I present a few screen shots here to give an idea of what 'Alleph' looked.
Showing posts with label Archive. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Archive. Show all posts
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Preserving Digital Literature: 'Alleph: A Self Portrait' by Sakab Bashir (2003)
'Alleph: A Self Portrait' won a BAFTA Interactive Arts Award in 2003 for its author Sakab Bashir. The work is no longer available online, but I include some screen shots here from a prolonged study I made of it as part of my graduate work for a earlier incarnation of my PhD thesis. 'Alleph' is a beautiful multimedia production in which links opened to audio and video loops. Seven spaces linked together to provide an allegory of the major stages of life. Material was lifted from the 12th Century Sufi poem The Conference of the Birds and intertwines with material sampled from popular films from the 20th Century, images of a school, a prison, a hospital, a workshop and a menhirs on a hill. There are adaptations of seven verse stories from The Conference of the Birds in Alleph; ‘A Pauper in Love’, ‘The Heron and the Sea’, ‘Rabe’eh and the Two Grains of Sand’, ‘The Ambiguous Courtesan’, ‘The Devil Complains’, ‘Joseph and the Well’ and ‘The Martyrdom of Hallaj’. Titles flowed across the screen and one manipulated and navigated the text of 'Alleph'. As one navigated further through the work the flowers opened around the main image, thus positioning the reader in the looping structure of 'Alleph' (it resumed again once the final image had been completed for links and media).
I present a few screen shots here to give an idea of what 'Alleph' looked.
I present a few screen shots here to give an idea of what 'Alleph' looked.
Tuesday, May 07, 2013
The Online Letter Archive
The online letter archive seems to be a popular project for humanities researchers. Such archives offer the correspondences of either a well known individual, or of people who experienced a historical event and wrote letters about it. The online archive is a model for the digital organization of of a collection and a brief survey of a few current online letter archives reveals some interesting tendencies, features and limitations to the present format.
The Darwin Correspondence Project (DCP) "exists to publish the definitive edition of letters to and from Charles Darwin". The site promises; "you can read and search the full texts of more than 7,000 of Charles Darwin’s letters, and find information on 8,000 more. Available here are complete transcripts of all known letters Darwin wrote and received up to the year 1868. More are being added all the time."With such a vast amount of material an efficient search system is essential. The basic search system on DCP is keyword motivated. As such it is an efficient but limited system. For example, in the general search window, by searching for the keyword "Galapagos" it returns 170 entries. More fine-grained search is available, with a) People, b) Places, c) Keyword (with four fields available; 1. All Content, 2. Only Summary, 3. Only Transcript, 4. Only Footnote) and finally d) Time Range. Entering "Galapagos" in the Places field only returns 59 entries; which seems odd. There is no graphical interface available (that I could find anyway) on the site for place correlation, such as a map that imposes time over place, to see some progression in the movements of Darwin, and thus connecting the letters together in another searchable field (i.e. place). There are a number of glossaries in the website for DCP, the most interesting of which is perhaps the Physical Descriptions. Here the original artefacts are coded according to genre and materiality (eg. original, handwritten, condition status etc). The coding of genre and materiality is an efficient way to present something of the objects it is representing, but it would be good to have seen at least some scans. There is however the Darwin Behind the Scenes virtual exhibition, which is linked from the site on the News section, where you can see high resolution images of some of the objects. Searching for Galapagos on the Behind the Scenes website brings 0 returns, but the images are stunning.
The Olive Schreiner Letters Online (OSLO) project "is funded by the ESRC. It will transcribe, analyse and publish the complete extant Olive Schreiner letters presently in archival locations world-wide". There are currently 4800 letters from Schreiner known to be in existence. The letters presently in the archive are organized alphabetically around the surname of the recipient. There is a general search function. Searching in it from the Index page for "Churchill" returns 10 entries, from letters not addressed to anyone by the name of Churchill, but that do contain the name within them. There seems to be an element of virtual portraiture to the OSLO, with the How to Use section stating; "Essential Schreiner' features Schreiner's 'Must Read' letters, letters concerned with transitions and turning points, and those which show the lighter side of her letter-writing practices, as well as an outline chronology of events and happenings in her life." A personality behind an archive always helps with relating to the materials within it. Interestingly, the OSLO contains "two indexes. The first is a list of all the letters in which she mentions or discusses her writing, including both particular publications and also her comments on writing as an activity, her work. The second is a sub-set of this, and it lists those letters which discuss publishers and editors and her dealings - not always very happy - with them." How these are cross-referenced is unclear. These is also an index of letters by topic, and this is an invaluable addition to the system. It is in the Letters by Topic section that we get a good overview of the possible uses for the OSLO. In the Letters by Topic we can see how rich an archive we have here, with a very broad range of possible applications.
