On the 13 March I attended the Jenkinson Lecture at UCL, organised by the Department of Information Studies, and given by Professor Jeannette Bastian of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College, Boston.
Bastian is interested in how memory studies can inform the work of practising archivists. To begin with, she spoke of the so-called 'memory boom' in academia, dominant since the 1980s, and the reification of memory in memory studies. She describes memory as omnipresent and:
- Situated in social frameworks.
- Enabled by technologies.
- Confronted by cultural institutions.
So where do archivists fit into memory studies? Community memories are often not recorded in ways that are consistent with standard archival practice. However, the emergence of memory studies indicates a renewed interest in 'untold stories'. The emphasis has shifted from the 19th century practice of accumulating archives as part of the process of nation-building to the 20th/21st century exploration of marginalised narratives and discourses through recording oral histories and other non-traditional memorial forms. Jan Assman writes, 'the concept of cultural memory comprises that body of reusable texts, images and rituals specific to each society in each epoch'.
Of the relationship between archives and memory, Brien Brothman makes a distinction between 'memory's archivist' and 'history's archivist'. Annette Wieviorka takes a 'historian of memory' approach in The Era of the Witness, in which she writes about the dynamic 'presentness' of memory.
Bastian referenced several examples of national libraries and archives that use memory as part of their rhetoric, including the American Memory project, Library Archives Canada on the 'continuing memory' of the nation, Archives UK, who state of archives, 'they are our collective memory' and the Australian Government Records, who invoke 'the memory of our nation'.
Archivists have had a tendency to view memory as a subject as opposed to memory as a framework but are now gradually moving into that realm.
Marita Sturken uses the term 'technologies of memory' in her study of traumatic world events, channelled through the mass media. She defines memory as a narrative as opposed to a replica or surrogate for the actual event, commenting that 'personal memory, cultural memory and history do not exist within neatly defined borders'.
Bastian then defined three methods for archiving memory, through:
- Memory texts as memory's embodiment in texts, talismans, imagery and performance.
- Community archives as self-documenting grassroots movements.
- Communities of records, whereby the community is both a record creating entity and a memory frame that contextualises the records it creates.
Bastian's take on technology is that it gives a practical agency to the task of archiving memory.
Example Archives
A Living Archive - John Cage - http://exhibitions.nypl.org/johncage/
A Becoming Archive - Project Save - http://www.projectsave.org/
Further References
Sturken, Marita, Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
AERI 2010 - Collective Memory Research Methods - http://aeri2010.wetpaint.com/page/Collective+Memory+Research+Methods
Look out also for an article, published in Archival Science, involving Margaret Hedstrom, which is a survey of the use of memory in archival literature.
Wednesday, 27 March 2013
Thursday, 21 March 2013
Research Professional Database
Research Professional is a comprehensive research funding opportunities database which offers users the opportunity to search for research funding in all disciplines from a wide range of sponsors in the UK and overseas. All funding information in the database is pre-screened for eligibility for UK researchers.
The University of Leeds has a subscription to Research Professional and all University staff can view and use it. With a username and password you can search for opportunities and set up regular updates, sent via email, in your areas of interest – it is also possible to also use the system from outside the University.
The University of Leeds has a subscription to Research Professional and all University staff can view and use it. With a username and password you can search for opportunities and set up regular updates, sent via email, in your areas of interest – it is also possible to also use the system from outside the University.
Wednesday, 13 March 2013
Parables for the Virtual - Brian Massumi
From Intro
'Attention to the literality of movement was deflected by fears of falling into 'naïve realism', a reductive empiricism that would dissolve the specificity of the cultural domain in the plain, seemingly unproblematic 'presence' of dumb matter' (p. 1).
'Culture occupied the gap between matter and systematic change, in the operation of mechanisms of 'mediation'. These were ideological apparatuses that structured the dumb material interactions of things and rendered them legible according to a dominant signifying scheme into which human subjects in the making were ‘interpellated' (pp. 1-2).
'The grid was conceived as an oppositional framework of culturally constructed significations: male versus female, black versus white, gay versus straight, and so on. A body corresponded to a 'site' on the grid defined by an overlapping of one term from each pair. The body came to be defined by its pinning on the grid. Proponents of this model often cited its ability to link body-sites into a 'geography' of culture that tempered the universalizing tendencies of ideology' (pp. 2-3).
'Movement is entirely subordinated to the positions it connects. These are predefined […] Since the positional model’s definitional framework is punctual, it simply can’t attribute a reality to the interval, whose crossing is continuity (or nothing) […] The space of the crossing, the gaps between positions on the grid, falls into a theoretical no-body’s land' (pp. 3-4).
'The charge of indeterminacy carried by a body is inseparable from it. It strictly coincides with it, to the extent that the body is in passage or in process (to the extent that it is dynamic and alive) […] To think the body in movement thus means accepting the paradox that there is an incorporeal dimension of the body. Of it, but not it. Real, material, but incorporeal' (p. 5).
Foucault – incorporeal materialism (see 'The Discourse on Language' in The Archaeology of Knowledge), p. 5.
Of the moving bow example and Bergson’s analysis, 'A path is not composed of positions. It is nondecomposable: a dynamic unity. That continuity of movement is of an order of reality other than the measurable, divisible space it can be confirmed as having crossed' (p. 6).
'Cultural laws of positioning and ideology are accurate in a certain sphere (where the tendency to arrest dominates) […] This 'limitation' does not belittle the approaches in question. In fact, it brings wonder back into them […] The Bergsonian revolution turns the world on its head. Position no longer comes first, with movement a problematic second. It is secondary to movement and derived from it' (p. 7).
'The problem is to explain the wonder that there can be stasis given the primacy of process. This is akin to the late-twentieth-century problem of ‘order out of chaos'' (p. 8).
'Another way of putting it is that positionality is an emergent quality of movement' (p. 8).
Simondon’s approach 'does not accept any categorical separation between the social and the presocial, between culture and some kind of 'raw' nature or experience. The idea is that there is an ontogenesis or becoming of culture and the social (bracketing for present purposes the difference between them), of which determinate forms of culture and sociability are the result. The challenge is to think that process of formation, and for that you need the notion of a taking-form […] A sociality without determinate borders: 'pure' sociality' (p. 9).
'Nature and culture are in intimate movement, into and through each other. Their continuum is a dynamic unity of reciprocal variation. Things we are accustomed to placing on one side or another of the nature-culture divide must be redistributed along the whole length of the continuum […] On the list of distinctions it becomes difficult to sustain in any categorical way are those between artifact and thing, body and object – and even thought and matter. Not only do these relay in reciprocal becomings; together they ally in process. They are tinged with event’ (p. 11).
'The kinds of codings, griddings and positioning with which cultural theory has been preoccupied are no exception to the dynamic unity of feedback and feed-forward, or double becoming. Gender, race and orientation are what Ian Hacking calls 'interactive kinds': logical categories that feed back into and transform the reality they describe' (pp. 11-12).
