
OHD_WKS_0131 Break the Archive
My first workshop with strangers! It was called Break the Archive and it was really fun but too short. You can download my report below.
OHD_LST_0128 experiments
In an attempt to create order in the chaos of my mind I thought that it would be helpful to also write all the ideas I have thoughout this process alongside all the questions, insights I have.
The Shelter for Phantom Voices
This idea came to me while I was doing a podcasting workshop (26/04/21 – 27/04/21). Combining the Last Archive podcast and the book Imaginary Museum and then ripping them off, I decided to make the Shelter for Phantom Voices: home of oral history. I thought it would be a good idea to used different oral history projects to illustrate the various challenges and opportunities that can be found in the field of oral history.
I don’t know whether I’ll make it into a podcast or just keep it as a mind palace for myself but either way it is a fun way to think about it.
Pop-Up Archive
I was zooming with Emma because we need our bi-weekly PhD vent. She had been busy with ethics forms which was driving her crazy and I had been thinking about reusing archives (duh). This combination led us to brain storm how you can make an archive pandemic and power-cut proof, while also sticking to GDPR regulations. Our conclusion, a pop-up archive where you can simply hear the oral histories live from the people without any recording. You see if there isn’t a document you do not need to worry about GDPR, power cuts or pandemics because the archive lives within the people. Inspired by oral tradition of Anansi the histories live within the generations through pop up archives. No collection, no storage problems.
PhD student seeking…
Since my roots lie with fine art and I am a strong believer in art as a frontier of exploration, I find it fitting that I should start this project with some type of collaboration with art students. I imagine this would involve me commissioning artists to create pieces that explore the ideas of: sustainability, audience participation, legacy, evolution, story telling, manipulation etc. Should be fun.
Continuing this idea but expanding it to software developers and architects.
The diverse feminist experience
I am currently (21/07/20) watching the drama series Mrs. America, which is about the ERA (equal right amendment) in 1970s America and the women who are both for and against it. The drama demonstrates perfectly how difficult it is for feminist unity because everyone has different life experiences. Women of colour have a different story to white women, young and old differ, lesbians and straights, rich and poor. It is a mess and the exact reason that when my brother asks why can’t women do what #blacklivesmatter protesters do, I reply with it’s just too complicated.
However what this particular situation offers is an extreme situation and extreme situations are very helpful in the case of designing something (Tim Brown, Change by Design). With this in mind I believe that an experiment involving the various opinions of a diverse group on the topic of feminism could provide an exceptional interesting source of footage. Something that could possibly be edited to fit any point of view.
I therefore imagine collecting this in a Photo Booth set up on, lets say, the university grounds and then later inviting people to create their own interpretation of the footage.
I think the aim of the experiment would be to see if you can edit any footage to fit your opinion even if you have collected a wide range of opinions.
Alternatively…
I could make a set up where you can answer a question and leave a question. Like a chain of opinions. Completely random. Could be a website or an installation of some kind.
OHD_LST_0123 questions
Here is a collection of questions I have asked myself concerning the topic of my PhD both big and small.
How do we handle the racism that exists in the archives? Date: 16/06/2020
What do we do with unused interviews? Date: 19/06/2020
Do we need to reevaluate how we create oral historians in order to ensure more equality within the sector? Date: 16/06/2020
What is the difference between a documentary and an oral history project or article? Are they not both curated equally? Is the only true form of oral history stuck unedited in the archives? Date: 20/07/2020
How can we utilise Gen z and the digital natives in oral history archives? What might the pitfalls be? Date: 21/07/2020
Do I have a problem with the word history in the context of oral history interviews? Date: 21/07/2020
Are there any aural oral history papers? If so where are they and why aren’t there more of them Date: 01/10/2020
How does the archive function in a ‘knowledge/data’ economy? Date: 23/10/2020
Do filters for the public limit or increase accessibility? Date: 23/10/2020
Are we looking for an ‘archive’ or a completely new system? Date: 23/10/2020
What should an archive be like during an pandemic? Date: 08/02/2021
How does “Material History” work in the context of oral history? Date: 08/02/2020
Do we get bogged down in the ethics? Date: 16/02/2021
What is our relationship to the ‘public’? Date: 16/02/2021
What does digitization replace? Date: 10/03/2021
Are result lists the problem when it comes to searching? Date: 12/02/2020
What does it mean if people can’t remember? When people are scared of not being able to remember? Date: 16/03/2021
Where does intertextuality and oral history theory end and academic snobbism begin? Date: 16/03/2021
Is having an oral history recorded like donating your body to science? Date: 16/03/2021
What do the interviewees think about reuse? Date: 16/03/2021
How do we take stuff back to the interviewee? Date: 16/03/2021
How do you build a community? Can you build a community? Or do they only grow naturally? What is the balance between setting up/designing a community and having one naturally occur? Date: 30/04/2021
Can the digital ever be transparent if those who make it are from one exclusive group? Date: 11/05/2021
Do we trust archives? Date: 11/05/2021
Does our idea of original need to change? Date: 11/05/2021
Can you democratise history outside of a democracy? Date: 07/05/2021
OHD_LST_0119 words
Acousmatic Sound
Acousmatic sound is sound that is heard without an originating cause being seen. The word acousmatic, from the French acousmatique, is derived from the Greek word akousmatikoi (ἀκουσματικοί), which referred to probationary pupils of the philosopher Pythagoras who were required to sit in absolute silence while they listened to him deliver his lecture from behind a veil or screen to make them better concentrate on his teachings.
Archivism
The act of moving something from the everyday to the space of archive.