We have chosen to include Letters from the American Civil War (LACW) as it is a good example of attention to the artefacts represented in the archive. The archive is actually a portal to a number of other archives. The letters are reproduced both visually and textually; with images of the letters and their envelopes (including addresses and stamps) alongside clear copies of the letters. These is no notation in the archive.The LACW archive is an archive at its most basic in terms of infrastructure, but the use of images of the represented artefacts adds a historical and material dimension that is lacking in many online letter archives.
The final archive in this collection is a recently created one from Sweden. Hjalmar Bergman Korrespondenser (HBK or Hjalmar Bergman Letters) contains hundreds of letters written between 1900 and 1930 by the Swedish writer. What is interesting about the archive is how the material is organized: i. from the date, ii. from the town it was sent from, iii. from the address, iv. from the people who are named in the letter, v. from works that are named in the letter, vi. from the genre of works named in the letter, vii. from where the letter is kept today and viii. from visual reproductions of the letter in the archive. In this way the HBK archive covers many of the possible search combinations in the organizing of the material. Tagging is of utmost importance to the organizing of materials in digital archives. Footnotes are included in each reproduction of text of letters. There is no general search function in the archive website that we could find. We think this is very interesting; instead of relying on a general search, the material is tagged to such a degree that users are directed towards specific themes in the archive.
To summarize, we thought it was interesting that none of the archives offered downloadable content. The result is materials cannot be extracted from the archives and worked with 'off site'. In this sense the archives as they appear online function more as interfaces than spaces to work in. However, as they are online and accessible, they do allow controlled access to materials and the opportunity to work from outside institutions for anyone interested in the subjects they cover. We would have liked to have seen more Creative Commons or Open Access statements attached to these archives. A design that allows linking and uploading to research that reference the archives, and feedback from users would have also been useful. The organization of digital artefacts is an important element in the management of events and the archives discussed here provide inspiration for the possibilities for storage, access (include searchability) and distribution for any materials stored online. In our discussions in the workshops next week the concept of 'The Archive' will feature, and we hope this short post inspires some consideration of the role of the archive in event management and the dissemination of research.
(This was originally posted on the SMKE Website).
The Darwin Correspondence Project (DCP) "exists to publish the definitive edition of letters to and from Charles Darwin". The site promises; "you can read and search the full texts of more than 7,000 of Charles Darwin’s letters, and find information on 8,000 more. Available here are complete transcripts of all known letters Darwin wrote and received up to the year 1868. More are being added all the time."With such a vast amount of material an efficient search system is essential. The basic search system on DCP is keyword motivated. As such it is an efficient but limited system. For example, in the general search window, by searching for the keyword "Galapagos" it returns 170 entries. More fine-grained search is available, with a) People, b) Places, c) Keyword (with four fields available; 1. All Content, 2. Only Summary, 3. Only Transcript, 4. Only Footnote) and finally d) Time Range. Entering "Galapagos" in the Places field only returns 59 entries; which seems odd. There is no graphical interface available (that I could find anyway) on the site for place correlation, such as a map that imposes time over place, to see some progression in the movements of Darwin, and thus connecting the letters together in another searchable field (i.e. place). There are a number of glossaries in the website for DCP, the most interesting of which is perhaps the Physical Descriptions. Here the original artefacts are coded according to genre and materiality (eg. original, handwritten, condition status etc). The coding of genre and materiality is an efficient way to present something of the objects it is representing, but it would be good to have seen at least some scans. There is however the Darwin Behind the Scenes virtual exhibition, which is linked from the site on the News section, where you can see high resolution images of some of the objects. Searching for Galapagos on the Behind the Scenes website brings 0 returns, but the images are stunning.