'What is a memory without content? One answer might be that it is just pastness, a pure pastness that would be the condition of emergence for determinate memory. But that would make the past contemporary to the present of sensation and perception. Leibniz goes on to say that although the perception of perception is without characters, it does carry a 'distinguishing sense of bodily direction'. Distinguishing bodily direction without a determinate form? In other words, without distance? That could only be tendency, pure tendency. Tendency is futureness: pure futurity. So there is a futurity that is contemporary with the past’s contemporaneousness with the present' (p. 15).
'For Spinoza, the body was one with its transitions. Each transition is accompanied by a variation in capacity: a change in which powers to affect and be affected are addressable by a next event and how readily addressable they are – or to what degree they are present as futurities' (p. 15).
'The first rule of thumb if you want to invent or reinvent concepts is simple: don’t apply them. If you apply a concept or system of connection between concepts, it is the material that you apply it to that undergoes change, much more markedly than do the concepts […] One device for avoiding application is to adopt an 'exemplary' method […] An example is neither general (as is a system of concepts) nor particular (as the material to which a system is applied). It is 'singular' […] As a writing practice, exemplification activates detail. The success of the example hinges on the details' (pp. 17-18) – the 'parables' of the title refers to the genre of writing most closely allied with the logical form of the example.
'Attention to the literality of movement was deflected by fears of falling into 'naïve realism', a reductive empiricism that would dissolve the specificity of the cultural domain in the plain, seemingly unproblematic 'presence' of dumb matter' (p. 1).
'Culture occupied the gap between matter and systematic change, in the operation of mechanisms of 'mediation'. These were ideological apparatuses that structured the dumb material interactions of things and rendered them legible according to a dominant signifying scheme into which human subjects in the making were ‘interpellated' (pp. 1-2).
'The grid was conceived as an oppositional framework of culturally constructed significations: male versus female, black versus white, gay versus straight, and so on. A body corresponded to a 'site' on the grid defined by an overlapping of one term from each pair. The body came to be defined by its pinning on the grid. Proponents of this model often cited its ability to link body-sites into a 'geography' of culture that tempered the universalizing tendencies of ideology' (pp. 2-3).
'Movement is entirely subordinated to the positions it connects. These are predefined […] Since the positional model’s definitional framework is punctual, it simply can’t attribute a reality to the interval, whose crossing is continuity (or nothing) […] The space of the crossing, the gaps between positions on the grid, falls into a theoretical no-body’s land' (pp. 3-4).
'The charge of indeterminacy carried by a body is inseparable from it. It strictly coincides with it, to the extent that the body is in passage or in process (to the extent that it is dynamic and alive) […] To think the body in movement thus means accepting the paradox that there is an incorporeal dimension of the body. Of it, but not it. Real, material, but incorporeal' (p. 5).
Foucault – incorporeal materialism (see 'The Discourse on Language' in The Archaeology of Knowledge), p. 5.
Of the moving bow example and Bergson’s analysis, 'A path is not composed of positions. It is nondecomposable: a dynamic unity. That continuity of movement is of an order of reality other than the measurable, divisible space it can be confirmed as having crossed' (p. 6).
'Cultural laws of positioning and ideology are accurate in a certain sphere (where the tendency to arrest dominates) […] This 'limitation' does not belittle the approaches in question. In fact, it brings wonder back into them […] The Bergsonian revolution turns the world on its head. Position no longer comes first, with movement a problematic second. It is secondary to movement and derived from it' (p. 7).
'The problem is to explain the wonder that there can be stasis given the primacy of process. This is akin to the late-twentieth-century problem of ‘order out of chaos'' (p. 8).
'Another way of putting it is that positionality is an emergent quality of movement' (p. 8).
Simondon’s approach 'does not accept any categorical separation between the social and the presocial, between culture and some kind of 'raw' nature or experience. The idea is that there is an ontogenesis or becoming of culture and the social (bracketing for present purposes the difference between them), of which determinate forms of culture and sociability are the result. The challenge is to think that process of formation, and for that you need the notion of a taking-form […] A sociality without determinate borders: 'pure' sociality' (p. 9).
'Nature and culture are in intimate movement, into and through each other. Their continuum is a dynamic unity of reciprocal variation. Things we are accustomed to placing on one side or another of the nature-culture divide must be redistributed along the whole length of the continuum […] On the list of distinctions it becomes difficult to sustain in any categorical way are those between artifact and thing, body and object – and even thought and matter. Not only do these relay in reciprocal becomings; together they ally in process. They are tinged with event’ (p. 11).
'The kinds of codings, griddings and positioning with which cultural theory has been preoccupied are no exception to the dynamic unity of feedback and feed-forward, or double becoming. Gender, race and orientation are what Ian Hacking calls 'interactive kinds': logical categories that feed back into and transform the reality they describe' (pp. 11-12).
'What is a memory without content? One answer might be that it is just pastness, a pure pastness that would be the condition of emergence for determinate memory. But that would make the past contemporary to the present of sensation and perception. Leibniz goes on to say that although the perception of perception is without characters, it does carry a 'distinguishing sense of bodily direction'. Distinguishing bodily direction without a determinate form? In other words, without distance? That could only be tendency, pure tendency. Tendency is futureness: pure futurity. So there is a futurity that is contemporary with the past’s contemporaneousness with the present' (p. 15).
'For Spinoza, the body was one with its transitions. Each transition is accompanied by a variation in capacity: a change in which powers to affect and be affected are addressable by a next event and how readily addressable they are – or to what degree they are present as futurities' (p. 15).
'The first rule of thumb if you want to invent or reinvent concepts is simple: don’t apply them. If you apply a concept or system of connection between concepts, it is the material that you apply it to that undergoes change, much more markedly than do the concepts […] One device for avoiding application is to adopt an 'exemplary' method […] An example is neither general (as is a system of concepts) nor particular (as the material to which a system is applied). It is 'singular' […] As a writing practice, exemplification activates detail. The success of the example hinges on the details' (pp. 17-18) – the 'parables' of the title refers to the genre of writing most closely allied with the logical form of the example.
Thursday, 7 March 2013
Digi-meeting with Paul Wheatley - 13 Dec 2012
Outline of Digitisation/Digital Preservation Initiatives
Europeana harvests collections from the UK's national aggregator, Culture Grid, maintained by Collections Trust.
UNESCO (left in 1985, rejoined in 1997). Memory of the World Initiative - programme began in 1992, with the aim of preserving and digitizing humanity's documentary heritage. See also: http://whmnet.org/. UNESCO's influence in the UK?
What (if any) is the relationship between JISC and the 6th Framework programme? Both claim to have funded projects like CASPAR.
EC stuff - see Digital Libraries Initiative doc.
British Library - PLANETS etc. PLANETS is not a repository project; PLANETS software components have been designed to work with a wide range of repository or archive systems.
Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) - see Museums Association press release.
NOTES
Conflation between digitisation and digital preservation (myth that to digitise is to preserve, it's not. Digital preservation is a separate process).
OPF and British Library, digital preservation. BL (largely) equally committed to digitisation and digital preservation.