Affective Computing
Affective computing is the study and development of systems and devices that can recognise, interpret, process, and simulate human affects. It is an interdisciplinary field spanning computer science, psychology, and cognitive science. One of the motivations for the research is the ability to give machines emotional intelligence, including to simulate empathy. The machine should interpret the emotional state of humans and adapt its behaviour to them, giving an appropriate response to those emotions.
Aufhebung
In Hegel, the term Aufhebung has the apparently contradictory implications of both preserving and changing, and eventually advancement (the German verb aufheben means “to cancel”, “to keep” and “to pick up”).
Authorised Heritage Discourse
The creation of lists that represent the canon of heritage. It is a set of ideas that works to normalise a range of assumptions about the nature and meaning of heritage and to privilege particular practices, especially those of heritage professionals and the state. Conversely, the AHD can also be seen to exclude a whole range of popular ideas and practices relating to heritage.
Brick and Mortar Archives
A rather more elegant term for archives that are stored in buildings. Because it is important to note that digital archives are also very physical.
Content Drift
When the content of a page has been moved around on the internet causing certain links to no longer be attached to that specific page.
Counter-reading
Counter reading is when you identify the gaps in an archive, analyse why they are exist and combined this with further contextual history in order to fulfil your research.
Data Degradation
Data degradation is the gradual corruption of computer data due to an accumulation of non-critical failures in a data storage device. The phenomenon is also known as data decay, data rot or bit rot.
Disciplinary Upbringing
The separate lenses through which individuals from different fields of work view and approach things like: problem solving, language, and general practice.
Drive By Collaboration
Collaborating but only a trivial amount of time and often to fulfil a funding requirement.
Ego Documents
The word ‘egodocument’ refers to autobiographical writing, such as memoirs, diaries, letters and travel accounts. The term was coined around 1955 by the historian Jacques Presser, who defined egodocuments as writings in which the ‘I’, the writer, is continuously present in the text as the writing and describing subject.
GAFA
Acronym for Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. The tech giants.
Historical Imagination
A tool use by historians to put themselves into the shoes of the historical figure they are investigating or imagining themselves in the streets of a certain historical setting. It can be helpful to bring together separate ideas and bring the history back to life as such.
GLAM
GLAM stands for Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museum.
Link Rot
When the webpage attached to a link can no longer be found when you click on it and instead offers you the message “Page not found”
Liquid Architecture
Liquid architecture is an architecture that breathes, pulses, leaps as one form and lands as another. Liquid architecture is an architecture whose form is contingent on the interest, of the beholder; it is an architecture that opens to welcome me and closes to defend me; it is an architecture without doors and hallways, where the next room is always where I need it to be and what I need it to be.
Marcos Novak in “Liquid architecture in Cyberpace”
Media
Originally coming from the word mediator.
Media Archaeology
Media archaeology or media archeology is a field that attempts to understand new and emerging media through close examination of the past, and especially through critical scrutiny of dominant progressivist narratives of popular commercial media such as film and television. Media archaeologists often evince strong interest in so-called dead media, noting that new media often revive and recirculate material and techniques of communication that had been lost, neglected, or obscured. Some media archaeologists are also concerned with the relationship between media fantasies and technological development, especially the ways in which ideas about imaginary or speculative media affect the media that actually emerge.
Media Literacy
Media literacy encompasses the practices that allow people to access, critically evaluate, and create or manipulate media. Media literacy is not restricted to one medium. Media literacy education is intended to promote awareness of media influence and create an active stance towards both consuming and creating media. Media literacy education is part of the curriculum in the United States and some European Union countries, and an interdisciplinary global community of media scholars and educators engages in knowledge sharing through scholarly and professional journals and national membership associations.
Multivalence
Multi-valents, many values, the holding of different values at the same time without implying confusion, contradiction, or even paradox. (Term coined by Michael Frisch.
Open Access
Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of cost or other access barriers.
Participatory Action Research (PAR)
Participatory Action Research (PAR) has been defined as a collaborative process of research, education and action explicitly oriented towards social transformation. Participatory Action Researchers recognise the existence of a plurality of knowledges in a variety of institutions and locations. In particular, they assume that ‘those who have been most systematically excluded, oppressed or denied carry specifically revealing wisdom about the history, structure, consequences and the fracture points in unjust social arrangements’. PAR therefore represents a counter hegemonic approach to knowledge production.
Post Private
The age of high surveillance which we live in now.
Reference Rot
When links in footnotes on longer are attached to the reference. This is often due to link rot or content drift.
Software Rot
Software rot, also known as bit rot, code rot, software erosion, software decay, or software entropy is either a slow deterioration of software quality over time or its diminishing responsiveness that will eventually lead to software becoming faulty, unusable, or in need of upgrade. This is not a physical phenomenon: the software does not actually decay, but rather suffers from a lack of being responsive and updated with respect to the changing environment in which it resides.
Taxonomy
The science, laws, or principles of classification.
Vox Pox
Coming from the latin vox populi, it refers to a short interview with a member of the public.
Wikidata
Wikidata is a collaboratively edited multilingual knowledge graph hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is a common source of open data that Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, and anyone else, can use under the CC0 public domain license. Wikidata is powered by the software Wikibase.
