Knowledge Creation and Artist Archives: The Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York, A Two Part Review.

The Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York, Inc. is a unique professional organization, due in part to the wealth of cultural, academic, public & private institutions located in NYC that are home to professionals in the archives field. ART produces educational programs, provides support for professional development, advocates for historical preservation, and gives archivists the opportunity to network at social events. At the start of their fall season, ART hosted a two-part series revolving around art and archives pertaining to David Wojnarowicz. The first program—New Approaches to Artists’ Archives: The Artist Archives Initiative & The David Wojnarowicz Knowledge Base—was a talk given by NYU Professor and MoMA Conservator Glenn Wharton along with Special Collections Librarian Nicholas Martin at Fales Library and Special Collections, NYU Bobst. The talk was followed by a brief lecture from Hugh Ryan, curator of The Unflinching Eye: The Symbols of David Wojnarowicz, an exhibition at the Mamdouha Bobst Gallery comprised of archival material from the Fales Collection. The second program—History Keeps Me Awake At Night: David Wojnarowicz Exhibition Tour—occurred the following week at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The tour was guided by Tara Hart, a graduate of Pratt’s MSLIS program who is currently the Archives Manager at the Whitney. The tour also featured an introduction to the Whitney and it’s facilities by the Director of Research Resources, Farris Wahbeh. I attended both of these events, including the networking and “happy hour” portions that followed.

Part I

The Fales Library and Special Collections, located on the third floor of ElmerHolmes Bobst Library at NYU, is a cozy space featuring antique card file cabinets—some of the Fales Special Collections still utilizes the card catalog—and wooden bookcases with glass doors. Behind the bibliographical threshold lay the archives; notably, The Downtown Collection, which holds archival material related to the LES and SoHo art scene as it developed from the 1970s through the 1990s. Within this collection, amongst other treasures, are the David Wojnarowicz papers, ca. 1954-1992. Consisting of 128 linear feet of documents, from journals and interviews, to phone-logs, to art-objects, this collection contains the primary source materials for the topic of the discussion today, The David Wojnarowicz Knowledge Base (DWKB), the premiere project of the Artist Archives Initiative (AAI). 

The Artist Archives Initiative is an ongoing experiment in contemporary art which seeks to address a need for evolving information resources based on cooperative efforts between artists and scholars. In pursuit of this goal, the AAI produced the DWKB, not only with the artists’ papers, but by conducting interviews with artists, friends, and others who knew Wojnarowicz; inviting scholars to submit their research and writings; and by choosing MediaWiki software to build the database. MediaWiki software is open-source, allows for low-cost maintenance, provides a strong user community, and has a hierarchical menu that allows researchers to search the database “laterally” through text searches and links within articles to other pages, including more DWKB pages, outside resources, and references. 

I believe this project is an example of a strategic development in the application of archival materials towards increased accessibility, discoverability, and interdisciplinary collaboration. The next project that the AAI has underway is the Joan Jonas Knowledge Base. Joan Jonas is a performance artist who is still very active. She lives closely with her personal archive, and because of this, she can be directly involved in the development of her own Knowledge Base. The iterative aspects of performance art pose an interesting challenge for Wharton and co-creator Deena Engel; multimedia documentation and the potential for years or decades between performances of the same piece, adds an element to the project that was absent from the scope of the DWKB. Additionally, the Joan Jonas Knowledge Base will not be developed with the benefit of content from a pre-existing archive.  

In respect to the ART event itself, the talk with Glenn Wharton and Nicholas Martin was informational, conducted in conjunction with a slide presentation, and allowed for time at the end for questions. It was a pleasure to hear Hugh Ryan, the curator of the archive-based exhibition, discuss his kindred relationship with Wojnarowicz. He conveyed a deep understanding of the symbols of Wojnarowicz’ art that in part had developed through years of studying the materials on display.

Downstairs in the Mamdouha Gallery, two tables had been prepared with concessions; wine, seltzer, fruit & cheese platters, and truffles that were handmade by the Program Coordinator, Amye McCarther. Treats were well-displayed and enjoyed by the event attendees. I made a point to discuss ART programming at-large with several professionals in attendance who gave reviews of past events along the lines of, “high-end”, and “always different, but always good.”

Part II

Meeting in the lobby of the Whitney, ART members and volunteers formed a group around the Director of Research Resources, Farris Wahbeh, who offered an abridged history of the museum, focusing on it’s origins and architectural provenance. Shortly after, the group followed Archives Manager Tara Hart up to the exhibition, David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake At Night. 

Among the first works in sight is an archival object that Nicholas Martin would refer to as “the big loan” during one of my subsequent tours of the Fales Collection—a Rimbaud Mask circa. 1978, which may have been used in Wojnarowicz’ early photo series, Arthur Rimbaud in New York. Archival material represents a sizable portion of the work on display. To name a few examples, there is an audio recording of a 1992 reading given by Wojnarowicz at The Drawing Center; a black and white unfinished film that was borrowed from the Fales Collection; and a vitrine containing a pamphlet from the American Family Association and the annotated Affidavit for David Wojnarowicz v. American Family Association and Donald E. Wildmon. 

These documents, again, on loan from the Fales, are evidence of one of Wojnarowicz’ contributions to defending artists’ rights, and a sad reminder of the value that the American court placed on his art. At the end of the text accompanying the documents in the vitrine was a prompt for the viewer to engage with yet another archival component—to listen to Wojnarowicz discuss the trial and his art practice with Terry Gross in a 1990edition of Fresh Air.

It was apparent to me that collections of primary source materials were integral to the present-day curation and exhibition of David Wojnarowicz’ work. Additionally, the presentation of archival materials enabled audience members to hear the artist’s voice and to learn about the politics and realities facing Wojnarowicz and his community at the time.

After the museum, the ART group reconvened for refreshments at a nearby bar. I was able to engage in conversation with McCarther, a practicing digital archivist who once participated in a Joan Mitchell Foundation CALL pilot program in Houston. CALL, which stands for Create A Living Legacy, provides resources to the public, supports late-career artists considering organizing their professional records, studios, and archives, and educates emerging artists who share these concerns in assisting older artists. It’s clear that a program like CALL operates on the opposite end of the spectrum compared to a project like the Artist Archives Initiative. However, it was helpful to participate in industry-relevant discussions and to meet like-minded individuals.