Collections Trust - access to digitised collections, digital preservation the responsibility of contributing institutions (preservation vs. access). Sometimes the money needed to preserve digitised collections isn't taken into account at the funding stage. If there's money for digitisation, but not digital preservation, there is an increased risk a of digital degradation.
Digital Register (a reigister of what's been digitised) - http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/archon/
UNESCO - what do they fund? Sources of income include the World Heritage Fund, which receives most of its income from compulsory contributions from countries (States Parties) and from voluntary contributions.
JISC - HEFCE funded (cuts mean they're now applying for EU money).
Copyright - legal deposit libraries have a responsibility for safeguarding digital information.
New EU model for digitisation under framework programmes. Organisations (in different countries) collaborate and put together a proposal, proposal then goes out to tender for commercial companies to carry out the work. Latter part the new model.
Partnerships between big MLAs and commercial companies. Issues: commercial embargoes, companies are selective (they can choose what they want to digitise) - see BL and Brightsolid: http://www.brightsolid.com/online-publishing/
Google not digitising any more newspapers (recent announcement) - http://www.news24.com/SciTech/News/Google-stops-digitising-old-newspapers-20110521
http://librarian.newjackalmanac.ca/2012/11/the-future-of-libraries-is.html - slideshow about the future of libraries.
Potential Contacts
Alistair Dunning @alistairdunning (Twitter).
Peter van Huisstede vanhuisstede@ubib.eur.nl
Europeana harvests collections from the UK's national aggregator, Culture Grid, maintained by Collections Trust.
UNESCO (left in 1985, rejoined in 1997). Memory of the World Initiative - programme began in 1992, with the aim of preserving and digitizing humanity's documentary heritage. See also: http://whmnet.org/. UNESCO's influence in the UK?
What (if any) is the relationship between JISC and the 6th Framework programme? Both claim to have funded projects like CASPAR.
EC stuff - see Digital Libraries Initiative doc.
British Library - PLANETS etc. PLANETS is not a repository project; PLANETS software components have been designed to work with a wide range of repository or archive systems.
Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) - see Museums Association press release.
NOTES
Conflation between digitisation and digital preservation (myth that to digitise is to preserve, it's not. Digital preservation is a separate process).
OPF and British Library, digital preservation. BL (largely) equally committed to digitisation and digital preservation.
Collections Trust - access to digitised collections, digital preservation the responsibility of contributing institutions (preservation vs. access). Sometimes the money needed to preserve digitised collections isn't taken into account at the funding stage. If there's money for digitisation, but not digital preservation, there is an increased risk a of digital degradation.
Digital Register (a reigister of what's been digitised) - http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/archon/
UNESCO - what do they fund? Sources of income include the World Heritage Fund, which receives most of its income from compulsory contributions from countries (States Parties) and from voluntary contributions.
JISC - HEFCE funded (cuts mean they're now applying for EU money).
Copyright - legal deposit libraries have a responsibility for safeguarding digital information.
New EU model for digitisation under framework programmes. Organisations (in different countries) collaborate and put together a proposal, proposal then goes out to tender for commercial companies to carry out the work. Latter part the new model.
Partnerships between big MLAs and commercial companies. Issues: commercial embargoes, companies are selective (they can choose what they want to digitise) - see BL and Brightsolid: http://www.brightsolid.com/online-publishing/
Google not digitising any more newspapers (recent announcement) - http://www.news24.com/SciTech/News/Google-stops-digitising-old-newspapers-20110521
http://librarian.newjackalmanac.ca/2012/11/the-future-of-libraries-is.html - slideshow about the future of libraries.
Potential Contacts
Alistair Dunning @alistairdunning (Twitter).
Peter van Huisstede vanhuisstede@ubib.eur.nl
Wednesday, 6 March 2013
Interesting Digi-bits from Email Folder
ENUMERATE Survey
The ENUMERATE Survey Report on Digitisation in European Cultural Heritage was carried out in early 2012 by the ENUMERATE Thematic Network. It attracted almost 2,000 responses and was conducted with the assistance of national coordinators in 29 European countries. This report is the first in a series of three to be published in the lifetime of the ENUMERATE project. Later this year there will be an in-depth “thematic” survey followed by a further update next year. It is intended ENUMERATE will continue its work beyond 2014. The report can be downloaded from: www.enumerate.eu/en/statistics. Funding for the project is from the European Commission under the ICT Policy Support Programme part of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme.
The 2013 FP7 ICT Work Programme has been published. Follow the link for details of open calls: http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/page/call_FP7#wlp_call_FP7
Digital R&D Fund
The 7 million pound Digital R&D Fund for the Arts has been launched as a partnership between the Arts Council, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and Nesta.The fund is intended to support research and development projects that use digital technology to enhance audience reach and/or explore new business models for organisations with arts projects.Organisations with arts projects, Technology providers and Researchers or research teams are invited to form collaborative relationships and make joint funding applications. You can find out about the fund, eligibility criteria and deadlines for expressions of interest for the fund here: http://www.artsdigitalrnd.org.uk/
Google Cultural Institute
Google has announced the launch of its new Google Cultural Institute platform, designed to provide cultural institutions with tools to open up collections online to new audiences. The platform launches with online exhibits from 17 cultural heritage institutions around the world. I had the opportunity of doing an email I
Interview with Google Institute Director Steve Crossan at http://www.collectionstrust.org.uk/googleinstitute/. The Collections Trust is going to be working with Steve and the team at the Google Cultural Institute to look at how to ensure that the process of participating is as smooth and risk-free as possible.
The first fully-syndicated site based on the platform is live at http://archives.nelsonmandela.org/#!home. The idea is that the platform can enable partners to set up their own web-based offer, using the same content and functionality from the core GCI platform, but under their own URL. This opens up the possibility of developing standalone thematic exhibitions from your digital content,with Google doing the heavy lifting in terms of data hosting.
Cultural venues and Mobile App Development Links
David Hopes, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust - https://vimeo.com/49898316
Ben Templeton talking about TATE Magic Ball - https://vimeo.com/44525319
Hein Wils + Ferry Piekart talking about Augmented Reality - https://vimeo.com/48732926
Nancy Proctor, Smithsonian - https://vimeo.com/44404225
Allegra Burnette on MoMA mobile strategy - https://vimeo.com/44523457
Comparison of Online Collections Databases
http://www.collectionslink.org.uk/softwaresurvey
Digital Engagement Framework
This offers a framework for cultural organisations to use as a basis for the development of digital strategies, and is based on experience running workshops and developing strategies for museums, galleries, theatres and festivals over the past few years. The workbook can be downloaded here: http://www.digitalengagementframework.com/framework.html
How to Manage Knowledge and Info Not Directly Related to Objects
London's Information Policy Toolkit - see: http://www.museuminforecords.org.uk/toolkits/InformationPolicy.pdf
Produced in the late stages of the MLA, there were plans to take it forward as the companion to SPECTRUM for broader knowledge and information management (lack of resources prevented this).
