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JACEK SMOLICKI JACEK DISSERTATION: NEW MEDIA, PUBLIC SPHERES, AND FORMS OF EXPRESSION OF FORMS AND SPHERES, PUBLIC MEDIA, NEW DISSERTATION: JACEK SMOLICKI PARA-ARCHIVES Rethinking Personal Archiving Practices in the Times of Capture Culture PARA-ARCHIVES MALMÖ UNIVERSITY2017 MALMÖ PARA-ARCHIVES Doctoral Dissertation in Media and Communications Studies Dissertation Series: New Media, Public Spheres and Forms of Expression Faculty: Culture and Society Department: School of Arts and Communication, K3 Malmö University Information about time and place of public defense, and electronic version of dissertation: http://hdl.handle.net/2043/23598 © Copyright Jacek Smolicki, 2017 Designed by Jacek Smolicki Photos by Jacek Smolicki unless stated otherwise Copy editor: Soren Gauger Printed by Service Point Holmbergs, Malmö 2017 Supported by grants from the National Dissertation Council and the Doctoral Foundation ISBN 978-91-7104-880-6 (print) ISBN 978-91-7104-881-3 (pdf) JACEK SMOLICKI PARA-ARCHIVES Rethinking Personal Archiving Practices in the Times of Capture Culture Malmö University 2017 Constrained, yet less and less concerned with these vast frame- works, the individual detaches himself [sic] from them without being able to escape them and can henceforth only try to outwit them, to pull tricks on them, to rediscover, within an electronici- zed and computerized megalopolis, the ’art’ of the hunters and rural folk of earlier days. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (1984, xxii - xxiv) CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................. 9 PREFACE ..................................................................................11 PART I 1. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................17 Dream versus Nightmare .................................................................17 The Context of Technology and Culture ............................................19 The Context of Art and Aesthetics .....................................................21 The Context of Life and Archiving .....................................................25 Concerns, Questions and Aims ........................................................29 Overview of the Thesis .....................................................................30 2. MEDIA PRACTICE APPROACH ..................................................37 Media Effects and Compulsively Controlled Collectivity ......................38 Selective Orientation and Motivations in Practising Media ..................40 Media Practices ...............................................................................42 Mediation and Close Living with Media Technologies ........................44 Archaeology of Media(tions) ............................................................46 Summary of the Chapter ..................................................................48 PART II 3. FROM MNEMOTECHNIQUES TO MNEMOTECHNOLOGIES AND BACK ...........................................................................53 Anemnesis and Hypomnesis ............................................................53 From Ars Memoriae to Industria Memoriae .......................................58 Re-harnessing Techne ......................................................................61 4. CAPTURE CULTURE ................................................................65 Recording-Capturing-Archiving ........................................................65 Snapshooting and its Archival Potential .............................................69 The Brownie ....................................................................................72 Ubiquity and Excess .........................................................................75 Transactionality and Enclosure .........................................................78 Temporality and Sedimentation ........................................................80 Nowness and Emphemerality ...........................................................85 Algorithmic Cruelty and Bias ............................................................88 Privacy and Paranoia .......................................................................91 Life-logging, Total Recall and Quantification of Everyday Life .............95 Ethics and Morality in the Passive Capture .......................................103 Discussion and Summary of the Chapter ........................................110 5. FROM COUNTER- TO PARA-ARCHIVING ................................117 Unhinging God’s Eye ....................................................................118 Sousveillance ................................................................................121 Tactics and Strategies .....................................................................125 Counter-acting the Involuntary Archive ...........................................128 Embracing Big Brother ...................................................................133 Revisiting the Tactics-Strategy Relationship ......................................134 Performing Para-archiving ..............................................................138 Discussion and Summary of the Chapter ........................................143 PART III 6. METHODOLOGICAL EXTENSION OF THE MEDIA PRACTICE APPROACH ....................................157 Between Procedurality and Performativity ........................................157 Auto-ethnography through Creative Media Practice .........................160 Practicing Archaeology of Media(tion) .............................................165 (Reverse-)remediation ....................................................................167 Between Prototyping and Provoking ................................................169 7. PAPER NOTEBOOK (THE PRE-DIGITAL PHASE) .........................173 Notes and Reflections ....................................................................186 8. ON-GOING PROJECT (THE DIGITAL PHASE) ...........................191 Soundtracking and Minuting: From Technologies to Techniques ........191 Misquoting and Mapping. From Capturing to Re-capturing .............199 Self-tracking. From the Quantitative to Qualitative ..........................205 Digital framework. From Programming to Digital Crafting ...............209 Discussion and Summary of the Chapter ........................................214 9. FRAGMENTARIUM (THE POST-DIGITAL PHASE) ........................221 From the Art of Excerpting to Cataloging the World (and Back) ........223 Paper Machines, Haunting Specters and Creative Media Devices .....227 The Fragmentarium as a Post-digital Practice ..................................229 Ambling Between the Analog and Digital ........................................235 9.1 The Fragmentarium as a Dialogical Device ...........................247 Modes of Access and Performativity .................................254 Time, Obsolescence and Media Hybridity ........................256 Discussion and Summary of the Section ...........................263 9.2 The Fragmentarium Club.....................................................269 Augmenting and Diminishing the Archived ......................269 Amateur Clubs and Ear-witnessing ..................................273 Soundwalking ................................................................274 Notes and Reflections .....................................................278 Discussion and Summary of the Section ...........................284 10. FINAL REMARKS ................................................................291 REFERENCES ...........................................................................299 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research was possible thanks to generous and sustained support, help and advice received from a number of people. Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisors. Maria Hellström Reimer, thank you for your sharp, thoughtful and encouraging critique throughout many stages of the process. Thank you, Ulrika Sjöberg, for your generous attention to and detailed commentary on this thesis that kept me motivated during these last four years. Maria and Ulrika, I am truly indebted to you for your sus- tained commitment and patience. I want to thank Susan Kozel, the head of the Living Archives research project, of which this thesis has been a part. Thank you for your inspiring thoughts while acting as a supervisor dur- ing the first two years of my work. Similarly, I want to thank all other cur- rent and former members of the Living Archives group, including Elisabet M. Nilsson, Anders Høg Hansen, Temi Odumosu, Daniel Spikol, Maria Engberg, Richard Topgaard, Camilla Ryd, Erling Björgvinsson, and Veronica Wiman. I am grateful to have had the chance to work with you and to get to know your creative, critical and inventive approaches to ar- chiving. I learned a great deal through our regular meetings, discussions and collaborations. A special thanks to Living Archives member Nikita Mazurov for your round-the-clock generosity, as a colleague and friend. To my fellow PhDs at the School of Arts and Communication (K3), and in particular to Mahmoud Keshavarz, Eric Snodgrass and Linda Hilfling Ritasdatter: Thank you for your vibrant presence, support, thoughtful- ness and great inspiration throughout these years. Thanks also to Erliza Lopez Pedersen, Åsa Ståhl, Kristina Lindström, Michelle Westerlaken, Anuradha Reddy, Luca Simeone, Molly Schwartz, and Zeenath Hasan, for inspiring conversations and for enriching the research