The Olive Schreiner Letters Online (OSLO) project "is funded by the ESRC. It will transcribe, analyse and publish the complete extant Olive Schreiner letters presently in archival locations world-wide". There are currently 4800 letters from Schreiner known to be in existence. The letters presently in the archive are organized alphabetically around the surname of the recipient. There is a general search function. Searching in it from the Index page for "Churchill" returns 10 entries, from letters not addressed to anyone by the name of Churchill, but that do contain the name within them. There seems to be an element of virtual portraiture to the OSLO, with the How to Use section stating; "Essential Schreiner' features Schreiner's 'Must Read' letters, letters concerned with transitions and turning points, and those which show the lighter side of her letter-writing practices, as well as an outline chronology of events and happenings in her life." A personality behind an archive always helps with relating to the materials within it. Interestingly, the OSLO contains "two indexes. The first is a list of all the letters in which she mentions or discusses her writing, including both particular publications and also her comments on writing as an activity, her work. The second is a sub-set of this, and it lists those letters which discuss publishers and editors and her dealings - not always very happy - with them." How these are cross-referenced is unclear. These is also an index of letters by topic, and this is an invaluable addition to the system. It is in the Letters by Topic section that we get a good overview of the possible uses for the OSLO. In the Letters by Topic we can see how rich an archive we have here, with a very broad range of possible applications.
We have chosen to include Letters from the American Civil War (LACW) as it is a good example of attention to the artefacts represented in the archive. The archive is actually a portal to a number of other archives. The letters are reproduced both visually and textually; with images of the letters and their envelopes (including addresses and stamps) alongside clear copies of the letters. These is no notation in the archive.The LACW archive is an archive at its most basic in terms of infrastructure, but the use of images of the represented artefacts adds a historical and material dimension that is lacking in many online letter archives.
The final archive in this collection is a recently created one from Sweden. Hjalmar Bergman Korrespondenser (HBK or Hjalmar Bergman Letters) contains hundreds of letters written between 1900 and 1930 by the Swedish writer. What is interesting about the archive is how the material is organized: i. from the date, ii. from the town it was sent from, iii. from the address, iv. from the people who are named in the letter, v. from works that are named in the letter, vi. from the genre of works named in the letter, vii. from where the letter is kept today and viii. from visual reproductions of the letter in the archive. In this way the HBK archive covers many of the possible search combinations in the organizing of the material. Tagging is of utmost importance to the organizing of materials in digital archives. Footnotes are included in each reproduction of text of letters. There is no general search function in the archive website that we could find. We think this is very interesting; instead of relying on a general search, the material is tagged to such a degree that users are directed towards specific themes in the archive.
To summarize, we thought it was interesting that none of the archives offered downloadable content. The result is materials cannot be extracted from the archives and worked with 'off site'. In this sense the archives as they appear online function more as interfaces than spaces to work in. However, as they are online and accessible, they do allow controlled access to materials and the opportunity to work from outside institutions for anyone interested in the subjects they cover. We would have liked to have seen more Creative Commons or Open Access statements attached to these archives. A design that allows linking and uploading to research that reference the archives, and feedback from users would have also been useful. The organization of digital artefacts is an important element in the management of events and the archives discussed here provide inspiration for the possibilities for storage, access (include searchability) and distribution for any materials stored online. In our discussions in the workshops next week the concept of 'The Archive' will feature, and we hope this short post inspires some consideration of the role of the archive in event management and the dissemination of research.
(This was originally posted on the SMKE Website).
Friday, February 22, 2013
The Online Letter Archive
The online letter archive seems to be a popular project for humanities researchers. Such archives offer the correspondences of either a well known individual, or of people who experienced a historical event and wrote letters about it. The online archive is a model for the digital organization of of a collection and a brief survey of a few current online letter archives reveals some interesting tendencies, features and limitations to the present format.
The Darwin Correspondence Project (DCP) "exists to publish the definitive edition of letters to and from Charles Darwin". The site promises; "you can read and search the full texts of more than 7,000 of Charles Darwin’s letters, and find information on 8,000 more. Available here are complete transcripts of all known letters Darwin wrote and received up to the year 1868. More are being added all the time."With such a vast amount of material an efficient search system is essential. The basic search system on DCP is keyword motivated. As such it is an efficient but limited system. For example, in the general search window, by searching for the keyword "Galapagos" it returns 170 entries. More fine-grained search is available, with a) People, b) Places, c) Keyword (with four fields available; 1. All Content, 2. Only Summary, 3. Only Transcript, 4. Only Footnote) and finally d) Time Range. Entering "Galapagos" in the Places field only returns 59 entries; which seems odd. There is no graphical interface available (that I could find anyway) on the site for place correlation, such as a map that imposes time over place, to see some progression in the movements of Darwin, and thus connecting the letters together in another searchable field (i.e. place). There are a number of glossaries in the website for DCP, the most interesting of which is perhaps the Physical Descriptions. Here the original artefacts are coded according to genre and materiality (eg. original, handwritten, condition status etc). The coding of genre and materiality is an efficient way to present something of the objects it is representing, but it would be good to have seen at least some scans. There is however the Darwin Behind the Scenes virtual exhibition, which is linked from the site on the News section, where you can see high resolution images of some of the objects. Searching for Galapagos on the Behind the Scenes website brings 0 returns, but the images are stunning.
