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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="" xml:lang="">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8" />
<meta name="generator" content="pandoc" />
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes" />
<link rel='me' href='https://post.lurk.org/@artistsandhackers'>
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<link rel="icon" href="./assets/img/favicon.ico">
<meta property='og:type' content='website' />
<meta property='og:image' content='https://leetusman.com/archiving-artist-spaces/assets/img/banner.jpg'>
<meta property='og:title' content="Archiving Artist-Run Sites">
<meta property='og:description' content="preserve the online activities of DIY and artist-run communities.">
<meta name='description' content="explorations of joyful and human-scale computing.">
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<header>
<a href='./'><p>🗃️ Archiving Artist-Run Spaces</p></a>
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<p>
<p><a href='.'>Home</a> <a href='./about.html'>About</a> <a href='./archives.html'>Archives</a> <a href='./resources.html'>Resources</a> <a href='./reading.html'>Reading</a> <a href='./devlog.html'>Log</a> </p>
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<main>
<h1 id="log">Log</h1>
<h3 id="section">2023-06-07</h3>
<p>Installed Archiving Artist-Run Spaces at the HASTAC 2023 <a
href="https://sched.co/1NY7v">exhibition</a> exhibition. Opens
2023-06-08 17:00 at Pratt in Brooklyn.</p>
<p>The HASTAC <a href="https://sched.co/1LeVA">workshop</a> for
Archiving Artist-Run Spaces will be held 2023-06-10 15:30 - 17:00.</p>
<p>Completed design for the Archiving Artist Spaces site where you are
likely reading this currently. Technical description follows: The site
is a custom static site generator I built using pandoc to render
markdown to html with a classless stylesheet. I’m using (fish) shell for
the scripting and created custom templates in pandoc. No javascript is
used. The site is hosted with GitHub pages. Even the gallery page of
archives is built with classless css though use of divs. A goal is that
someone with basic web design knowledge could write their own website
just as text, markdown converted to HTML and drop my stylesheets in to
render a nice website and image galleries. In practice, there’s slightly
more knowledge required currently to hook their pages up but I can
document or try to automate it further for folks.</p>
<h3 id="section-1">2023-06-05</h3>
<p>Had a really positive workshop at ISEA 2023. Great discussion and
participation and some nascent collaborations and brainstorming
developing.</p>
<p><a
href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/16IJNX_PayRJYPODXHfHuZ-Al72sg-CBw0dZL--4WR6A/edit?usp=sharing">Strategic
Preservation of Online Communities slides</a></p>
<p>Created static site templates for the Archiving Artist-Run Spaces
site (that you’re currently reading). Workflow is markdown -> html
via pandoc with my classless css template. Will be deploying this
shortly after deciding on the URL.</p>
<p>Batya and Lindsay at NYU Technology and Law Clinic developed an
incredible copyright guide that I’m excited to share.</p>
<p><a
href="assets/archiving-artist-spaces-copyright-guide.pdf">Archiving
Artist Space Copyright Guide PDF</a></p>
<p>Took possession of 5 good-condition monitors, keyboards and mice from
Materials for the Arts.</p>
<p>Updated a hand-selected list of archives.</p>
<p>Next workshop at HASTAC 2023 this coming Saturday.</p>
<p>Reading Links:</p>
<p><a
href="https://100r.co/site/weathering_software_winter.html">Devine’s
talk Weathering Software Winter for Handmade Seattle</a></p>
<p><a href="https://permacomputing.net/">Permacomputing Wiki</a></p>
<h3 id="section-2">2023-04-08</h3>
<p>Gas.gallery is online! We published and announced the web archive at
the beginning of the week. I spent the past many months working on it
with Caleb. The last month up to launch was spent uploading and
organizing content, and lots of bug smashing with Caleb, with some
additional help from Andrew and Amelia. I’m happy with the site and
excited for people to view it.</p>
<p><a href="https://gas.gallery">gas.gallery</a></p>
<p>I’ve been continuing to meet with NYU Technology and Law Clinic, who
is providing me counsel on the archives and best practices to share with
DIY spaces attempting to build same. This is ongoing with approximately
bi-monthly meetings. The next archive to complete is Little Berlin.</p>
<p>I was accepted for two workshops, at ISEA in Paris late May, and at
HASTAC (peer-reviewed) in June. HASTAC will also feature an exhibition
of the archives.</p>
<p>Spent time considering and alternative OS considerations for browsing
archives via the file system, including through GUI file systems, CLI,
and through TUI. Also spent time working with fzf fuzzy finder to build
Text User Interfaces. Another potential point to investigate would be
using Lua/Love2d to build simple GUI based on folders and text, like a
browser client concept. Would work offline.</p>
<p>Researched creation of Roku channels as potential archive
distribution and presentation tool.</p>
<p><a
href="https://developer.roku.com/en-gb/docs/direct-publisher/overview.html">Roku
Direct Publishing</a></p>
<p><a
href="https://developer.roku.com/en-gb/docs/developer-program/getting-started/hello-world.html">Roku
Hello World sideloaded app example</a> Attended online tutorial from
Rhizome on using Conifer (former: webrecorder) with its free and paid
features.</p>
<h3 id="section-3">2023-01-31</h3>
<p>Some recent events:</p>
<ul>
<li>My talk and workshop for the Digital Literature for Social Good
Unconference went well. A great first run-through of publicly presenting
and walking folks through some of the ideas, methodology, design
process, etc.</li>
<li>Visited the Internet Archive, interviewed Brewster Kahle, attended