OHD_BLG_0039 It’s not my problem
There is a problem within the National Trust’s storage system (SharePoint) that is sadly a consequence of democratisation. SharePoint is a complete mess and no one really knows what is going on or who to ask about what is going on. And although this has a lot to do with the design of SharePoint and the lack of transparency surrounding the structure of folders and such, there is another reason there is so much chaos in the folders and that is control. You see before this chaos took hold it was the collection staff who would have been in charge of the archival and collection material, while others might handle files concerning business. Information would have been kept on people’s shelves in their offices, and so to access this information you would have to go through a human. This might in some cases be really annoying because the person who could grant access wasn’t feeling up for it. But then the internet came along with the main intention to make information free and accessible – a more democratic system. Like everyone else the National Trust also decided to remove its strict system of gatekeepers and adopt the attitude of the internet. And this is where an unforeseen consequence arises because while before one person was responsible for a file, now everyone is responsible for all the files, there are no parameters. And because everyone is in charge of looking after everything it is really easy for the individual to simply hope that the next person will sort out that file. Also because looking after files is maintenance and people do not like doing maintenance. Now do not get me wrong I agree that we should have better access to archives and no has the right to deny someone access, but in a world where everyone is responsible, no one is responsible and the National Trust’s SharePoint proves this.
OHD_PRT_0016 Failed Archive – again (formerly a blog post)
Let me start at the beginning…
I wanted to do an inventory of my work so far – see my journey. To do this I went through my blog posts, bits of longer writing, mind maps, and all the bits and bobs on my website. I noted them all down on a post it and sorted them into five categories: the big idea/overall concept, development of stuff, development of space, historical maintenance, and background maintenance. Super proud of myself, I thought that I finally had the basic idea for my PhD by practice; an archive in various different forms (digital and analogue) with some lovely categories that people can look through.
Two weeks later I go through my “archive” because I need to write a summary of my first year. I start going through my post its and concluded that everything is in the wrong place…
*sigh*
CATEGORIES NEVER WORK! People always change their mind or are looking for something different. Tagging is therefore the only option. They are flexible and very easy to word search.
( how to make it analogue is not easy but is an interesting thought experiment )
💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡
Here is an idea…
Instead of having an archive where there is detailed cataloguing done by one archivist, all we do is give items a code, a date of entrance into archive, and a brief description of archive item. No need to catalogue in a specific spot.
Then all people need to do is word search the archive and whenever people bring up an item, they are invited to add their own description, increasing the word search capabilities.
Like URBAN DICTIONARY
OHD_BLG_0063 A Spanner, a Chat and a Gang
Subheading: a meeting with Lucy Porten
Bad news first? Or good news first? Lets end on a positive…
The Spanner
So… The National Trust is not an archive. Every recording is stored at the British Library and you have to pay to get it out; a small fee but still. A fabulous perk of having it stored at the British Library is that the library is a power house and has the money and facilities to keep everything updated and playable. They also have great paperwork, which can be interpreted in multiple ways. The National Trust also does not use this archive. The National Trust podcasters have only recently discovered the existence of the archive, which is a bit awkward. Also it is unknown whether the British Library wants to store any edited recordings.
This does not mean that I am not allowed to keep copies of the recordings at the hall, but the British Library have pretty strict rules around keeping second copies. They are definitely a bigger stakeholder then I initial imagine, but I think we can still think of something.
Added note (27/04/21) Tried to find the National Trust archive on the British Library website and failed. Even asked the help chat and they could not help me.
The Chat
I mentioned that I was interested in doing an oral project around this oral history project, Lucy reacted by saying that she also was interested in doing an oral history project of oral history at the National Trust. The National Trust seems to be in a similar spot as the UN and the WTO where they have no idea how they got where they are now.
The Gang
Now this is the really fun bit because Lucy’s and my thinking do align, and my CDA is starting at a time of change within the National Trust and an increasing interest in oral history. Lucy therefore wants to set up an informal gang of like minded people and I have an invite. Hopefully this will result in a super helpful network of people who want to reform how oral history is conducted at the National Trust with an extra focus on reuse. Yay! I have also offered my services as someone who can deliver all sorts of fun innovation workshops.
OHD_MDM_0032 Beasties of the Archive
I did a mind map/a brain dump around all the supernatural bullshit that bounces around in my head and I finally used a post-it note that some how has survived since February.
The Ghost
The idea of archives being haunted I have talked about a lot. I do find it a rather beautiful and romantic idea but some people do not believe in ghosts or went to art school so they have a lower tolerance for bullshit. Let’s leave the bullshit argue for now and just enjoy the idea of ghosts of Seaton Delaval Hall floating around the archive telling their stories. The root the stories within a human and therefore more relatable setting. The story has a face and a personality so there is more room for the reuser to create a bond with the person.
However, ghosts are by their mythology rather static beings. Ghosts exist because they have unfinished business in this world. They live a rather selfish existence which is not too ideal for the space that I want to create where ghost and human collaborate together.
The Undead
Unlike the ghost the undead are able to stay in this world forever, adapting with society, taking on new trends etc. They are also human like but unlike ghost they have less of an agenda so are more likely to be open to ideas.
However humans do not generally like things that live forever, mostly because we are very jealous, so the undead are often painted as pretty gross. For example, rotting zombies or blood thirsty vampire, generally both are not very cool when it comes to fitting in with society.
The Robot
Here is another potentially immortal being, the robot! However this one might potentially die faster than all of us due to rampant capitalism, built in obsolescence and many many updates. But if it does survive it has a bigger brain than all of the beasties. However, it does not have a heart and unlike the above beasties this one is less of a metaphor and more of a physical system many of which already exists. My only addition is that we give this robot a name, which is not a particular new idea just ask Alexa. By the way here is probably the biggest problem – I do not really like Alexa, I think she is creepy.
