The Performative Archive: New Conceptions of the Archive in Contemporary Theory, Art and New Media Practices

Røssaak, Eivind

doi:10.5040/9780755694952.ch-005

Cited by 10 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Drawing upon Giannachi's (2016) recent treatment of Archives 0.0 through Archives 4.0itself built upon Shanks' (2008) previous treatment that builds towards an animated archive -I assume a historical trajectory characterizing the discourse of archives, which necessitates open discussion and interdisciplinary work between scholars from multiple domains. Archives evolve alongside the forms of media they contain (Røssaak, 2010). In this regard, the practical sites of archives are themselves discourses within the broader historical field site of the archive.…”

Section: Archives: a View From Withinmentioning

confidence: 99%

Into the archive of ubiquitous computing: the data perfect tense and the historicization of the present

Seberger

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

PurposeThis paper theorizes ubiquitous computing as a novel configuration of the archive. Such a configuration is characterized by shifts in agency underlying archival mechanics and a pronounced rhythmic diminution of such mechanics in which the user's experiential present tense is rendered fundamentally historical. In doing so, this paper troubles the relationship between: archival mechanics such as appraisal, accession and access; the archive as a site of historical knowledge production and the pervasiveness of data-driven daily life.Design/methodology/approachBy employing conceptual analysis, I analyze a classic vision of ubiquitous computing to describe the historicization of the present tense in an increasingly computerized world. The conceptual analysis employed here draws on an interdisciplinary set of literature from library and information science, philosophy and computing fields such as human-computer interaction (HCI) and ubiquitous computing.FindingsI present the concept of the data perfect tense, which is derived from the future perfect tense: the “will have had” construction. It refers to a historicized, data-driven and fundamentally archival present tense characterizing the user's lived world in which the goal of action is to have had created data for future unspecified use. The data perfect reifies ubiquitous computing as an archive, or a site of historical knowledge production predicated on sets of potential statements derived from data generated, appraised, acquisitioned and made accessible through and by means of pervasive “smart” objects.Originality/valueThis paper provides foundational consideration of ubiquitous computing as a configuration of the archive through the analysis of its temporalities: a rhythmic diminution that renders users' experiential present tenses as fundamentally historical, constructed through the agency of smart devices. In doing so, it: contributes to ongoing work within HCI seeking to understand the relationship between HCI and history; introduces concepts relevant to the analysis of novel technological ecologies in terms of archival theory; and constitutes preliminary interdisciplinary steps towards highlighting the relevance of theories of the archive and archival mechanics for critiquing sociotechnical concerns such as surveillance capitalism.

show abstract

Section: Archives: a View From Withinmentioning

confidence: 99%

Into the archive of ubiquitous computing: the data perfect tense and the historicization of the present

Seberger

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The dynamic infrastructures of radio archives present a special case study of transnational cultural memory. Radio archives are archives in motion (Røssaak et al 2010) that collect not only static objects such as static texts and images, but also dynamic streams of information. The dynamic nature of radio archives presents specific infrastructural archival conditions that have significant implications for its migration into the digital sphere as well as the legal-political questions this migration raises.…”

Section: The Implications Of Digitization For Sonic Cultural Memory Imentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural Memory in the Digital Age

Thylstrup¹

2018

Edition Medienwissenschaft

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Radio archives are central sites of cultural memory. They contain records that can be consulted to understand our past and project our future. Today, most of these institutions are in the process of digitization or seeking to digitize their collections, often responding to political and popular calls of bringing analogue cultural memory artefacts online. This chapter seeks to examine the politics of this process, asking: how can we conceptualize sound and radio archives as sites of cultural memory? What politics does digitizing it produce? And what are the implications of it for radio research? froM nATionAl To TrAnsnATionAl culTurAl MeMory Cultural memories are, by definition, mediated memories (Ong 2013[1982]; Assman 2008; Erll 2008); they need vehicles of memory to transport them across space and time beyond the finite human bearer of memory, such as books, buildings, radio programmes, the body, visual art works, natural objects, museum institutions, media institutions, natural landscapes, and so on. Via these vehicles, cultural memories allow individuals and groups to orient themselves in time and space by constructing and connecting to their past. Until recently, cultural memory vehicles were primarily confined to movement within the nation-state paradigm. (see for example Nora 1996) 1 The main reasons for this confinement were twofold: firstly, the cultural technologies mediating cultural memory often had limited geographical reach; secondly, the 1 | Importantly, there was always an asymmetry between the nation-state and cultural memory, however. This is for instance outlined in Jay Winter's Remembering War in which he notes: "Collective remembranceor, if you will, collective memoryis rarely what the state tells us to remember. There are always too many people who construct their own narratives which are either at a tangent to those constructed by politicians or their agents, or which are totally inconsistent with what the state wants us to believe happened in the past." (Winter 2006, 277

show abstract

“…As it is woven into everyday life through apps and software clients, it exemplifies how the classic, static, and place-bound archive is being transformed into a moving digital one [12]. This is not only true in the sense that this is an archive that captures movement (online flows of data), and is itself constantly being transformed, updated and adjusted Røssak, 2010), but also in the sense that it continuously pushes other things in motion by uplifting, hiding, and evaluating both people (musicians) and things (sounds). In doing so, The Echo Nests media archive is a dynamic entity that collapses former divisions between archives and everyday life; it facilitates the entanglement of data and culture.…”

Section: Putting Metadata To Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Close reading big data: The Echo Nest and the production of (rotten) music metadata

Eriksson¹

2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Digital music distribution is increasingly powered by automated mechanisms that continuously capture, sort and analyze large amounts of Web-based data. This paper traces the historical development of music metadata management and its ties to the growing of the field of ‘big data’ knowledge production. In particular, it explores the data catching mechanisms enabled by the Spotify-owned company The Echo Nest, and provides a close reading of parts of the company’s collection and analysis of data regarding musicians. Doing so, it reveals evidence of the ways in which trivial, random, and unintentional data enters into the data steams that power today’s digital music distribution. The presence of such curious data needs to be understood as a central part of contemporary algorithmic knowledge production, and calls for a need to re-conceptualize both (digital) musical artifacts and (digital) musical expertize.

show abstract

The Performative Archive: New Conceptions of the Archive in Contemporary Theory, Art and New Media Practices

Cited by 10 publications

References 0 publications

Into the archive of ubiquitous computing: the data perfect tense and the historicization of the present

Into the archive of ubiquitous computing: the data perfect tense and the historicization of the present

Cultural Memory in the Digital Age

Close reading big data: The Echo Nest and the production of (rotten) music metadata

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About