Networked Collective Memory
Networked Collective Memory
A media-archeological approach towards digital collective memory Patty Jansen
Student number: 10219455 Patty.Jansen@student.uva.nl
patty@pattyjansen.nl
RMA Thesis Arts and Culture: Artistic Research Supervisor: dr. J.H. Hoogstad
Second Reader: dr. J. Boomgaard Universiteit van Amsterdam
Index
0.0 Introduction...4
1.0 Mediating Memory... 7
Collective Memory ...7
Official, Vernacular and Public Memory... 9
Portraits of Grief and Resilience... 9
The Role of the User in Collective Memory...13
2.0 Network Memory...14
Timeless Time... 14
Beyond News Paradigms and Network Diagrams... 15
Wolfgang Ernst's Processual Memory...18
3.0 Networked Collective Memory...20
The Deleted Collective Memory...20
The Retrievable Collective Memory...24
The Real-Time Collective Memory ... 28
The Open Collective Memory ...34
The Augmented Collective Memory ...38
The Updated Collective Memory ...41
The Animated Collective Memory ...45
4.0 Conclusion... 51
5.0 Bibliography...55
Literature... 55
Websources...56
0.0 Introduction
The past has become remarkably adjustable. The digital medium enables individuals to edit our past and present for the future to come. Collective memories are open to entire communities and their form has become as fluid and in flux as their traditional concept inherently is. Recent research has focussed on studying digital memory behavior such as digital memorials, digital memory archives, social media memorialization and the complexity of collective memories open tointeraction.1 In my previous artistic research, which resulted in the practical work The Private, The Public and The Nation (2012), I focused on the underlying media and political tactics concerning the depiction of death in the news and how this works into our collective memory of these events. Continuing my research, I concentrated on the development of these images into national symbols as for example the symbolic use of the Twin Towers in mass media. It was already back then, I traced the complex structures of collective memory as presented to us in the digital medium. Whereas in my earlier work, I approached events as presented for us by the media, the presentation of events as they appear on the web seem to be more ambiguous, due to the open source nature of the digital medium. Collective memory first was mostly in hands of those with the power to collect, represent and shape these memories; official institutions such as museums and other cultural institutions, where the digital medium allows for multiple voices to shape the same collective memory into versions of this memory. Memory and commemoration, official and vernacular memory now co-exist in the same medium. How do these developments influence the way we perceive and experience collective memory?
Collective memory is an abstract and complex concept. Many academics draw back on French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs (1877-1945) as a point of reference for the theory of collective memory. In 1925, Halbwachs wrote Les Cadres Sociaux de la Mémoire where he introduced collective memory as a social or cultural phenomenon, later also described as cultural memory. The concept has been developed throughout time, since historians depart from Halbwach's theory but shortly after draw back from his theory because Halbwachs asserts that individual memory is entirely socially determined.2 Most academics are convinced that there is a notion of individual agency in collective memory. Cultural theorist Jan Assmann (1938) further develops the notion of cultural memory as a distinction from Halbwachs theory of collective memory, which Assmann describes as 'communicative memory'. Cultural memory is a form of collective memory which is mediated and shared by a number of people, conveying to these people a collective identity, where Halbwachs concept of collective memory is not concerned with mediation through traditions, institutions and archives but lives in everyday interaction and communication about the past.3It becomes a 1 Andrew Hoskins, The Diffusion of Media/Memory: the new complexity, text cited from: Warwick Books
<http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/warwickbooks/complexity/andrew_hoskins/> (31 May 2015).
2 Wulf Kansteiner, 'Finding Meaning in Memory, A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies', in: History and
Theory, Vol. 41, No. 2, p. 181.
3 Jan Assmann, 'Communicative and Cultural Memory', in: Cultural Memory Studies, Astrid Erll, Ansgar Nünning (ed), Berlin 2008, p. 110 – 111.
collective memory in the terms of my research when this memory, paraphrasing Wolf Kansteiner, exists in the world and not only in the mind of a person, sharing a certain meaning about the past which is part of the life-worlds of individuals who join and want to join this certain collective.4 I hereby choose to follow Assmann's definition of cultural memory as a form of collective memory. The earlier addressed 'collective' individual agency is a key aspect to contemporary collective memory since the digital medium has become an important factor in the shaping of this collective memory. It allows users to actively and simultaneously produce and reproduce their and other versions of a collective past. A generative multi-memory, in which the browser is used as a collective memory-tool, providing the possibility to react and upload real-time. We can write our past for the future to come from our homes, in our chairs, at our desks. There are no longer
constraints for everyday users to upload and delete whatever it is what they want to say, show or react to. Web dynamics do not have the same power dynamics and hierarchy physical collective memory places do tend to have. However, once uploaded, these shared contributions are delivered to the unpredictable laws of the digital medium. Digital time, in comparison to static time as presented by historical writing, is an
inherent temporal and fluid concept. There is the possibility to publish immediately and what is uploaded can be altered minutes later, sometimes lost forever. Memory, also a fluid concept, is constructed in another dynamic fluid concept, where it changes while being produced and reproduced. The appearance of our collective memory has become, due to the digital medium, a progressive state in flux.As a theoretical point of departure, I consider the archive-oriented media archeology of media theorist Wolfgang Ernst (1952) to be relevant to my research. Drawing from German media theorist Friedrich Kittler (1943-2011) and French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984), Ernst's object oriented approach concentrates on the underlying processes that are unique to the digital medium itself and how these processes are influencing the way memory is archived. According to Ernst, the digital medium has come to generate meaning, as the archive does in Foucauldian sense - a dynamic agency; archive and memory have become metaphorical terms.5 In the digital medium they are in fact transfer processes which generate meaning in terms of other processes. Ernst's time-critical theory focusses on how digital archives generate meaning; how contemporary memory is generated, reflects our current society. I see Ernst's theory aligned with digital theorist and practitioner Anna Munster's An Aesthesia of Networks (2013), where Munster argues to view networks from the dynamic relations they render instead of the visualisations that flatten our experience of these networks. Through Ernst's medium specific approach towards a generative memory and the analysis of a range of case-studies situated within the digital medium, I will prove the following argument feasible;
The digital medium enforces a collective networked process which generates simultaneously memory and a loss of memory – a collective memory-on-memory.
4 Wulf Kansteiner, 'Finding Meaning in Memory, A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies', in: History and
Theory, Vol. 41, No. 2, p. 188.
