Continuum informatics and the emergent archive: Theory for memory-making
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In this paper I present the Mediated Recordkeeping model developed as an outcome of my PhD research into YouTube as an emergent archive and space of diversity and multiplicity and of personal and community memories and stories. The Mediated Recordkeeping model was developed from a deep understanding of continuum informatics and as a result of an exploration into the numerous and simultaneous transactional and evidential processes involved in the creation, use and value of cultural expression on YouTube. The Mediated Recordkeeping model challenges and extends continuum informatics, and presents a framework for understanding memory-making and recordkeeping as a node in a pluralized network. The opportunity this model presents is for heritage and memory institutions to connect, collaborate and facilitate an active, participative shared memory-making network that is diverse, yet inclusive of multiple narratives, including those that are dispersed, hidden and incommensurate.
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Continuum informatics and the emergent archive: Theory for memory-making
- 1. Continuum informatics and the emergent archive: Theory for memory-making Leisa Gibbons PhD. Kent State University School of Library and Information Science
- 3. 1. The multiple and entwined role of individuals and community in establishing identity and evidence; 2. Curation as a distinct dimension of activity. 3. The role of narrative as power across time and space; 4. The role of technology systems in mediating memory; 5. The need to acknowledge co-creation and plurality across all interactions; and 6. The role of mediated recordkeeping as a value-based relationship people have with managing recorded information facilitated by technologies, frameworks, environments, identity and memory.
- 5. Continuum informatics is the body of knowledge, including several theoretical models, that promotes a multi-dimensional understanding of the transformative interactions involved in creating, capturing, organizing and pluralizing information over time and throughout different spaces (spacetime).
- 10. Exploring web archiving: • assumptions, concepts, theory • policy & frameworks • Narrative/ identity/ evidence Examining distributed identity networks: • Individuals • Communities • Document requirements • Identity/mediate/memory Designing participative archives: • Connect • Collaborate • Facilitate • Meet requirements • Activities/designs/memory/identity Exploring search results/functions: • Google • Catalogues • Archival systems • Evidence/functions/memory Exploring user experience: • Museums • Archives • Identity/memory/narrative Designing sustainable digital systems: • Museums • Archives • Libraries • Evidence/identity/mediate
Editor's Notes
- Hello and welcome to my presentation. Today I am going to talk about a theoretical model I developed as an outcome of my PhD study on the formation of cultural heritage in online spaces. In this presentation I wanted to go back to some analysis work I had done a few years ago to explore one particular video I assessed, but this time using this new model. So today I am showing how the model works – and I hope you will contribute to the analysis as I go.
- This is the model – it is called Mediated recordkeeping – culture as evidence.
- In my research on social media website YouTube I found a need to highlight several interlinking complexities related to the formation of cultural heritage. These include: A mediated recordkeeping approach is about the contexts that contribute to and enable multiple, diverse and dispersed voices across spacetime. It has been suggested by colleagues at Kent State, who watched a run through of this presentation, that the term recordkeeping is not necessary in the title and in fact lends the model to a particular reading when it would be something far bigger. So please consider this issue over the next few slides and let me know what you think. The model shows five dimensions of interactivity - co-create, capture, organise, curate, and pluralise. The axes that intersect these dimensions are transactionality, mediated memories, memory making, evidentiality, narratives, and identities.
- A mediated recordkeeping approach is about the contexts that contribute to and enable multiple, diverse and dispersed voices across spacetime. It has been suggested by colleagues at Kent State, who watched a run through of this presentation, that the term recordkeeping is not necessary in the title and in fact lends the model to a particular reading when it would be something far bigger. So please consider this issue over the next few slides and let me know what you think. The model shows five dimensions of interactivity - co-create, capture, organise, curate, and pluralise. The axes that intersect these dimensions are transactionality, mediated memories, memory making, evidentiality, narratives, and identities.