The Garden
From fauna to flora here comes the archive as a garden. Originally this post-it was created because I was thinking about how I have memories attached to plants but it has now morphed into this… Archives can be viewed as an eco system just like a garden. The plants are the documents that live within the garden: some die, some live, some completely take over and some change with the seasons. The insects are the users of the archive: some users are bees they take and add to the archive, some are snails and just take take take, and some are flies who deal with the messy that is created. The whole thing becomes an eco system that needs everyone to help in order for it to keep existing. Take one thing out and it all falls apart.
Now I perfectly aware that I cannot use all these metaphors at once because then they do not work, but it is interesting to think about which metaphor can best encourage the mindset that I wish for the users of the archive to have. That mindset being one of care for those who donated parts of their lives to this public space. Are people more likely to care for ghosts, zombies, robots or plants? Or maybe I need to create my own supernatural archival being?
HERE LIES A POTENTIAL EXPERIMENT
OHD_BLG_0065 New words among other things
Readings:
Community archives and the health of the internet by Andrew Prescott
Steering Clear of the Rocks: A Look at the Current State of Oral History Ethics in the Digital Age by Mary Larson
Sometimes I feel like we are in the trenches with our machine guns and old military tactics…
This ain’t for you
People live their lives in very specific ways. They have certain rituals and values that they hold very close to their hearts. However it is very unlikely that everyone else in the world has the same approach to life as you do. Some people do not use the right tea towel in my opinion, some people think it is perfectly fine to wear socks in sandals, and some people a zero problems with eating meat everyday. In the case of Prescott’s paper on community archives/Facebook groups we have an academic freaking out because a community is not archiving properly something which he considers to be a great sin, and yes, in a certain way it is a great shame that a community archive is not sustainable because of the platform used or the limited funding. This is especially the case when you come from an oral history angle where one really wants to preserve the voices of those who current fall outside of history. However, maybe we need to remove the academic lens in these situations, maybe these archives just aren’t for you. They have a different, more temporary, function to bring people together over a shared history. They are about sharing history not preserving history like archives do.
This is where I think I (as an academic 🤢) feel that my role is not to impose my beliefs onto these make-do archives but instead build better tools to support them. A community archive on Facebook is a different beast to the university backed oral history project. Truly it is a shame that this knowledge might go missing, but then I suggest that we get more minorities to work in academia rather than dictate what we think they should do.
It’s a power thing.
Anonymity is anti-oral history ?
…, anonymity is antithetical to the goals of oral history if there are no exacerbating risk factors.
Mary Larson
Anonymity, accountability, freedom of speech, privacy, welcome to the 21st century. There is the opinion within the field of oral history that anonymity is against the principles of oral history. This is mostly because oral history demands a high level of context in its reuse, which makes complete sense. However does that mean that all information should be available? Is it impossible to have different levels of anonymity?
It seems odd that currently when it comes to privacy we have to work in such absolutes. You can get a certain level of privacy on the internet but that often requires lots of digging around and downloading plugins that send out white noise. You basically have to spend time fending off those who run the platforms you use, which when put in a AFK context would be the equivalent of the shop keeper pickpocketing you while you were shopping. Currently privacy and anonymity equals not using either the internet or archives, which defeats the point.
Why is this our only option?
Well, in my opinion it is not. We just need to get a bit more creative for example:
- Use pseudonyms
- Use other identifiers e.g. White, young adult, middle class, female (that’s me)
- Use identifiers + 𝓲𝓶𝓪𝓰𝓲𝓷𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷. There are loads of researchers who have to use their imagination because history has not been good at recording their subject
- Only allow access to certain information if you either visit the BAM archive or ask for permission
- Generally encourage more thorough and ethical reuse and research
New words
To elaborate on that last point we currently approach the ethics around archiving from the donating angle; if everything is correctly archived now there will definitely be no more problems in the future. This attitude I do not find very sustainable because attitudes towards ethics change all the time. So instead I purpose a different angle: ethical reuse of archival material lies predominantly with the reuser not the donator. This is where I would also like to insert the ‘new’ words. Instead of using the terms ethical and ethics we instead use responsibility and care, because the former is so slippery so ‘high-level’ thinking that it loses its meaning while the latter are more human words. Responsibility and care are concepts that you teach your children. They are more instinctive. So what I wish for is more care and responsibility from those who reuse oral histories. I want the reuser to remember the human-ness of the archive and the responsibility they have to care for their other humans.
NOTE: this is why I love the idea of archival ghosts so much because it gives the oral histories a face.
OHD_BLG_0066 An Archival Impulse
by Hal Foster
turn “excavation sites” into “construction sites”
No Ghost Just a Shell
This is why I want to work with some of the art students because you can get some of this lovely weirdness when you work in that space. I just think there is great benefit in looking at how artists approach archives. Do I think that this artwork is archival? Well the ‘shell’ AnnLee (the manga character) is indeed an archival source but the majority of the piece is artists building on this archival source. So the artwork uses the archive and builds the archive AKA makes the excavation site into a construction site. There is all sorts of interesting things happening around the copyright of this piece. First an artist buys the copyright then invites others to do what they want with it and then finally they block anyone using AnnLee.
The idea of AnnLee and No ghost just a shell got me thinking again about this idea of something living in the archive, a ghost, a shell, a figure; something that people can project onto, something that embodies their need for a story. Anansi-esque, forever changing with the times.
Which is why I say…
Kill originality its all about collaboration now.