In order to support my argument, I will explain seven case-studies which lie at heart of the specific processual and dynamic relations the digital medium generates. First case-study is the In Memoriam: September 11, 2001 deleted Wiki-page, which was voted to be deleted from Wikipedia in 2006 by the community itself and moved to a 'normal' URL-address. After this movement, it was badly maintained and this finally resulted in the page being hacked, unrecognizable for its original content. The voting and decision process on the other hand has maintained its own page on Wikipedia. Second case-study is the MH17
airplane-crash (2014), initially being acknowledged by an Ukrainian separatist leader on what we could call the Russian Twitter, but shortly after it became known it was a civil airplane, the post was removed from the site. However, the post was preserved in the Internet Archive and remains retrievable there ever since. In the third case-study, I will analyse a BBC-timeline which was a live digital reporting of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack in Paris. This reporting started approximately 75 minutes after the attack found place and brought forth a timeline which is produced out of real-time cross-platform messages and responses on the attack. The fourth case-study is the API (application programming interface) of the Open Cultuur Data (Open Culture Data) that provides data from the cultural heritage sector in order to stimulate the
development of valuable cultural applications.6 The API is open to anyone and is allowed accessible through a one page visual interface. The digital enables the collective to collectively access and use images from cultural institutions for their own personal or formal and (hopefully) cultural ends. The fifth case-study is the Augmenting Masterpieces project led by embedded researcher Johanna Barnbeck. Augmenting Masterpieces is a project that analyses visitor experiences in order to research the way the museum is perceived and how the viewer interacts with the traditional museum surroundings. The visitor is connected through a digital interface to the museum collection and other visitors, in order to change how exhibition spaces are
experienced socially. The sixth case-study is the Digitaal Joods Monument (Digital Monument to the Jewish Community in the Netherlands, 2005), designed by Dutch Art and New Technology foundation Mediamatic. This monument only exists on the web and is constituted from digital techniques and algorithms. Its
existence depends solely on the web; it is a medium specific monument and is therefore defined by the digital relations and errors it returns. The seventh case-study shows us the different sorts of collective images that are uploaded to the internet and are produced with digital techniques, such as photoshop, digital apps and sites to render animated GIF's.
The thesis is ordered as followed; chapter one will first explain the concept of collective memory in terms of my research. Chapter two will outline the dynamics of the digital medium and lay out the
foundation for the media-archeological perspective of Wolfgang Ernst related to this thesis. As followed, chapter three will present the seven case-studies to situate them in the previously described framework. Chapter four will provide the conclusion where I will come back to my argument, giving an overview of how these case-studies prove to be examples of a collective processual memory-on-memory.
1.0 Mediating Memory
Collective
Memory
“Collective memory is not history, though it is sometimes made from similar material.”
(Wolfgang Kansteiner, 2002, p. 180)
“The concept of ‘collective memory’ rests upon the assumption that every social group
develops a memory of its past; a memory that emphasizes its uniqueness and allows it to preserve its self-image and pass it on to future generations.”
(Moti Neiger a.o., 2011, p. 3)
Memory relates to our identity and collective memory relates to our national or community identity. We are in need of a narrative that binds us in a uniting feeling, a togetherness – the feeling that we are not alone in this.7
This identity can survive and evolve overtime, meaning content-wise, it can and will change. Collective
memory, in terms of Assmann's definition of collective memory, is therefore a fluid concept but it does not exist in the abstract: it takes on corporeal form in means of memorials, museums and the people who believe in them. There is no collective memory without public articulation; their presence and influence can only be discerned through their ongoing usage.8 It needs production and performance, since we cannot actually posses this certain moment in history we try to remember. As Moti Neiger (a.o.) writes On Media Memory: Collective Memory in a New Media Age (2011), collective memory is mediated through rituals, ceremonial commemorations and mass media texts. Examples are a nations half mast flag as a sign for mourning which is performed on specific dates to commemorate specific events or performed right after specific events to show grief and respect, the 'Dodenherdenking' on the 4th of May in the Netherlands, where two minutes of silence at eight o'clock in the evening is contributed to commemorate those who died for 'our' freedom in the WO II and the special supplement of the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad in July 2014 to commemorate the victims of the MH17 airplane crash. [fig. 1-3] Collective memory is, inherently and by default,always mediated.9
7 Carolyn Kitch, ' ”Mourning in America”: ritual, redemption, and recovery in news narrative after September 11', in: Journalism Studies Vol. 4 (2) 2003, pp. 213 – 224.
8 Moti Neiger, Oren Meyers, Eyal Zandberg, On Media Memory: Collective Memory in a New Media Age, 2011 p. 3. 9 Ibidem, p. 3.
[fig. 1] Dodenherdenking Amsterdam 2013.
[
fig. 2] Half mast flag [fig. 3] Supplement of Algemeen Dagblad to comemmorate those who died in theOfficial, Vernacular and Public Memory
The memory produced by museums, archives and memorials, the so-called institutions of memory, is described as official memory.10 This sort of remembering has a self-evident nature of producing memory; it renders and presents our past, it bonds our nation through our cultural heritage, through our national misery and shapes our national identity. Thus, the imagined community is created which Benedict Anderson addressed in his 1983 essay. These institutions, with economic and political motives, have obtained the power to select, represent and interpret these memories; what should be remembered and what should be forgotten.11 As Pierre Nora wrote in his essay Between Memory and History (1989), “In this sense, collective memory is both a tool and an object of power.”12 Vernacular memory on the other hand, represents almost literally the voice of the people. It is important to point out this is not to be confused with the terms 'public memory' or 'social memory', which are in itself forms of official, vernacular or combinations of official and vernacular remembering, as Bodnar describes. Vernacular memory is at best described as memory in the public realm produced by individual members of society and encompasses personal approaches towards public memories. In short, vernacular memory is the individual experience and mediation of a collective memory. Public memory, John Bodnar (1944) writes in Remaking America: Public Memory,
Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (1993), emerges from the intersection of official and vernacular culture expressions. It is produced from the debates that surround fundamental issues concerning our society, described by Bodnar as the politics of culture, which encompasses societies power structures, organization and the meaning of its past and present. Public memory develops from the
contradictions brought forth by our society, for example ethnic and national cultures, men and women, young and old, etcetera.13 Its function, Bodnar writes, is to mediate these contradictory and competing statements. Therefore, public memory is constituted by its polarities as a result of the power structures it is built upon. And equally important; it represents both official and vernacular interests, although Bodnar does emphasize that public commemorations do seem to celebrate official interests more than vernacular ones.14
Portraits of Grief and Resilience
A widely known and even awarded form of collective memory where official and vernacular memory intersect ('public memory'), is the 'Portraits of Grief' section in The New York Times which started the mourning process in America almost immediately after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. [fig. 4]
'The Portraits of Grief' appeared in a section called 'A Nation Challenged' in The New York Times till December 31 2001, but will remain indefinite on www.nytimes.com and will be updated with additional profiles. The victims of 9/11 were portrayed with their picture and a commemorative text; a personal story 10 Ekaterina Haskins, Between Archive and Participation: Public Memory in a Digital Age, Rhetoric Society Quarterly (37) 2007, p.
402.
11 Dejan Jović: “Official memories in post-authoritarianism: an analytical framework”, Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans, Vol 4 (2004), No 2, 97-108.
