Last weekend Fresh Starts published a column in the New York Times about the up and coming job of the digital archivist. The article explains the new role of the modern archivist with both digitized, born digital and analog files becoming increasingly messy and cluttered and how it’s growing increasingly harder to find that good stuff hidden away in collections.
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So after my review two weeks ago, I’ve begun to think more about my thesis direction and how I want to remix these curiosity epicenters (aka archives) with wunderkammern and tasting rooms.
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ABSTRACT: The Archive Tasting Room is a space situated outside of an archive’s research reading room in which users—both scholarly and casual—can sample or taste a curated selection of past researchers’ experiences and inquiries at archives around the world.
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On Thursday I met with Robert and Cathy—Art Center College of Design’s archivists.
We had a long conversation about the issues, concerns, problems, benefits, and successes of archives, the archiving practice, and means of access by many different types of users.
The following is an audio file of that conversation.
Interview w/ Robert and Cathy from Parker Kuncl on Vimeo.
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When someone asks me what I am doing for my thesis, I tell them:
“It’s the design of new interactive modes of access to archives, inspired by play.”
My thesis will showcase projects that ask how access to archived materials or information can employ physical affordances and interactive experiences to gain back the original artifacts’ tangible qualities.
Past: gone by in time and no longer existing, events of an earlier time, history of something or someone.
Prologue: an event or action that leads to another event, a separate introductory section to a literary or musical work.
William Shakespeare said this. His quote lives on engraved on the side of the National Archives building in Washington D.C.
“What is past is prologue,” can be interpreted as meaning our past knowledge will lead to new knowledge.
Here is an essay I came across on the subject of paradigm shifts in archiving practices.
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My thesis work will begin investigating two areas which I feel are rich for exploration. It will focus on designing new interfaces for archiving.
The first area involves introducing the concept of play with the practice of archiving. I feel that archiving and archives on the whole tend to be burdensome, efficiency driven, and whose sole outcome is for high productivity. This is a task-oriented approach. I want to invite play into the archiving process to make archiving more enjoyable, more meaningful, and even fun.
A second parallel path for my thesis is designing Read the rest of this entry »
For my thesis gateway presentation, I proposed a thesis with two parallel directions.