Public Domain Day 2023! This was really fun.</li>
<li>Met with legal team from NYU</li>
<li>Finishing draft archive for GAS</li>
<li>Have been building another draft archive with Internet Archive
resources. Will test ‘alternative frontend’ ideas.</li>
</ul>
<h3 id="section-4">2023-01-17</h3>
<p>I found many more great materials while doing research for my
workshop for the Digital Literature for Social Good Unconference, hosted
by Bournemouth University (UK) in partnership with the Electronic
Literature Organization and the British Library January 17 and 18. In
addition to compiling notes and preparing a presentation, I came across
information on The Art Spaces Archives Project, 2003-2019, hosted by
Bard College physically and on the web only on The Wayback Machine on
the Internet Archive.</p>
<p><a
href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190208082004/http://www.as-ap.org/">Art
Spaces Archive Project AS AP on the Internet Archive Wayback
Machine</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>Art Spaces Archives Project AS-AP is a non-profit initiative founded
by a consortium of alternative art organizations, including Bomb
Magazine, College Art Association, Franklin Furnace Archive, New York
State Council on the Arts NYSCA, New York State Artist Workspace
Consortium, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, with a
mandate to help preserve, present, and protect the archival heritage of
living and defunct for- and not-for-profit spaces of the “alternative”
or “avant-garde” movement of the 1950s to the present throughout the
United States.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That’s a list of a number of great organizations. Unfortunately its
website expired. Thank god for the Internet Archive. A good reminder
that DIY and experimental archives need longevity plans, duplication,
and longterm caretaking, even when they are the product of major
institutions.</p>
<p>I’ll quote extensively from this article from the Common Field
website, which itself is in danger of disappearing from the web as the
organization is “sunsetting” this year!</p>
<p><a
href="https://www.commonfield.org/projects/3554/archival-legacies-the-art-spaces-archives-project-2003-2019-by-ann-butler">original
page about AS-AP on Common Field site</a></p>
<p><a
href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230117085024/https://www.commonfield.org/projects/3554/archival-legacies-the-art-spaces-archives-project-2003-2019-by-ann-butler">backup
copy of same on the Internet Archive</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>Because many nonprofit art spaces don’t possess the means and
resources to fully document their own history, let alone manage the day
to day preservation and access of the material, AS-AP also served as an
advocacy organization for alternative art spaces wishing to place their
archives in research repositories.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>My workshop talk for the Unconference is DIY Approaches to Preserving
Creative Communities Online. The conference is organized by the New
Media Writing Prize with the Electronic Literature Organization and
British Library. In this 1 1/2 hour workshop I cover the problem, a
number of example archives of born-digital works by artist-run creative
communities, various questions to answer and approaches to take. Then
we’ll break to have people begin working on their own projects while I
am available to provide assistance or feedback.</p>
<h3 id="section-5">2023-01-16</h3>
<p>I watched the Glenn Kurtz TEDx talk about “Three minutes in Poland,”
1938 color film footage of a small town only months before the
holocaust. “What are we looking at? What is preserved when we preserve
this film?” His subject is weighty and serious. One of the things he
talked about is that these snapshots, home movies - we don’t know what
we will find important years later.</p>
<h3 id="section-6">2023-01-07</h3>
<p>Work continues on Gas archive, now with Andrew L helping. He set up
Kirby, which we’ve switched to, in order to make the organizing, backend
easier. On the one hand, I think it will be a lot easier than a json
database. It has a WYSIWYG CMS running as a local server in the browser.
It uses templates and generates info per object (with their own rendered
images, sizes, and text file with info to populate the static pages that
are rendered). Kirby pops out a static site. Kirby’s code is public, and
has been maintained for over a decade by a single dev, though it is not
open source and each individual site requires a license, currently $105.
That and the complexity of setting it up mean it’s good for creating our
custom archive but I fear the fee, complexity, and lack of open source
mean again this isn’t a good general tool for non-devs. But due to some
of these reasons, namely a sustainable business and static output and
good documentation and easier ‘database’ system, it is a fine choice for
this particular archive project.</p>
<hr />
<p>In the past month I pored through Kenneth Goldsmith’s Duchamp is my
Lawyer: The Polemics, Pragmatics, and Poetics of UbuWeb. He’s a great
writer, and really lays deeply into the dance of copyright, abandoned
works, fair use in the age of the digital reproduction. He’s driven by a
love for sharing the work, and talks about his 2-decade long UbuWeb
project, including it’s infrastructure and architecture, how he deals
with legal threats and situations. After detailing its history and legal
approach he then has some chapters highlighting other DIY digital
archives and then makes selections and descriptions of work from the
UbuWeb collection.</p>
<p>UbuWeb itself is a product of earlier anthologies and collections:
both formal and informal. Vinyl or cassette collections of a history of
sound art, torrented mp3 collections of historial sound art, collections