The Olive Schreiner Letters Online (OSLO) project "is funded by the ESRC. It will transcribe, analyse and publish the complete extant Olive Schreiner letters presently in archival locations world-wide". There are currently 4800 letters from Schreiner known to be in existence. The letters presently in the archive are organized alphabetically around the surname of the recipient. There is a general search function. Searching in it from the Index page for "Churchill" returns 10 entries, from letters not addressed to anyone by the name of Churchill, but that do contain the name within them. There seems to be an element of virtual portraiture to the OSLO, with the How to Use section stating; "Essential Schreiner' features Schreiner's 'Must Read' letters, letters concerned with transitions and turning points, and those which show the lighter side of her letter-writing practices, as well as an outline chronology of events and happenings in her life." A personality behind an archive always helps with relating to the materials within it. Interestingly, the OSLO contains "two indexes. The first is a list of all the letters in which she mentions or discusses her writing, including both particular publications and also her comments on writing as an activity, her work. The second is a sub-set of this, and it lists those letters which discuss publishers and editors and her dealings - not always very happy - with them." How these are cross-referenced is unclear. These is also an index of letters by topic, and this is an invaluable addition to the system. It is in the Letters by Topic section that we get a good overview of the possible uses for the OSLO. In the Letters by Topic we can see how rich an archive we have here, with a very broad range of possible applications.
We have chosen to include Letters from the American Civil War (LACW) as it is a good example of attention to the artefacts represented in the archive. The archive is actually a portal to a number of other archives. The letters are reproduced both visually and textually; with images of the letters and their envelopes (including addresses and stamps) alongside clear copies of the letters. These is no notation in the archive.The LACW archive is an archive at its most basic in terms of infrastructure, but the use of images of the represented artefacts adds a historical and material dimension that is lacking in many online letter archives.
The final archive in this collection is a recently created one from Sweden. Hjalmar Bergman Korrespondenser (HBK or Hjalmar Bergman Letters) contains hundreds of letters written between 1900 and 1930 by the Swedish writer. What is interesting about the archive is how the material is organized: i. from the date, ii. from the town it was sent from, iii. from the address, iv. from the people who are named in the letter, v. from works that are named in the letter, vi. from the genre of works named in the letter, vii. from where the letter is kept today and viii. from visual reproductions of the letter in the archive. In this way the HBK archive covers many of the possible search combinations in the organizing of the material. Tagging is of utmost importance to the organizing of materials in digital archives. Footnotes are included in each reproduction of text of letters. There is no general search function in the archive website that we could find. We think this is very interesting; instead of relying on a general search, the material is tagged to such a degree that users are directed towards specific themes in the archive.
To summarize, we thought it was interesting that none of the archives offered downloadable content. The result is materials cannot be extracted from the archives and worked with 'off site'. In this sense the archives as they appear online function more as interfaces than spaces to work in. However, as they are online and accessible, they do allow controlled access to materials and the opportunity to work from outside institutions for anyone interested in the subjects they cover. We would have liked to have seen more Creative Commons or Open Access statements attached to these archives. A design that allows linking and uploading to research that reference the archives, and feedback from users would have also been useful. The organization of digital artefacts is an important element in the management of events and the archives discussed here provide inspiration for the possibilities for storage, access (include searchability) and distribution for any materials stored online. In our discussions in the workshops next week the concept of 'The Archive' will feature, and we hope this short post inspires some consideration of the role of the archive in event management and the dissemination of research.
