[-empyre-] A question concerning the electrification of digital objects

[Kristie MacDonald]

Hello All,

In keeping with Hannah’s line of thought from an "in the wild, on the
ground” approach I have been considering the questions posed by our
moderators from the archival perspective, based in a practice of media art
preservation.

When considering "what is a digital object," I am inevitably always drawn
to questions of physicality or materiality. How does materiality support/
enable digital networks, and the digital objects they hold. As an archivist
I am constantly negotiating the relationship between carrier and signal /
support and content (ex. a videotape and the signal it holds).

In particular, I am faced with the reality of preserving digital objects,
which have the capacity to exist independently of *specific* carriers (data
tape, optical disks, hard drives etc.) yet also rely on them. If the hard
drive fails the digital object is lost. Preservation necessitates the
migration of digital objects from carrier to carrier, system to system. How
do these physical technologies of creation and access affect our definition
of the digital object?

Amidst their many observations on the practice of preserving digital
objects (or *documents *as they would call them) Luciana Duranti and
Kenneth Thibodeau (of the InterPARES project) conclude that preserving
digital objects consists of preserving the ability to reproduce them.  It
is the digital objects reproducibility  (a quality which allows us to
migrate, emulate, and distribute) that seems to be at the centre of its
existence from a preservation standpoint.

Perhaps at the end of these thoughts my question to the group is - what
does longevity mean for our definition of digital object. What relationship
is there between how these entities span time (through constant migration
and change) and how we perceive them?

-Kristie

On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 4:16 PM, Hannah Turner <hannah.turner at utoronto.ca>
wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Dear all,
>
> Although with less of a philosophical lens, and at the risk of separating
> into another corner of the party - I thought I would post some initial
> thoughts on the last few posts, and raise a few questions that have
> occupied my mind through my work, and pose more questions.
>
> I wanted to offer, alongside the discussion of the definition of the
> digital as both discretized and the holistic, as the previous post put it,
> a way to ground or reground this in practice, "in the wild, on the ground”
> so to speak. Specifically, I want to ask: what does a definition of the
> "digital" allow us to talk about, or help us to conduct practice in
> different, new or more productive ways? And what “difference” does this
> make to users of these computational systems – if any at all?
>
> Part of this begs the question - what is an object, and why are these
> important? One way to describe them, is that digital objects, as many
> people I work with would say, "just" representations of existing objects,
> for example, material heritage, and whether it is through a film camera or
> a computer, serve the same function and therefore are both described in the
> same way?
>
> The first question, I think, is an interesting one. For example, some of
> my research has been to look at how computers and the Internet have enabled
> Indigenous communities who are interested in doing research on their
> cultural heritage located in museums, and who are geographically dispersed
> from these sites, a practice that has been happening for the better part of
> 20 years. For many individuals who seek this kind of access, viewing to the
> "Real" objects is of utmost importance, but images and representations on
> computer screens seem to be good enough placeholders for communities to
> identify objects that may or may not belong to them, and begin the process
> of repatriation or loans, or begin a dialogue with the museum about viewing
> the collections in situ. In any case, the ultimate goal is to be in
> presence with the "original" object - and any distinction made between an
> image taken with film versus one on the computer may not be relevant at all
> in this context, because as I said, they are talked about as if they are
> the same.
>
> It is my suspicion that defining a digital object is of little consequence
> in these places - however these same communities are seeking greater
> control and power over these digital representations and therefore, at
> least recognize the power (and danger) of the digital object to be
> endlessly repeated, duplicated (one of Goodman's criteria, I recall). This
> has potential ramifications, specifically when some individuals who
> carve/make these objects have relied on the income that comes with making
> and copying their own works with their hands and tools.
>
> Another interest of mine, and which falls in line with the original
> question concerning the historical or political forces that lie behind this
> definition of the "digital", is how the there has been some interesting
> push back to work to realign the histories of Western philosophical
> discourse of the "digital" and the notational, and situate them in
> alternative "digital" practices that are not necessarily considered part of
> the canon as of yet, that very much use the "finger" metaphor to describe
> digitality. This is just a thought, and a paper called "Wampum as
> Hypertext" by Angela Haas comes to mind, although I'd be interested to hear
> if there is anything else from other subscribers to help me think through
> this point.
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20141008/771d8707/attachment.htm>