Archival Encounters III
Presentations from the evening are now available online at: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/heritage/index.html
Futurelearn
As was announced in December 2012, the University of Leeds is a launch partner in FutureLearn, the OU-led Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platform. For background information about FutureLearn, see the following links:
University Press Release (December 2012): http://www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/3345/leeds_joins_partners_in_offering_free_online_access_to_education
University of Leeds For Staff update (February 2013): http://www.leeds.ac.uk/forstaff/news/article/3753/six_new_partners_join_futurelearn
FutureLearn website: http://futurelearn.com/
Resources
Books
Benkler, Y. 2006. The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom. Yale University Press.
Brabazon, T. 2008. The Revolution Will Not be Downloaded. Chandos Publishing (Oxford) Ltd.
Shirky, C. 2010. Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. London: Allen Lane.
Tredinnick, L. 2008. Digital Information Culture: The individual and society in the digital age. Oxford: Chandos Publishing (Oxford) Ltd.
Weinberger, D. 2012. Too Big to Know. Basic Books.
Journal Articles
Anderson, I.G. 2008. Necessary but Not Sufficient. D-Lib Magazine, 14(1/2). Available at: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january08/anderson/01anderson.html
Anderson, S.R. & Allen, R.B. 2009. Envisioning the Archival Commons. American Archivist, 72(2), pp.383–400.
Evans, M.J. 2007. Archives of the People, by the People, for the People. American Archivist, 70(2), pp.387–400.
Flinn, A. 2010. “An attack on professionalism and scholarship”?: Democratising Archives and the Production of Knowledge.Ariadne, 62. Available at: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue62/flinn/
Hinton, A. ‘The Machineries of Context.’ Journal of Information Architecture, 1(1), pp.37–47. Available at: http://journalofia.org/volume1/issue1/04-hinton/jofia-0101-04-hinton.pdf
Huvila, I. 2008. Participatory archive: towards decentralised curation, radical user orientation, and broader contextualisation of records management. Archival Science, 8(1), pp.15–36.
Kennedy, M. 2009. Cautionary Tales: Archives 2.0 and the Diplomatic Historian. Ariadne, 61. Available at: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue61/kennedy/
Oomen, J. & Aroyo, L. 2011. Crowdsourcing in the Cultural Heritage Domain: Opportunities and Challenges - Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Communities & Technologies (C&T 2011), Brisbane, Australia, p. 138. Available at: http://www.cs.vu.nl/~marieke/OomenAroyoCT2011.pdf
Rosenzweig, R. 2006. Can history be open source? Wikipedia and the future of the past. Journal of American History, 93(1), pp.117–146.
Theimer, K. 2011. What Is the Meaning of Archives 2.0? American Archivist, 74(1), pp.58–68.
Blogs
Chan, S. Fresh and New(er) http://www.freshandnew.org/
Hitchcock, T. Historyonics http://historyonics.blogspot.co.uk/
Prescott, A. Digital Riffs http://digitalriffs.blogspot.co.uk/
Sherratt, T. discontents http://discontents.com.au/
Theimer, K. ArchivesNext http://www.archivesnext.com/
The ENUMERATE Survey Report on Digitisation in European Cultural Heritage was carried out in early 2012 by the ENUMERATE Thematic Network. It attracted almost 2,000 responses and was conducted with the assistance of national coordinators in 29 European countries. This report is the first in a series of three to be published in the lifetime of the ENUMERATE project. Later this year there will be an in-depth “thematic” survey followed by a further update next year. It is intended ENUMERATE will continue its work beyond 2014. The report can be downloaded from: www.enumerate.eu/en/statistics. Funding for the project is from the European Commission under the ICT Policy Support Programme part of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme.
The 2013 FP7 ICT Work Programme has been published. Follow the link for details of open calls: http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/page/call_FP7#wlp_call_FP7
Digital R&D Fund
The 7 million pound Digital R&D Fund for the Arts has been launched as a partnership between the Arts Council, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and Nesta.The fund is intended to support research and development projects that use digital technology to enhance audience reach and/or explore new business models for organisations with arts projects.Organisations with arts projects, Technology providers and Researchers or research teams are invited to form collaborative relationships and make joint funding applications. You can find out about the fund, eligibility criteria and deadlines for expressions of interest for the fund here: http://www.artsdigitalrnd.org.uk/
Google Cultural Institute
Google has announced the launch of its new Google Cultural Institute platform, designed to provide cultural institutions with tools to open up collections online to new audiences. The platform launches with online exhibits from 17 cultural heritage institutions around the world. I had the opportunity of doing an email I
Interview with Google Institute Director Steve Crossan at http://www.collectionstrust.org.uk/googleinstitute/. The Collections Trust is going to be working with Steve and the team at the Google Cultural Institute to look at how to ensure that the process of participating is as smooth and risk-free as possible.
The first fully-syndicated site based on the platform is live at http://archives.nelsonmandela.org/#!home. The idea is that the platform can enable partners to set up their own web-based offer, using the same content and functionality from the core GCI platform, but under their own URL. This opens up the possibility of developing standalone thematic exhibitions from your digital content,with Google doing the heavy lifting in terms of data hosting.
Cultural venues and Mobile App Development Links
David Hopes, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust - https://vimeo.com/49898316
Ben Templeton talking about TATE Magic Ball - https://vimeo.com/44525319
Hein Wils + Ferry Piekart talking about Augmented Reality - https://vimeo.com/48732926
Nancy Proctor, Smithsonian - https://vimeo.com/44404225
Allegra Burnette on MoMA mobile strategy - https://vimeo.com/44523457
Comparison of Online Collections Databases
http://www.collectionslink.org.uk/softwaresurvey
- Europeana & Culture Grid: aggregate data about items from other organisations (the items have to already have to be on the web somewhere else).
- Modes Users Association: sell and support collections management systems which can output content for use on a web site.
- Orangeleaf: website developers who will build you whatever you want.
- Historypin is a social media site.
- E-Hive: a "cloud" collections management system for museums and others which will, if you want, allow public web access to object records.
Digital Engagement Framework
This offers a framework for cultural organisations to use as a basis for the development of digital strategies, and is based on experience running workshops and developing strategies for museums, galleries, theatres and festivals over the past few years. The workbook can be downloaded here: http://www.digitalengagementframework.com/framework.html
How to Manage Knowledge and Info Not Directly Related to Objects
London's Information Policy Toolkit - see: http://www.museuminforecords.org.uk/toolkits/InformationPolicy.pdf
Produced in the late stages of the MLA, there were plans to take it forward as the companion to SPECTRUM for broader knowledge and information management (lack of resources prevented this).
Archival Encounters III
Presentations from the evening are now available online at: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/heritage/index.html
Futurelearn
As was announced in December 2012, the University of Leeds is a launch partner in FutureLearn, the OU-led Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platform. For background information about FutureLearn, see the following links:
University Press Release (December 2012): http://www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/3345/leeds_joins_partners_in_offering_free_online_access_to_education
University of Leeds For Staff update (February 2013): http://www.leeds.ac.uk/forstaff/news/article/3753/six_new_partners_join_futurelearn
FutureLearn website: http://futurelearn.com/
Resources
Books
Benkler, Y. 2006. The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom. Yale University Press.
