Forgotten as data – remembered through information. Social memory institutions in the digital age: the case of the Europeana Initiative

The study of social memory has emerged as a rich field of research closely linked to cultural artefacts, communication media and institutions as carriers of a past that transcends the horizon of the individual’s lifetime. Within this domain of research, the dissertation focuses on memory institutions (libraries, archives, museums) and the shifts they are undergoing as the outcome of digitization and the diffusion of online media. Very little is currently known about the impact that digitality and computation may have on social memory institutions, specifically, and social memory, more generally – an area of study that would benefit from but, so far, has been mostly overlooked by information systems research. The dissertation finds its point of departure in the conceptualization of information as an event that occurs through the interaction between an observer and the observed – an event that cannot be stored as information but merely as data. In this context, memory is conceived as an operation that filters, thus forgets, the singular details of an information event by making it comparable to other events according to abstract classification criteria. Against this backdrop, memory institutions are institutions of forgetting as they select, order and preserve a canon of cultural heritage artefacts. Supported by evidence from a case study on the Europeana initiative (a digitization project of European libraries, archives and museums), the dissertation reveals a fundamental shift in the field of memory institutions. The case study demonstrates the disintegration of 1) the cultural heritage artefact, 2) its standard modes of description and 3) the catalogue as such into a steadily accruing assemblage of data and metadata. Dismembered into bits and bytes, cultural heritage needs to be re-membered through the emulation of recognizable cultural heritage artefacts and momentary renditions of order. In other words, memory institutions forget as binary-based data and remember through computational information

JPEG: the quadruple object

The thesis, together with its practice-research works, presents an object-oriented perspective on the JPEG standard. Using the object-oriented philosophy of Graham Harman as a theoretical and also practical starting point, the thesis looks to provide an account of the JPEG digital object and its enfolding within the governmental scopic regime. The thesis looks to move beyond accounts of digital objects and protocols within software studies that position the object in terms of issues of relationality, processuality and potentiality. From an object-oriented point of view, the digital object must be seen as exceeding its relations, as actual, present and holding nothing in reserve. The thesis presents an account of JPEG starting from that position as well as an object-oriented account of JPEG’s position within the distributed, governmental scopic regime via an analysis of Facebook’s Timeline, tagging and Haystack systems. As part of a practice-research project, the author looked to use that perspective within photographic and broader imaging practices as a spur to new work and also as a “laboratory” to explore Harman’s framework. The thesis presents the findings of those “experiments” in the form of a report alongside practice-research eBooks. These works were not designed to be illustrations of the theory, nor works to be “analysed”. Rather, following the lead of Ian Bogost and Mark Amerika, they were designed to be “philosophical works” in the sense of works that “did” philosophy

JPEG: the quadruple object

The thesis, together with its practice-research works, presents an object-oriented perspective on the JPEG standard. Using the object-oriented philosophy of Graham Harman as a theoretical and also practical starting point, the thesis looks to provide an account of the JPEG digital object and its enfolding within the governmental scopic regime. The thesis looks to move beyond accounts of digital objects and protocols within software studies that position the object in terms of issues of relationality, processuality and potentiality. From an object-oriented point of view, the digital object must be seen as exceeding its relations, as actual, present and holding nothing in reserve. The thesis presents an account of JPEG starting from that position as well as an object-oriented account of JPEG’s position within the distributed, governmental scopic regime via an analysis of Facebook’s Timeline, tagging and Haystack systems. As part of a practice-research project, the author looked to use that perspective within photographic and broader imaging practices as a spur to new work and also as a “laboratory” to explore Harman’s framework. The thesis presents the findings of those “experiments” in the form of a report alongside practice-research eBooks. These works were not designed to be illustrations of the theory, nor works to be “analysed”. Rather, following the lead of Ian Bogost and Mark Amerika, they were designed to be “philosophical works” in the sense of works that “did” philosophy