poetics of memory ebook format.pdf

8/11/2019 poetics of memory ebook format.pdf

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Poetics of Memory: invention and discovery using metadata to

create cultural memories in programmable environments

Carlos Henrique Rezende Falci

AbstractDoes memory need a fixed place to exist? Does memory need an

archive to exist? If it does, what kind of archives does it need?

Although one can say memory has never been defined from a fixedlocation, I think that the very definition of the concept is marked by

the idea of a place, a record which is capable of showing this

memory. Even if it is related to the imaginary, or to unstable

elements, there is tension associated with a search for a location for

memory. The aim of this paper is to discuss how metadata can

produce other logics to create cultural memories in programmable

environments. We analyze three projects seeking to understand how

such narratives appropriate metadata in a poetic way, creating

imaginary places of memory. The first project is The Whale Hunt,

an experiment using automated data collection process mixed with

human perspective. The artist documents a whale hunt usingphotographs taken at five-minute intervals, regulated by a

chronometer attached to a heartbeat counter. And the interface

permits the visualizing of history from the cadence of the artists

heart. Second project is This is now, a visual composition which

uses real-time updates from Instagram application based on users

geo-tag locations. The interface instantly streams photos as soon as

they are uploaded on Instagram and captures a citys movement, in a

fluid story. And the third project is Blackpool Manchester in whicha woman made two journeys to the same place, Blackpool: one using

Google Earth or Second Life; and the real journey to Blackpool. She

explores two journeys through a video documentary. These logics

suggest other concepts to delimitate memories, which mixes fixed

places with networked places, cultural software and metadata,

politics and poetics, cultural memories and communicative

memories. We consider metadata as elements capable of operatingpassages indicated above.


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Poetics of memory: invention and discovery using metadata to create cultural

memories in programmable environments

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Key Words: cultural memory, communicative memory, metadata,programmable environments, archive, poetics of memory.

*****

How do mediated memories in programmable environments relate

to the concepts of archive, place, and metadata? This paper intends to

investigate whether such memories need a fixed place, and if they do,

where these places are, if they relate to the concept of archive, andhow this relationship is established. The intention herein is to

understand how the poetic use of metadata can modify memory

locations in a way it operates passages from invention and discovery,

when it comes to creating memories at the same time volatile and

durable, in programmable environments. The research here disclosed

is part of a project funded by CNPq on poetics and politics of

memory in programmable environments, with the support of

FAPEMIG (Minas Gerais Research Support Foundation).

Paul Ricoeur (2007) proposes memory and imagination are

different, considering memory is related to something from the past,

something that actually has happened, even though being absent.

Although imagination would also produce something which is

missing, it would be fictional and, therefore, nearer to the logic of the

invention. The places of memory, whether or not fixed, cross both

the construction of memory and the creation of the imagination. Toexamine these relationships, we started the debate from the modes of

permanence of memory.

Ricoeur (1997) lists some connectors capable of producing places

of memory, among which calendar time and the use of archives,

documents, and traces specifically interest us.

Calendar time provides a linear and uniform notion of chronic

time figure, from the concept of founding event, which creates the

possibility of segmenting, narrating, and working this time. The

founding event appears as an original moment, as an enunciation of


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the uniqueness of the moment. Thus, past events may be

characterized as the marking of a temporal place in which they

occurred, considering their distance or proximity in relation to a

private now.

To determine when a past event occurred, in relation to a datum,

contributes to delimiting the records which can function as

documents testifying the fact has actually happened. An archive

would be a type of testimony attesting the existence of a past event,

in an already institutionalized way. Ricoeur's view of archives should

be related to the role of documents and traces to a fact which has

happened in a past place.Traces can be the marks of something which has passed, the

marks of the fact that something went through a certain place, or the

action which produced a mark. A trace is mobile and static, because

it speaks of an event which has happened, and it is visible at the

moment it is recognized as such, in a long lasting inscription. In

addition, a trace is a pre-figuration of the event; the document

presents itself as the choice of some traces, and its subsequent release

as traces; and the archive would be the institutionalization of thatwhich has already been contained in the trace, nonetheless, as

groove. This leads to a way of characterizing the archive relating its

creation to an arbitrary choice made to collected documents related

to a previous event, since past events are selected from a motivation

or issue one wants to investigate. The archives, as they are investedin such a condition, allow you to create new associations between

events which took place in the past time from the temporal boundarythey themselves produce. Unrevealed elements are then discovered

causing the memory to revolve about it. At the same time, the

archives can be inventions, since what is called archive can be

created by the narrative, choosing elements not previously

considered as belonging to the past events.

