Edited by Anna Maj & Daniel Riha Digital Memories Exploring Critical Issues Critical Issues Series Editors Dr Robert Fisher Dr Nancy Billias Advisory Board Dr Alejandro Cervantes-Carson Dr Peter Mario Kreuter Professor Margaret Chatterjee Martin McGoldrick Dr Wayne Cristaudo Revd Stephen Morris Mira Crouch Professor John Parry Dr Phil Fitzsimmons Paul Reynolds Professor Asa Kasher Professor Peter Twohig O w e n K e l l y Professor S Ram Vemuri Revd Dr Kenneth Wilson, O.B.E A Critical Issues research and publications project. http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ The C y b e r Hub ‘Digital Memories’ Digital Memories: Exploring Critical Issues Edited by Anna Maj and Daniel Riha Inter-Disciplinary Press Oxford, United Kingdom © Inter-Disciplinary Press 2009 http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/id-press/ The Inter-Disciplinary Press is part of Inter-Disciplinary.Net – a global network for research and publishing. The Inter-Disciplinary Press aims to promote and encourage the kind of work which is collaborative, innovative, imaginative, and which provides an exemplar for inter-disciplinary and multi- disciplinary publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of Inter-Disciplinary Press. Inter-Disciplinary Press, Priory House, 149B Wroslyn Road, Freeland, Oxfordshire. OX29 8HR, United Kingdom. +44 (0)1993 882087 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 978-1-84888-004-7 First published in the United Kingdom in eBook format in 2009. First Edition. Contents Introduction Anna Maj and Daniel Riha 1 Part I: Theories and Concepts in Digitizing Individual and Community Memory 11 The Trouble with Memory: Reco(r)ding the Mind in Code 46 Laura Schuster 13 (New) Media and Representations of the Past Martin Pogačar 23 The Globytal: Towards an Understanding of Globalised Memories in the Digital Age Anna Reading 31 Part II: Externalization and Mediation of Memories, Representational Principles for Memory Record, Digital Recording Strategies 41 Original Cinephany and Reappropriation: The Original Affect and its Reactualisation through Emerging Digital Technologies Marc Jolly-Corcoran 43 Can Web 2.0 Shape Metamemory? Alberto Sá 51 Clickable Memories: Hyperlinking and Memory Contextualisation Olivier Nyirubugara 63 Part III: Emergent Technologies and Systems for Capturing Private Memories 73 HyperAuthor: A New Tool for Hypertextual Narrative Creation Diana Espinal Cruces and Jose Jesus García Rueda 75 Disclosing Cultural Heritage over iDTV Tom Evens 85 Part IV: Virtual Spaces of the Past 95 Biography as an Interactive 3-D Documentary Daniel Riha 97 Bill Viola’s Passions Series and the Sensualisation of Experience Maria Lakka 107 3-D as a Medium for Virtual Memorialisation Lois Hamill 117 Part V: Archiving and Disseminating Community Memory Data 127 Is There a Way Back or Can the Internet Remember its Own History? Marcus Burkhardt 129 Browsing through Memories: the Online Disclosure of Oral History in Flanders Laurence Hauttekeete, Tom Evens and Erik Mannens 139 The Digitization of Audiovisual Archives: Technological Change within the Structures of Reproduction Thomas Nachreiner 149 Part VI: New Media and Representations of the Past 159 Data as Memory and Memory as Data describes The Vienna Project Karen Frostig 161 Re-Writing Literary Past in the Digital Age Marin Laak and Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt 167 Part VII: National Identity and Memory in the Digital Age, Political Uses of Cybermedia for Historical Revisionism 177 Dokdo Island Dispute: Korean Reconstruction of History and National Identity in User-Created Content Media Jukka Jouhki 179 National Heroes in the Digital Age: The Institution of Great Men in Change Tuuli Lähdesmäki 189 Part VIII: Social Issues Research, Online Ethnographic Research 197 Computerlore, Netlore and Digital Memories: HCI as Ethnographic Field Research Michal Derda-Nowakowski 199 Digital Memories of High-Tech Tourists and Travelling Media: Twittering and Globalhood Anna Maj 209 Introduction Anna Maj & Daniel Riha The papers included in this volume reflect the debates that progressed during the First Global Conference on Digital Memories, held as a part of Cyber Hub activity in the frames of the ID.net Critical Issues research in Salzburg, Austria in March 2009. The edited draft papers are a snapshot of the actual publishing. The topic of digital memories emerged soon after the first computers as the result of data storage and processing which enabled the creation of artificial intelligence. The Digital Memories conference, however, cannot be summarized as a prosaic meeting for archaeologists of new media. Data accumulation, protection and