this is bad art

Research

  • Archives
    • Archive as a narrative tool and a form of surveillance; the concept of curation as control.
    • Archive as an art form or framing device; examples of fictional archives or creative cataloging
    • Practical archiving concepts and skills – software, cataloging, and preservation techniques
  • Context
    • Web 1.0, theories of World Wide Web connectivity, data/knowledge-sharing concepts (The Medium is the Message)
    • Online communities, particularly relating to moderation, cohesiveness as a function of size, and personal identity formation.
  • Memory
    • Memory erosion, data loss, and the act of memory accession as an act of subconscious revision, alteration, and loss
    • The act of archiving as a failure or a refusal to progress or let go, for better or worse
    • Functional uses of nostalgia, namely the ideas of mortality salience and terror management theory.

Archiving

  • Physical - Scanning, cataloging, and preserving family photos, personal artifacts, and family history/lore
  • Digital – Locating, downloading, and preserving as much digital material as I can find or remember, both as a creator and as a consumer
  • Experiential – Creating a repository of personal and cultural memories, both to preserve and to escape
  • Cultural – Various levels of ethnographic research. See Coming of Age in Second Life by Tom Boelstorff.
    • [Redacted] fandom between 2004 and 2007
    • Teen Open Diary, an online journal website aimed at teenagers and running between 1998 and 2006.
    • University School, my since-shut-down laboratory elementary school

Emulation/Reconstruction

  • Virtual Machines - Re-creating virtual versions of the computers and internet that I would have used at particular times in my life. This includes websites, games, software, and other multimedia.
  • Frankie - A browser-based instant messenger and chat room meant to visually, functionally, and nostalgically replace AOL instant messenger.
  • Imaginary Places - A web-based experiment in place, safety, memory, and fantasy. This project replicates environments and situation from my memories and melds them with concepts and environments from childhood play and fantasy.