The hypothesis here postulated is that a poetics of metadata can

create archives able to combine invention and discovery, giving rise

to imaginary places of the memory.


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Metadata can be considered both a description of a set of data, and

what allows the computer read the data in addition to performingvarious other tasks, such as compressing them, etc. (Manovich, 2002;

Matthews, Aston, 2012). The computer establishes ownership of the

data through metadata. The ownership is like an institutionalization

the division of an archive generates for specific documents.

However, the archives themselves are not the metadata, which, at

most, are connected to traces of an action. The use of metadata

would be able to isolate how a testimony is created, giving it power

to appoint documentary evidence, a place of memory. Would thisdirection distinguish memory from imagination; discovery from

invention; story from fiction? Isnt it about thinking of the relations

between these terms?

The configuration of narratives and the way they present

themselves to those who are willing to access them produces the

differences between memory and imagination. Andrew Hoskins

(2009) and Jos van Dijck (2007) work with the concept of mediated

memories to characterize memories in programmable environments.

Van Dijck (2007) addresses the topic from the concept of memory

items which would be capable of performing mediation between

individuals and groups, items which would function not only as

memories of past things. The memory, in that sense, would be a

phenomenon which lasts a short time in a single format, because it is

a relation between things. It is appearance.

When metadata is presented in a way to indicate several past actsfrom different points of views, they become ways of guiding the

hunting, typical of the traces. At that moment there would be passing

of traces to archives, when metadata were able to create a constant

flow between communicative memory and cultural memory.

(Assman, 1995). Andrew Hoskins (2009) emphasizes this same

aspect when he addresses the concept of schemata. The memory

schemata would be an interstitial level between socially

institutionalized content and shared individual experiences into


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memory networks. They would thus be similar to what is known here

as practiced places of memory.

With intents of verifying how this movement can occur, I analyze

three projects located on the boundary between invention and

discovery and which, therefore, would create imaginary places of

memory.

The project The Whale Hunt 1

consists of a recording of

Jonathan Harris nine-day trip to an Eskimo settlement in northern

Alaska to follow a whale hunt. Jonathan Harris documented the

entire experience through a sequence of 3214 pictures organized in a

digital interface with five-minute intervals. By using a timerconnected to the camera, the pictures were taken even when the

author of the project was sleeping. The number of photographs taken

within each five-minute interval (every interval, the camera

photographed for one minute) varied with the heart rate experienced

by the creator of the project, reaching a maximum of 37 images in a

minute.

The interface shows the sequence of the images in different ways,

with some further subdivisions within these general forms. In each ofthese modes it is possible to perceive poetic operations conducted

with the use of metadata, giving access to archives which are

concurrently testimony of an event and ephemeral reports of the fact.

A timeline is the first display mode, at the bottom of the screen,

representing the entire trip. The timeline is shown as a heart ratewhose slopes correspond to the excitement experienced at that very

moment.Regarding the metadata, Harris delineates a set of them, which are

extracted from both the type of the content in each picture, and the

way each image is understood by the camera or other equipment to

record the experience. The metadata chosen is: the heart rhythm (the

excitement level at the time the picture was taken), the average color

of the pixels in the image, photo backdrop, the concepts (ideas

depicted in the image), and characters. Each of these metadata has

subdivisions, and may be combined to display a given set of imagesfor the entire period in which the organizer was in the project. To do


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these intersections is like defining an initial event from which a time

axis is structured indicating past facts, present facts and future facts.Since various intersections are possible to be managed, the initial

events may multiply, as well as the archives documenting them and

the places to which the archives relate. Thus, every memory place is

a temporary tag, associated with a specific manipulation of metadata,

to make images from the hunt arise. If memory needs archives to

exist, perhaps this type of archive is more typical of digital memory,

since they do not exhaust the temporality of events, and neither can

they be unequivocally associated with a past fact.The interest lies in the understanding of how the use of metadata

in a single document interface gives each archive the value of a

differentiated testimony, while suggesting comparisons between

them. The inability to locate memory in a kind of metadata is

obvious, since it is just a form of relationship between archives, and

it is not able to capture the essence of each archive. Still, by applying

different filters to the narrative, then using cross metadata,

similarities arise in the midst of differences, creating a mix between

invention and discovery, and between communicative memory and

cultural memory.