Posted on by Meghan Lyon 0

Protecting the Power (Value) of Voices: The New University in Exile Consortium

On September 6th of 2018, I attended The New University in Exile Consortium at The New School, in Manhattan, New York. The New University of Exile website describes the program by stating that: 

“We are an expanding group of universities and colleges publicly committed to the belief that the academic community has both the responsibility and capacity to assist persecuted and endangered scholars everywhere and to protect the intellectual capital that is jeopardized when universities and scholars are under assault.”

The New School has a long history of helping refugee scholars. Starting in 1933, The New School’s first president, Alvin Johnson, created the first University of Exile. During the rise of Nazism and the increasing threat of intellectual prosecution, Johnson hired many European scholars as the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science. Johnson firmly believed that universities had to play a pivotal a role in protecting independent thought and research. He believed that it was a unendangered university’s responsibility to assist other universities that are under assault.

The New University in Exile has begun working again internationally with Scholar Rescue Fund, and Scholars at Risk, in the midst of new political and military attacks on scholars. In places like Turkey, Iran, India, Yemen, and Syria, universities are being weakened, shut down, and destroyed, forcing scholars to flee or face being prosecuted and jailed. The New University in Exile seeks to be a safe space for displaced scholars. The aim is to create a collaborative community in which these scholars can continue to do research and produce information. The New University has a growing membership of universities, primarily on the east coast, for now, that are joining in the fight for intellectual capital. 

During the program there was an in-depth conversation between Kati Marton, a Hungarian-American journalist, and David Miliband, the CEO of International Rescue Committee, that was mediated by the Director of The New School, T. Alexander Aleinikoff. Marton and Miliband discussed how they both where from families of refugees and how this movement was very important to them. One of the main topics that was being discussed dealt with the removal of access to information. Both Marton and Miliband feared that history is being lost with people. They described how “fake news” and social media has played a pivotal role in shaping ideas and opinions about topics ranging from refugees, political movements to advertisements. 

Marton discussed her growing fear of the relationship between media outlets and popular vote “demi-gods,” which tied directly into a conversation about the current American political position. Marton’s career as a journalist clearly amplified her worries on this subject, and she gave a clear opinion on America’s lost position as a sanctuary country. While discussing this topic, Miliband argued that we must keep recording all the facts and events to protect all voices.

Although, I agree with, and understand this sentiment, it also made me question the relationship between power, authority and context. Different poisons are going to have a different view of the value that is placed on an item over time. Value, as described by Michelle Caswell in her article, “’The Archive’ is not and an Archive: Acknowledging the Intellectual Contributions of Archival Studies,” is dependent on the way in which an item can attest to the events in which they emerged. Caswell states that “Like, ‘evidence,’ ‘value’ always exists for someone in a particular place at a particular time.” (Caswell, 2016, <p> 16) Therefore, the facts and events that are recorded today, may have different implications dependent on who saves them, how they are later represented, and who is viewing them in the future. 

I believe that the key point both Marton and Miliband were stressing though, had more to do with censorship and false media today. They were expressing a need for information access and reliability in today’s political environment in order to help save information capital. Information capital ties in very closely with ideas of information literacy. Information capital is the theory that agues that information has value. It alludes that sharing information is a means of sharing power. Although, the word value in this theory holds a similar meaning to the value that archivist Caswell mentions, I think there should be a distinction. Value as placed in the Information Capital theory places the importance on how information forms power, rather than how power is chosen in a material. It is important to note that The New University in Exile is working within the western tradition of knowledge. The power to make a record, to name, preserve, mediate, and access, (Schwartz & Cook, 2002, pp.5) is being placed in the hands of scholars and organizations. This does not however, change the importance stressed by Marton, Milibrand, and The New University in Exile, that the ability to have a chance to create information is powerful in its own right and should be a human right. 

At the end of the program we also heard from two scholars, that are currently working within the New University of Exile, describe their plight. Cem Ozatalay and Mohammat AlAhmad are professors that have fled their home countries and have begun teaching in America with the help of The New University in Exile, Scholar Rescue Fund and Scholars at Risk. Hearing these professors talk about the prosecution they faced and the struggles they endured to come to America was very moving. They talked about facing prison time for their thoughts and ideas and how they had to smuggle their families across borders to escape. Through these programs, these scholars were able to continue researching, learning and teaching. 

The New University in Exile is clearly making a stand that stresses the importance of creation and dissemination of information. The university as a mode of expressing and sharing ideas has been a long standing tradition in the western world. The act of a political power silencing voices, and the need to protect them, overrides my concerns about future value placed on the information produced by the voices, at this time. I, like Marton, and Miliband, believe that the most important thing right now is to create, so at least sometime in the future, there will be a possibility of both sides of history being present. 

Important websites for more information on this topic:

https://newuniversityinexileconsortium.org

http://www.scholarrescuefund.org

https://www.scholarsatrisk.org

References:

AlAhmad, M., Aleinikoff, A., Fanton, J., Mack, A., Marton, K., Miliband, D., Ozatalay, C., Van Zandt, D. (2018, September). The New University in Exile Consortium, The New School, New York. 

Caswell, M. (2016). “‘The Archive’ Is not an archives: On acknowledging the intellectual contributions of archival studies.” Reconstruction: Studies in contemporary culture, 16. Retrieved from https://esscholarship.org/uc/item/7bn4v1fk

Schwartz, J., & Cook, T. (2002). “Archives, records and power: The making of modern memory.” Archival Science, 2, pp. 1-19. 

Posted on by Amber Pasiak 0

Engaging Shared Heritage @ NYPL

Wednesday Sept 26 I attended the talk at NYPL on ‘Engaging Shared Heritage.’ Academics from around the world shared with each other the projects they are working on and the challenges they face. The panel on “Preserving Cultural Heritage” shared the different types of preservation work they were engaged in. The following panel, “Engaging through Research and Dissemination,” discussed how they connect their work to other cultural heritage institutions and to the larger public. Instead of briefly touching on each person who spoke, I am going to focus on the panelists whose research most aligned with my interests and what we are studying in Foundations of Information.