of found flyers of ‘outsider’ visual poetry, the collection of the Aspen
magazine ‘The multimedia magazine in a box’, and the 365 Days project
collecting ‘cool and strange and often obscure audio selections.’ In my
mind this parallels how early museums were often built of many
individual collectors’ cabinet of curiousities collections brought into
the same space, a collection of various idiosyncratic collections, as
any archive will be.</p>
<p>While reading Duchamp is My Lawyer I thought through some of the
parallel ideas with the archives I’m working with: preserving work for
others to sift through, and the site architectural and infrastructure
challenges to keeping these works ‘alive.’ I started thinking through
various ways to surface materials from these archives. This is partly
about answering some of Eli’s challenge to boldly play with and
reimagine an archive. Earlier I had thought through a guest book,
receiving input from users. Now I’m thinking about bots (on social media
perhaps, like Mastodon or previously a Twitter bot) that would surface
material from UbuWeb and surface material from these digital archives
I’m building. The challenge with the UbuWeb material is that the pages,
while simple HTML without JS don’t have an overarchiving recipe for all
content, and aren’t tagged. UbuWeb has “Top Ten” pages where selectors
have listed favorite works, though mostly without much or any
description beyond the artist and title of the work and a direct link to
the media. In the Experimental Archive Space we had the ‘random shoebox
of photos’ type page, partly inspired by Warhol’s Raiding the Icebox. So
I’m thinking some of the tools or approaches to take with these archives
might be to have bots, curated selections by users or creators, or even
a way to get input from folks to repost or select materials.</p>
<p><a
href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/duchamp-is-my-lawyer/9780231186957">Duchamp
Is My Lawyer on Columbia University Press</a></p>
<p><a href="https://ubuweb.com/resources/top_tens.html">UbuWeb Top
Tens</a></p>
<h3 id="section-7">2022-12-05</h3>
<p>Working on GAS archive. More on that later.</p>
<p>Started working on new tool to interoperate with my Bookmobile
library which pulls down articles, runs them through the Readability
library to remove cruft (headers, ads, footers, navigation, etc) and
then save as an epub or markdown or cleaned up html or with a css theme
from my curated selection. My new update can download a list of links,
let’s say to create a directory on a certain topic. Would be great to
combine this with yt-dlp (fork of youtube-dl) and any image scrape tool,
at a later date.</p>
<p>The two parts of the suite I’m building: tools to pull, tools to
publish/browse/interact. Tools to pull will be CLI and possibly GUI
tools to get photos, texts, audio, video. Tools to
publish/browse/interact are GUI and CLI tools to make archives of photos
and text and media, and software to browse these archives (and ideally
to continue adding to them).</p>
<p>My Bookmobile software relies on readability-cli and its upstream
readability from Mozilla.</p>
<p>I’m using my new in-progress tool to build another example personal
archive of artware, interviews, and more on media art and DIY art
community organizing, among other subjects.</p>
<p><a href="https://gitlab.com/gardenappl/readability-cli">Gardenappl’s
Readable aka readability-cli on GitLab</a></p>
<p><a href="https://github.com/mozilla/readability">Mozilla’s
Readability on GitHub</a></p>
<h3 id="section-8">2022-11-15</h3>
<p>As we’re going deeper into archiving issues of copyright are coming
back, and specifically how to archive documentation that originates in
online closed platforms, as opposed to images shared with Creative
Commons rights for example.</p>
<p>In addition to legal assistance, I’m also looking at how different
archives deal with this issue.</p>
<p>First, here’s a link to DiscMaster, which is a new experimental
‘frontend’ of sorts to browse an archive housed on Archive.org</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Experimental website to browse and search vintage computer files from
archive.org. Thousands of new files are added daily! Click the links at
the top!</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://discmaster.textfiles.com/">Textfiles.com
DiscMaster</a></p>
<h3 id="section-9">2022-10-27</h3>
<p>Flux Thursday dinner with members of <a
href="https://institutforx.dk/">Institute for X</a> visiting us in NYC.
They talked about the funding of X, its precarious nature, and how it
works with the city, and how Danish society and culture differs from our
US model. One of the things they emphasize was the importance of
explaining the value and activities of X when meeting with politicians.
How do they make the case and demonstrate what they’re doing is
essential, important, timely? They printed a large book This is X to
document the community, its mission and activities. I’m reminded of
earlier discussions with LACA about printed materials, about my choice
to make Zine software for our pilot project with Space 1026, about
Coaxial and Elevator Mondays’ printed books as well. Seems like an
important part of the puzzle would be to provide simple (automated if
possible) layout software for spaces to make publications, though I
don’t know how bogged down in this I want to be right away before
completing digital archiving activity first.</p>
<p><a href="https://institutforx.dk/publications/this-is-x/">This is X
book</a></p>
<h3 id="section-10">2022-10-25</h3>
<p>Worked with Caleb on json templating and reviewing ideas for
manipulating/resizing images using imagemagick.</p>
<p>Going back to my earlier discussion about producing various
‘fidelity’ output of the archive, I’m bookmarking an idea about creating
a build step to produce minimal dithered image copies of all images.
