M4 Thesis Proposal: Project #2
Swinging from the Archives (jungle gym as interface)
Archive Selector (DJ’s turntable play sources archived text/imagery/video/3D object images in animation relating to song’s tags)
Archivation
In a world where film archivists, historians, museums and information scientists research the practice of ARCHIVING, what can a media designer bring to the table?Archive for February, 2008
Pandora.com
Pandora is a free online music radio station tool of sorts. Based on the Music Genome Project, you can either actively select, direct, or suggest a stream to play certain types of music, or you can passively let the stream choose new music for you based on the previous song and decisions you made about it.
Instead of playing music from one genre or artist, a user-curated Pandora station plays music based on similar musical attributes like vocals, melodies, beats, instruments, etc.
I want to design a physical spacial interpretation of pandora as an interactive environment, and see if physical interactions change the user experience to a more meaningful, more enjoyable one.
Google Death Maps
A company by the name Human Archives Organization has a website where they want you to register and create an online representation of yourself or someone you love so that your memory will live on forever.
Once you pass away, the profile of you or your loved one can be updated with the final resting location. Incorporating Google’s API, a “Google Maps of Dead People“—as I call it—has been born.
National Archives—Other Locations?
In browsing the National Archives website the other day, I was struck by a section towards the lower center of their homepage that reads: “You don’t have to go to Washington D. C. to visit the National Archives.
This gets at my point about whether archives, in the digital era, have to remain in one location and is the web the best place for migrated information to live on?
Archive—The Band
In my daily swim through the internet’s deep ocean of an archive, I came across this music video from a band called “Archive.” The song is called “System,” which I also find quite funny because of a past project.
The video moves through what looks to be an archive of photos thrown about.
KCRW Proposal
Hello Rachel. My name is Parker Kuncl and I am currently an MFA candidate in the Graduate Media Design program Read the rest of this entry »
Comments off
Archives and Aspiration
Notes from my reading of Information Is Alive, selected essay “Archive and Aspiration” by Arjun Appadurai.
Begins by introducing the idea of two memories: the personal memory and the collective memory.
Memory vs trace vs accidental trace.
With digital archives becoming more popular, archive returns to general status for being solely a site of anticipated memories.
Digital archives rely on the absence or impossibility of face-to-face.
With arrival of electronic media, collective memory is interactively designed and socially cultivated and edited.
Read the rest of this entry »
Conversation with Experts
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.
Read the rest of this entry »
Elevator Pitch
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.
SAA Call For Posters – Proposal
The Society of American Archivists are holding their annual meeting in late August. Having just found out about this on Tuesday, I decided this would be a great chance to have a dialogue with a collection of national experts on issues, concerns and theories on archiving and what a media designer can offer in terms of access for the user. The following is my final Abstract proposal for the conference.
TITLE
Archives don’t last, unless they are made out of Twinkies: Introducing the concept of play to the practice of archiving.
ABSTRACT
Archives don’t last unless they get used, unless there is some sweet attractor to motivate access, use and contribution. Archives also don’t last unless they hold up over time.
Read the rest of this entry »