 

Challenges to Preservation

Dr. Annie Sartre-Fauriat explained the destruction of historic sites such as the Temple of Bel and Palmyra and the loss of artifacts because of the civil war in Syria is irrecoverable. The proposition Sartre-Fauriat made was to reconstruct the damaged heritage sites from a variety of different periods. She warned against what she called “a Disney style approach” but contested that since Syria has had such a diverse history that the reconstruction shouldn’t look like any one particular era. She explained they do have enough archival resources to create a deep reading of these sites’ histories, but she admits that they while they have unlimited ideas and potential, everything else they need is non-existent. Currently Russian mercenaries are in control of the area and people are quiet freely looting the world heritage sites. She said that at the moment there is virtually no control and no ability to organize any sort of enforcement.

Father Samer Yohanna, a priest from Salahaddin University-Erbil in Iraq, explained the lack of trust that exists at all levels of society in Iraq. He said that between fellow countrymen, neighboring countries, and Westerners there are few areas where large swaths of society can work together. They have had to move their collections 5 times and at the moment they are not disclosing their location to anyone outside of the organization. He stressed the need in Iraq for places of community that give people incentive to see their history as shared, and work to preserve it.  

Father Yohanna also stressed the danger of working with artifacts in the modern Iraqi political climate. This is something that I partly dealt with in my undergraduate thesis, so I was eager to hear his perspective. There is intense pressure for different societal groups to prove their place in Iraq’s history, and against influences that have come in from the West. Yohanna explains ownership of artifacts and control of the narratives that surround them is a volatile issue that makes doing archival work very dangerous in Iraq.

The perspectives represented at this event were a reminder that free unfettered access to information in the context of a civil society might provide healthy debate, but could serve as fodder for violence in an area with few formal avenues to scholarly interpretation. This reflects what we read in the Dabello article, albeit in a different context, about traditional expertise not being able to play the role as gatekeeper as it once did in the face of an active public (Dabello, 2009). Our ability to create a publicly shaped identity I think directly relates to the amount of trust society has in each other and our institutions. When asked about opening up the their online platforms to community input Yohanna and Stewart (mentioned below) said they both have a moderated comment section that often provides insight, but with an undereducated public and a turbulent political climate, maintained that primary interpretation should remain in control of those with library and archive expertise. Respect for expertise and the potential power of crowdsourced information is a tension that continues to come up in this course.

 

Digitizing Responsibly  

The next panelist, Columbus Stewart, was a Benedictine monk from a monastery I am very familiar with back in Minnesota. He works with Hill Museum Manuscript and Library (HMML). Their mission starting out was to protect Benedictine manuscripts in Eastern Europe directly after WWII. Since then they have expanded to preserving Muslim and Christian manuscripts across the Middle East. HMML began preserving manuscripts in Syria before the civil war broke out. One of his primary points was that we must do preservation work preemptively, especially for things as fragile as manuscripts, because it is often impossible to predict where conflict will break out. He cites their work in Mosul just before the civil war as evidence. Thus far they have digitized 40,000 manuscripts. From their website (https://www.vhmml.org) people can then export their own data sets. The only barrier to access they put up is the creation of a free account to access the images and the export function; people can access the index information without an account.

The key to their success has been working with local communities. He explained the general consensus that Americans find a way to monetize everything they touch. Distrust is something they always face, but their position as monks he said actually helps convince people they are not there to turn a profit. By working with locals they are able to gain a richer understanding of the texts. As a result the metadata that locals generate is far more accurate than what they would produce on their own. Drabinski illustrated this same point with the anecdote about the term “Kafir” in Zambian context (Drabinski, 2013). When digitizing any material we would be repeating past colonial mistakes if we continue to attest that description can be done neutrally. Father Stewart’s team takes this role very seriously. They train and pay locals to take photographs of manuscripts, teach them how to work with the data sets. This results in the spreading of expertise as well as the creation of rich digital databases.  

 

Archives and Peace

In the next panel, Vincent Lemire introduced us to Open Jerusalem which is trying to index as many archives as possible in Jerusalem and across the Middle East. Some of his points reflected what we have been discussing in class. For example he explained that with archives, unlike books, the producer is not the author and the contents of the archive is always composed of diverse material. They must find a way to describe the archive deeply while also applying a standardization that can be searchable in a database. Also because of the location and history of Israel, they are working with materials written in many different languages and described in different languages still during their various stages of provenance. For this reason they only focus on making the indexes digital, not the actual material.

Lemire explained that it is very difficult to have any mutual basis when inferences from the records lead opposing sides to drastically different conclusions. How they have overcome this, to an extent, is to start at the most basic irrefutable positions such as “this material is a book, it is written in Arabic, it is on such and such type of paper,” and build from there. He sees this as a practical, project-based form of peacemaking. While uninspired by the effects that formal peace talks have had on the region, Lemire argues that having to get through an insurmountable amount of archives forces people to develop a working relationship even if they still deeply disagree. McChesney stressed in “Digital Disconnect,” the importance of having public spaces in order for democratic civil society to flourish (McChesney, 2013). Panelists Yohanna and Lemire both echoed McChesney’s sentiment with the calls for spaces, such as a reading rooms, for people to be able to benefit from materials and develop a local concept of community.

 

Works Cited

Caswell, M. L. (2016). ‘The Archive’ is Not An Archives. Reconstruction 16(1).

Dalbello, M. (2009). Digital Cultural Heritage: Concepts, Projects, and Emerging Constructions of Heritage. Proceedings of the Libraries in the Digital Age (LIDA) conference, 25-30.

Drabinski, E, (2013). Queering the Catalog: Queer Theory and the Politics of Correction. The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy, 83(2). pp 94-111.

McChesney, R. (2013) Digital Disconnect. New York, NY: The New Press.