These can be used in the option to produce a low-bandwidth archive. I’m
brainstorming some possible build outputs based on how intentions for
how they can be deployed and viewed/browsed. This isn’t at all confirmed
but some ideas include: * custom web archive - jekyll or js with
templates, full images - example: Gas * archive ‘application’ - built
with lua/love and compiled. Views with text and images build from
folder/structure * web 1.0 - just html (from markdown), css, color
images * gemini - gemtext, dithered b&w images</p>
<p>Need to consider how this workflow could work along with
Archive-It.</p>
<h3 id="section-11">2022-10-18</h3>
<p>I read this blog post about a speculative idea to have a browser
standard for specifying website fidelity. They point out how NPR, CNN,
PBS (for example) offer minimal versions of their sites without images
and minimal CSS styling. This is great for low-bandwidth usage, for
example for folks in rural areas, with minimal
connection/speed/bandwidth, during a hurricane for example when one
needs to conserver energy. Discussion of this topic of creating
low-bandwidth sites is ongoing on the corner of Mastodon I’m on for
example, but I see no discussion outside this select community of
‘solarpunk’ programmer-artists-makers. If we’re striving for a future
with less consumption, less energy usage, and even ‘off-the-grid’
networks and reducing consumption then lower bandwidth consumption
should be a priority. One of my goals as stated is to make a version of
these digital archives that can be consumed at different levels of what
I’ll now call fidelity: can they work on low-bandwidth, low-consuming
browsers and devices/computers and not just those with the fastest and
latest computers and tablets? This works in parallel to creating
multiple modes of collecting and presenting these archives: online, as
software, as command line programs, and as organized collections of
files (text, images, video, audio) that can be reproduced and
shared.</p>
<p><a href="https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2022/website-fidelity/">Website
Fidelity</a></p>
<h3 id="section-12">2022-10-18</h3>
<p>I want to write a bit more about digital preservation, which I think
of as a nascent movement with many possible permutations.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In 2014 Het Nieuwe Instituut launched New Archive Interpretations, a
series of commissions for artists, designers and researchers to examine
the influence and impact of the digital archive in relation to its
analogue predecessor, the paper archive. Over a two-year period they
investigated the challenges and opportunities of digital archives.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>….This practice-led approach to digital archiving is vital because
the characteristics of the digital demand a reconsideration of the
material value of digital and digitized documents and their archives
through practice and doing. In short, by experimenting we tested the
limits and tried to uncover the possibilities and boundaries of digital
archiving. In the process, we addressed the authoritative position of
archives, the usefulness of open data and openness, and the importance
of human presence.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These kinds of digital archiving investigations are important to me,
and are informing the work I’m doing now. While the interest in
permacomputing seems like a brand new trend, the need to preserve
writing and visual materials is timeless, going back centuries. Linking
new approaches to past ones helps us see what’s new and specific to the
time we are in now, but also how it may relate to previous approaches to
archiving. When I talk about archiving I am using words like text,
images, but what we’re really archiving is a particular part of history
- trying to preserve, present, contextualize this history through
choices we make.</p>
<p>As part of New Archives Interpretations, an interview “What Kind of
Archivist Are You?” was conducted between organizer Annett Dekker and
software artist and writer Marloes de Valk and artist and researcher
Aymeric Mansoux, who both have a practice that goes back over a decade
examining and creating new works dealing with issues of digital
preservation. Their project What Remains, with Dave and Amber Griffiths,
is an 8-bit videogame about archives and the environment, created to run
on the 1985 Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). In the interview they
speak about using this old platform, with lots of emulators, with a
thriving community 40 years on, and how old cartridges may ‘last
forever.’ When asked about the position of public institutions on how
archival systems function they say</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…today’s difficulty for archival systems to be truly useful is linked
to the need to constantly work around their incapacity to make things
public. Since the late 90s retro gaming online communities have worked
around the law to provide the most resilient and best documented archive
of gaming software, as well as fostering the creation of a myriad of non
profit organisations, and other types of groups, dedicated to both the
preservation and the active use of so-called obsolete hardware. If we
can do it from our basement with virtually no financial support, surely
public institutions can do it too.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In another answer they talk about the challenges of digital
archiving:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>On the one hand there is the role of keeping information safe
long-term, archiving for the future, without too much worry about
access. On the other hand there is the approach of online communities
that keep the information they value hyper accessible and alive, without
focussing on the longevity of the information. Once the community
shrinks or loses momentum, the information is no longer maintained and
could easily disappear.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>They point to several simultaneous approaches, from individuals or
groups that set up their own infrastructure to share books, files and
objects, to the conveniences and challenges of working with corporate
platforms, to the independent communities that work to free, share,
preserve, use and breathe life into the shared works.</p>
<p>By the way, I love the license they use for their interview, the
Copypasta 1.0 License.</p>
<p><a
href="https://archiefinterpretaties.hetnieuweinstituut.nl/en/new-archive-interpretations">New
Archive Interpretations</a></p>
<p><a
href="http://aaaan.net/aymeric-mansoux-and-marloes-de-valk-the-need-to-archive/">Aymeric
Mansoux and Marloes de Valk: What kind of archivist are you?</a></p>
<p><a href="https://things.bleu255.com/licenses/copypasta.txt">Copypasta
1.0 License</a></p>
<h3 id="section-13">2022-10-08</h3>
<p>Caleb and I met online with Eli Mellen, a friend via Mastodon code
community. He offered to talk with us about site architecture, about
some of our ideas, and to give feedback. It was a generous offer, and
extremely helpful. First, he confirmed using a static site generator and
not a dynamic server. Secondly, he told us to consider with each of
these archive sites/projects, there needs to be a person who is the
caretaker. Where does this data archive ‘live?’. The most important part
is the back of house, where things are archived/preserved if you’re
really interested in it living in the future.</p>
<p>Eli spoke about letting people work with an archive versus letting
people stare at it. The metaphor he used was letting people into the
butterfly garden versus pinning butterflies dead and letting people only
look at them. In other words, how to make archives more playful,
inventive, exploratory, interactive.</p>
<p>Next we talked about the database part. Caleb and I spoke about using
JSON to hold our data (artworks, images, names, dates, collections). Eli