The Darwin Correspondence Project (DCP) "exists to publish the definitive edition of letters to and from Charles Darwin". The site promises; "you can read and search the full texts of more than 7,000 of Charles Darwin’s letters, and find information on 8,000 more. Available here are complete transcripts of all known letters Darwin wrote and received up to the year 1868. More are being added all the time."With such a vast amount of material an efficient search system is essential. The basic search system on DCP is keyword motivated. As such it is an efficient but limited system. For example, in the general search window, by searching for the keyword "Galapagos" it returns 170 entries. More fine-grained search is available, with a) People, b) Places, c) Keyword (with four fields available; 1. All Content, 2. Only Summary, 3. Only Transcript, 4. Only Footnote) and finally d) Time Range. Entering "Galapagos" in the Places field only returns 59 entries; which seems odd. There is no graphical interface available (that I could find anyway) on the site for place correlation, such as a map that imposes time over place, to see some progression in the movements of Darwin, and thus connecting the letters together in another searchable field (i.e. place). There are a number of glossaries in the website for DCP, the most interesting of which is perhaps the Physical Descriptions. Here the original artefacts are coded according to genre and materiality (eg. original, handwritten, condition status etc). The coding of genre and materiality is an efficient way to present something of the objects it is representing, but it would be good to have seen at least some scans. There is however the Darwin Behind the Scenes virtual exhibition, which is linked from the site on the News section, where you can see high resolution images of some of the objects. Searching for Galapagos on the Behind the Scenes website brings 0 returns, but the images are stunning.
The Olive Schreiner Letters Online (OSLO) project "is funded by the ESRC. It will transcribe, analyse and publish the complete extant Olive Schreiner letters presently in archival locations world-wide". There are currently 4800 letters from Schreiner known to be in existence. The letters presently in the archive are organized alphabetically around the surname of the recipient. There is a general search function. Searching in it from the Index page for "Churchill" returns 10 entries, from letters not addressed to anyone by the name of Churchill, but that do contain the name within them. There seems to be an element of virtual portraiture to the OSLO, with the How to Use section stating; "Essential Schreiner' features Schreiner's 'Must Read' letters, letters concerned with transitions and turning points, and those which show the lighter side of her letter-writing practices, as well as an outline chronology of events and happenings in her life." A personality behind an archive always helps with relating to the materials within it. Interestingly, the OSLO contains "two indexes. The first is a list of all the letters in which she mentions or discusses her writing, including both particular publications and also her comments on writing as an activity, her work. The second is a sub-set of this, and it lists those letters which discuss publishers and editors and her dealings - not always very happy - with them." How these are cross-referenced is unclear. These is also an index of letters by topic, and this is an invaluable addition to the system. It is in the Letters by Topic section that we get a good overview of the possible uses for the OSLO. In the Letters by Topic we can see how rich an archive we have here, with a very broad range of possible applications.
We have chosen to include Letters from the American Civil War (LACW) as it is a good example of attention to the artefacts represented in the archive. The archive is actually a portal to a number of other archives. The letters are reproduced both visually and textually; with images of the letters and their envelopes (including addresses and stamps) alongside clear copies of the letters. These is no notation in the archive.The LACW archive is an archive at its most basic in terms of infrastructure, but the use of images of the represented artefacts adds a historical and material dimension that is lacking in many online letter archives.
The final archive in this collection is a recently created one from Sweden. Hjalmar Bergman Korrespondenser (HBK or Hjalmar Bergman Letters) contains hundreds of letters written between 1900 and 1930 by the Swedish writer. What is interesting about the archive is how the material is organized: i. from the date, ii. from the town it was sent from, iii. from the address, iv. from the people who are named in the letter, v. from works that are named in the letter, vi. from the genre of works named in the letter, vii. from where the letter is kept today and viii. from visual reproductions of the letter in the archive. In this way the HBK archive covers many of the possible search combinations in the organizing of the material. Tagging is of utmost importance to the organizing of materials in digital archives. Footnotes are included in each reproduction of text of letters. There is no general search function in the archive website that we could find. We think this is very interesting; instead of relying on a general search, the material is tagged to such a degree that users are directed towards specific themes in the archive.