 

Event information and feature image credit can be found at:  https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2018/09/26/engaging-shared-heritage

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Open Access in the Screening of “Paywall: The Business of Scholarship”


On Thursday, September 20th, I went to the NYU Cantor Film Center to watch the screening of the new documentary film Paywall: The Business of Scholarship directed by Jason Schmitt, a communications and media scholar at Clarkson University, New York. Paywall is a 65-minute film which seems to advocate for the need of open access (OA) practices that lack in the academic publishing industry focused on research and science. The documentary weaves two overarching inquiries: it examines the 35-40% profit margin associated particularly with Elsevier and other top academic publishers and compares this with the incomes of the most profitable tech companies like Apple, Facebook, and Google. The film also questions the high financial costs of subscription-based academic journals and how scholarship and innovation in general is affected by these costs when scholars, students, and researchers hit paywalls that deny them access to the most updated research.

The format of Paywall is presented through sequenced interviews of a wide range of scholars, publishers, and OA advocates from across the world. One of the key issues that strucked me of the interviews is when I learned that most scientific research is publicly funded by government agencies or universities, and yet this research is locked behind expensive paywalls and kept from access to the general public. It was also surprising to see why the academic publishing industry is extremely profitable. John Adler, a professor of neurosurgery at Standford University who appeared early on in the film, said “publishing is so profitable because workers do not get paid.” He referred to workers as the people who create the products for academic journals – authors and reviewers. This brings to question how come writers do not get paid for their services and how is this business model sustainable for them?

While the documentary do not delve into the perspectives of authors and scholars who provide their labor to academic journals, it examines the way top publishers have sustained their business model in the market. They have made themselves indispensable to their clients, in this case universities, with a set of policies that allow them to be excessively profitable. Some interviewees in the film including library professionals, explain that universities are required to keep in confidentiality the costs they pay for subscription-based academic journals. In this way, publishers can charge any rate to each university without revealing their different charging practices with other schools, which prevents others to compete against them. Universities also lack the power to decide which journals they should buy or should not because they need all the latest scholarship work that is controlled by legacy publishers such as Elsevier, Wiley, Springer Nature, and Sage.

These issues with control and power over information exerted by top publishers brought me back to Robert McChesney’s ideas in Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy when he discusses the political economy of communication (PEC). The author explains that the PEC examines the institutions, market structures, support mechanisms, and labor practices that define a media or communication system, and determines whether those practices are conducive or not to democratic values. For instance, McChesney analizes the case with Microsoft which has become a proprietary software company indispensable to society. The reading states that “Microsoft has been able to exploit the dependence of a wide range software applications on its underlying operating system in order to lock in its system permanently, allowing it to enjoy long-term monopoly-pricing power. Any competitor seeking to introduce a new rival operating system, faces an enormous ‘applications barrier to entry’ ” (p. 73). This business model of dependency and monopoly aligns with they way academic journals have also employ their power with paywalls. A model that interferes with the progression of a modern democracy.

Schmitt’s film also addresses the negative consequences of paywalls to broader societal issues. Two medical doctors from Nepal and Nigeria who participated in the interviews testified the experiences of students in their countries with subscription-based journals. They mentioned that paywalls deny students access to the latest literature and this prevents the professional development of students and contributions to their field to happen. This exclusion is due in part for the high costs of paywalls that do not correspond with the inequities of the currency of countries from the developing world. Therefore, this is harmful not only for them and researchers from the developing world, but also for scholarship itself. A vital aspect of scholarship is innovation and this flourishes when a great diversity of people and knowledges contribute to it.

Although most Paywall’s interviewees seemed to support the idea that society would be better if scholarly articles are distributed in an open access world, the documentary do not explore adequately the challenges that OA publishing would face – the costs and risks associated with it. Additionally, the film does not address the reasons why scholars choose to sign away their rights to their scholarly work to commercial publishers, instead of making their papers freely available to their academic institutions. This question is brought up in Siva Vaidhyanathan’s article Critical Information Studies: A Bibliographic Manifesto which states that academics frequently “overreact to perceived ‘threats’ that someone is teaching ‘their’ course or relying too heavily on ‘their’ data.” Vaidhyanathan also mentions that “[t]oo often, academic leaders forget their ethical duty to the community of scholars and world citizens at large. Their rabidly protect their ‘intellectual property’ to the detriment of the scholarly world (an the species) as a whole…” (p. 26). These issues helped me to be more aware of the complexities that scholarship work entails.

After watching the screening, there was a discussion among the audience mediated by NYU librarian April Hathcock. She started the conversation by asking us if this making-money business mindset belongs in to academic scholarship? Rather than providing answers in the room, there were more questions from the audience regarding advocacy, research efficiency, inclusivity, copyrights, commerce, quality, and innovation. A NYU PhD student referred the example of Sci-Hub, which was featured in the film, as a tool that helps him to find academic papers more easily and faster than the academic journals he is able to access through his university. He suggested that Sci-Hub’s website is more user-friendly and seamless. It was interesting to hear this perspective from a student who has the privilege to access to the most updated information in research from top subscription-based journals. His comment left me with questions regarding deficiencies of the website development and interface design of academic journals.

References

Paywall: The Business of Scholarship. Retrieved September 27, 2018, from https://paywallthemovie.com

McChesney, R. W. (2013). Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy (pp. 64-66, 73). New York: The New Press.

Vaidhyanathan, S. (2005). Critical Information Studies: A Bibliographic Manifesto (p. 26).

Posted on by Diana Cadavid 0

Non-relational Databases: Two Case Studies and their Potential for Collection Management Application

On September 18 Seth Kaufman, founder of Whirl-i-Gig, presented at the Code4Lib NYC meetup at the Metro offices. He demonstrated the Whirl-i-Gig projects ePandda and Inquisite which make use of non-relational database structures to store and access research data .

Kaufman began his presentation by explaining that relational databases have been the dominant structure for commercial databases since the 1970s, but they have limitations for certain applications.  Kaufman walked the audience through the process behind Whirl-i-Gig team’s development of two non-relational databases that were able to meet his clients’ research-centered needs in ways that relational databases could not.

Kaufman explained that document-oriented databases are based on the notion of a document rather than on joined records as in a relational database. With document-oriented databases, each document is “schema-less”. There are no pre-defined fields, every field can have multiple values, and there are no relationships or joins. According to Kaufman, the advantages of document-oriented databases are that they are fast, flexible, scalable, and are easily integrated with programming languages. For these reasons, Whirl-i-Gig decided to use a document-oriented database for a solution they eventually called ePandda (enhancing Paleontological and Neontological Data Discovery API).