The story of a single narrative, a lone genius, an isolated idea is silly, because that is not how the world works. There is not one story that can represent a large group of people. A lone genius is most likely someone with an extensive network where they are able to exchange ideas. An eureka moment is often the result of many smaller ideas coming together. There is no such thing as an original idea and all artists steal. So maybe it is a good idea to stop obsessing over this idea of originality because all it does it put people with great ideas against each other instead of getting them to collaborate. Collaboration is more sustainable. Time would have change AnnLee and she would have reflected the world as it progressed and different people manipulated her. She could have lived on forever. Allowing things to change through collaboration instead of preserving and protecting an idea will allow the piece to support society while at the same time keeping its archived versions as windows to he past. This seems a more favourable than it becoming an artwork that needs to have a plaque added to it that says something along the lines of “by the way this dude was a massive misogynist”.
Moving on…
Vandalism as AFFECT
Trying to capture affect is very difficult/probably impossible. But in the written piece Foster mentions the spontaneous creation of the Diana memorial in Paris.
This got me thinking about how this spontaneous shrine and other types of vandalism or sudden outbursts of marking is maybe the closest you could get to capturing affect. Think the tearing down of the Berlin wall or the Edward Colton statue in Bristol. Pure in the moment emotion.
OHD_BLG_0075 Texts, Images and Sounds Seminars Summary
What follows is a summary of the various seminars that I took presented by Ian Biddle from Newcastle University. Overall I enjoyed these seminars mostly because I had covered many of the topics during my time at Goldsmiths but now I understand it better.
Thinking Texts
Seminar
You can read many things as texts: buildings, art, music etc. The word text comes from the word to weave. A text therefore represents a complicated set of ideas woven together to create one idea.
There is a lot of snobbery and hierarchical thinking around text and the author. Author come from the word authority. However to say that the author has complete authority over a text is a very outdated idea. Everyone interprets and experiences texts in a different way. This is often due to the various elements that make up their background: gender, race, work, economical background etc. In addition to this snobbery around interpretation there is also the also now outdated belief that cultures that have no text, have not published, have no history. Which is a bit racist.
Visual Culture and the Cinema Mode of Production
Reading and Seminar
I wrote a summary in a blog post
Map
Noise Cultures Base/Bass Materialism
Seminar
Sound is married and dependant on technology. They way we experience sounds has developed in correlation with tech look at the invention of noise canceling headphones but also the noise of industry and cars that infiltrates our everyday surroundings. Because of advancements in speakers listening has become a contact sense. We can now feel the beat of the music move our bones to the rhythm.
There is a spectrum of sound where music is on one end and noise is on the other. Where sounds fall on this spectrum changes with time and whoever is listening.
How we perceive sound and our experience of it has changed dramatically over time. We now live in a world of lo-fi sound, a constant blurry noise where we cannot make out the specific sources. Before we live in hi-fi sound. Everything could be heard crystal clear because we did not have the rumble of the machines.
Our relationship with silence is also very strange. Sound proof housing in a city centre is extremely expensive. To have access to silence is a privilege. Yet we are also afraid of silence. We are constantly turning on music and TV. Most people cannot walk from A to B without having headphones in. I think we have a need to control our sound.
Slavonic Languages have different words for listening but I haven’t been able to find any examples.
‘Acousmatic Sound’ listening to a sound without know the source. Basically Greek philosophers would stand behind a curtain and speak in an effort to get the audience to concentrate better on what they were saying.
Map
The Affective Turn or the New Scholarship of the Senses
Seminar
Affect (psychology) = mood
Affect (philosophy) = the grammar of emotions
Affect labour = labour that is conducted in the service industry often considered feminine work
Affective computing = instead of the old input output model this type of computing is focused on interface
Feeling works on a very different logic. It’s the body of knowledge outside of the rational that controls emotions. It is in a sense a different world that we live in.
Affect. Complicated political thinking without attracting too much attention or a specific type of attention from a suppressive state. Think Provo and their ludike actions.
Art organises your feelings. It’s that ah! moment when you see a work of art that perfectly communicates a complex feelings.
Affect theory kills boundaries. Biddle’s tip if you are stuck throw some affect theory at it. It’s not political and it unpicks the logic of other theories.
Map
Memory and the Archive
Reading
This is an easier version of Derrida.
To make an archive is to repeat. It is a deeply nostalgic act with questionable productivity. “I just want to relive it”
The archive represents the now of whatever kind of power is being exercised anywhere at any place or time.
There is a feverish desire – a kind of sickness unto death – that Derrida indicated, for the archive: the fever not so much to enter it and use it, as to have it, or just for it to be there, in the first place.
Stedman, Dust
We have to have all the data.
And currently those who are in power (big tech) are also mining all the data for reasons no one is completely sure about less of all them.
Seminar
Archives are full of metaphors. From the architecture of the buildings that store them to the icons we use to store data on our laptop. This is common theme in new technologies. The first cars looks like carriages and the save button is a floppy disc. However some of these metaphors are more tailored to the elite, as in the elite are more likely to recognise this metaphor or the metaphor represents an elite version. Just look at the representation of the Jedi library in Star Wars it is nearly exactly the same as the library at Trinity College in Dublin. Why would Jedis need books?
The putting something in an archive is called archivisation. By archiving something you move it from the private into the public but not from the secret to the non-secret. That is because archives promise access but do not always give it. An archive can be compared to house arrest, the documents are not in prison but they are also not free.
Archives are particular anxious places. They worry a lot about the longevity of their collections and general rot. There is also the added anxiety that new forms of preservation leads to new forms of loss. When we were able to record sound we had to learn how to archive it. I cannot imagine the amount of loss that is created by the internet.
Quick warning here to not fetishise the archive please.