To summarize, we thought it was interesting that none of the archives offered downloadable content. The result is materials cannot be extracted from the archives and worked with 'off site'. In this sense the archives as they appear online function more as interfaces than spaces to work in. However, as they are online and accessible, they do allow controlled access to materials and the opportunity to work from outside institutions for anyone interested in the subjects they cover. We would have liked to have seen more Creative Commons or Open Access statements attached to these archives. A design that allows linking and uploading to research that reference the archives, and feedback from users would have also been useful. The organization of digital artefacts is an important element in the management of events and the archives discussed here provide inspiration for the possibilities for storage, access (include searchability) and distribution for any materials stored online. In our discussions in the workshops next week the concept of 'The Archive' will feature, and we hope this short post inspires some consideration of the role of the archive in event management and the dissemination of research.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Queering the Archive
Kimberly Austin, Cecilia Barriga, Mary Coble, Aleesa Cohene, MichElmgreen & Ingar Dragset, Conny Karlsson, Heidi Lunabba, Al Masson, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, Flemming Rolighed, Tejal Shah, Ingo Taubhorn
How can we create an archive of the private memories of gender, love and sexuality that have been erased by official archives and excluded from the writing of history? How do we record and store feelings and intimacy? In the exhibition Lost and Found: Queerying the Archive these issues are addressed from queer perspectives through art works offering alternative histories and reworked archives.
Lost and Found - Queerying the Archive, curated by Jane Rowley and Louise Wolthers, is an international show of 13 contemporary artists focussing on memory and history in relationship to gender and sexuality. The exhibition is presented at Bildmuseet in close collaboration with Umeå Centre for Gender Studies and is accompanied by a series of seminars, artist’s talks and lectures. Using the potent and emotionally laden detritus of society, like silent movie footage, a jukebox archive of pop songs and alternative family photo albums, the art works in Lost and Found present new readings of the past or produce other archives. Using photography, video, installations and performance, the artists in the exhibition challenge official versions of history with humour and intelligence, tenderness and rage.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Australia on Film
I may actually go and see Baz Luhrmann's Australia as it will be showing here in the far north of Sweden in about a month.
What I am more excited about is the Australian Screen website. It is a treasure trove of Australia cinema going back to its earliest years. There are online streams from hundreds of films and some are in their entirety. Teaching notes and resources such as still images and downloadable segments make the Australian Screen site a valuable potential teaching tool. You can register as a member (there is also a Facebook group) and receive emails and make contacts with others interesting in the amazing world of Australian film.
I was happy to reconnect with a favorite film of mine, The Year My Voice Broke. Not easy to find a copy of these days, but a film that reminds me so much of growing up in rural Queensland.
Friday, September 07, 2007
Digital Land Management
Bryan at Infocult made reference to a demographic study of labor by the International Labor Organization (ILO) Key Indicators of the Labour Market (KILM) which pointed out that presently the majority of human beings are not working in agriculture, something that has not been the case for a long time (10 000 years?). Bryan then proposed the question "How much of the history of information has been shaped by the divide between urban and rural ways of life?"
This could be a great thesis topic. I thought about the way land is an information system in traditional Aboriginal cultures. The urban/rural divide does not apply to Aboriginal socities that are still inhabiting traditional lands and following culture. The concept of agriculture does not apply either as they do not cultivate but follow seasonal patterns of food production. However, information is stored and distributed, created and altered on a vast scale in Aboriginal narrative systems. Three projects that are dealing with the storehouse of knowledge that resides with Aboriginal cultures are:
Digital Songlines
The Australasian CRC for Interaction Design (ACID) is host to an innovative and exciting project aimed at conserving Indigenous heritage using virtual reality technologies. Digital Songlines is an ACID project that is developing protocols, methodologies and toolkits to facilitate the collection, education and sharing of indigenous cultural heritage knowledge. The project explores the effective recording, content management and virtual reality delivery of indigenous cultural knowledge in way that are culturally sensitive and involve the indigenous custodians, leaders and communities.
Traditional Knowledge Revival Pathways
Welcome to the Traditional Knowledge Revival Pathways (TKRP) website. The Traditional Knowledge Revival Pathways was developed from the aspirations of Indigenous Elders, to preserve and recognise Traditional Indigenous Knowledge. With the guidance and instruction of our Aboriginal Elders, we are supporting them to collect information that will be beneficial for County and Community, both in the present and the future.