talked about using sqlite as a database. The database would act as an
intermediary layer to more easily manage the data itself. It doesn’t
need to be a backend. But you could point at a sqllite and your static
site generator uses it to generate static files for the website. It
gives more options than just using my file directories. If we build in
Sqlite we would come up with a database scheme that seems useful for
creating metadata and then write a script to jump into the database and
export as json. The idea of the database is a tool to massage and edit
that is easier than working directly in json. Easier than doing sorts,
searches, etc. Tools like jq let us manipulate that json as more than a
text file.</p>
<p>We next talked about a basic organizational hierarchy:</p>
<pre><code>Class organization:
* index view - all the exhibits
* collection view - a specific exhibit
* detail view - an artwork in that exhibit</code></pre>
<p>Next we talked about Jekyll for static site generation. I’ve used it
for half a decade at least. Caleb has put a lot of work into mastering
Liquid templating. Eli told us to consider Hugo, which is compiled in
Go. It means that you can export a specific binary so if Hugo dissapears
you can ship the site with a binary of Go, making a self-contained
ecosystem. This is worth consideration, though I don’t know if we want
to have to relearn new templating language and be stuck with the Go
ecosystem.</p>
<p>When looking at our json template Eli suggested an alteration: having
an images array: each individual image will have some data (url, name,
photographer, etc) and then an array of type, maybe with multiple types
(exhibit, header, etc). One thing worth considering is the IIIF
standard, a standard for how to distribute images (and audio and video)
in a single specific way. It could give us a way to call any single
image and pull it at a few different sizes based on this API. However,
he cautioned it’s overly complicated because it’s a standard and an
international body and many museums with their own complex interests
participate, and it’s not documented well. There are standalone servers
that do this, but they are not static so they don’t fit our model.</p>
<p><a href="https://iiif.io">International Image Interoperability
Framework</a></p>
<p>I mentioned talking with Brewster Kahle and Eli suggested working
with Archive-It may be the best structure if it allows us to host the
images from their website-server. Another option is to have images live
on our shared server. Some people would suggest a CDN but there are
other options because the data becomes more abstracted from us. This is
less important for a ‘quirky art site.’ If you’re the Met, yes, maybe
think about it. The important thing is to make sure you’re not
delivering full quality image every time. We can solve some of this in
the design itself.</p>
<p>Internet Archive has the idea of a collection. He suggested our
external site as frontend, and then we build a web viewer at a
collection and that we host that someplace, and we have a website built
off this collection backed off the internet archive data.</p>
<p>In terms of accessibility we should think how to expose the metadata
on the page even if it’s not visible. Image descriptions: can you
automate the building of that? For example: Artist name, name of piece,
in this exhibit.</p>
<p>And what’s the experience like if a site loads with no images, for
screen readers, etc?</p>
<p>If we decide to add a search tool (I think unlikely?), he suggested
looking at lunrjs.com, a client-side search, no database needed. Uses
data in json. This is a way to add searching and filtering. A powerful
tool if you’re willing to add client side javascript. It’s modeled after
solr, which is a beefy java search indexing machine. There are some
alternatives to lunr as well.</p>
<h3 id="section-14">2022-09-23</h3>
<p>Met with Caleb to review GAS design and the collected archive assets.
We continued discussion on designing an archive for longevity. We’ve
pretty much ruled out fast-moving frameworks but we’re still thinking we
may use Jekyll. We have lots of experience with it. I’ve used it for
about 5 years or so, and the code I wrote back then still works to power
my blog. This will let us mostly write html/css, with templating. For
the modular stuff we’ll likely use json and call it with Liquid. Our
goal will be for the site last at least 5 years this way, in a framework
that we can review and should be able to work with for years. We’ll also
organize all the assets in a hierachy of folders with text files.</p>
<p>I’ve been doing more reading, thinking and brainstorming about
permacomputing and creating resilient archives. Caleb and I started
talking last week about building a physical computer that could serve as
a device to browse an archive. Partly inspired by Community Memory, this
would be a computer with monitor and keyboard, and not intended as web
software, but as an OS with minimal software to view an archive of an
art space (we’ll test with Flux Factory) and even perhaps to allow
entry, which could be an upload station or as simple as allowing people
to write in their own memories, experiences as part of their art
space/specific art community.</p>
<pre><code> /\
/ \
/ \
/ \
/ Our \
/ custom \
/ designed \
/ GUI software \
/________________\
/ \
/ CLI, TUI programs \
/______________________\
/ \
/ The OS, builtin programs \
/____________________________\
/ \
/ Text files, images, in folders \
/__________________________________\</code></pre>
<p>While command line software (and simple text files and images) could
be seen as the most simple and less brittle software, Caleb spoke about
how the command line is offputting, not immediately compelling, perhaps
even scary to many people. I posted on Mastodon about trying to create
something resilient and perhaps needing things to be CLI for that reason
but Devine responded and asked why not create both. I think that’s a
great idea. While we could code our own GUI software to view an archive
to be as longterm as possible, we acknowledge it may still fail
(dependencies not available, hardware changes, operating system changes,
etc etc), so we could have a fallback to simpler systems. If our own
software fails, what’s below it? How can things still be used/seen? I
showed Caleb my drawing of a pyramid. At the bottom is text files and
images and folders, the ‘meat’ of an archive. The level above is the
operating system and built-in programs, ways to display and view these
files, agnostic by system. A level above this is our simple interactive
command line program, and perhaps there is an interactive Text User
Interface option. A simpler CLI version would be command line with just
number input at the prompt. On top would be our custom GUI software,
maybe a website, electron app (seems like it would break fast though!),
a Lua program, TCL, or something else.</p>
<p>Simplest Text User Interface (not a real mock-up, just a tiny flavor
of what things could look like):</p>
<pre><code>Flux Archive 0.1
________
/ \___________________________
/ |
| |
| 1) View the archive directory... |
| 2) See a random archive page |
| 3) See a random archive image |
| >4) Read the book of memories |
| 5) Enter your own memory |
| 6) Quit |
| ____________________________________|</code></pre>
<p>Simplest Command Line Interface:</p>
<pre><code>Flux Archive 0.1
----------------
1) View the archive directory...
2) See a random archive page
3) See a random archive image
4) Read the book of memories
5) Enter your own memory
Selection:
></code></pre>
<p>Again, these are just minimal examples, not actually well-designed
yet.</p>
<p>The simplest level in terms of complexity, is just a collection of
folders and text files. This could be ‘spit out’ and read/the ‘backend’
of our CLI, TUI and GUI programs.</p>
<pre><code>Flux_Archive/
what-is-this.txt
how-to-use.txt
credits.txt
years/
2022/
events/
exhibit-xxx-yyy/
description.txt
photos/
1.jpg
2.jpg
flux-saturdays/
2021/
2020/
.
.