This discussion is clear in the project This is Now2

, a platform

using Instagram to compose a mosaic of images from twelve cities

in the world. Its operation is automatic, capturing and archiving the

images by tracking the geo tags. Once the images are loaded by the

application, they immediately go to the project page.The page has a simple and functional interface. Cities are divided

into categories exhibiting date and local time. Simply select the

option of your choice to view a mosaic full of assorted and random

images displayed from left to right. The flow depends on the volume

of images produced and shared at the moment.

By using the geo location systems, the platform generates hybrid

spaces of circulation of meaning. The use of geo tags increases the

communicability and the monitoring of traces left by the actors,

including the ones left by the very locations. This classification


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transforms the everyday experience in a series of data moving by the

programmable environments and absorbing the logic of the database.

However, the interface itself has affective capacity, whereas it also

becomes a transforming agent, indicating these data are constantly

changing, in a permanent state of report writing.

The third project, the Blackpool, Manchester, 3

developed by

Gwenola Wagon, addresses the logic of socio technical networks in

confluence with archive and metadata organization to function

efficiently. Here the poetic mode creates an appropriation which also

takes the metadata as ambiguous narrative sets open to invention and

producers of imaginary places.The project shows the paths the developer takes as she goes to

Blackpool, a town in England, and later to Manchester. Before the

physical displacement, Gwenola took a trip between the two cities

using Google Earth and Internet data. After the virtual journey, she

traveled to Blackpool and then crossed referenced the two trips,

which she displays in a video with two screens. In this presentation

references intersect and the terrains become mutual provocations to

reimagine each of the places the artist went through. Gwenolaretraces the path she had virtually undergone and tightens the two

sets of archives produced in conjunction with programmable

interfaces.

A first testimony is brought by virtual trips in which the artist

explores archives organized from interfaces present in sociotechnique networks having their way of organizing a set of

information about a physical location. Although in the videos we areunable to view the metadata the artist used to create her trip, one can

notice such metadata permeate the pursuit of information about

Blackpool and Manchester by the developer. She interferes in the

real images from experiences she had on the web trying to view the

physical locations; and she also rearranges the virtual paths as she

experiences the real ones. If the metadata were weaved otherwise, the

places to which they refer would obviously be different from what is

seen. It seems to be fundamental to explicit how these two archivesultimately collide through the way the interface organizes them. The


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1Available onhttp://thewhalehunt.org.Accessed in 05/24/2014.

2Available onhttp://now.jit.su.

3 Available on http://www.nogovoyages.com/blackpool_manchester.html.Accessed in September, 27 2013

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Latour, Bruno. Reagregando o social: uma introduo teoria do Ator-rede.Bahia: Edufba, 2012.

Latour, Bruno. A esperana de Pandora: ensaios sobre a realidade dos estudos

cientficos.Bauru: Edusc, 2001.

Manovich, Lev. Metadata, mon amour. Last modified 2002. Acessed Jun 27,

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Matthews, Paul; Aston, Judith. Interactive multimedia ethnography: archivingworkflow, interface aesthetics and metadata.. ACM Journal on Computing and

Cultural Heritage5 (4) (2012): 1-13.

Ricoeur, Paul.A memria, a histria, o esquecimento. Campinas: Ed. da Unicamp,

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Ricoeur, Paul. Tempo e narrativa. Tomo III. Campinas: Papirus, 1997.

Van Dijck, Jos. Mediated memories in the digital age. Stanford: StanfordUniversity Press, 2007.

Carlos Henrique Rezende Falci is Associate Professor at School of Fine Arts at

at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. His recent works involves production of

memory in socio-technical networks, mobile devices and many kinds of technical

interfaces.He also develops projects concerning physical computing and memoryproduction.
http://thewhalehunt.org/http://thewhalehunt.org/http://thewhalehunt.org/http://now.jit.su/http://now.jit.su/http://now.jit.su/http://www.nogovoyages.com/blackpool_manchester.htmlhttp://www.nogovoyages.com/blackpool_manchester.htmlhttp://manovich.net/http://manovich.net/http://manovich.net/http://www.nogovoyages.com/blackpool_manchester.htmlhttp://now.jit.su/http://thewhalehunt.org/

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