Whirl-i-Gig built ePandda to meet the needs of paleontological researchers at Yale who needed to observe patterns taken from multiple data sets that span geological epochs. The ePandda API made existing paleontology databases interoperable in order to query across enormous data sets. Through ePandda’s http-based query language ElasticSearch, researchers could examine questions such as “When did brachiopods die?” which would lead to their developing theories about climate change more broadly.

Whirl-i-Gig’s other non-relational database project, Inquisite, uses a graph structure. It was developed to analyze data for NYU’s NewYorkScapes project. NewYorkScapes is a project that studies the history of urban cultures in New York City and makes collected data discoverable for research. In Kaufman’s own words, the role of Inquisite in the project is to “streamline the formation of open research communities and foster the acquisition, preservation, dissemination and reuse of research data.”

Inquisite uses a graph structure, a non-relational database format that has been around for decades but has seen a resurgence in recent years. Graph databases use nodes (entities) and edges (expressions of two related nodes) to create structure. In graph databases, the relationships themselves contain data which results in a simpler data model that is faster to query. Relational databases, on the other hand, rely on key structures to represent relationships. As the depth of these relationships increases, query performance can be slowed.

Inquisite makes use of graph databases’ simple structure and fast query ability to enable  project participants to use their mobile devices to gather and upload data (audio, video, and images). Inquisite then visualizes these create community-generated data sets as graphs, timelines and maps.

Kaufman’s presentation demonstrated innovative ways that academic research data can be expressed and accessed through non-relational databases. I was left wondering how these principles might apply to other content areas. I was particularly curious to know more about the potential of non-relational databases in collection management software for cultural heritage institutions.

Whirl-i-Gig is the creator of the open source collection management database CollectiveAccess which is used by dozens of art organizations, libraries and museums. I reached out to Kaufman to ask about the Whirl-i-Gig team’s choice of structure for CollectiveAccess and his perspective on the role of non-relational databases in collection management software generally.

Kaufman explained that CollectiveAccess is a typical relational database built with SQL. In his opinion, a document-oriented structure is not well-suited for collections databases. The main reason for this is their lack of structured relationships  which are necessary to represent collection content.

Kaufman considers Graph databases to be more promising for collection management software. The developers at Whirl-i-Gig considered a graph structure for the next major version of CollectiveAccess. Kaufman is confident that graph structures would function well for this purpose.

Though Kaufman describes query processing speed as one of the main reasons non-relational databases were chosen for Inquisite and ePandda, I wonder if it is graph database’s query intuitiveness that may be the greatest advantage for collection management databases for cultural heritage institutions. For example, the widely used collection management database TMS (Gallery Systems’s The Museum Systems) is a SQL-based relational database that has a non-intuitive query interface that requires specific training to understand. A collection management system built in the graph model might feel more natural for users to query because the relational structure itself is built using a syntax that more closely resembles the language people use to ask questions verbally.

An analogy of navigational instructions given to a driver can illustrate this concept. Relational databases are the equivalent of giving a driver a map. The driver needs to look at the map and understand how to orient themselves and then figure out for themselves which path they need to follow. A graph database is like giving the driver step by step directions, for example, “turn right at the next intersection and your destination is the third building on your left.” The argument for the efficiency of graph databases is that the query is more streamlined. Less time is wasted in an interface that needs to interpret the user’s query and then if the query was not possible, to re-interpret the result back to the user.

Despite the potential of graph databases to more effectively produce queries, Kaufman doesn’t expect to see graph databases used widely for collections because of the IT support required to implement and maintain them. Kaufman went on to explain that graph databases tend not to be well understood by IT professionals. Most cultural heritage institutions are not likely to allocate the resources required for the more extensive IT support. In his opinion, the familiarity and ease of relational databases for developers will likely cause them to remain the most prevalent database structure for collection management software for the foreseeable future.

References

Kaufman, Seth. 2018, September 18. Managing research data with non-relational databases.

Sasaki, Bryce Merkl. 2018, August 15. Graph Databases for Beginners: Why a Database Query Language Matters (More Than You Think). Retrieved from https://neo4j.com/blog/why-database-query-language-matters/.

 

 

 

 

Posted on by Eve Perry 0

Power in New Pedagogies at MoMA PS1’s Art Book Fair

Across the board, I think it’s safe to say museums and other cultural institutions are working towards rectifying their troubling pasts and working towards a more inclusive future. Some museums are doing better than others in regards to seeing this goal into fruition. My visit to MoMA PS1’s Art Book Fair last weekend was a shining example of how museums can correctly and creatively invite underrepresented groups into their space to tell their stories. Two groups at the show,We the News  and Manufactoriel, really stood out to me as both engaged with issues of identity and place- the first through zines and social activism, and the latter through reimagining spaces through photography.

Lizania telling my friends and I about her work!

We the News

Lizania Cruz was the first artist I spoke to at the fair. I was drawn to the large prints that read “Go Home Yankees” in bright pink across a stark white background. Lizania’s booth was filled with provocative signage calling out white supremacy and colonialism in history as well as its lasting effects on the community here in Brooklyn. She said she’s very interested in exploring the Black Diaspora, the worldwide community of descendants from Africa. I picked up a zine titled “Navigating Nuances of Diasporic Blackness: Tensions within the Black Community” or “Navegando por los matices de la negritud diásporica tensiones dentro de la communidad negra”. Almost all of her publications are available in English and Spanish, which speaks to the intentional intercultural inclusivity within the black community. It’s also worth noting that these zines are typically free and distributed around the Bed-Stuy neighborhood by the We the News collective. In fact zines are a very important form of publications in the field of social activism. Scholar Anna Polleti articulates why the zine tradition is a critical example of disrupting what she describes as mainstream methods of story telling:

“Through the production of independent publications, zine culture seeks to erode the predominance of mainstream and commercial interests in particular cultural activities. The zine community is a form of alternative media, a subculture of story telling and knowledge sharing…” (Polleti 184).

 

Artists Books from Manufactoriel- “Amegbeto” can be see on the left and Salwat’s book “Zingatia” on the right.