Warumungu Community Digital Archive Project
Since December we have made great progress on the archive. Based in community feedback we simplified and streamlined the upload process, we revamped the user interface, and we have made changes to the user profiles and restrictions sections of the archive. We also got a new name for the archive: Mukurtu Wumpurrani-kari Archive. Mukurtu is a Warumungu term meaning “dilly bag.” Dilly bags were used as “safe keeping places” for Warumungu sacred materials in the past. The archive’s name reflects the fact that this is a new type of “safe keeping place” mirroring the cultural protocols for the proper circulation, distribution, and viewing of cultural materials
This could be a great thesis topic. I thought about the way land is an information system in traditional Aboriginal cultures. The urban/rural divide does not apply to Aboriginal socities that are still inhabiting traditional lands and following culture. The concept of agriculture does not apply either as they do not cultivate but follow seasonal patterns of food production. However, information is stored and distributed, created and altered on a vast scale in Aboriginal narrative systems. Three projects that are dealing with the storehouse of knowledge that resides with Aboriginal cultures are:
Digital Songlines
The Australasian CRC for Interaction Design (ACID) is host to an innovative and exciting project aimed at conserving Indigenous heritage using virtual reality technologies. Digital Songlines is an ACID project that is developing protocols, methodologies and toolkits to facilitate the collection, education and sharing of indigenous cultural heritage knowledge. The project explores the effective recording, content management and virtual reality delivery of indigenous cultural knowledge in way that are culturally sensitive and involve the indigenous custodians, leaders and communities.
Traditional Knowledge Revival Pathways
Welcome to the Traditional Knowledge Revival Pathways (TKRP) website. The Traditional Knowledge Revival Pathways was developed from the aspirations of Indigenous Elders, to preserve and recognise Traditional Indigenous Knowledge. With the guidance and instruction of our Aboriginal Elders, we are supporting them to collect information that will be beneficial for County and Community, both in the present and the future.
Warumungu Community Digital Archive Project
Since December we have made great progress on the archive. Based in community feedback we simplified and streamlined the upload process, we revamped the user interface, and we have made changes to the user profiles and restrictions sections of the archive. We also got a new name for the archive: Mukurtu Wumpurrani-kari Archive. Mukurtu is a Warumungu term meaning “dilly bag.” Dilly bags were used as “safe keeping places” for Warumungu sacred materials in the past. The archive’s name reflects the fact that this is a new type of “safe keeping place” mirroring the cultural protocols for the proper circulation, distribution, and viewing of cultural materials
Monday, July 16, 2007
Net Arts
JavaMuseum - Forum for Internet Technology in Contemporary Art is starting its 2nd phase by releasing an open call focussing on the question whether blogs and/or blogging can be tools for creating a new type of net based art.
The launch of this new project is planned to be in October 2007 also the occasion for re-launching JavaMuseum after a phase of re-structuring since 2005.
The new show "a + b = ba ? [art + blog = blogart?]" will be presented in sequence on divers festivals.
.
JavaMuseum - Forum for Internet Technology in Contemporary Art, founded in 2000, realized during the 1st phase (2001-2005) 18 show cases focussing on Internet based art in a global context, including more than 350 artists from 40 countries.
For "a + b = ba ? [art + blog = blogart?]" JavaMuseum is inviting artists to submit such an art project in form of a blog. The entry details, regulations and entry form can be found on http://www.nmartproject.net/netex/?p=7
Related to JavaMusuem quest and questions is the now online paper by Karin Wagner; Internet Art and the Archive at HumanIT:
The launch of this new project is planned to be in October 2007 also the occasion for re-launching JavaMuseum after a phase of re-structuring since 2005.
The new show "a + b = ba ? [art + blog = blogart?]" will be presented in sequence on divers festivals.
.
JavaMuseum - Forum for Internet Technology in Contemporary Art, founded in 2000, realized during the 1st phase (2001-2005) 18 show cases focussing on Internet based art in a global context, including more than 350 artists from 40 countries.
For "a + b = ba ? [art + blog = blogart?]" JavaMuseum is inviting artists to submit such an art project in form of a blog. The entry details, regulations and entry form can be found on http://www.nmartproject.net/netex/?p=7
Related to JavaMusuem quest and questions is the now online paper by Karin Wagner; Internet Art and the Archive at HumanIT:
Abstract: Internet art is ephemeral by nature and several initiatives have been taken to preserve it for the future. Apart from formal archives holding art of this kind, there are also artworks which exist outside these web based institutions. In what way can they be regarded as archived? In the article, criteria are suggested which can be used to judge whether an artwork is active or archived and these criteria are applied in the analysis of twelve different artworks. Different kinds of dating are important for how the status of a work is perceived by the visitor. The concepts of explicit and implicit archiving are used to characterize archiving of Internet art, where works can be "dead" and "alive" at the same time.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Everything You Have Wanted to Know About UBUWEB
But were too busy looking at UBUWEB to ask....