.
memories/
aaaaaaaas_memories.txt
Lee_Tusman_memories.txt</code></pre>
<p>Again, this is an overly simplified mockup.</p>
<p>We spent some time looking into the Internet Archive’s Archive-It
service, which Brewster said is something he’d love for us to check out,
use, and encourage other arts orgs to use. It has many more options than
the plain Wayback Machine, including many ways to input metadata, give
us a frontend of sorts for the project, and has APIs. This is where we
could build software specific to our arts communities we are trying to
serve. As simple as customized form pages for input and uploading.</p>
<p>We also checked out the captures of our Jekyll site for our podcast
Artists and Hackers, which was captured by Archive Team. We saw that the
JavaScript modules were captured and did work in the archive of our
site, albeit slowly, except the audio (which we host externally on
podbean) was not saved. Whether external content could be configured and
captured with Archive-It is something we’ll have to look into (we
hope/suspect yes).</p>
<p>For our GAS archive we are thinking we’ll host our site content and
images all together on a server rather than on an external IMG CDN
though we’ll look into the options. We spent time talking about
organizing our data (artist names, exhibits, artwork lists, statements,
etc etc) and considered JSON and SQLite and looked into some SQLite
frontend code options. We’ll likely stick with JSON since it’s pretty
standard and we know it and our ‘database’ will be relatively small.</p>
<h3 id="section-15">2022-09-21</h3>
<p>Today I am tuning into Publishing Partyline, a series of talks online
organized on Varia about web-to-print design practices. For Experimental
Archive Space we are using Bindery.js to mock up and print the zines,
but found Bindery a bit brittle to work with. I’d really like an
easy-to-use web-to-print workflow so I can build-in easy
zine/catalog-making software for art spaces so they can have digital PDF
and print PDF archives.</p>
<p><a href="http://bindery.info/">Bindery.js</a></p>
<p><a href="https://varia.zone/en/publishing-partyline.html">Publishing
PartyLine</a></p>
<p><a href="http://osp.kitchen/">Open Source Publishing</a></p>
<p><a href="https://pagedjs.org/">paged.js</a></p>
<h3 id="section-16">2022-09-20</h3>
<p>Attended a talk at NYU Engelberg Center with Brewster Kahle talking
about the Internet Archive’s legal case against 4 publishing companies
who are suing them. Kahle talked about a canadian term Technological
Neutraility - what you can do with previous-generation technology
(e.g. a book) you should be able to do with present-day technology
(e-books - buy, sell, loan, etc). Afterwards I talked to Brewster about
the Archiving Artist Spaces project. He was extremely supportive and
gave me some contacts at his organization to get in touch with and some
suggestions to look into their API and to help other groups learn about
and use Archive-It.</p>
<h3 id="section-17">2022-09-06</h3>
<p>Ongoing work on Gas archive</p>
<h3 id="section-18">2022-08-11</h3>
<p>Recorded an initial audio interview with about 10 members of Flux
Factory in Aarhus, Denmark.</p>
<h3 id="section-19">2022-07-21</h3>
<p>Pete and I completed an initial draft of the Little Berlin
archive.</p>
<h3 id="section-20">2022-06-15</h3>
<p>Met with Pete last week to check in on Little Berlin web archiving
project. Trying to get a draft completed this week. Got all events page
to render text if available. This process seems overly complicated and
not a precise copy. Using a webrecorder archiver might be a better fit
for most use cases for minified / obscured site code. Will
investigate.</p>
<p>An example of an artist working in the archive:</p>
<p><a href="https://citizen-dj.labs.loc.gov/about/">Library of Congress
Citizen DJ project</a></p>
<h3 id="section-21">2022-04-30</h3>
<p>Last night I watched <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawson_City:_Frozen_Time">Dawson
City: Frozen Time</a>, an incredible and gorgeous documentary about the
history of the gold rush in the Alaskan Yukon and the discovery of 533
lost silent films. The Library of Congress says 75% of all silent films
have been lost forever; in other words, no known reels are thought to
still exist. The Scorsese Foundation says “half of all American films
made before 1950 and over 90% of films made before 1929 are lost
forever.” This documentary covers the history of early silent film, how
it was made, and the unique characteristics of life in this frontier
town that led to films arriving years after their release, to be played
in the town theater. Because silver nitrate film was so flammable,
studios didn’t want them back, so they were stored and then eventually
dumped, some down the river, and others in a basement and then an old
frozen pool. The main cinema burned down (twice I believe). And many
large historical film archives also were destroyed in fires as a result
of the flammable silver nitrate films. The documentary told their story
but also presented the films as an incomplete document. It used modern
documentary technique but also classic silent film techniques with a
very powerful soundtrack, inter titles, and scanned photographs. Of
course I couldn’t help but also be reminded of the loss of digital files
and documentation of DIY spaces and of course other histories and
communities.</p>
<p>I got an email today from someone looking for a book I edited 8 years
ago, called Really Free Culture: Anarchist Communities, Radical
Movements and Public Practices. They wanted a PDF copy to help them cite
something in an academic paper, but couldn’t find the PDF. Well, I
couldn’t find it either, though I do have the paper copy. I created it
using PediaPress, which let me compile Wikipedia articles into a book.
Strangely to me, I found over the years it was used as a citation by
many other wikipedia articles, including about bike sharing programs and
Provo, the Lower East Side Motherfuckers, and some other places. Time
for another edition. And a good reminder of the importance of physical
print documentation.</p>
<h3 id="section-22">2022-04-26</h3>
<p>I’m part of the Flux Factory collective, and we’ll be in residency on
Governor’s Island beginning now through the fall. That’s a long time!