Map
OHD_BLG_0077 RE-MIX (reading group – 16/02/21)
Readings:
M. Frisch – “Three Dimensions and More: Oral History Beyond the Paradoxes of Method” in Handbook of Emergent Methods
J. Bornat et al. – “Don’t mix race with specialty”: Interviewing South Asian Overseas-Trained Geriatricians (this was the wrong piece but we went with it)
Bornat piece
The Bornat might have been the wrong piece but it definitely showed how complex oral histories are. The amount of layers that can be found in the interviews that were conducted with the South Asian Geriatricians would make one hell of a cake. It can be said that all of these layers symbolise a different part of someone’s identity and are all viewed through the lens of memory which makes things extra complicated. The way we remember things lives in the present which is often a very different world to the past. This can be especially seen in the language. The language that we used to describe our identity is constantly changing just look at the ‘new’ identities found in LGBTQ+ or the language that movements like the metoo movement or blacklivesmatter have all given us to talk about life and experience.
When we remember things we take this new vocabulary with us, which sometimes clashes with the feelings that we initially had during the event that is being remember. For example, a woman post-metoo might look back a certain incident that she now understands as being sexual harassment but at the time she just put up with it. These two interpretations of the event, the initial one and the post-metoo one can cause all sorts of reactions.
e.g.
- It couldn’t have been that bad because you are only talking about it now
- It was bad but you did not know why because you did not have the words to describe it
- It didn’t matter at the time and you don’t really care about it now but because of all this language you feel you should
Memory is messy especially when dealing with identity because it changes constantly.
Frisch
I am very familiar with the Frisch piece but many in the reading group hadn’t read it before. What was funny to see was how many had the same reaction I did when I first read it: that it was both obvious, innovative and fundamentally frustrating because he does not give any answers.
Because I had already read the Frisch piece some of the things that had been mention were not completely new to me. The ethical difficulties of oral history archives (Graham wondered whether me might be making too much of a fuss.) Digital silver bullets that will rid us of all access problems?
However, the talk around one theme did intrigue me and that was reuse. This theme was triggered by someone asking whether oral histories even get reused now. Turns out oral historians do not really reuse but oral histories are reused in popular culture, especially for World War novels. All this led me to dig up some old thoughts I had on remixing, which I have already written on after one of the NYU lectures I attended. And at the top of the post is the trailer for the exhibition that planted this idea of remixing in my head way back when.
There are strange power dynamics that are interlocked with reuse and remixing. The decision to store something is an incredibly powerful move, mostly because it involves money. The move to store also automatically highlights documents that are not deemed important enough to store. So now you have items that have been declared important and those that are not, all done by a single person or body of power. However, power shifts over time so eventually someone might want to tell a different story, but they can’t rely on what is stored because that does not represent them, so they remix and create a ‘new’ history. This ‘new’ history might be true or it might be completely fabricated but either way it is necessary. Remixing is a power move that in my eyes should not be hindered by power structures, because the previous power structures already declared what was allowed to be kept.
You can also look at this through the academia vs pop culture lens. Andy pointed out that one of the main reasons people go into oral history is because they like talking to people and not necessarily because they like digging through archives. Now one could easily declare that we therefore should not really bother storing oral histories, but people do use them it’s just that oral historians don’t. In many industries you have those who make and those who can’t afford to make so they adapt and modify often paying tribute to the original. It is exactly this that I am building an archive for; not for oral historians but those who want to remix to reuse.
OHD_BLG_0093 Oral History ➡️ Design
My masters in Multidisciplinary Innovation (MDI) taught me how design and its practices can be used in any field in order to create innovative solutions to complex problems. I believe that during this PhD I will use these techniques to help create a solution to the problem of unused oral history archives. This particular flow of knowledge I am completely aware of, however now I would like to discuss the reverse. How can oral history, its practices and its archives influence the world of design?
Let’s start with the reason oral history as a field exists. Oral history interviews are there to capture the history that is not contained within historical documents or objects. These histories often come from those whose voices have been deemed ‘unimportant’ by those more powerful in our society. It could be said that the work oral historians do is an attempt to equalise our history. However, oral histories, unlike more static historical objects and documents, are created in complex networks of politics, cultures, societies, power dynamics and are heavily influenced by time: past, present and future. Some oral histories take on mythological or legendary forms and are not necessarily sources of truth, but they do capture fundamentally human experiences that cannot be distilled into an object.
But how can this help the design world I hear you ask? Well, currently the design world is going through a bit of an ethical crisis. Ventures that started out as positive ways to help the world have brought us housing crises (AirBnB), blocked highways (Uber), crumbling democracy (social media etc.), higher suicide rates (social media), and even genocide (look at Facebook’s influence in Myanmar.) It’s all a big oopsie and demands A LOT of reflection. Why did this go wrong? How did this go wrong? What happened? Have we seen this before? How can we stop this from happening again?
We did a lot of reflection during MDI, but we also didn’t do enough. One, at the time we never shared any of our own reflections with the group and two, we now cannot revisit any of these reflections or the outcomes of our real life projects because they weren’t archived. The only documents I can access is my own reflective essays and a handful of files related to the projects, most of which solely document the final outcomes. This results in me only being able to see my own point of view and no process. Post it notes in the bin, hard drives no longer shared and more silence than when we were working in the same room. So what do we do if one of our old clients came to us asking how we got to the final report? Or after having implemented one of our designs are now experiencing a problem which they feel we should solve? Did we foresee it ? What are we going to do about it? I don’t know ask the others. It’s not my problem.
