Presentation at RESAW conference, Aarhus, June 2015

1. SPATIAL AND
TEMPORAL MODELS
OF DIGITAL ARCHIVES
Nathalie Casemajor

2. WHERE DO DIGITAL ARTEFACTS GO
ONCE PUBLISHED ONLINE?

3. “From a methodological point of
view, it is the things-in-motion that
illuminate their human and social
context”.
A. Appadurai
The Social Life of Things:
Commodities in Cultural Perspective (1986)
THE SOCIAL LIFE OF DIGITAL THINGS

4. EXPLORATORY CASE STUDY
REPRODUCTIONS OF CONTEMPORARY ARTWORKS
corpus of web pages
(image-based search)
corpus of web images files
(material properties + metadata)

5. MIXED-METHODS
JPG
photoshoped
image
ONLINE
RAW
IPTC
metadata
exif
metadata
invisible
watermark
facebook
press
instagram
gallery website
artist website
reverse
image
search
…
…
…
…
…

10. DATA COLLECTED
SOURCE IMAGE FILES
- - ID code
- original file name
- URL
- weight
- pixel size
- format
COPIES OF IMAGE FILES
- ID code
- file name
- URL
- weight
- pixel size
- format
SOURCE PUBLICATION WEB PAGES
- category
- website name
- URL
- publication date
- capture date
- remarks
RE-PUBLICATION WEB PAGES
- category
- website name
- URL
- publication date
- capture date
- account name
- level of interaction

11. HOW TO MAP
WEB MATETIAL AS
NETWORKS OF CIRCULATION?
spatial + temporal dimensions

12. SPATIAL MODELS
(and special metaphors)

13. Geographical layer
Physical network layer
Logical network layer
Mediascape layer (graph)
Social network layer
Social field
(power relations, brokers)

14. Geographical layer
Physical network layer
Logical network layer
Mediascape layer (graph)
Social network layer
Social field
(power relations, brokers)

15. GLAMS
WIKIMEDIA
SPECIALIZED
BLOGS
TWITTER
GENERAL MEDIA
(tv, newspapers)
PEER2PEER
PARASITE
WEBSITES
COMMERCIAL
ARCHIVES
AUCTION
HOUSES
PROPOSED METHOD
1) Locate copies in thematic clusters
FACEBOOK
INSTAGRAM

16. GLAMS
WIKIMEDIA
SPECIALIZED
BLOGS
TWITTER
GENERAL MEDIA
(tv, newspapers)
PEER2PEER
PARASITE
WEBSITES
COMMERCIAL
ARCHIVES
AUCTION
HOUSES
PROPOSED METHOD
1) Locate copies in thematic clusters
2) Map the hyperlink graph around these resources
FACEBOOK
INSTAGRAM

17. EXAMPLE
LITERATURE BLOGS
By Crépel, Boullier & Le Béchec | 2010

18. TEMPORAL DIMENSION IN SPATIAL GRAPHS

19. TEMPORAL
MODELS
(and lineages)

20. DISTRIBUTED OBJECT (Gell)

21. Lineage 1
FACEBOOK
Lineage 2
ARTIST WEBSITE
timeline

22. CHALLENGES WITH TEMPORAL DATA
> publication date
> crawl date
> image weight and size
> image file copies date
of creation or modification
> perceptual hashing
(if image transformed)
> text analysis
(contextual info)
CLUES ISSUES
not always available
source platforms generate
thumbnails
not always available
not always accurate
is not publication date
does not always happen
time consuming

23. Nathalie Casemajor
PhD, Assistant Professor in Communication
Dpt. of Social Sciences
University of Quebec in Gatineau (Canada)