12 Pierre Nora, Between Memory and History, Representations No.26 (Spring 1989), pp. 7 -24.
13 John Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century, Princeton 1992, p. 14.
told by relatives and friends. People were united next to each other, without any classifying order according to rank, nationality etcetera. It symbolizes a collective's urge for identification and struggle to cope with the aftermath of this event. The sections gave the victims of the attacks a face and a name and the city and nation something to hold on to. It united the people of New York and America and symbolized the first step to turn 9/11 into something comprehensible.15 In 2002, The New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for the section 'A Nation Challenged', which, according to the Pulitzer Price Jury, “(...) coherently and
comprehensively covered the tragic events, profiled the victims, and tracked the developing story, locally and globally.”16 In 2011, at the 10th anniversary of the attacks, Time Magazine published their Emmy award winning 'Beyond 9/11: Portraits of Resilience' , a direct reference to the New York Times 'Portraits of Grief section.17 It comprises a website with testimonies from forty men and women who all had their own part in dealing with the attacks. [fig. 5 – 6]
“If the story of the United States has a theme so far in the 21st century, it is surely one of resilience. To hail that spirit of September 11, 2001, TIME revisited the people who led us, moved us and inspired us, from the morning of the attacks through the tumultuous decade that followed. These astonishing testimonies — from 40 men and women including George W. Bush, Tom Brokaw, General David Petraeus, Valerie Plame Wilson, Black Hawk heli-copter pilot Tammy Duckworth, and the heroic first responders of Ground Zero — define what it means to meet adversity, and then overcome it.”18
When you enter the website, the portraits of these forty men and women are aligned next to each other. When the mouse hovers over, a red line indicates a portrait and when clicked, a smaller window opens, showing the portrait, a short movie of this person telling his or her version of 9/11 with the text description of this movie as an option. Below, this person is linked to other portraits on the website. Former president Bush, army fighters, survivors and family of lost ones are aligned with each other on the same level; they have all experienced their share of the horrific event, they all had to deal with it and they have overcome it. Both 'Portraits of Grief' and 'Portraits of Resilience' render the contradictory structures Bodnar describes into an uniting public memory; an attempt to soften the grief and to overcome this event, collectively. Moreover, this reflects how collective memory can change overtime: from grief, it develops into resilience. From mourning, it enforces a uniting perseverance. From the newspaper it moves into the website, from printed stories we now have recorded personal stories and their linking to others. It visualises the community relations the collective memory is set out to build.
15 Patty Jansen, research paper: 'The Twin Tower Mythology' (2014).
16 The Pulitzer Prizes | Citation, from website: Pulitzer < http://www.pulitzer.org/citation/2002-Public-Service> (31 May 2015). 17 'Portraits of Resilience' appeared as a special issue, a film documentary, a book and a photo exhibition. They won an Emmy
award for the category of “New Approaches to News and Documentary Programming.”
18 'Beyond 9/11: Portraits of Resilience', from website: TIME.com <http://content.time.com/time/beyond911/> (retrieved 30th May 2015).
[fig. 5] Website TIME Magazine's 'Portraits of Resilience' 2011.
The Role of the User in Collective Memory
In 2007, scholar Aaron Hess analysed four examples of vernacular user generated web memorials in which he argues against Bodnar's argument that public commemorations usually celebrate official concerns more
than vernacular ones.19 The memorial websites,accordingto Hess, “offer a unique forum for discussion of
the vernacular experience.” The digital medium offers users the time and space offline memorials do not.20 According to digital researcher André Donk, the web is the place where individual memories can become collective and vice versa and where user generated history is discovered by the mainstream media. Donk illustrates his argument with an example of the German magazine Spiegel which appears in an online edition, containing a section called einestages.de. This website provides historically written articles written by its readers instead of professional journalists and claims to be a part of Germany’s collective memory, Donk describes this as 'bottom up history' – the voice of the people meeting official history.21 It occurs to me, when collective memory is discussed concerning web users, we distinguish them to be vernacular. The people, apart from institutions and media. However, in a medium that is based on its networks, is not everyone a 'user', even when it is an institution? In collective memory theory, we speak of official and vernacular memory and the parts where they intersect and create a tension. However, in networks, there is no hierarchy except maybe in users and web-masters, in terms of who has an editing role concerning a certain part of the web and who does not, who has the power to take down networks and who does not. There is a sense of diffused control and this is why nations such as Iran, Russia and China do try to take control in terms of denying national web access to certain websites with a freedom of speech, worldly participation and massive media attention such as Twitter. In other words; they try to gain territory in a medium that is not grounded in the concept of space to begin with. Power relations in web dynamics offer a different structure apart from existing power structures, a topic I will discussin the following chapter. It seems that collective memory theory habits to distinct between official and vernacular memory are a bit too easily projected on digital collective memory, where different structures of the intersection of these two appear. I consider both official and vernacular memory 'makers' all to be 'memory developing users' on the web. Even more important, as I will show in my case-studies; more and more often the web seems to stimulate forms of public memory where official and vernacular memory not only intersect, but are also designed to collaborate. For future reference: when I address the 'user' in the next chapters, I address both official and vernacular web users.
19 John Bodnar, Remarking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century, Princeton 1992, p. 16.
20 Aaron Hess, 'In digital remembrance: vernacular memory and the rhetorical construction of web memorials' in: Media, Culture & Society 29(5) 2007, p. 828.
21 André Donk , 'The Digitization of Memory: Blessing or Curse? A Communication Science Perspective', p. 13. Presented at the Media in Transition Conference “MIT6: Stone and Papyrus, Storage and Transmission”, April 24-26, 2009, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston.
2.0 Network Memory
Timeless Time
In
Networks Without a Cause (2012), Geert Lovink points out that digital networks are both powerful and dissolve power; the internet can be “secondary” and dominant at the same time. This results into a diffuse type of control; the digital power structures aligned next to existing 'real' power structures..22 The internet enforces a dual nature; moral outrage on heavy news topics disappear easily in the '24-hour spectacle' of the web.23 The Internet is not merely just a tool anymore, but the creation of a collaborative “user culture”, a new fluid ecology with its own characteristics.24 In other words; this new fluid ecology is where human life meets technology resulting in a complex structure. Lovink proposes a contemporary network theory that reflects the rapid changes, real-time flows and takes the critical and cultural dimensions of technical media seriously; he proposes to study the web from the webs cultural logics such as real-time, linking vs liking and the rise of national webs instead of what impact it might have on our lives. “We cannot understand the Web by deconstructing The New York Times,” Lovink writes, “We have to get beyond the news paradigm”.25Lovink draws from Manuel Castells’ theory of The Rise of the Network Society (2004) where Castells (1942) introduces his theory of the 'space of flows'. Castells' theory distincts between the space of places; our 'real' world in its physical manifestation as defined by its social relationships, and the space of flows; a space organised by the networks and flows of information in our contemporary society. The space of flows connects humans, the node-network and computer systems together.26 This space of flows eventually will manifest somehow into a physical space and form, however, its internal logic on how and how it manifests it self to be physical, is determined by the network. The space of flows does not negate places but time; Castells introduces his concept of timeless time, which is the internal ordering logic of networks. In Castells' words: “Timeless time belongs to the space of flows, while time discipline, biological time, and socially determined sequencing characterize places around the world, materially structuring and destructuring our segmented societies. Space shapes time in our society, thus reversing an historical trend: flows induce timeless time, places are time- bounded.”27 His concept is translated in the transformation of time in two forms: simultaneity and timelessness. Castells here refers to the possibility of the real-time experience of historical events through live reporting on the one hand (Castells provides the 1991 collapse of the Soviet state as a starting point, but we can easily refer to 9/11 as well) and the mixing of 'times' in the media on the other hand, creating a temporal collage, synchronizing their timing in a flat horizon. “History is first
organized according to the availability of visual material”, Castells writes, “then submitted to the 22 Geert Lovink, Networks Without a Cause: A Critique of Social Media, London 2011, p. 73.