Brabazon, T. 2008. The Revolution Will Not be Downloaded. Chandos Publishing (Oxford) Ltd.
Shirky, C. 2010. Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. London: Allen Lane.
Tredinnick, L. 2008. Digital Information Culture: The individual and society in the digital age. Oxford: Chandos Publishing (Oxford) Ltd.
Weinberger, D. 2012. Too Big to Know. Basic Books.
Journal Articles
Anderson, I.G. 2008. Necessary but Not Sufficient. D-Lib Magazine, 14(1/2). Available at: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january08/anderson/01anderson.html
Anderson, S.R. & Allen, R.B. 2009. Envisioning the Archival Commons. American Archivist, 72(2), pp.383–400.
Evans, M.J. 2007. Archives of the People, by the People, for the People. American Archivist, 70(2), pp.387–400.
Flinn, A. 2010. “An attack on professionalism and scholarship”?: Democratising Archives and the Production of Knowledge.Ariadne, 62. Available at: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue62/flinn/
Hinton, A. ‘The Machineries of Context.’ Journal of Information Architecture, 1(1), pp.37–47. Available at: http://journalofia.org/volume1/issue1/04-hinton/jofia-0101-04-hinton.pdf
Huvila, I. 2008. Participatory archive: towards decentralised curation, radical user orientation, and broader contextualisation of records management. Archival Science, 8(1), pp.15–36.
Kennedy, M. 2009. Cautionary Tales: Archives 2.0 and the Diplomatic Historian. Ariadne, 61. Available at: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue61/kennedy/
Oomen, J. & Aroyo, L. 2011. Crowdsourcing in the Cultural Heritage Domain: Opportunities and Challenges - Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Communities & Technologies (C&T 2011), Brisbane, Australia, p. 138. Available at: http://www.cs.vu.nl/~marieke/OomenAroyoCT2011.pdf
Rosenzweig, R. 2006. Can history be open source? Wikipedia and the future of the past. Journal of American History, 93(1), pp.117–146.
Theimer, K. 2011. What Is the Meaning of Archives 2.0? American Archivist, 74(1), pp.58–68.
Blogs
Chan, S. Fresh and New(er) http://www.freshandnew.org/
Hitchcock, T. Historyonics http://historyonics.blogspot.co.uk/
Prescott, A. Digital Riffs http://digitalriffs.blogspot.co.uk/
Sherratt, T. discontents http://discontents.com.au/
Theimer, K. ArchivesNext http://www.archivesnext.com/
Tuesday, 5 March 2013
Changes to Copyright Law in 2013
(From a note by Tim Padfield on the Archives Listserv)
Copyright law is set to change significantly over the next year. This note sets out some expected changes that are likely to have an impact on archivists.
The Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill is currently before Parliament. It contains copyright elements that will need to be supplemented by regulations, if they are passed, but the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) is already working on drafting. Commencement might be as early as October 2013. Important points for archives are:
- Removal of the 2039 terminal dates and their replacement by (probably) standard terms, notably life plus 70 years. There might be a short transition period (5 years, as in the USA?). This will remove all works created before about 1870 or a bit earlier from copyright at a stroke.
- Introduction of a licensing scheme for the use of orphan works, so long as a diligent search has been carried out. Licensing is likely to be by a government body. This will not assist mass digitisation. We shall know more about the impact of these changes once the Act has received Royal Assent and in particular once we can see the regulations.
- On 20 December the Government published its long-awaited white paper (http://www.ipo.gov.uk/response-2011-copyright-final.pdf) on reform of the copyright exceptions. The changes outlined will have huge implications for the general public, for archivists and librarians, for museums professionals and for public sector organisations. Implementing regulations are intended to come into force in October 2013. There will be no further consultation on the policy, but the draft regulations will be published for comment on the technical details
General points
The motivation of the Government has been set out (p 8 para 6): 'Economic growth is a principal motivator but fairness, the reputation of the copyright system, the consequences of increasingly widespread digital technologies and a range of wider social goods such as education and culture are also important considerations.'
Contracts will be prevented from overriding exceptions where this is permitted and desirable. There will be no general provision on this because some exceptions must be able to be replaced by contract.
Private copying
People who own a copy of any kind of copyright work (e.g. music recording, ebook) will be able to copy it to any medium for their own personal use. No copy may be supplied to anyone else (e.g . family, friend). Contract override will be prevented.
Quotation
Fair dealing for criticism and review to be extended to all forms of quotation, for instance to allow citation and bibliographies of books (titles are capable now of being copyright works in themselves) and in articles. Contract override will be prevented.
Research and private study
Fair dealing and the library and archive copying exceptions for users are to be extended to all types of work (though the IPO appears to think, mistakenly, that library and archive copying already applies to artistic works (p 32 para 3, p 35 para 1)). Contract override will be prevented. The IPO is to consider removing or simplifying the requirement for a declaration form when copies are made by libraries and archives. A new exception will permit access to digitally-preserved material on dedicated terminals on the premises of libraries and archives. This exception does not currently exist in UK law but I fear that some archives are infringing by already providing this service. If so they should consider whether they should use dedicated terminals for online access to the records so that they are at least compliant when the law changes.
Archives get special mention in relation to this subject in the introductory sections (p 8 para 3): 'Archives stand to save money from being able to copy works and share them by computer terminals on their premises rather than shifting fragile documents back and forth from storage, and both users and society will benefit from improved access to those works.'
Education
The non-reprographic copying exceptions and examination exception will be widened and replaced by a new fair dealing exception for non-commercial educational use. This will apply for instance to use of material on whiteboards and the publication on intranets of past exam papers. It remains to be seen how use for examination (which currently includes research for an examined thesis) will be covered. The exception will apply to all organisations and individuals, not just educational establishments, and so would potentially apply to all archives.
Licensing of reprographic copying for educational use will continue, but the exception permitting copying where a licence is not available will be extended and all kinds of work will be covered. The definition of an educational establishment will be widened to cover institutions with an educational purpose, such as museums. Archives are not mentioned, but maybe they will be included. An educational copying licence would be required. Distance learning will be covered.
Disabled
Exceptions for the visually impaired to be extended to all disabled where the disability prevents access, and to all kinds of work unless the work is available commercially. Contract override will be prevented.
Preservation
Preservation copying is to be extended to museums and galleries, is to apply to all kinds of work in the permanent collection of a library, archive, museum or gallery so long as a replacement is not commercially available, and is to be permitted as often as necessary for the preservation purpose. Contract override will be prevented. The procedure for identifying institutions that may preserve folk materials is to be simplified.
Public administration
The public administration exceptions are to be extended to permit works that are publicly available (even if unpublished) to be made available online (and so reduce the number of FoI applications). Contract override will be possible for unpublished works. This might be important for archives, but that depends on the details.