Manufactoriel

Manufactoriel is a “research proposition in African and Black Contemeporary visual culture, art, and style” (Manufactoriel 2018). I was able to speak with Salwat, an artist in the collective about the work on their table. Each art book responded to themes like the consequences of colonialism and identity politics. One book “Amegbeto”, which means “the one who refused” in Tongan, documents a bi-racial artist’s experience meeting her Tongan family for the first time. My favorite book on the table was created by Salwat herself. She is conducting academic research on a museum in Zanzibar that houses a collection important to Swahili maritime culture, yet the museum is in ruins as a result of decolonization. The museum has no funding and the records and objects left behind are falling apart and forgotten. After she received her master’s degree, Salwat created a book artists book to document the museum’s state of disrepair including some images of the galleries but many blank pages to symbolize the absence or lack of information and care given to the collections.

All in all, the Art Book Fair was not just a space for artists and independent publishers to present their work; it is also a space for underrepresented community’s to share their narratives in a public platform. This is especially important when thinking about the lack of representation topics like the black diasporic experience, or the consequences of colonialism have in major institutions. In a book of essays titled “As radical, as mother, as salad, as shelter: What should art institutions do now” edited by Paper Monument, seeks to address the looming question of how we rectify museums as problematic institutions in the current political environment. The book is formatted in a series of questions and author responses, my favorite question is “Can an art institution go from being an object of critique to a site for organizing? How?” The answers vary. Some think museums should “decentralize the art object and emphasize the process” (Basha 6) others are less optimistic that this change will occur describing efforts made by major institutions as “lip service”.  Although I am often wary of museums efforts to be more inclusive, I think MoMA PS1 is doing a great job. Hosting this type of event, outside of the gallery space, creates a different type of information environment that gives vendors like Lizania and Salwat to tell their stories. Not to say that museums are obsolete, or that curated collections are unimportant, but I only mean to suggest that in exploring alternative forms of art consumption through art books, zines, and free events, MoMA PS1 had the opportunity to engage with a larger community. Currently museums are in what feels like the beginning stages of recognizing and rectifying difficult realizations about the foundations and funding surrounding institutions, the next steps to making change are more difficult to identify. But perhaps in thinking outside of the typical pedagogical playbook of what museums have been and should be, we can create spaces that are more creative, thoughtful, and inclusive.

“The Black Women’s Free Library”
One set of the many cool posters plastered around the walls of the outdoor area.

References

About. (n.d.). Retrieved September 26, 2018, frmo https://www.manufactoriel.com/about-manufactoriel

Basha, R. (2018) As radical, as mother, as salad, as shelter: What should art institutions do now? Brooklyn, NY: Paper Monument

Liu, M. (2017, March 22). We The News. Retrieved from

We The News

Poletti, A. (2005). Self-Publishing in the Global and Local: Situating Life Writing in Zines. Biography,28(1), 183-192. doi:10.1353/bio.2005.0035

 

 

 

Posted on by Sloan Strader 0

Missing the Point: Art Tourism and the New Wave of Art Fanatics

Event: Untitled (The Drop), performance in Performa 17 by Barbara Kruger

Kruger Fans were disappointed—yes, I just labeled the new wave of followers and lovers of Barbara Kruger’s art Kruger Fans—they’ve written about it all over the internet. From Vogue to Artsy, these ‘art critics’ were not impressed with buying tickets to wait in a long, slow-moving line, just to buy “skater” fashions. But they did it anyway (Yotka, 2017).

Barbara Kruger is a Performance Artist Now?

The setting for the performance was a pop-up shop featuring a limited number of Volcom-brand tees and sweater, a special MetroCard, and even a skate deck, all printed with Kruger’s new work, for sale. Tickets were $5. Attendees became the actors, waiting outside to get their turn to make a cameo in the shop. No, really. The performance was us, standing in line, waiting to be let into the pop-up shop. For what? To make a purchase. That was it.

Barbara Kruger is a Non-Performance Artist Now

The focus of “The Drop” performance and her other installations became the resurfacing of Kruger’s drama with Supreme. The over-hyped, clothing brand relies on promoting the anti-authoritative, skater subculture, but it’s mainly just an exploitation of their aesthetic and caricature of their masculinity. Buyers consist of young males, who wait in long lines for expensive clothing. These particular events are known as ‘drops’. The brand is accused of having ripped off (read: stolen) Kruger’s typographical design treatments to come up with their brand identity. Later, they turned around and sued another brand for appropriating and using a version of their logo. The irony is unreal. If it’s not apparent, her partnership with Volcom is in direct, market competition with Supreme (Zuckerman, 2013).

On the surface, the pop-up was Barbara Kruger’s turn to give her middle finger to Supreme. She did this by not only ripping the brand’s style (and the idea of branding a MetroCard), but also by appropriating their sales strategies of building an air of great desire for limited-quantity items that promise a certain lifestyle. In a way, Barbara Kruger took back what is rightfully hers, and took a few other things along the way (Hodge, 2017).

Quickly criticized as anti-climatic, the internet dubbed “Untitled (The Drop)” a lack-luster non-performance. Meanwhile, Kruger’s other site-specific installations, especially “Untitled (Skate)” at Coleman Skatepark, garnered all sorts of attention and acceptance. I believe the reason that the skatepark was more successful, is because Barbara Kruger actually appropriated a whole skatepark, including the skaters. She served Kruger Fans an easy-to-digest performance: no surprises, provided the en vogue actors oozing the right aesthetic, and plastered war phrases and terms on a school bus. What a spectacle (Indrisek, 2017).

An Open Letter to the New Wave of Art Fanatics

You are the jerks that Barbara Kruger references in her work. You immediately succumbed to Kruger’s own version of brands’ manipulation tactics used to convince you to buy forgetful, useless products. “Untitled (The Drop)” is meant to be a reminder that we are capable of recognizing the audacity of certain groups’ actions, yet, are so quick to accept this information and move on with no action. We never really acknowledge the core of the problem, or attempt to protest and correct those situations. Instead, we become part of that problem. Even if you insist that you know it’s wrong or inappropriate, you still follow the masses (Williams, 2014).