23 Ibidem, p. 3. 24 Ibidem, p. 13. 25 Ibidem, p. 69.
26 Manuel Castells, Rise of the Network Society, West-Sussex/Singapore 2010 2nd edition with new preface, pp. Xxxi – xxxii.
computerized possibility of selecting seconds of frames to be pieced together, or split apart, according to specific discourses.” The user-producer and user-consumer organise information, perception and expression by their impulses, distorting the historical ordering of chronological events and become arranged in time sequences based on these impulses.28 Castells describes this as a culture of the eternal and the ephemeral; it reaches back and forth the sequence of our cultural history of events but at the same time it is transitory because each arrangement and sequence depend on the context and purpose it is constructed. We are not in a culture of circularity, Castells concludes, but we find ourselves in the midst of undifferentiated temporality of cultural expressions.29
Beyond News Paradigms and Network Diagrams
In An Aesthesia of Networks (2013), Anna Munster proposes a further developed approach to the link-node network that human-computer interaction comprises and moves beyond the news paradigm. The title refers to our contemporary experience of networks; all our networks, whether economical, social or legal, are visualised in the same link-node network diagrams. According to Munster, this flattens our experience of networks as active and relational processes and assemblages, “while deadening the sense of complexity.”.30 Munster challenges us to rethink our experience of a network and start questioning and thinking from the network itself; how do networks experience, what operations do networks perform and undergo to change and produce new forms of experience?31 To enforce the relational experience of her network theory, Munster draws from an untechnical theory of experience; the work of empiricist William James (1842-1910). Experience, according to James, is a process which is comprised out of relations – or connections, which are also part of the experience. It shows an understanding of the production of experience on a 'molecular level', a reference to French philosopher Felix Guattari's concept of the molecular, which is also interwoven in Munster's examples throughout the book. Munster uses James' philosophy to make sense of the networks rhizome and “to get a way out of the now overdetermined and superabundant social and organizational network analyses”, hereby positioning her theory across Lovink's solution to network complexity in forms of organized networks. Most important, she points out the dynamics of recursion within the human and non-human actors behave and interact. Munster refers to Latour's network theory where non-humans and nonnon-humans are on the same level. In Munster's words; “As Bruno Latour likes to remind us, humans and nonhumans are in this together (1993:3). But we are not together in the same ways; that is, our togetherness is also
heterogeneous. It is through this heterogeneous togetherness that networked experience arises.”32 To illustrate this, Munster uses the example of Autoscopia (2009), a virtual artwork made by Justin Clemens, Christopher Dodds and Adam Nash and was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery of Australia for the
Doppelganger exhibition, exploring the notions of online portraiture. [ fig. 7 - 8]
28 Manuel Castells, Rise of the Network Society, West-Sussex/Singapore 2010 2nd edition with new preface, pp. 491-2. 29 Ibidem, pp. 491-2.
30 Anna Munster. An Aesthesia of Networks: Conjunctive Experience in Art and Technology. Cambridge 2013, pp. 1-18. (ebook) 31 Ibidem, pp. 1-18. (ebook)
Autoscopia’s Second Life portraits are built using data from internet-based 'vanity searches'
conducted within the Second Life installation. Each name creates a unique outcome composed of 27 'limbs'. Each limb is fed data from websites such as Google, Facebook, Twitter (and other more invasive, though publicly available, sources) etc, with colours, geometry and audio affected by variations in search volume. Data is then re-published via discrete web pages automatically composed through text and images collected during the search. The identity created will thereafter be reincorporated into future search results. Each portrait also 'Tweets' its existence on Twitter, with both the web pages and Tweets looping back into future portraits.33
The higher the density of the images online, the more recognizable the portrait becomes. The work, Munster emphasizes, mirrors how networked ecologies and their relations come to be generated.34 Inserting your name, renders an image back to you while the rendering of this images leaves a trace on the web in the form of a URL which is to be found when searching the web and leads you back to your personalised Autoscopia webpage. By then, your name has also been added to the sequence of users who have inserted their names as well. Recursively and autopoetically, Munster asserts, spreading generates more spread; the more things go viral, the more they become networked. It folds back on itself in order to replicate, it builds on itself towards one point but simultaneously generates something new; platforms, sensations and unpredictable relations. The networked experience is constituted out of its relations, and therefore, we can experience it
immediately.35
33 Quoted from website: Autoscopia <http://www.autoscopia.net/pages/index.html> (Retrieved 31 May 2015). 34 See note 30, pp. 1-18. (ebook).
[ fig. 7] Autoscopia (2009)
Wolfgang Ernst's Processual Memory
“Nothing is less clear today than the word ‘archive’” (Jacques Derrida, 1996, p. 90).
“The imperative of our epoch is not only to keep everything, to preserve every indicator of memory – even when we are not sure which memory is being indicated – but also to produce archives.”
(Pierre Nora, 1989, p. 14).
“Now is the time not to be lost in historicist relativism but to pursue the question that the present escalation of the media addresses to an archive, library, museum, or a collective memory called “the past.”
(Wolfgang Ernst, 2013 ,p. 49).
In the theory of media theorist Wolfgang Ernst the notion of media temporality or how a medium produces time and therefore experience and memory, is fundamental to his theory of media archeology. Digital algorithmic processes operate on a level that are not directly accessible to our human senses, described by Ernst as micro-events or micro-temporal processes.36 The diagram tends to illustrate this for us. To Ernst the diagram is, in the words of Jussi Parikka: “(...) both and indexical mapping of circuitry which guides both the machine processes and is a way to tap into how temporality – the new regimes of memory – is being
circuited on this micro-level. The diagram shows how machines work but is also a way to understand how society operates through the diagrams of machines.”37 The micro-temporality in the operativity of data processing replaces the traditional macro-time of the historical archive, which means that memory is literally permanently in transition.38 Data processing in digital archives takes place in real-time; a 'fast memory', as Ernst describes it, which is experienced as the present. These processes open up to a generative, participative form of archival reading, from which Ernst introduces the term 'dynarchive'.39 What is created is a
processual memory; dynamically updatable and reproducible but not a permanent or fixed memory. The internet's technological infrastructure is temporary and subject to its permanent rewriting, we see this very clearly when we compare the classic printed static encyclopedia to the digital dynamic Wikipedia. On the
36 Friedrich Kittler, 'There is no Software.' in: Stanford Literature Review. 9,1, Spring 1992, 81-90. (English). 37 Jussi Parikka, Operative Media Archaeology: Wolfgang Ernst’s Materialist Media Diagrammatics, Theory,
Culture & Society 2011 (SAGE, Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, and Singapore), Vol. 28(5), p. 65. 38 Wolfgang Ernst, Jussi Parikka (ed.), Digital Memory and the Archive, Minnesota 2013, p. 70. 39 Ibidem, pp. 81-82.