Now imagine this but on a global scale in a trillion dollar industry with millions of people (a relatively small proportion of the world) and very little regulation. And I am not just talking about Silicone Valley for once, but every global institution in the world. My supervisor told me that the World Trade Organisation once came to him asking for his help in setting up an oral history archive. The reason they needed this oral history archive was because they had all these trade agreements but everyone that had worked on them had retired and taken their work with them. They had the final outcome but not the process. Zero documentation of how they got there. Post it notes in the bin. They eventually did complete the oral history project but then did not have the documents to back these oral histories up because post it notes GO IN THE BIN. Whoops.
So, how did we get here?
In order to answer this question you need to be able to look back and see a fuller picture than your own point of view. We do this by not doing what the World Trade Organisation and MDI 2018/19 did. We create a collateral archive made of our post-it notes, digital files, emails etc. and we talk. We then put the collateral archive and the recordings of us talking together in one place. The reason we cannot rely solely on the collateral archive is because, as I said previously the documents cannot encompass the human experience to the extend that oral histories can. Also, not everything is written down some things will be exclusively agreed on verbally so the oral interview should (hopefully) fill in some of the blanks.
Once all this documentation has come together it needs to be made accessible to EVERYONE (with probably some exceptions.) This has two outcomes, firstly, it answers the question how we got here. People can analyse and reflect on the process in complete transparency. When something goes wrong we can look back and work out why. And secondly, in the case of design we now have a fantastic bank of ideas, a back catalogue of loose ends and unpursued trails of thought. Setting such a bank is already being examined in the field of design. Kees Dorst collaborated with the Law department at his university (I think) because he wanted to see how the Law department was able to access previous cases to help the present cases.
“Design […] seems to have no systematic way of dealing with memory at all” – Dorst, Frame Creation and Design in the Expanded Field p.24
In conclusion, people are increasingly aware that they need to capture their process in a constructive and archivable manner. Which is something I highly encourage for ethical reasons but also because archives are cool and you can find cool stuff in them. I am going to integrate this trail of thought into my PhD by being active in the creation of my collateral archive and also suggesting oral history interviews to be taken from all those involved.
(There is another reason why I would like to take oral history interviews of those involved, which hopefully is made clear in the ethics section of the site)
I hope that by integrating oral history into the design process it will push design into a more ethical space.
OHD_BLG_0094 The Abstract Archive and the Material Archive
Archives Nationales, Paris 2004, photographer: Patrick Tourneboeuf
Look at this picture. [you can no longer look at this picture. I tried to link the picture in but then the image came up. I found this funny, so I am keeping]
Look at this archive with all its documents carefully organised and safe. It looks untouched and tidy. Perfect preservation. This images embodies what Ariella Azoulay calls ‘the abstract archive’ in her piece Archive. ‘The abstract archive’ refers to a place devoid of time, politics and humans and embodies the Hegelian concept of ‘Aufhebung’ – simultaneously preserving and canceling. This archive is perfect, but it also does not exist. Instead we have what Azoulay calls ‘material archives’. Archives full of politics and complex systems of power. Who can access the archive? What can be archive? What should not be archive? Who categorises the archive?
I like either of these archives. One of them is super boring and the other can be used as a tool for oppression. I want a fluid archive. An archive that is constantly changing and always questions authority. But isn’t complete chaos, like the internet where everyone can upload anything and also access everything (except in China and North Korea). And where the chaos has to be navigated by algorithms created by unelected power hunger figures (mostly white men) that push certain things to front depending on how much the pay. No not that. Something nicer.
Quick note: I actually wanted to write about back at the beginning of October when I zoomed into the first NYU talk but I kept putting it off because I wanted to write ‘properly’ about it. I think that I need to get into the habit of writing things straight away in order for this website to work as a journey of my work.
OHD_BLG_0102 DIGITAL FORAYS: ARCHIVES & ACTIVATION // ARTISTS AND ACCESS
At the start of the talk someone mentioned that they missed the mingling after a talks. Like the coffee houses Steven Johnson talks about.
Then I thought about whether it would be interesting to map these post talk chats by mic-ing people up and tracking their movements and interactions. \
Re-mixing
Just like the previous talk this was mainly about archival work concerning the middle east. Because of this everything (understandably) is coated in this layer of reclaiming ones history. This in combination with artists leads to a re-mixing of archives, putting a new lens on it. In some circumstances this means creating a whole new story. Using bits from the archive and remixing them to such a degree that a (maybe not completely factual) story is created. However the factual accuracy of the story does not really matter. These works are made in the freedom of the artistic space and their main aim is to become some thing that stands against the state archive and tell the story of a minority.
In one particular case during the talk the person was using archive footage from the British Library that had such strict copyright laws that she had to do extensive manipulation in order to even be able to make a film. This brought a lot of frustration since the footage is British colonial propaganda.
This re-mixing and manipulating of state archives in order to create something for a minority reminded me of the streetwear exhibition that I went to in Rotterdam. I see parallels between the practice of mixing and matching clothing the belonged to an elite with tracksuits and sportswear (among other things) order to create this own culture and what these artists create using archival footage. (Especially when you look at issues of copyright.)
In addition to streetwear the discussant Helga Tawil-Souri brought up Dada and how they used collage in order to make sense of a world increasingly filled with information. What the Dada-ist would have made of this age I do not know.
The “dead” .v. “alive”
There was a lot of discussion around resolute-ness of archiving something. By archiving something are you saying that it’s over? Then when do you start archiving a revolution? And when you archive something are you then also “creating” things to not be archived? Is it dead when you archive something? Should it be dead? Do we kill it when we archive it? Does an archive work best when it is alive? When the stories live in the people? Does an archive need a community? Even if they are subject to legend and myth? Why do consider an object truth when some one still has to label the object?