Of course, those that study Kruger’s art are fully aware of the dualistic nature of her work. It intends to attack consumerism’s veil, while at the same time setting us up to succumb to the manipulative sales strategies, and enacting those consumerist-driven tendencies. They know her work is a call to action to apply self-reflective, critical thinking to the approaches we take in our daily lives (Canelo, 2016). We should get to know the institutions that we interact with, beyond the public-facing marketing campaigns. The underlying message here bears a reminder to go beyond consumption of information and no-action.

I urge the new wave of art tourists and Kruger Fans to not rely on art to teach them about culture. Culture is not a category defined by an institution. It does not come in a neat package, nor is it framed, hanging in some Chelsea studio in the gentrified New York . Culture spans the schools of thoughts. You can’t rely on any one institution to teach you everything you need to know about it.

Art is an industry maintained by consumerism—just like fashion and retail. Museums rely on event and ticket sales to promote agendas. Nevermind that you are unaware of this psychology. Your responsibility is to apply critical thinking and art theory to all works—which many bloggers, magazine editors, and art spectators miserably fail to do so more and more every day (Gottshalk, 2017).

Does it even matter that Barbara Kruger donated the money from sales to charity? Nobody wrote about that. Find the real problems that need solutions, or you might just miss the point.

Sources

Canelo, M. J. (2016). Art as social commentary: visual syntax and meaning in Barbara Kruger’s collages. Ways of seeing, ways of making seen, 70.

Gottschalk, M. (2017, December 08). Is Culture in the Americas in Trouble? Arts Leaders Say Yes. Retrieved December 10, 2017, from https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-culture-americas-trouble-arts-leaders

Hodge, K. (2017, November 07). Barbara Kruger Takes Aim at Supreme With “The Drop” Pop-Up. Retrieved December 09, 2017, from https://www.highsnobiety.com/2017/11/07/barbara-kruger-supreme-the-drop/

Indrisek, S. (2017, November 09). I Went to Barbara Kruger’s First-Ever Performance-and Left with a Skateboard. Retrieved December 09, 2017, from https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-barbara-krugers-first-ever-performance-left-skateboard

Williams, P. (2013, May 04). Artist Barbara Kruger Responds to the Supreme Lawsuit. Retrieved December 09, 2017, from https://www.highsnobiety.com/2013/05/02/artist-barbara-kruger-responds-to-the-supreme-lawsuit/

Yotka, S. (2017, December 08). Was Barbara Kruger’s The Drop a Success? Retrieved December 09, 2017, from https://www.vogue.com/article/barbara-kruger-the-drop-supreme-perfoma-2017

Zuckerman, E. (2013, May 02). Artist Barbara Kruger Is Not Cool with the ‘Totally Uncool Jokers’ at Supreme. Retrieved December 10, 2017, from https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/05/artist-barbara-kruger-supreme/315652/

References

Barbara Kruger. (n.d.). Retrieved December 09, 2017, from http://17.performa-arts.org/artists/barbara-kruger

Barbara Kruger. (n.d.). Retrieved December 09, 2017, from http://17.performa-arts.org/artists/barbara-kruger-the-drop

Posted on by Armando Garcia 0

Observation: VR World NYC

This year, the largest virtual reality experience center in North America-VR World, landed in New York, right close to the Empire State Building. Visitor can try out 50 unique VR experiences in three floors, including gaming, film, art, music, etc. I went there a few weeks ago, experiencing some games and movies, and also observing players’ behaviors from a user experience standpoint.

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Visitors are handed disposable eye masks for the purpose of hygiene when using public VR headsets. Each game has guide staff there to assist each experience, ensuring players have a full understanding of the equipment and experiences. Depending on the experience, each should last between 5-10 minutes. Most gaming bays have a big-screen TV where you can watch the action that’s happening in the headset, which makes it convenient to observe players’ behaviors and responses.

Experience types

There are different types of the VR experiences in the VR World, including gaming, film, art, and music, etc. Undoubtedly, gaming is the most popular one and usually needs to wait for playing.

All experiences require a headset and headphone. The simplest experiences are you can just sit and watch a film or documentary. The most common ones are those require controllers in hands and your body movements, such as “Raw Data” which lets you shoot droid with controllers, and “Tilt Brush” which lets you paint in virtual reality. Some special experiences normally need other equipment to interact with, such as steering wheel, “paraglider” and “spaceship”.

VR World Experiences

Children and adult have different experiences in VR games

Kids love VR game! During the 3-4 hours I was visiting, nearly half of the visitors are kids and they keep coming back to the game they found interesting. They are very excited and not stopped by the frustrations they came across. I can see a future where a place like this could become a “theme park” like Disneyland and Universal Studios.

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One interesting thing I noticed is children and adults have different experiences in VR games, majorly because of the height and learning curve.

Even though in the same game, we can see the angle of view from kid and adult are different. Adult’s is higher and kid’s is lower because of the height, which actually influences their performance in games. The broader view you can see, the better you can handle the situation, such as the enemy in the game. To improve the experience for kids, designers may consider providing a “child mode” and lifting the angle of view for them.

Screen Shot 2017-12-14 at 5.42.52 PM

Same for the experiences which require other equipment. In the below example, the kids were struggling with pressing the brake. He cannot sat comfortably when his foot touched the brake. When kids are playing games, they actually consider themselves “an adult/hero” who can beat everything, then why not help them remove the constraints?

Screen Shot 2017-12-14 at 5.43.11 PM

(Notice from VR World about age requirements: “VR World isn’t an all-ages attraction. In fact, children under age 7 aren’t admitted and certain games have age requirements, while a couple of others are geared toward those over 5-foot-2.”)

Female characters are missing

Having game characters controlled by players is very common in most games, especially in role-playing games. While if you play alone, you may not get the chance to see what you look like in the game. If you have teammates who play with you, then they can see you and potentially collaborate with you.

When I was playing the shooting game called “Raw Data” with one friend, even though I am a female, my friend still saw a man in the game which is not appropriate. It reminds me of a discussion I’ve been through about  “feminist theories of technology”, which mentioned how women’s needs are less met by new technologies because there are fewer women worked in the tech industry, either as designers or developers. The situation I came across in the game is just a good example for that. Virtual reality aims to make people feel real, but if women cannot behavior or been seen as a female, how can it be real?

Screen Shot 2017-12-14 at 5.46.48 PM

Emotional Impacts and Learning Curve

Another two things I think the UX designer of VR games should consider are the emotional impacts and learning curve.