web, information can only be documented but not actually archived.40 However, digital devices are no longer simply bearers of documents or: meaning - they also have come to generate it.41 Memory does not serve only the goals of a cultural record but is a performative form of memory which serves as communication – they generate present information.42 Where the classic archive orders and separates its data, the web provides immediate feedback, turning all present data into archival entries and archival entries into data – a dynamic agency, with no delay between memory and the present. Here, archive and memory become metaphorical; a function of transfer processes, which Ernst describes as an economy of circulation – permanent
transformations and updating.43 The traditional concept of an archive is to preserve documents for an indefinite time and to conserve them for later. However, digital storage media also deal with the erasure of data. On the web, texts are in a continuous state of flux; they do not fall silent. The web has no memory, it does not store – it is always on the move. Lovink already stresses this point in his book; how are we to understand all of this information when it's context is always in transition? Referring to Nora's notion of Lieux de Mémoire, Ernst points out that this 'new kind of memory' is no longer fixed in terms of institutions, but rather in the sense of rhizomes within the net itself, where Ernst clearly is referencing Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's concept of the rhizome. It is here where the link to Munster's theory of networks becomes evident; the digital archive generates relations – or: memory - in terms of linking. There are no places of memory, Ernst states, there are simply urls.44 In other words; digital memory is built from its architecture, it is embedded in the network and constituted from how it links from one to another. Here, the way Ernst rethinks processes of memory creation as a production from the medium itself, develops a fundamentally different approach to notions such as networks, visualised as diagrams and memory, grounded in
human minds.
As Parikka wrote in 2011 on Ernst's theory; “The implications for the wider set of cultural institutions and museums are radical: the need to think museums and archives as nonplaces,
and as addresses and hence as modes of management of protocols, software structures and patterns of retrieval which potentially can open up new ways of user-engagement as well, and where data storage cannot be detached from its continuous search-ability and distribution; data storage on the move, so to speak.”45 Here, the implications of the digital medium for collective memory are foreboded: Parikka glimpses in the future towards a collective memory in a permanent state of development, continuously processing on itself and opening up to new forms of experience. The case-studies of the Open Data API and the Augmenting Masterpieces project represent steps towards the examples of cultural institutions as non-places and new ways of user-engagement Parikka describes, with their context and content always on the move, developing into new relations and experiences. Through Castells' concepts of space of flows and timeless times and Munster's idea of how networks generate relations I have laid out the foundation for Ernst's notion of 40 Ibidem, p. 85.
41 Ibidem, p. 93.
42 Wolfgang Ernst, Jussi Parikka (ed.), Digital Memory and the Archive, Minnesota 2013, p. 101. 43 Ibidem, p. 97-99.
44 See note 43 p. 120, p. 138. 45 See note 38, p. 58.
processual memory as a perspective for the analysis of the introduced collective memory case-studies in the following chapter. Although they all reflect the framework I just proposed, each of them also represent sub-themes relating to Ernst and Munster's theories, which will be explored accordingly.
3.0 Networked Collective Memory
The Deleted Collective Memory
Let me clarify first; this part focuses not on an entire collective memory to have been deleted (imagine the intense effort this would cost in certain cases) but a specific case that has a certain dynamic that is very specific to the digital medium that deserves to be mentioned. Between 2005 – 2006 , the community that preserved the In Memoriam: September 11, 2001 Wiki, a special section within Wikipedia (a project of Wikimedia) with a large number of articles related and dedicated to the 2001 9/11 attacks in the U.S., decided to take this specific section offline. It was a community-driven decision, sterning from debates between its users and editors, who finally came to a consensus on this topic. The main concern was the Wiki turning into a tribute to the victims of the attacks; functioning as an online memorial, a page was meant to be created for each victim. This went against the interests of the Wikipedia community; Wikipedia is set up to function as a dynamic encyclopedia from a neutral point of view “and is meant for human knowledge, not personal diaries” according to a Wikipedia user participating in the debate. By then, the fear had emerged that this Wiki memorial would lead to more Wiki memorials concerning other disasters.46 This finally led to a ongoing discussion between users and editors what the most appropriate place would be for the personal stories, also referred to as biographies. The voting that took place returned 28 votes for moving the page, 9 votes for deletion (not only from Wikipedia but from the entire web) and 7 votes for maintaining it on Wikimedia. Eventually, since most votes were in favor of moving it away from Wikipedia but not a final delete, it was moved to the website http://www.sep11memories.org/. [fig. 9] A version of the former In Memoriam: September 11, 2001 as it appeared on Wikipedia has been saved in the Internet Archive's
Wayback Machine. [fig. 10] When we visit http://www.sep11memories.org/ nowadays, there is nothing to be found anymore from it's original content due to spam and hacking attempts. It is literally unrecognizable as a 9/11 memorial page and only readable for visitors who are able to read Japanese. When translated into english, it shows a financially written text. The transformation is intriguing; it absolutely holds no other reference to its former content than its URL-address. In the source-code, all references to and traces of the original page are missing, only the URL echoes the websites previous form. The images, links and content have no inherent meaning to the previous subject. The homepage contains nine links on the right which lead us to different sections, all loaded in the same page. It has the possibility of going back and forth between topics. The images used are all financial images, except one; the home page header, which is a football field. In comparison to what the Internet Wayback Machine provides us, the transformation is large, while the size of its content decreased. The website functions as a digital cast-away, or even more as a digital artifact of its time; having being transfered outside the digital areas of Wikipedia, the page transformed overtime. It had losts it authority as a collective memory mediation and had lost the interests of the users to preserve it. The 46 From website: Wikimedia Meta-Wiki <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/9/11_wiki_move_proposal> (Retrieved 31 May 2015).