Copyright Notices
The IPO will issue copyright notices for non-experts on general interest issues where there appears to be confusion about copyright law. This may be on its own initiative or as result of a request. Notices would be authoritative and would be taken into account by the courts but would be non-statutory. They will inform any future review of the CDPA.
Friday, 1 March 2013
Digitisation and the Intangible Cultural Heritage Debate
My post on Hidden Histories mentioned the 2003 UNESCO Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage, and I'm interested in exploring it in more detail, particularly with regard to the intangible cultural heritage (ICH) debate. I haven't come across many studies that make the link between ICH and digitisation but Kate Hennessy's essay, 'From Intangible Expression to Digital Cultural Heritage' is one. She critically reflects on two international policy statements - the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage and the 2003 UNESCO Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage and is interested in exploring the possibilities for transforming intangible expression into digital cultural heritage. The focus for her essay is the Ridington/Dane-zaa Digital Archive, an archive of the traditions and rituals of the indigenous Dane-zaa community.
Since these issues are examined with reference to two UNESCO documents, that organisation's definitions of ICH and digital heritage must first be established. In the 2003 UNESCO Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage, digital heritage is defined as:
The 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage defines ICH as:
The contrast here between the emphasis on heritage as a sense of identity and continuity and on heritage as a resource is quite striking. Where ICH is a heritage that is being 'constantly recreated', the value implicated in digital heritage is as a unique and enduring resource. However, the flexibility of the digital format, its relational structure and its capacity for change through real-time updates would superficially ally itself with those protean qualities highlighted in UNESCO's definition of ICH. My question, then, is this: does digitisation support and provide opportunities for the spontaneous and improvisational aspects of ICH to be represented? Or does it actually bolster notions of tangible heritage (in UNESCO terms, at least) by operating according to the same principles of permanence, value and uniqueness?
Hennessy's approach is to argue that the 'the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage and the preservation of digital heritage are not separate projects' (p. 43). She explains how the Charter puts an emphasis on public access to digital cultural heritage materials, encoded through UNESCO programming as the 'Memory of the World'. Accordingly, Article 2 of the Charter states that: 'the purpose of preserving the digital heritage is to ensure that it remains accessible to the public'. The discourse of loss that permeates the Charter, in which digital media 'is at risk of being lost to posterity' (Article 3, The Threat of Loss), is reflected in the 2003 Convention:
By focusing on the connectedness of these endeavours, Hennessy makes the case that the Ridington/Dane-zaa Digital Archive is formed of both ICH and digital heritage elements, concluding that 'as heritage categories (tangible, intangible, natural) are increasingly understood to be arbitrary and interconnected (Kirschenblatt-Gimblett 2004)*, so are the meanings and consequences of words and things, in ephemeral analogue and digital form' (p. 43). While this approach is interesting, I'm wary of the extent to which she downplays the significance of media categories. I would agree that ephemeral, analogue and digital formats are related to one another but there are important differences in that they are not completely benign/arbitrary in their modes of communication and representation. My purpose here is to investigate these differences through further analysis of the definitions in UNESCO's Charter and Convention. The pairing of continuity and identity in defining ICH strikes me as particularly pertinent, and does potentially raise questions about the link between digital heritage and ICH, a point which is also highlighted by comparison with definitions of tangible heritage.
The discourse of permanence and uniqueness constructed around heritage generally has been subject to increasing criticism within the last ten years. At the forefront of this critique is Laurajane Smith, who’s central idea (as covered in Madness in the Method) is that heritage does not exist in the sense that it is embodied in grand, monumental and historic sites; instead, heritage is a discourse that 'validates a set of practices and performances' (p. 11) and, through an authorised heritage discourse (AHD), perpetuates and reinforces a view of heritage as inherently 'tangible'. Emma Waterton draws from Smith's argument and her characterisation of AHD. In the ''The Envy of the World?' Intangible Heritage in England', co-authored with Smith, she writes:
Here Waterton refers explicitly to permanence and continuity as being part of a discourse that calls for the protection of heritage 'fabric', against the threat of damage or destruction. However, if we return to the Charter and the fears it expresses of digital heritage being 'lost to posterity', or The Threat of Loss section of the ICH Convention, these statements seem indicative of comparable sentiments. The similarity could either indicate the danger of loss argument having close associations with any concept of heritage (I believe this is true up to a point, i.e. memory-forgetting), or that the so-called AHD has insinuated itself into policy statements about ICH and digital heritage, which is what Smith and Waterton would and do argue in 'The Envy of the World'. Central also to this discourse is the emphasis placed on preservation and, while discussions of preservation often carry with them intimations of permanence, the pursuit of permanent solutions to preservation problems, tangible or otherwise, is somewhat misguided. As David Lowenthal writes in The Past is a Foreign Country:
References
Cameron, Fiona, 'The Politics of Heritage Authorship: The Case of Digital Heritage Collections', in New Heritage: New Media and Cultural Heritage, ed. by Yehuda Kalay, Thomas Kvan and Jane Affleck. London: Routledge, 2008, pp. 170-184.
Hennessy, Kate, 'From Intangible Expression to Digital Cultural Heritage', in Michelle L. Stefano, Peter Davis and Gerard Corsane (eds.), Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2012, pp. 33-45.
Huyssen, Andreas, Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Lowenthal, David, The Past is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Smith, Laurajane and Emma Waterton, ''The Envy of the World?' Intangible Heritage in England', in Intangible Heritage, ed. by Laurajane Smith and Natsuko Akagawa. London: Routledge, 2011, pp. 289-301.
Stiegler, Bernard, ‘The Discrete Image’, in Echographies of Television: Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002.
UNESCO, Charter on the Preservation of the Digital Heritage, 2003. Accessed 18 February 2013 from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001331/133171e.pdf
UNESCO, Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, 2003. Accessed 18 February 2013 from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001325/132540e.pdf
Since these issues are examined with reference to two UNESCO documents, that organisation's definitions of ICH and digital heritage must first be established. In the 2003 UNESCO Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage, digital heritage is defined as:
Unique resources of human knowledge and expression. It embraces cultural, scientific and administrative resources, as well as technical, legal, medical and other kinds of information created digitally or converted into digital form from existing analogue resources.
The 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage defines ICH as:
The practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills - as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated therewith - that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity.
The contrast here between the emphasis on heritage as a sense of identity and continuity and on heritage as a resource is quite striking. Where ICH is a heritage that is being 'constantly recreated', the value implicated in digital heritage is as a unique and enduring resource. However, the flexibility of the digital format, its relational structure and its capacity for change through real-time updates would superficially ally itself with those protean qualities highlighted in UNESCO's definition of ICH. My question, then, is this: does digitisation support and provide opportunities for the spontaneous and improvisational aspects of ICH to be represented? Or does it actually bolster notions of tangible heritage (in UNESCO terms, at least) by operating according to the same principles of permanence, value and uniqueness?