Artist, critic, poet, writer, and Web provocateur Kenneth Goldsmith is one of those rare individuals who create their own gravity. The breadth of interests and activities that have characterized his twenty-three year career alone is enough to command respect, but perhaps chief among Goldsmith's accomplishments is the creation of the online avant-garde archive UbuWeb. Founded in 1996 as a sort of experimental destination and laboratory for various forms of poetry, UbuWeb has blossomed into a premiere educational resource and essential location for all forms related to the avant-garde. The most striking component of UbuWeb as an online institution is that it seeks to create an environment based on the Web's inherent utopian ideal: the free and unfettered access to information.
Artist, critic, poet, writer, and Web provocateur Kenneth Goldsmith is one of those rare individuals who create their own gravity. The breadth of interests and activities that have characterized his twenty-three year career alone is enough to command respect, but perhaps chief among Goldsmith's accomplishments is the creation of the online avant-garde archive UbuWeb. Founded in 1996 as a sort of experimental destination and laboratory for various forms of poetry, UbuWeb has blossomed into a premiere educational resource and essential location for all forms related to the avant-garde. The most striking component of UbuWeb as an online institution is that it seeks to create an environment based on the Web's inherent utopian ideal: the free and unfettered access to information.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
The Bounty of UBUWEB
I have been ill for the last two days and the two days before that I was caring for the rest of my family that were similarly infected. I rise this morning after two days of fevered dreams and find so much of interest around me. The day seems clear and colors bright. And UBUWEB is publishing:
The complete works of Maya Deren (1917-1961) streamed online
A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945)
At Land (1944)
Meditation on Violence (1948)
Ritual In Transfigured Time (1946)
Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)
The Very Eye of Night (1958)
Witch's Cradle (1943)
Divine Horsemen 1985
Original footage shot by Deren (1947-1951). Reconstruction by Teiji & Cherel Ito
Joseph Bueys Filz TV (1970)
Beuys turns up the bottom left corner of the felt, revealing a glimpse of the faulty TV picture. The voice of a TV reporter, who is talking about current milk and meat prices, is still audible. Beuys declares he has 'undertaken a gradual elimination' by 'filtering away' the picture first while leaving the sound, 'but when the picture has gone, the sound becomes absurd.'
Samuel Becketts' complete dramatic works
Including Krapp's Last Tape (1960) a brilliant study in technology and presence. Also Embers in Swedish!!
The complete works of Maya Deren (1917-1961) streamed online
A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945)
At Land (1944)
Meditation on Violence (1948)
Ritual In Transfigured Time (1946)
Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)
The Very Eye of Night (1958)
Witch's Cradle (1943)
Divine Horsemen 1985
Original footage shot by Deren (1947-1951). Reconstruction by Teiji & Cherel Ito
Joseph Bueys Filz TV (1970)
Beuys turns up the bottom left corner of the felt, revealing a glimpse of the faulty TV picture. The voice of a TV reporter, who is talking about current milk and meat prices, is still audible. Beuys declares he has 'undertaken a gradual elimination' by 'filtering away' the picture first while leaving the sound, 'but when the picture has gone, the sound becomes absurd.'
Samuel Becketts' complete dramatic works
Including Krapp's Last Tape (1960) a brilliant study in technology and presence. Also Embers in Swedish!!
Friday, March 23, 2007
Data-storing bacteria
In keeping with the ecological theme established by the bee swarm search entry I thought I would put this here as well:
I wonder how we are going to download information from a bacteria?
A Japanese university announced scientists there have developed a new technology
that uses bacteria DNA as a medium for storing data long-term, even for
thousands of years. Keio University Institute for Advanced Biosciences and Keio
University Shonan Fujisawa Campus announced the development of the new
technology, which creates an artificial DNA that carries up to more than 100
bits of data within the genome sequence, according to the JCN Newswire.The
universities said they successfully encoded "e= mc2 1905!" -- Einstein's theory
of relativity and the year he enunciated it -- on the common soil bacteria,
Bacillius subtilis.
I wonder how we are going to download information from a bacteria?
Friday, January 26, 2007
Exhibition at MACRO - Contemporary Art Museum Rosario/Argentina
The sound archive I submitted to last year, SoundLAB edition 4 Memoryscapes, is to be included as part of ://selfprortrait a - show for Bethlehem - a show for Peace at MACRO - Contemporary Art Museum Rosario/Argentina oepning on Feb 9th. My sound piece, Thursday Morning in London, is in M'scape 03 (pictured above).
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