transformation is an effect of digital temporality; other users saw its release to a “normal' URL and signs of no activity as a free-pass to hack and alter its content. The digital archive is made up of dynamic processes, the processual memory Ernst describes. Obviously, archives are subject to this electronic speed and have to adapt. As we can see here, static archives will not go unnoticed and fall prey to the dynamic processes of digital technology. http://www.sep11memories.org/ has become a true product of its medium, just as the appearance of the Wiki-page concerning the voting process. The page, titled 9/11 wiki move proposal, reflects the steps that have been taken and all the discussion surrounding the deletion from Wikipedia. [fig. 11] The header says: 'This page is kept for historical interest. Any policies mentioned may be obsolete. If you want to revive the topic, you can use the talk page or start a discussion on the community forum.'47 On the right, past information of In Memoriam: September 11, 2001 has been given:
In Memoriam: September 11, 2001
Moved location of the site:
http://sep11memories.org (now a spam site) Original discussion
Dealing with September 11 pages Sep11wiki
Mémorial 9/11 What to do with entries Discussion at sep11wiki Project proposals Wikipedia Yearbook Wikimorial Discussion 2005-2006 Babel thread Request for deletion 9/11 wiki move proposal Closure proposal Announce of wiki lock
The running text shows arguments of users who are against or in favor of removal:
“If this wiki is to stay we will have to have lots of new memorial wikis. Certainly the indosisian quake that killed over hundered thousand people was a much worse incident (strictly looking at the body count). The nuking of two Japanese cities were also a worse incident compared to 9/11 (again strictly looking at the body
count).” Cool CatTalk|@ 12:13, 19 January 2006 (UTC)48
“Interesting to propose closing a project without mentioning it in the project concerned or, so far as I could see,
47 From website: Wikimedia Meta-Wiki <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/9/11_wiki_move_proposal> (Retrieved 31 May 2015). 48 Ibidem, (Retrieved 31 May 2015).
to even one administrator there. I'll address a few of the points others have mentioned in comments:
•
The project isn't a vandalism or spam magnet. I found none in the roughly 220 edits since 21 March.•
The project isn't dead. It's currently averaging about 10 edits a day.• There are two parts to this wiki:
◦ The one you linked to, In Memoriam. It's mostly biographies, not personal diaries. Personally, I have no interest in this material. **The rest, intended to be more in-depth information about the attacks and their consequences. This was built in en and other languages and then largely deleted from en without being copied to the September 11 wiki. It's probably too late to get this full coverage for this event.
• There's been minimal demand for wikis for biographies of the casualties of events in the past, like the nuclear bombing of Japan, so that seems to be a straw man argument.
• eventname.majorevents.(wikinews or wikimedia).org might be of interest, since there is often much extremely popular high activity coverage of major events. The tsunami coverage in particular generated huge interest and major traffic growth for several weeks with a tail many months long. At present this is mostly happening in the encyclopedias, which restrict the interesting content they hold and limit the coverage significantly.
• I suppose biographies in a sub-wiki as part of major event coverage might be useful, if completely uninteresting to me, personally. People do seem to want them and it is well established in the traditional media that they are an appropriate part of news coverage. I don't think they belong under the wikipedia domain; that's an accident of history and the original intent that this provide full coverage, not only biographies.
◦ In the case of the September 11 attacks, the initial en Wikipedia coverage of events (not casualties) was fairly comprehensive but then most of it was removed, generally with "too much detail" as the reason given. That suggests to me that the approach of doing it only in encyclopedias isn't working very well. It was this removal of coverage from en Wikipedia which prompted me to get involved with the September 11th wiki - I'm interested in detailed encyclopedic coverage of major events.
•
Given what we know about major event coverage, using this as the basis of a trial of major events wikis seems like an interesting option, proivided we can respond fast enough in setting up for a new major event when one happens.”Jamesday03:37, 12 April 2006 (UTC)49
One memory has been voted off, the collective process has taken its place instead. Due to a community driven decision, In Memoriam: September 11, 2001 has been transformed in a different part of the web where it, as a result of user alterations, became part of the webs algorithmic processes, leaving behind the
documented process it had enforced. It represents different times, the temporal collage Castells is referring to; the historical event it is referring to (now almost reduced to being merely the subject of action), the collective memory that was created back in 2003, the page that was replaced to an different order of the web and was altered in the years to come, the voting process that followed thereafter and now is being
represented on a Wiki-page and the original page being saved in the Internet Archive and not to forget, the present memory this temporal-collage represents to us. This processual memory-on-memory proves indeed to be complex.
[fig. 9] http://www.sep11memories.org/
The Retrievable Collective Memory
On the 17th of July 2014, the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-2H6ER, collectively known as MH-17, an international flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, lost contact. 283 passengers and 15 crew members on board were killed while the plane crashed down in the fields of near Torez in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, 40 km from the Ukraine-Russian border. Having departed form Schiphol Airport at 10:31 hrs, last actual contact with Flight Control was at 13.19.56 hrs, with all flight-data recording being stopped at 13:20:03, revealing no distressed crew messages as an indicator of recurring technical casualties. Soon after the crash happened, it became clear that MH17 did not crash down because of technical defects, but was shot down, dispersing the wreckage over a large area.50 The passenger population consisted of ten nationalities, with the largest number representing the Dutch nationality. In the official rapport it has been noted down due to some of the passengers carrying multi-nationalities, the rapports amongst media concerning nationalities varied. Once it became clear the plane was shot down, the media-events started with the alarming question; who was to blame for all of this? Although the plane was meant to cross through a safe declared area, things have been turmoiling in the Ukraine-Russian for years. Official investigations are still running – a Dutch report concerning the crash only describes the technical events and de Rijksoverheid supplies only information about the ongoing research. However, the footage, images and discussion concerning the crash were published on the internet right away.
Most remarkably, Igor Girkin, leader of the Donbass separatists, claimed at 17:50 (MCK) on the 17th of July on Russian social medium VKontakte (www.vk.com) to have shot down military transport. After it became known that the crash concerned a civil airplane, it was pulled down from VKontakte and denied shortly thereafter. However, the Internet certainly has its ways; a copy of Girkin's VKontakte page was saved in the Internet Archives WayBackMachine.51 Between the 1st of June 2014 and 25th of April 2015, his social media page has been crawled for 554 times. The page-save shows us a collection of Girkin's posts on the 17th of July 2014, where one post stands out. [fig. 12 - 13]Girkin's post contains two references to YouTube video's. Both are still to be found on YouTube but differ one second in duration in comparison with the two video's Girkin has posted. However, on the loading of the video's, suddenly, the total duration of the videos do seem to match those of the duration of the videos of Girkins post. There is no source on the web actually reporting about this YouTube time-dissonance. The physicality of the digital medium here becomes evident and is more important than ever. Is this slight dissonance caused by a algorithmic round off? However, YouTube's overview clearly shows us that the video's are estimated as 01:11 (video 1) and 0:58 (video 2). These small differentiations suddenly become large; are these the actual videos posted in the archived page of Girkin, where we can only see the images of the videos? The stakes of the claim are obviously high; defining these video's as the actual video's in Girkin's post will raise suspicion towards separatists guilt. 50 Zie rapport MH-17
51 From website: The Internet Archive <http://web.archive.org/web/20140717152222/http://vk.com/strelkov_info> (Retrieved 31 May 2015).