Along with Flux Factory (in building 404), a large number of
organizations, community groups, DIY art spaces and others have
temporary or more permanent space on the island. For example, Flux
Factory had use of a building last summer for 2 months, and this time
we’ve been bumped up to have the space for at least 7 months. As I and
many other artists are used to, the building is rundown. Former
officers’ family quarters, they have no utilities. We must bring in
water and access portable restrooms offsite on another part of the
island. The walls have lead paint. We brought in folding chairs and
plastic folding tables, our tech and audio equipment. We set up shop
onsite and use the building for studio space, meetings, performances,
hang-outs, and exhibits. We’ll have open studios many weekends, and host
a continuation of Flux’s longstanding picnic and artist presentations
monthly event, Flux Thursdays, though on the island we’ll do “Flux
Saturdays”. This will be a staging space for me to work on the Archiving
Artist Spaces project, both specifically about and with Flux Factory in
specific, and with other artist-run spaces located on the island as
well. It’s also a good meeting space for other organizations not located
on the island, as many artists come through. I’ll make some organizing
and info-gathering materials and zines, conduct mini versions of the
trainings, and meet new contacts and collaborators. First order of
business will be to make an Archiving Artist Spaces website, a
placeholder, and then to print handouts/flyres Calling For Artist-Run
Spaces. I may build a little library space for zines in nook at some
point, and hold workshops in the summer or fall.</p>
<h3 id="section-23">2022-04-20</h3>
<p>In the end of February I suffered a serious concussion and am going
through rehab.</p>
<p>I wasn’t able to do much of anything on the project, but I did gather
some related zines and talk to a few folks involved in archival
work.</p>
<h3 id="section-24">2022-02-21</h3>
<p>Met up with a friend from grad school today. He runs a company that
creates archives of artwork documentation online for individual artists
and institutions. It’s a commercial service with yearly charges. I’m
trying to do somewhat similar things, with some additional services, for
no money. It reminds me of that extended metaphor about operating
systems as cars from Neal Stephenson’s long-in-the-tooth ‘In the
Beginning… Was the Command Line’.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Linux, which is right next door, and which is not a business at all.
It’s a bunch of RVs, yurts, tepees, and geodesic domes set up in a field
and organized by consensus. The people who live there are making tanks.
These are not old-fashioned, cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like
the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, made of space-age materials and jammed
with sophisticated technology from one end to the other. But they are
better than Army tanks. They’ve been modified in such a way that they
never, ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to use on
ordinary streets, and use no more fuel than a subcompact car. These
tanks are being cranked out, on the spot, at a terrific pace, and a vast
number of them are lined up along the edge of the road with keys in the
ignition. Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it away
for free.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>The group giving away the free tanks only stays alive because it is
staffed by volunteers, who are lined up at the edge of the street with
bullhorns, trying to draw customers’ attention to this incredible
situation. A typical conversation goes something like this:</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Hacker with bullhorn: “Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks!
It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety
miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!” Prospective
station wagon buyer: “I know what you say is true…but…er…I don’t know
how to maintain a tank!” Bullhorn: “You don’t know how to maintain a
station wagon either!” Buyer: “But this dealership has mechanics on
staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day
off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the
waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music.” Bullhorn: “But if
you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house
to fix it for free while you sleep!” Buyer: “Stay away from my house,
you freak!” Bullhorn: “But…” Buyer: “Can’t you see that everyone is
buying station wagons?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Aside from the obviously mistaken “They’ve been modified in such a
way that they never, ever break down” statement, it’s a great and
hilarious metaphor.</p>
<h3 id="section-25">2022-02-20</h3>
<p>Some notes on two things I reviewed today:</p>
<p>The Digital Preservation Commission is a UK and Ireland company and
charity that works to help its members “secure our digital legacy.” They
host events, a blog, post on social media, video webinars on
preservation topics and tools, and a Digital Preservation Handbook.
Their extensive handbook, originally created in 2001 and refined in a
2nd edition and updated in phases is licensed Open Government licence
v3.0, allowing re-use. It provides a good example for a toolkit, where
mine can be aimed more specifically for shoestring
artist-run-spaces.</p>
<p>Secondly, Devine posted Digital-Preservation Proposals published as
part of a 20-year old article from MIT’s Technology Review on Data
Extinction. They list 4 methods of digital preservation: migration,
emulation, encapsulation, and a “universal virtual computer.”</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“People count on libraries to archive human creativity,” Abby Smith
says. “It’s important for people to know, though, that libraries are at
a loss about how to solve this problem.” When computer users are saving
documents or images, they don’t think twice about making them accessible
to future generations, she says. “They need to.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Links:</p>
<p><a
href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgCmeMYeF0nfZCRSof6qXug">DPC’s
YouTube channel</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_Nou5vlabc">Web &
Social Media Archiving:’ DIY Approaches & Tools and HTTrack</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.dpconline.org/handbook/getting-started">DPC
Digital Preservation Handbook</a></p>
<p><a
href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2002/10/01/234717/data-extinction/">Data
Extinction</a> (MIT Technology Review)</p>
<h3 id="section-26">2022-02-12</h3>
<p>There was an article in NPR today about archiving artwork from the
Black Lives Matter protest on the fence that stood between The White
House and Lafayette Park during 2020 protests.</p>
<p>The fence stood for 6 months and was a site that accumulated signs,
artwork, scraps, and messages. In the article it describes a confluence
of factors where both the participants and supporters of the protest
(and the fence monument and artifacts) recognized the worth and value of