selection are increasingly important issues connected with the everydayness of humanity on a global scale. Digital identities produce individual digital memory that can be read out en masse as social digital identities. This means that digital remembering, in addition to being chaotic or insignificant collecting of data, can have economic or political impact on contemporary societies and hence will be crucial for knowledge and power distribution in the future. Digital memory seems to be vulnerable in many ways. It produces a new context for human existence-not only due to the available and accessible data, whose amount can be both an advantage and a disadvantage for its users, but also by inflicting a direct change on human lives at the level of privacy or its gradual deprivation. On the other hand, the vulnerability of digital memory can be seen as a threat not only for individuals but also for societies or even cultures. Data protection, performed with the help of new digital archiving means and methods, becomes a never-ending struggle to select the important elements in cultural heritage and preserve this purified vision of humanity for future users. The parallel processes of constant digitisation of data and erosion of its analogue artifacts may well lead us to a moment in which only these purified versions of human life will be accessible. Although interpretation of the past has always been the major role of all traditional archives, the possible future scenario shows that even conservative institutions of that type are evolving under the pressure of the digital age. The virtual archive providing only a digital version of the past is more flexible and open to modifications, hence it allows cultural heritage to fluctuate and dissolve: digital remembering can be both similar to and different from digital forgetting. Although the “fragility” of digital data may lead to a global digital memory disaster that can paralyse the most developed countries and turn them back to the Gutenberg Galaxy, thus far technology has rather been an 2 Anna Maj & Daniel Riha ______________________________________________________________ element accelerating and stimulating culture, communication and economy. Digital memory provides a new context for both personal remembrances and for information, which is strategic for whole societies. Although this memory is still personal or local, it also reaches a global aspect creating new possibilities and threats for information seekers, users or distributors. In this context, data storage becomes more that just archiving - it acquires the power of knowledge. Database becomes the most important form of the digital knowledge. The discourse of digital power is thus dependent on technology and competencies to use it. The ability to create meta-data is no longer the work of a librarian; each user must learn to manage and manipulate the extraordinary amount of data. It is important to note, however, that new media competencies emerge together with new models of perception and behaviour. New strategies of dealing with data are the answers to questions of new everyday practices associated with the use of technology. The convergence of new media provokes new users’ strategies: mobile phones with cameras and ubiquitous Internet access enable instant exchange of data, such as text messaging, photo sharing or web browsing and social bookmarking, which as a result, form possibilities or even create the need to access to various personal yet publicly shared data in the form of a moblog. The rising mobility of contemporary societies has impacts on all areas of life. The demand for instant information on every subject affects data regarded as both private and public. Thus, the meaning of privacy is changing. Memory is no longer solely a private thing; it becomes personal and public at the same time. Sharing photos, videos or sounds turns into a new cultural paradigm exerting influence on identity. Common behaviour of life logging or other kinds of self-recording can be easily criticised but, in psychological and anthropological terms, they are elements of the process of global testing of new devices and communication possibilities. Digital memory is the result of this experiment conducted on a global scale by independent yet coordinated and interconnected users. Technology creates digital imagination and digital imaginary. This means that at various levels of interaction, memory is reworked and functionalised. Constant self-recording and web-based share-ism connected with Web 2.0 ideology are significant elements of this process - a re- invention of the human-computer relationship and a re-invention of the human itself in the context