However, being a save in the Internet Archive remains being a representation without the social media's actual functionality; when clicking on the video's, the video's unfortunately do not link properly. It remains unknown to which source Girkin was actually linking. According to a online source, the representation of the Internet WayBackMachine proves the post to be real, still there is no actual follow up on this. As it comes to posts, websites, uploads, images, do representations of the Internet WayBack Machine and for example cache memory count as cultural evidence? Wat are the political implications of these digital artifacts? The MH17 crash certainly raises attention to the role of the web in a case where a rather complicated collective memory is created. Involving citizens, armies and an considerable amount of nationalities, whether victim, attacker, mediator or taking sides, the tension is high, for any wrong claim or move might unleash the start of a major conflict. While attention is usually raised to social media as an indicator of memory dynamics on the
Internet, I would like to zoom in on the Internet Archives function of preserving memory, particularly in this case. Founded in 1996, the non-profit Internet Archive is solely focused on “universal access to all
knowledge”. It attempts to preserve everything and this is to be accomplished by their web bots, who automatically browse the web, and by all willingly web users. As the Internet Archive's Jason Scott
emphasizes in a march 2015 interview, he believes to grab everything from the internet to preserve; “entropy and time can choose which digital works we choose to remember”.52 In other words, the storage dimensions of the digital archive (whether there are any) and the notion of time are the decisive forces for the Internet Wayback Machine.
The question remains; how do we deal with these functions of the digital archive and how does this effect our collective memory for the future to come? As in the previously discussed case of the In
Memoriam; September 11, 2001, the page was voted to be removed from Wikipedia but saved to the Internet Archive first. We could say; it is deleted, but it's not deleted. It might not appear to be on Wikipedia anymore but we can visit it as its specific appearance as a Wikipedia-page in an archive which is to be found on the same medium. The Memoriam; September 11, 2001 page has become the memory of a memory. As for the MH17 case, it even more strongly matters whether it is preserved or not. This specific save is not only a marking memory to the events on 17th of July 2014, but also historical evidence and at the same time, a clear manifestation of our contemporary digital collective memory; what is deleted, is being saved. What is produced is being reproduced. The diffuse control concerning networks Lovink addresses here becomes evident; it is removed because of its political implications but is preserved because of its digital nature. Due to its temporality, we feel that it is documented but not archived, although the name Internet Archive does want to imply something else. A classic archive answers to a certain authority and a set of rules, a collection of preserved official documents. The Internet Archive preserves as much as possible since, quoting Ernst, “the archival infrastructure in the case of the internet is only ever temporary in response to its permanent dynamic rewriting.”53 As Lovink points out, we are mostly considered with preserving these cultural patterns,
52 Signe Brewster, 'Keeping The Internet's Past Alive—And "Boring As Hell" (In A Good Way)', from website: Readwrite <http://readwrite.com/2015/03/14/internet-archive-jason-scott-memory>(Retrieved 01 June 2015).
before they change or are being deleted.54 However, we do not consider it to be official information, it does not answer to the rules of a classic archive. It is there but is has no authority. It does illustrate a dual process; its deletion is fueled by 'actual' power relations while it's saving is to prevent losing everything to the web's temporal processes. Here, memory is indeed brought back – or should we say; brought forward- to the present memory Ernst is referring to: it raises questions on how contemporary dynamics of the archive, memory and digital medium relate each other; memory is already replaced by its present memory.
[fig. 12] Girkin's post as preserved in the Internet Archive (Screenshot)
The Real-Time Collective Memory
On the 7th of January 2015, the Paris headquarters of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, founded in 1970, was taken under attack by two terrorist Islamist gunmen. By a cease of gunshots twelve Charlie Hebdo staff-members were being killed, leaving 4 critically wounded and 7 wounded. The magazine was well known for its controversial depictions of Muhammad. Judging the behavior of the gunman, the attack is to be presumed a extremist retribution. After the attacks, people massively adopted the short phrase “Je Suis Charlie”, which represented the massive worldly support for the freedom of speech and press; we are all Charlie.[fig. 14] The slogan was first used on Twitter as the hashtag #jesuischarlie and #iamcharlie and went viral on the web. “Je Suis Charlie” was offered on the Charlie Hebdo-website in a PDF-format, translated in seven languages. As a result of this, the statement was used worldwide in all sorts of publishing imaginable, from stickers to mobile phones, from cartoons to music.
This part is not about the use of 'Je Suis Charlie', although it could not stay unmentioned of course, but about the extensive timelines it produced. On BBC-news, the event's aftermath was live reported online, starting with “11:15 Welcome to the BBC's live coverage of the unfolding attack at the Paris offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.” Of course, here the first sign of digital archival time already becomes visible; as mentioned above the timeline, the timeline is said to be in UK-time, which is one hour time difference, one hour 'earlier' than EU-time to be exact, which in total would make it fifteen minutes prior to the shooting actually taking place, however, converted to EU-time, this would mean it was all set up and ready to go 70 - 75 minutes after the event. What follows then is an extensive, live almost minute to minute report about the unfolding actions in response to the event. [fig. 15 - 16] Here, memory is the actual digital real-time event. What is highly interesting, is the specific kind of reporting it handles. The timeline is not a linear sum up of the real life events taking place at the scene of crime, but the combination of multiple times. First there is BBC's own live reporting which is text written, usually in a few lines without defining the author , external links and accompanied by the possibility to share and now and then interrupted with “Breaking News” messages. Posts contain a large amount of social media references. The main leading posts are the “Get Involved” posts, which are linked to and directed from BBC's Twitter page;
@BBC_HaveYourSay, which keep recurring throughout the timeline. It also incorporates retweets from responses of Twitter- and Facebook users . The Twitter-account of Charlie Hebdo is being analysed for its last tweet. Other posts contain Twitter statistics; at 15:43 UK-time, BBC reported a cartoon from the New Yorker has been tweeted thousands of times.55 Further on, BBC reports that Google has put on a black ribbon for mourning and a selection of national and international front pages are shown. The timeline appears to highly concentrate on all of the social implications which are set in motion by the shooting. The
live-coverage multi-timeline is ended at 04:25 UK-time, where it is announced to be taken further on at the news coverage on the main page.
A few things stand out from this timeline. To get to the beginning of the timeline, you will have to click the button “show more updates”, repeatedly, as I might add. Going back in time here means, ironically, to show more updates. Once at the beginning of the timeline you will have to scroll up to read the reporting
chronically. Memory here is ordered according to Twitter regimes; the latest post comes first. Second is the way messages from the crime scene are enriched with different sorts of messages and images circulating on the web. Hence, the memory is made collective by an instant. The timeline show inner workings to which are easily to compared with the theory of a transactive memory system; a system that sets out for one common syntax, which has to be filtered out of so-called semantic knowledge boundaries. “Translating” knowledge across the boundary can be facilitated through the use of collective stories, cross-functional interactions, boundary spanners/translators and common artifacts.56 The interactions between memory within the individuals as well as the processes that update this memory here are being represented; a rendered present-memory which now is already in the past. Individual knowledge is actively being dispersed into a collective knowledge about the event, just minutes/hours after the attack. While the timeline itself reads as a very dynamic, cross-referential and closely timed reporting, it is just as much about the event as it is a real-time memory-event of its own, with the opportunity to share and participate. It captures the digital processes of a becoming collective memory. It refers to the attack; the historical event, but is a sign of its digital time. What is actually generated are present-memory relations; you are able to link to other websites, users and accounts in a collective memory momentum. The attack is topic of upheaval, but the timeline is the melting of a collective digital gathering of real-time information. Imagine somebody born in 2014/2015 reading this in about 15 years. First of all, it is probably not possible because it is highly unpredictable if it will even last to next year, next month or next week even. But if it would, then this person will read an actual generated collective memory and is provided with a notion of how this collective memory came to live and the thoughts, despair and honouring of a rather large group, where the attack would serve as the color of the diagram; the glue that holds the pieces together. It literally is a networked collective memory.