- I also chose to situate this research within a continuum perspective– what I have begun to call - continuum informatics – which describes the body of knowledge, including several theoretical models, that promotes a multi-dimensional understanding of the transformative interactions involved in creating, capturing, organizing and pluralizing information over time and throughout different spaces or spacetime. The broad concept of a continuum refers to “something” that is ongoing, but which changes in many small ways over time: a progression of minute degrees. This is a dictionary definition. Often a continuum is visualised as a spiral which it makes it is clear that actions that happen over time can never be repeated because it just moves on. The things that do change over time are the contexts – like what is being done, who does it, for what reasons, and how.
- This model represents the spiral and the multiple dimensions of contexts. While space and immediacy changes from co-create to pluralise – the model is not designed to be read from create to pluralize - from a beginning to an end. It is a model of multiplicity and plurality– within it exists many interactions and contexts – and so loops from plurality to co-create as a continuum I see the model as a framework that helps to map out threads as they link over time and space – sometimes immediately, sometimes over millennia. Sometimes in the same place, sometimes in difference spaces. The model also allows for multiple embedded knowledge and knowing – taking into account personal, community and societal understandings of contexts from within and external to their immediate contexts – that all exist simultaneously, although some may be hidden or dislocated. To demonstrate how it works I want to show you a YouTube video that has been preserved in a national archive in Australia.
- This is the National Film and Sound Archive catalogue entry for the video we are about to watch. What can you tell me about this video? There is a copy of this archive entry on your handout. From this description we get an idea about the video – that it is from YouTube because the summary comes from there. It has something to do with music, or more specifically folk music, and has been contextualised with an Indigenous identity. We also know that the video is not accessible without going into the archive. The summary of the video provides all the contextual information. The media is described as film – which is most definitely is not – it is digital video. http://blog.fanpagekarma.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/3976381424_ef16e38ecc_o.png Chooky dancers described via NFSA. http://colsearch.nfsa.gov.au/nfsa/search/display/display.w3p;adv=;group=;groupequals=;holdingType=;page=0;parentid=;query=chooky%20dancers;querytype=;rec=6;resCount=10
- Watch video first. This is in part what the video looks like on YouTube. Can you already see what might be missing from the NFSA catalogue entry by just looking at this small view of the YouTube channel and having watched the video? How is context communicated – how is this a YouTube video? Who is it relevant to? What does it mean in relation to cultural heritage? What is it a record of? Why was it made and in what context should it be understood? There is some information here, but not enough. I cannot even be entirely sure if this is the video that the NFSA catalogue is capturing. The description on YouTube is 99% the same as the NFSA description, so it must be right yes? Let’s get onto a reading using the model. https://youtu.be/O-MucVWo-Pw
- Firstly, the video itself is a (1)trace – it shows people dancing to music. This context is related to both (2)memory-making and evidentiality where memory-making is the decision making, and evidentiality is the process of applying decisions. The dance is (3)evidence of a decision to fuse modern Yolngu (Yon-gu) movements with the Greek Zorba – it doing so it becomes part of (4)community memories and encoding systems related to dance and heritage. These are also related to how dance is perceived in this community as well as more broadly in society – this is about the (5)narrative of dance in multiple cultures and the role it plays as (6)collective memories for various cultures. The man who made this decision – the lead dancer, called Lionel - is one of many (7)actors in the co-creation of the video - and the dance and the video are evidence of his personal decisions related to his community and contribute to his (8)personal memories. The Ramagining Festival, (9)an organization in this context, is the (10)reason why Lionel created this dance, but the use of dance in the (11)Yolngu community was also created to educate people to promote healthy living in the community – serving (12) multiple, simultaneous functions and activities. Other actors involved in the creation of the video are (13)Frank Djirrimbilpilwuy (Dj-irrim-bilpil-why), the man behind the camera. Frank is from (14)Galiwinku on Elcho Island north of the Northern Territory of Australia. Also included are the dancers as individuals and as a group – (15)the Chooky Dancers. The audience who we hear laughing helps us to understand this is to be (16)seen as comedy. This tells us something of the role this performance had in the community, and by us watching on a (17)shared system, communicates to us something of the meaning of comedy (18)as interpreted by others. These are shared stories about (19)identity and narrative highlights the role of narrative providing the power to help form identity and identity helps to reinforce individual and shared narratives. The video was (20)recorded on technology that allows for the capture of moving