Hennessy's approach is to argue that the 'the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage and the preservation of digital heritage are not separate projects' (p. 43). She explains how the Charter puts an emphasis on public access to digital cultural heritage materials, encoded through UNESCO programming as the 'Memory of the World'. Accordingly, Article 2 of the Charter states that: 'the purpose of preserving the digital heritage is to ensure that it remains accessible to the public'. The discourse of loss that permeates the Charter, in which digital media 'is at risk of being lost to posterity' (Article 3, The Threat of Loss), is reflected in the 2003 Convention:
Recognizing that the process of globalization and social transformation, alongside the conditions they create for renewed dialogue among communities, also give rise, as does the phenomenon of intolerance, to grave threat of deterioration, disappearance and destruction of the intangible cultural heritage (see p. 37).
By focusing on the connectedness of these endeavours, Hennessy makes the case that the Ridington/Dane-zaa Digital Archive is formed of both ICH and digital heritage elements, concluding that 'as heritage categories (tangible, intangible, natural) are increasingly understood to be arbitrary and interconnected (Kirschenblatt-Gimblett 2004)*, so are the meanings and consequences of words and things, in ephemeral analogue and digital form' (p. 43). While this approach is interesting, I'm wary of the extent to which she downplays the significance of media categories. I would agree that ephemeral, analogue and digital formats are related to one another but there are important differences in that they are not completely benign/arbitrary in their modes of communication and representation. My purpose here is to investigate these differences through further analysis of the definitions in UNESCO's Charter and Convention. The pairing of continuity and identity in defining ICH strikes me as particularly pertinent, and does potentially raise questions about the link between digital heritage and ICH, a point which is also highlighted by comparison with definitions of tangible heritage.
The discourse of permanence and uniqueness constructed around heritage generally has been subject to increasing criticism within the last ten years. At the forefront of this critique is Laurajane Smith, who’s central idea (as covered in Madness in the Method) is that heritage does not exist in the sense that it is embodied in grand, monumental and historic sites; instead, heritage is a discourse that 'validates a set of practices and performances' (p. 11) and, through an authorised heritage discourse (AHD), perpetuates and reinforces a view of heritage as inherently 'tangible'. Emma Waterton draws from Smith's argument and her characterisation of AHD. In the ''The Envy of the World?' Intangible Heritage in England', co-authored with Smith, she writes:
Smith (2006) has labelled this discourse the AHD, which is a way of seeing heritage that developed over a considerable period of time, and owes many of its characteristics to an evocative mixing of Enlightenment and Romanticist philosophies. A sense of permanence and continuity permeates this discourse, which brings with it a need for the protection of 'authentic' fabric from damage and/or destruction for the ultimate benefit of future generations.
Here Waterton refers explicitly to permanence and continuity as being part of a discourse that calls for the protection of heritage 'fabric', against the threat of damage or destruction. However, if we return to the Charter and the fears it expresses of digital heritage being 'lost to posterity', or The Threat of Loss section of the ICH Convention, these statements seem indicative of comparable sentiments. The similarity could either indicate the danger of loss argument having close associations with any concept of heritage (I believe this is true up to a point, i.e. memory-forgetting), or that the so-called AHD has insinuated itself into policy statements about ICH and digital heritage, which is what Smith and Waterton would and do argue in 'The Envy of the World'. Central also to this discourse is the emphasis placed on preservation and, while discussions of preservation often carry with them intimations of permanence, the pursuit of permanent solutions to preservation problems, tangible or otherwise, is somewhat misguided. As David Lowenthal writes in The Past is a Foreign Country:
Preservation itself reveals that permanence is an illusion. The more we save, the more aware we become that such remains are continually altered and reinterpreted. We suspend their erosion only to transform them in other ways.
Recognising that we can only slow, rather than halt the passage of time raises interesting questions about the preservation of ICH and digital heritage. What would be deemed an acceptable stage of deterioration? With books and manuscripts, their manifest age lends them a sort of authenticity or authority. Conversely, damaged computer files more often reinforce the perceived ephemerality of digital information and many forms of ICH are only constituted in their enactment. These examples highlight Lowenthal’s point that heritage in the broad sense is being continually reconfigured so that preservation becomes less a matter of maintaining a fixed state of things and more a case of interpreting and transforming them.
Unfortunately, although crucial to acknowledge, it is difficult to base policy on a notion of heritage that is constantly in a state of flux, which perhaps accounts for a tendency to revert to well established assumptions about value and culture. This tendency creates a potentially vicious cycle, whereby the attempts of organisations like UNESCO to delineate separate categories for heritage (arbitrary or not) are undermined by a dominant and mismatched set of heritage principles. For example, of digital heritage, Fiona Cameron writes that the 'ascription of heritage metaphors to cultural materials in a digital format means that digital media has become embedded in a cycle of heritage value and consumption' (p. 170). Likewise, Smith and Waterton suggest that 'Western discourses of heritage that stress its materiality work to make intangible memories more 'tangible' by linking them to places, objects and spaces' (p. 294).
I mentioned continuity earlier, as forming a part of this heritage vocabulary, which is taken up in UNESCO’s definition of ICH. Continuity in this sense presumably refers to the retention and continuing practice of rituals, in order to maintain a feeling of community and identity from generation to generation. Like the custodianship of artefacts or archival records, the focus is on the persistence of traditions or traditional objects. Without reiterating the argument about the shifting nature of preservation, there is also a preoccupation with time embedded in these claims. The frequency with which continuity is cited in relation to an understanding of heritage (see Smith and Waterton above, also Andreas Huyssen, p. 27), testifies to the importance of 'one thing following another'. In his account of the museum, Huyssen identifies continuity as feature of modernisation, which is characterised by 'its strong subject, its notion of linear continuous time, and its belief in the superiority of the modern over the premodern and the primitive' (Huyssen, p. 28). It is his contention that these beliefs are now being challenged to the extent that marginalised voices and excluded histories are re-entering the frame, a symptom of our museal culture. Of course another symptom, and a significant factor affecting the perceived continuity of time is the rise of digital media, nebulous and network like. In the Charter again continuity is described as 'fundamental' in ensuring the long-term preservation of digital heritage. But how can UNESCO appeal to a sense of continuity when the very form and structure of digital heritage essentially challenges this linearity?
In 'The Discrete Image', Bernard Stiegler discusses the phenomenon of 'discetization', the function by which the digital photograph is converted into a manipulable, machine readable format. The discrete of the title is indicative of digital technology’s capacity to store images as binary code, a form that is entirely quantified, and which could be seen to interfere in the process that renders the photograph whole, or continuous. It is his view that 'by discretizing the continuous, digitization allows us to submit the this was to a decomposing analysis' (pp. 157-158) – [what he describes as the 'this was' is the experience of looking at the analogue image/photograph, which invites comparison with Roland Barthes' project in Camera Lucida]. However, this form of analysis is also what destabilises the experience of continuous time. In the heritage context, a digital image/object disrupts that continuity by revealing its 'wholeness' as an illusion.
