Round 01: Bas

What i've read about archives so far is that digital technologies change the archive in ways that destabilize authority over what should be in the archive and the categorization of what's in the archive. People can now access archives over the internet, creating their own unique and contingent research paths, shaping new relations between different archive artefacts, and adding their own personal metadata. This questions the role of the researcher/user, who seems to be completely free, and about which we think a lot for new concepts. The role of the archivist also fundamentally changes, he seems to be obsolete at first glance, but can probably play a role in filtering all of the personal categorizations and new archiving material. So maybe, besides thinking of new ways of accessing the archive as a user, it's also interesting to look at concepts for the archivist.

Some general remarks about concepts i came up with so far (still only focussed on regular user):
- interaction between physical and virtual world
- social interaction within the archive
- making the audiovisual archive easily accessible and creating incentives for people to use or browse the archive.
- new ways of browsing the archive: physical browsing in a 3D immersive space.

I have a picture in mind of this last idea, it's based on some general futuristic ideas about browsing and disclosing information that appear movies like minority report and some new ways of categorizing archive material as in the example of the software studies lab in san diego (I posted some example movies earlier on this blog). The archive should appear around a person or a group of persons and the browsing should be physical and intuitive. It should be accessible anywhere. The groupversion could be in the form of a game, in which the team-members have to find certain information in the archive to construct a bigger picture. It's just a very general idea and i still have to work out the 'how and why'.

Some things that came up during discussion:
- incentive for browsing in a group: disuccions platform
- bringing the archive to the home (TV?)

Round 01 - Aeshta

These ideas are just things that have popped up in my mind. I still feel that I am not touching the right stuff jet.

Social Network (game)
Here I am looking at the connections between people. Also I want to find out how they would have to work together or share their stories.

- Use the Siftables as an access device. Let people use the rules of game like PackRat. Collection, finding, stealing and trading material that is accessible from the archive. Also having booths or other creative places to find special material.

- Having photo booths spread over the country people can use it to make short stories and watch stories from other people.

- Pirate Broadcasting channel. People can make material and retrieve from the archive and watching it on a "pirate" broadcast. ;)

Physical connection to archive
In this part I am searching for the physical connection with the body and the archive. Using the hands and touch to connect with the archive in some way.

- A space with many books. Each book has his content and a AR layer which is some how projected directly on the pages.
(try to avoid the view technological filter)Perhaps most fun to place such spaces in libraries.

Round 01 - Shauna

To rephrase the meta-statement we developed last Friday, the key goal for this project is to create concepts that connect people to the archive content in a meaningful, experiential, and durable way. From the meeting on Thursday with Johan, the two main insights I got were that:

• BenG (Beeld en Geluid) has the web2.0 aspects of archive already covered.
• There is an opportunity to create meaningful mixed physical-digital experience beyond those for the casual museum visitor (offsite and/or onsite)

Below I elaborate on five points that I find inspiring as a starting point for idea generation. Some first directions for ideas are listed in italics.

1. Continuity of experience (spatial and temporal)

• Provide a storyline/context/ritual/progression of steps that brings logic and structure to the experience, whatever that might be.
• Visitors can connect and reconnect to the archive easily.
• The experience should be immersive in that the technology aspect fades away. This means the usage should be intuitive.
• Link to the other services and experiences already developed by BenG
• INSPIRATION: using rituals facing extinction like going to the library or bookstore for an afternoon as a starting point/analogy for new concepts. For example, link the archive/library/bookstore/café experience in a new way? Get people to go outside of their houses!

2. Flexibility of interaction

• The interaction should be non-deterministic, supporting the needs/desires of individuals in making interpretations, making connections and their natural way of learning or exploration.

3. Interfacing the best of reality with the best of the digital

• What are the strengths, paradigm shifting ideas that each can take from the other? For example:
• Reality is immersive
• Web democratizes information, increases accessibility for all (or does it?)
• INSPIRATION: digitally stored information means that different methods of access can be mapped to the same data unlike a physical archive which is ordered by one system.
• INSPIRATION: embedding data in 3-D space, like the audio project Jan mentioned.

4. Durable/sustainable

• The concepts developed should be durable in the sense that the new ideas/principles can inform future design and design thinking.
• The concepts promote the preservation of cultural heritage and new ways of preserving/thinking of cultural heritage.
• New content creation/curation through users? New-ways of thinking about curation, content, i.e. mashup.

5. Accommodates sociality

• Supports groups as well as individuals. Rather than thinking of groups as homogenous, how do different people within a group play different roles?
• Multi-modal interaction between virtual/physical users
• Collaborative use/access of archive in new ways?

analog AR

As touched upon in the previous post, people have been augmenting reality way before there was this fetish for computer vision.

Here is Where: a project that rediscovers (lackluster) physical locations through historical accounts. New York Times article that describes the project.

“It’s sort of a reverse scavenger hunt,” he said. “Trying to find things that aren’t there.”

Other things to look at could be shamanism or other rituals in which people initiate this accessing of information that is not there. (Often this refers to the physical perceptible reality.) More to come.

Philosophical/Higher Level Questions + Reading List

What is:

- an archive?
- memory?
- reality?
- space?
- augmentation?

What are these things when they are mapped/layered on each other?

Some relevant literature/inspirations....

Art of Memory - Francis A. Yates (ask Kate for the pdf)

Relational Aesthetics - Nicolas Bourriaud

The Interventionists - Gregory Sholette

Library of Babel - Borges

Orality and Digitalization

Cybertherapy - a collection of papers on VR, mixed reality, interreality, ambient intelligence in health care.