images with sound - maybe a video camera, or possibly a mobile phone. This (21)transaction of taking video sits within multiple (22)activities including how Frank wanted to capture this video to share because he thought it was something special. The video is captured in several systems – (23)local and shared and demonstrates how technology plays the role of (24)mediator of memories for the individuals and the community. The (25)transactionality reflects what goes on and the mediated memories shows the how. Also, perhaps Frank took the video to share specifically on YouTube – (26)an activity that moves this video into new dimensions of meaning – beyond community and collective memories to (27)networked memory. The movement of the video to YouTube, from Frank’s camera or computer is also an act of (28)re-creation, but also capture and organisation. YouTube provides in their system (29)ways to encode the video in relation to its role in the website – metadata is generated by YouTube itself, as well as (30)added by the channel creator or video uploader in collaboration. A time and date stamp is added, YouTube automatically orders the videos, and assigns the URL and provides a tool for information-sharing functionality within YouTube but also across the (31)Internet (purpose) as part of social communication. Being able to access and view the video, and its growing popularity demonstrates how it is (32)valued by people within the YouTube community. A few days after it was uploaded a café owner from an island in Greece screened it in the local square. Using the (33)network the café owner presented a new story of Greek culture – referencing also the value this dance and music has (34)to Greek culture. This video also exists as a hosted video in other YouTube channels by people called Bartos2007 and Kneali Xroerc as well as (35)curated within other people’s playlists related to various contexts including indigenous media, dancing, Zorba the Greek, but also just random contexts like favourite clips. How people use technology to archive the video as having continuing value by managing it within their own channels contributes to (36)organisational and community warrant and the development of (37)collaborative memory systems. The NFSA, as an (38)institution is a node in the (39)networked memories playing their own role. They are likely to have (40)downloaded and captured the video from YouTube when they decided to add it to their collections for the purpose of (41)collective memory – driven by a (42)mandate to preserve. But by doing so (43)they re-created the video by capturing it into a (44)new format, and re-creating its value by identifying and including metadata they determined was relevant, in effect re-creating the story of the video and its place in memory. These are many other contexts of the video I have not touched on today such the moving image genre, the other performances of the Chooky Dancers, or the media organisation that Frank worked for, or layers of social, political and cultural context related to Australian indigenous people and community. Additionally, the research findings also highlighted the role of data and databases as heritage – something being investigated right now by social media archivists. There are also the comments that provide informational context for each video as well as across online communities- this has been researched and is used in documentation strategies where a topic or subject is chosen and web content and social media are collected during a determined time period. But there are also links to how YouTube work occurs offsite and in physical spaces as well as online. The complexity of these contexts are not being explored – documentation strategies are not necessarily designed to capture all the content – and there is little contemporary theory to support these practices. I believe the opportunity this model presents is an opportunity to explore (45)pluralisation. This means not just using the model to tell my interpretation – which is what I told today, but to be able to see and map out the multiple, simultaneous stories. The stories do not have to start with the object either – they can start with the individual, or the narrative, or the community memories related to the role of dance, or the use of technology to develop collaborative systems. My questions are - does the NFSA, as node in a larger memory network, have to exist as a repository or collector of objects? The custodian of memory. What else is possible? Do you have any suggestions?
- Someone suggested to me recently that it would be possible to use this model to map Google search results – to see how the algorithm works within a cultural dimension – I have no idea of what the results might be, but I am guessing they would favour a dominant narrative. I am about to launch my first project using this model – in this research I focus on the practice of web archiving to explore the concepts, assumptions and theory that sits behind it and how a mind set informs the creation of web archives. The second project I am working on is the study of distributed identity in relation to memory-making. I want to collaborate with individuals and communities to develop a series of conceptual requirements for memory-making. Findings would then we reflected back on what I found in the first project. I am looking for research partners for these projects. Ultimately the goal is to explore participative archives from multiple, collaborative perspectives, and how memory institutions can connect, collaborate and facilitate multiplicity and pluralisation in our rich, diverse and technologically evolving world.
- Thank you for your time. Any questions?