To return to the definition of digital heritage and the emphasis UNESCO puts on providing public access through digital resources, perhaps in serving this increasingly important function, it is making a fair trade-off. But it is more likely that at a policy level, there is a lack of understanding of what is at stake. In the Hidden Histories post, I described one account of digitisation where preservation and access are two sides of the same coin. However, as heritage’s older concern, preservation is still mired in the traditional values I’ve already described, while access is less bound by this discourse, and now finding a channel through the ubiquity of the Internet. Going back to a point I touched on at the beginning (an echo of 'the medium is the message'), we cannot underestimate the power of the digital medium to change the way we experience and interact with heritage, and its tendency to displace a sense of 'continuity' and history. In this way, while superficially conforming to dominant notions of heritage, and even possibly reinforcing the pre-eminence of the 'real thing', underneath the surface, as a mode of representation, it is distorting dominant and long-held heritage principles.
So where does this leave ICH? What the discussion here highlights is that while the policy pays lip-service to the process of performative revision in its depiction of ICH as being 'constantly recreated', ICH practices are in danger of being subjected to the same processes of regulation, control and preservation as tangible heritage. Hennessy challenges the necessity of distinctions like tangible, intangible and digital, and Smith and Waterton argue along similar lines, that all heritage is intangible. While this view is constructive in moving away from an idea of heritage that's bound to the material of culture, I would contend that UNESCO (particularly in its Digital Heritage Charter) is still wedded to more traditional notions of tangible heritage.
* I would argue that despite this connectedness, important distinctions between tangible, intangible and digital heritage should considered. For example, discussions of authenticity that so frequently permeate the field of digital heritage will not be as significant for ICH, where more of discussion focuses on how to document ritual and traditional practices.
Unfortunately, although crucial to acknowledge, it is difficult to base policy on a notion of heritage that is constantly in a state of flux, which perhaps accounts for a tendency to revert to well established assumptions about value and culture. This tendency creates a potentially vicious cycle, whereby the attempts of organisations like UNESCO to delineate separate categories for heritage (arbitrary or not) are undermined by a dominant and mismatched set of heritage principles. For example, of digital heritage, Fiona Cameron writes that the 'ascription of heritage metaphors to cultural materials in a digital format means that digital media has become embedded in a cycle of heritage value and consumption' (p. 170). Likewise, Smith and Waterton suggest that 'Western discourses of heritage that stress its materiality work to make intangible memories more 'tangible' by linking them to places, objects and spaces' (p. 294).
I mentioned continuity earlier, as forming a part of this heritage vocabulary, which is taken up in UNESCO’s definition of ICH. Continuity in this sense presumably refers to the retention and continuing practice of rituals, in order to maintain a feeling of community and identity from generation to generation. Like the custodianship of artefacts or archival records, the focus is on the persistence of traditions or traditional objects. Without reiterating the argument about the shifting nature of preservation, there is also a preoccupation with time embedded in these claims. The frequency with which continuity is cited in relation to an understanding of heritage (see Smith and Waterton above, also Andreas Huyssen, p. 27), testifies to the importance of 'one thing following another'. In his account of the museum, Huyssen identifies continuity as feature of modernisation, which is characterised by 'its strong subject, its notion of linear continuous time, and its belief in the superiority of the modern over the premodern and the primitive' (Huyssen, p. 28). It is his contention that these beliefs are now being challenged to the extent that marginalised voices and excluded histories are re-entering the frame, a symptom of our museal culture. Of course another symptom, and a significant factor affecting the perceived continuity of time is the rise of digital media, nebulous and network like. In the Charter again continuity is described as 'fundamental' in ensuring the long-term preservation of digital heritage. But how can UNESCO appeal to a sense of continuity when the very form and structure of digital heritage essentially challenges this linearity?
In 'The Discrete Image', Bernard Stiegler discusses the phenomenon of 'discetization', the function by which the digital photograph is converted into a manipulable, machine readable format. The discrete of the title is indicative of digital technology’s capacity to store images as binary code, a form that is entirely quantified, and which could be seen to interfere in the process that renders the photograph whole, or continuous. It is his view that 'by discretizing the continuous, digitization allows us to submit the this was to a decomposing analysis' (pp. 157-158) – [what he describes as the 'this was' is the experience of looking at the analogue image/photograph, which invites comparison with Roland Barthes' project in Camera Lucida]. However, this form of analysis is also what destabilises the experience of continuous time. In the heritage context, a digital image/object disrupts that continuity by revealing its 'wholeness' as an illusion.
To return to the definition of digital heritage and the emphasis UNESCO puts on providing public access through digital resources, perhaps in serving this increasingly important function, it is making a fair trade-off. But it is more likely that at a policy level, there is a lack of understanding of what is at stake. In the Hidden Histories post, I described one account of digitisation where preservation and access are two sides of the same coin. However, as heritage’s older concern, preservation is still mired in the traditional values I’ve already described, while access is less bound by this discourse, and now finding a channel through the ubiquity of the Internet. Going back to a point I touched on at the beginning (an echo of 'the medium is the message'), we cannot underestimate the power of the digital medium to change the way we experience and interact with heritage, and its tendency to displace a sense of 'continuity' and history. In this way, while superficially conforming to dominant notions of heritage, and even possibly reinforcing the pre-eminence of the 'real thing', underneath the surface, as a mode of representation, it is distorting dominant and long-held heritage principles.
So where does this leave ICH? What the discussion here highlights is that while the policy pays lip-service to the process of performative revision in its depiction of ICH as being 'constantly recreated', ICH practices are in danger of being subjected to the same processes of regulation, control and preservation as tangible heritage. Hennessy challenges the necessity of distinctions like tangible, intangible and digital, and Smith and Waterton argue along similar lines, that all heritage is intangible. While this view is constructive in moving away from an idea of heritage that's bound to the material of culture, I would contend that UNESCO (particularly in its Digital Heritage Charter) is still wedded to more traditional notions of tangible heritage.
* I would argue that despite this connectedness, important distinctions between tangible, intangible and digital heritage should considered. For example, discussions of authenticity that so frequently permeate the field of digital heritage will not be as significant for ICH, where more of discussion focuses on how to document ritual and traditional practices.
References
Cameron, Fiona, 'The Politics of Heritage Authorship: The Case of Digital Heritage Collections', in New Heritage: New Media and Cultural Heritage, ed. by Yehuda Kalay, Thomas Kvan and Jane Affleck. London: Routledge, 2008, pp. 170-184.
Hennessy, Kate, 'From Intangible Expression to Digital Cultural Heritage', in Michelle L. Stefano, Peter Davis and Gerard Corsane (eds.), Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2012, pp. 33-45.
Huyssen, Andreas, Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Lowenthal, David, The Past is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Smith, Laurajane and Emma Waterton, ''The Envy of the World?' Intangible Heritage in England', in Intangible Heritage, ed. by Laurajane Smith and Natsuko Akagawa. London: Routledge, 2011, pp. 289-301.
Stiegler, Bernard, ‘The Discrete Image’, in Echographies of Television: Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002.
UNESCO, Charter on the Preservation of the Digital Heritage, 2003. Accessed 18 February 2013 from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001331/133171e.pdf
UNESCO, Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, 2003. Accessed 18 February 2013 from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001325/132540e.pdf
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