Decentralised Archives
The questions asked in “dead” .v. “alive” are nearly all subject to power structures. Whoever is in charge of the archive can allow new stories to be created or they can kill it, keeping it in its hibernated state. Like copyright. After all “history is written by the winners”.
But how do we break down these power structures?
A lot of people are using social media and other digital platforms but as we slowly realising now that just moves the power over the archive from the state to unelected billionaires (not ideal).
Diana Allan mentioned the idea of exiled archives. Archives created by refugees and those that move around the globe. This might allow the creation of archives that aren’t chained to any state. However this then brings up the issue with copyright and privacy.
Obviously the artists taking part in this talk also challenge the power structures by remixing. But the archives need to be open to this happening. Maybe having regular artist in residence.
OHD_BLG_0107 DIGITAL FORAYS: ARCHIVES & ACTIVATION // PLATFORMS AND PUBLICS
With Kristine Khouri (Arab Image Foundation), Yazan Kopty (Imagining the Holy), Sana Yazigi (Creative Memory of the Syrian Revolution) & Discussant Laila Shereen Sakr (UCSB). 08/10/20
This talk was recommend to me by Joe because he is on the mailing list for talks at NYU. He joined me for the zoom (obviously it had to be a zoom).
The talk was interesting and generally it was nice to attend a talk again even though it was in my living room. Many different topics were discussed but there was less discussion around digital archives and the consequences of digitising. This was a little disappointing although not surprising, because as you often get with talks the speakers will always bring the conversation to their research. And who can blame them, we all suffer from ‘the researcher’s lens’ where you view the world completely through what you are thinking about. However, during this talk it meant less talking about the digital and more talking about post colonialism and decolonising archives, which is still very interesting. And not surprising as the talk was organised by middle eastern studies at NYU.
Anyway what follows is some of the things I picked up on during the talk.
Archive as collateral
Something that was briefly brought up in the talk was the idea of a collateral archive. In other words, an archive that exist because at the end of a project you realised that you had enough stuff to make an archive. If you take this term in its broadest sense everyone has a collateral archive: diaries, planners, notes, shopping lists etc. All of these can make up an archive of your life. The same can be said for any project. If we take the Hand Of school summer project, NTSW then you could very easily create an archive from the kids sketchbooks to the notes of the planning meetings. Every thing can be archived.
But there are some questions to be asked, one: should it archive in the first place, and two, if so how should it be archived? Now the first question is a big one and one I will probably revisit several times. The second question was triggered because in the talk one of the speakers had set up a completely new archive because they looked at all the stuff they had collected for their project and decided that they might as well make a archive, hence collateral archive. So should they have made a completely new archive? Or should they have added to an existing one? Or should have created it but then have it live in a network of other collateral archives?
Another big question is whether people should think about their collateral archive before they start a project or after? Should there be a software that allows for easy archiving as a project progresses? I guess it is often the case that you don’t know what you are going to collect until it has been collected. But then again the internet has led to an increase in document production, so maybe we need to start preparing more for an influx of stuff in order to avoid a desktop soup of documents.
The ‘home’ of History
As I previously said the talk was arranged by the school of middle eastern studies, hence the steering of the conversation towards decolonisation. Unsurprisingly the topic of where documents should be stored came up. This was mostly concerning Yazan Kopfy work on Palestine. He is working on gaining more information on photos of Palestine that are stored in the national geographic archive (one hell of a collateral archive by the way, as they were not initially stored there for archiving proposes but as leftover stuff from articles. Which they were thinking of throwing away somewhere in the 1980s as a clearing out exercise.) Many of these photos only state who took the photo and not who is in the picture or any wider cultural information. So he has started to flesh out this information. What was interesting was his comment that people outside of Palestine view it as the holy land when in Palestine it is first and foremost viewed as home. So where do you store photographs taken through the (literal) lens of a coloniser? And how does this work in the digital context? Because even if there is a digital copy there is also a physical copy somewhere.
EXTRA NOTE: this is also where Joe mentioned ‘Nice White Parents’ and how this might be another case where diversity and decolonising is in fact benefiting the white-western academic world more than the people of Palestine.
The Scale of the Digital
There were three main speakers Kristine Khouri, Yazan Kopfy and Sana Yazigi. All three had a very different approach to digital archiving.
On side of the scale I am going to put Khouri, whose project was ‘Past Disquiet’, which she described to be like a website in an exhibition space. She seemed to be slightly fearful of algorithms and digital space. On the other end of the scale Kopfy, who used instagram to collect information on his pictures. Interestingly he struggled to get information on images from the 1920s and 30s, but got lots on photos from the 1970s. I feel this really shows the age of instagram users. And in the middle of the scale I will place Yazigi, who created the Creative Memory of the Syrian Revolution, a rather epic website, which is kept update. The only thing I worry about is the actual user friendliness of it.
To me this wide range of approaches to the digital is typical of our time. There are those who embrace it and those who are fearful of it. Either way there are questions to be asked around big data, data rot and the environment. Because all these digital things are stored on servers which use a lot of energy. Sadly this was not fully disgusted which I do wish they had done.
Hauntings
Nearer to the end of the talk Kristine Khouri started talking about hauntings in the archive. An idea that Joe could get behind if it was art but not necessarily if it was academic. But the idea of ghost and hauntings I do not think is too much of a far fetch idea since going through an archive can be like going through someone’s knicker drawer. I think this is especially true with oral histories because you are listening to the person’s voice. There is a responsibility attached to going through people’s archives. Maybe an increased awareness of people’s presence when researching will deliver a more ethical research or an awareness of their intentions or maybe even warnings about the future.