56 Julia Kotlarsky, Bart van den Hooff, Marleen Huysman, 'The Role of a Transactive Memory System in Bridging Knowledge Boundaries', conference paper for Information Retrieval & Knowledge Management, (CAMP), 2010 International Conference on; 04/2010, (Carlile 2004; Levina and Vaast 2005; Kellogg et al. 2006), p. 13.
[fig. 16] Detail BBC's live-reporting on the Charlie Hebdo attack 2015.
The Open Collective Memory
In 2011, Open Cultuur Data (Open Culture Data), a joint initiative of Kennisland, Open State Foundation and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, started their project that opens data from the cultural heritage sector and encourages the development of valuable cultural applications.
They strive for the following five qualities:
1. Open Culture Data includes digital representations of collection objects and/or knowledge and information of cultural institutions and initiatives about their collections, activities and organization 2. Everyone can consult, use, spread and re-use Open Culture Data (through an open license or by making material available in the Public Domain).
3. Open Culture Data is available in a digital (standard) format that makes re-use possible.
4. The structure and possible applications of Open Culture Data are documented, for instance in a data blog (some examples in Dutch here)
5. The provider of the Open Culture Data is prepared to answer questions about the data from interested parties and respects the efforts that it costs that the open data community invests in developing new applications.57
Their goal is to make culture more accessible to a broader audience and to anchor the cultural sector in the international open data movement.58 As a result from their efforts, on the 25th of May the Open Culture Data API was launched. This API offers an infrastructure to collect, search and re-use combined open culture datasets. As stated above every developer can add open culture datasets to the API. In this way you contribute to a platform for open culture data in the Netherlands that is as up to date and complete as possible. As a result everyone that is using the API will benefit directly from these additions. The dataset contains paintings, archival objects, photographs and photographed objects, resulting in the current amount of 1049.974 objects. Fifteen institutions have contributed to this API: Rijksmuem, Nationale Beeldbank, Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam Museum, Open Beelden, Fries Museum, Koninklijke Bibliotheek,
Textielmuseum Tilburg, Visserijmuseum Zoutkamp, Erfgoed Leiden, Universiteit Utrecht, Museum
Rotterdam, Regionaal Archoef Tilburg and Gemeente Ede.59 Fortunately, the API has been made insightful at 57 Quoted from website: Open Cultuur Data <http://www.opencultuurdata.nl/english/> (Retrieved 31 May 2015).
58 Ibidem, (Retrieved 31 May 2015).
59 Quoted rom website: Open Cultuur Data <http://www.opencultuurdata.nl/2015/04/meer-dan-1-miljoen-objecten-in-de-ocd-api/> (Retrieved 31 May 2015).
http://search.opencultuurdata.nl/. Designed into a graphic interface, the Open Data search has been simply organised; with one search engine you can search through al datasets with the help of keywords. [fig. 18 - 19]
It is a single page application (SPA) which means in response to user actions, like passing a word into the input field, the chosen resources are dynamically loaded and added to the page. In a very simple explanation, this means whatever information is held at the server side, is transfered to the client side (the user), resulting into pure data API. This will at least reduce building too complex systems in order to prevent recurring problems.
For the search engine, Open Culture Data uses Elasticsearch, a “near real-time search platform”, which means it has a small latency from the time you index a document until the time it becomes searchable. It allows the user to quickly store and search through big volumes of data.60 The structure is based on the structure of clusters, nodes, index and documents. The arrangement is as followed; a cluster, which carries a unique name, enhances a collection of one or more nodes, which in this case represent servers. This cluster holds your entire dataset(s) and provides federated indexing and search capabilities across all nodes. A node, also identified by a unique name, is a single server stores your data, and participates in the cluster’s indexing and search capabilities.61 An index, marked by a lowercased name, is a collection of documents that have similar characteristics. In this specific case , you can have an index for Rijksmuseum data, another index for Nationale Beeldenbank data , one for the Tropenmuseum data etcetera. This name is used to refer to the index when performing indexing, search, update, and delete operations against the documents in it. Going down one level, you can define categories ('types') within the index.62 For example, the Rijksmuseum could have a “painting” category, a “sketches” category and a “objects” category. In general, a type is defined for documents that have a set of common fields. A document is a basic unit of information that can be indexed, in this case, the objects and representations of objects we can now see through the graphic interface. The works are translated in to JSON format which allows users to incorporate API-content in their sites and applications easily.63 The indexes can store a large amount of data but they can exceed the hardware limits of a single server (node), causing error problems or slow traffic. The solution provided by Elasticsearch is the ability to order your index into multiple pieces called shards: each shard is in itself a fully-functional and independent "index" that can be hosted on any node in the cluster.64 This feature is very useful because it will split your indexes into manageable pieces and it increases performance. In short, the architecture of the Open Culture Data API has been organised into a horizontal structure to 'cut' the entire API into easy manageable pieces. Lastly, the Open Culture Data API uses Extract, Transform and Load (ETL), which is a process specific to data usage or data warehousing. A very simple explanation; it extracts data from the data-sets, transforms it into a format which is appropriate for querying an API and loads it into the target database.65 60 Quoted from website: Elastic <http://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/getting-started.html>
(Retrieved 31 May 2015). 61 Ibidem, (Retrieved 31 May 2015). 62 Ibidem, (Retrieved 31 May 2015). 63 Ibidem, (Retrieved 31 May 2015). 64 Ibidem, (Retrieved 31 May 2015). 65 Ibidem, (Retrieved 31 May 2015).
Basically, behind the one page graphic interface, there is only code, hierarchies and structure. The user can retrieve previously stored information, transfer it to their target where it will translate into the object of choice. Institutions here are only their logo's, there is no actual place involved, except a space of algorithms behind a thin layer of graphics. Cultural institutions are becoming nodes in the network. Collective memory as provided by official institutions is designed to adjust to digital dynamics in order to use them – with everyone spending so much time on the web, it is important to stay visible in this medium as well. Where these works once were exclusively meant to be kept in between four walls, on the open web, some rules do not apply anymore. Power dynamics do dissolve here, or even better; adjust to their current situation as this example proves. With the option to use and reuse without any further implications, collective memory spreads through the digital networks, with the chance to pop up unexpectedly, being used and re-used, altered and deleted silently.
[fig. 18] Search engine Open Cultuur Data (screenshot)