People react differently to the games, some calm and some exciting. Fear and frustration are the two major negative emotions I found when observing other people play. Although negative emotions don’t mean negative impacts, because people could actually be excited about experiencing vivid feeling in the VR games, the emotional impacts are still something needs to be paid attention. VR is emotion amplifier because of the immersion, which can also lead to motion sickness when players lose control – I felt once when I was playing the racing game and suddenly lose the control of the steering wheel.

Giving control to players is very important for the user experience of VR game, which connects the second aspect – learning curve. Different people have different learning curves, and different games also have different learning curves. First-time players can act very differently while playing. Currently, every game in the VR World has guide staff there to explain the instructions before each one plays. Therefore, how to make the games intuitive and self-explanatory, and help players master the techniques quickly are good challenges to tackle. When players are comfortable with playing it without assistance, VR games or places like this should be much easier to scale up.

 

References:
1. VR World NYC: https://vrworldnyc.com/

2. Wajcman, J. (2009) “Feminist theories of technology,” Cambridge Journal of Economics http://wiki.medialab-prado.es/images/4/4b/Wajcman_Feminist_theories_of_technology.pdf.

3. Moor, J. H. (1985). “What is computer ethics?” Metaphilosophy 16(4): 266–275.

Posted on by Elise Fu 0

Behind the Scenes at the American Museum of Natural History

Tour of the American Museum of Natural History’s Library and Special Collections

Micaela Walker

On November 17 I was lucky enough to attend a tour of the Library and Special Collects at the American Museum of Natural History which was arranged by Pratt ASIS&T chair Heather Hill.  The library is located on 2 floors of a building within a courtyard surrounded by other buildings.  The tour was given by the Senior Research Services Librarian, Mai Reitmeyer and she began by showing us on several archival drawings and photographs where, exactly, we were.

The AMNH is notoriously difficult to navigate and now I understand why; the museum is comprised of 28 buildings interconnected over an area covering 4 city blocks. There are buildings within buildings, buildings that can only be accessed via certain elevators to certain floors.  It is a labyrinth of knowledge.  The museum began in 1869 in a building within Central Park, which it quickly outgrew.  Calvert Vaux, one of the architects of Central Park, helped with the initial design of buildings on the site where the museum now stands. However, new buildings and facades were being added and redesigned until 1936.

Illustration of an early design plan for the AMNH
Illustration of an early design plan for the AMNH

 

Mid construction photo of the Museum in 1878
Mid construction photo of the Museum in 1878

Along with the library, which is in building #1, the museum has over 200 research scientists and curators working in earth and planetary science, astrophysics, paleontology, anthropology, zoology, invertebrates,  several vertibrate departments, one of the largest frozen tissue labs in the world, and a PhD program in comparative biology.  This is, of course, only behind the scenes workings – the exhibits and educational programs  that are open to the public are immense and expansive.

The physical library holds over 1 million photo items including prints, transparencies, and contact sheets organized in rows of filing cabinets and cataloged by area of study (ie geography).

Print (and bust) storage
Print (and bust) storage. The painting at the end was an illustration for the cover of a magazine AMNH used to print.

 

Librarian Mai Reitmeyer
Librarian Mai Reitmeyer

 

Digitizing their existing collections of prints, negatives, journals and field notes is an ongoing process that has to be done carefully by hand.  The library has this clever device to scan books, with two cameras and lights placed at the perfect angles to capture pages that are gently pressed into a glass V called the Book Eye scanner.

Book Eye Scanner
Book Eye Scanner

 

They use EAD as their encoding standard entered in XML when adding the scans and their metadata onto their digital archive, a low res version of which is then uploaded to their online archive, which currently has over 25,000 items in it’s database (http://lbry-web-007.amnh.org/digital/).

They have partnered with Internet Archive to offer images through their platform, which has nearly 4,000 AMNH scanned items (https://archive.org/details/americanmuseumnaturalhistory).  Additionally, they have a Flickr photo stream that includes everything from collection items to student drawings from it’s education programs (https://www.flickr.com/photos/amnh/).

They are currently scanning field notebooks from various 19th and 20th century anthropologists and scientists, which will all be available to the public online.  Ms. Reitmeyer, as with nearly everyone I have met in the field since starting the MSLIS program, is more excited about the opportunities that all of this open access affords the museum to connect within it’s own community of scientists and researchers, and to the general public, than fearful of any possible copyright violations or misuse.

Next Ms. Reitmeyer took us to the rare book section which is accessible only with two staff members present to open the door. It looks like an old safety deposit vault only less grand and more utilitarian, with metal shelves surrounding a high central viewing table.

 

Mai holds up a rare and very large book in the rare book collection
Ms. Reitmeyer holds up a rare and very large book in the rare book collection

 

There are some seriously big books. And very old fragile ones. The textures of the various crinkly, thick papers feel more like pelt than pulp. Among the treasures she showed us were a page from Charles Darwin’s manuscripts, books from 1551 and 1558 complete with spines intact, books of outrageously whimsical hand colored fish by Louis Renard, a rare copperplate of an owl by Alexander Wilson, and John Gould lithographs.  Each item is encased in an archival box that is custom made by the conservation staff. All told we had a firsthand tour of 400 years of printing methods in about 20 minutes.

Page from Charles Darwin's manuscripts
Page from Charles Darwin’s manuscripts

 

Fish by Louis Renard
Fish by Louis Renard

 

Copperplate by Alexander Wilson
Copperplate by Alexander Wilson

 

Lithograph by John Gould
Lithograph by John Gould

 

On our way out we got a look at the negative storage lined up perfectly in identical archival boxes and an entire room of audio and film storage covering nearly every format created. The goal is to have everything digitized and, where possible, made available to the public.

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We finished the tour as the museum was closing up so I went to say hello to the Titanosaur and catch a glimpse of some of the iconic (if ethically troublesome) animal dioramas. As I left the building I caught sight of this gem by Teddy Roosevelt, carved into the gargantuan wall above the check-in.  I took a picture because I thought my sons could use a bit of fortified, timeless advice like this, but actually I think we would all do well to follow it.

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Posted on by Micaela Walker 0