each individual and the collective material on that fence; as well,
archivists worked with the activists to preserve these pieces, which are
now being displayed online and the physical artifacts will be preserved
as well.</p>
<p>Over 800 signs were saved from the fence. It’s really clear how much
these kinds of archival projects can be communal, shared caretaking.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The signs are being housed in a storage unit in Washington, D.C., as
they await to be scanned by archivists at Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free
Library, a joint project with the D.C. Public Library.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A collection of the signs was exhibited to mark the 100th anniversary
of the Tulsa race massacre. Howard University acquired some of the
signs. Some other museums expressed interest in owning pieces as well
once all the items have been scanned (when I look today I count only 37
items scanned). They have still to decide how to break up the items and
where they should go after.</p>
<p>Looking at the metadata for each individual item I see Title, Date
Created/Published, Medium, Summary, Reproduction Number, Rights
Advisory, Call Number, Repository, Notes, Subjects, Format,
Collections.</p>
<p>An excerpt from one item:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Poster was removed from the Black Lives Matter Memorial Fence, an
installation of protest art attached to a chain link fence outside of
the White House, Washington, D.C, from June 2020 through January 2021,
responding to the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, and other
instances of police brutality against African Americans; other issues
addressed by posters on the fence include institutional injustices,
political protest, frustration and mourning related to COVID-19, and
international solidarity. Forms part of: [Posters from the Black Lives
Matter Memorial Fence in Washington, D.C.]. Gift; Nadine Seiler &
Karen Irwin on behalf of the BLM community; 2021; (DLC/PP-2021:011).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I also checked out the George Floyd and Anti-Racist Street Art
Archive online. Some phrases that stand out to me on this linked web
archive: “Use of images: Images and metadata available in this database
are intended for non-commercial educational use only. The intention of
this database is to document and analyze street art for scholarship,
research, and teaching. Whenever possible we have included the names of
artists responsible for creating these works. If you notice any errors
or ommisions, please let us know!” The site and works are also licensed
CC BY-SA.</p>
<p>I’m curious whether Library of Congress might be a good fit for the
collections of digital artifacts (and possibly paper/item artifacts) as
well from the artist-run archives I’m working with. And lastly, I’m
making a note to possibly get in touch with Aliza Leventhal, co-founder
of Society of American Archivist’s Digital Design Records Taskforce.</p>
<p>Links:</p>
<p><a href="https://text.npr.org/1080027368">Artwork from the Black
Lives Matter memorial has a new home: the Library of Congress</a>
(NPR)</p>
<p><a
href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?q=black+lives+matter+memorial+fence&st=gallery">Black
Lives Matter Memorial Fence search</a> (Library of Congress)</p>
<p><a href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2021630016/">Example
item</a></p>
<p><a href="https://georgefloydstreetart.omeka.net/">George Floyd and
Anti-Racist Street Art Archive</a></p>
<p><a
href="https://www2.archivists.org/prof-education/faculty/aliza-leventhal">Aliza
Leventhal on website of The Society of American Archivists</a></p>
<h3 id="section-27">2022-02-11</h3>
<p>Learning from LACA:</p>
<p>I spent the afternoon today in the stacks of Los Angeles Contemporary
Archive (LACA), meeting with the director Hailey, and going through
various books and collections of files. LACA identifies as an
“artist-run archive” and a non-circulating library “in which creative
processes are recorded and preserved.”</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Archive houses and catalogues art-related objects, with a special
focus on underexposed artistic modes of expression and ephemeral
materials. The Archive includes studio and performance ephemera,
artists’ writings, audio-visual recordigs, digital media files and
institutional archives of artist-run spaces.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>LACA has a great bound binder with documents about its purpose,
collections, intentions, mission, as well as short, medium and long term
planning. I found it really helpful to go through the whole thing, as it
prompted me to consider lots of questions to consider while working on
this project and producing a useful toolkit and tools for archiving
artist-run spaces digitally.</p>
<p>Here’s an example of the kinds of content I found in the archival
storage box of Human Resources (artist-run space in LA): * binders with
bills, paid or unopened * printed press releases, exhibition checklists,
art statements * gallery visitor sign-in sheets with individually
written names and emails * exhibition proposal letters sent to the
director * rejected grant letters written by Human Resources</p>
<p>I loved reading through the short term, medium term and longterm
goals listed by LACA. Some items from ‘medium term’:</p>
<ul>
<li>institute a system for processing backlogged items</li>
<li>create manuals for communicating appropriate handling of
materials</li>
<li>collaborative emergency response planning with neighboring archives
in the event of a localized disaster</li>
<li>physical supplies and maintenance for the space and physical
preservation</li>
</ul>
<p>Some questions for LACA:</p>
<ul>
<li>what practices can a space follow to ensure longterm protection of
their creative activities?</li>
<li>what kinds of institutions might a space outside of LA want to be in
contact with about caretaking or archiving their work?</li>
<li>is it important to print out web-based material (press releases,
posts, exhibition pages, emails) for archiving?</li>
<li>are you concerned about photocopy paper degrading?</li>
<li>how do you decide which materials from an artist space to
preserve?</li>
</ul>
<p>I started thinking about the contents of the toolkit I will build for
spaces interested in self-preservation archiving. Here’s some questions
that can go in the ‘assessment’ / how-to document:</p>
<ul>
<li>what kinds of materials exist (e.g. photo documentation of
performances, instagram posts…)</li>
<li>what should be saved? how will you decide?</li>
<li>which of this do you already have?</li>
<li>what materials are out ‘there’ that you need help accessing? how can
you gain access to preserve it?</li>
</ul>
<p>Some items I should put together:</p>
<ul>
<li>mission</li>
<li>collections - what do we preserve?</li>
<li>programs - trainings, what else?</li>
<li>I’ll want to put together a consent/oral history intake form.</li>
</ul>
<p>While looking at all of these physical artifacts and books today I
realized I need to clarify how what I’m working on (archiving digital
collections) relates to physical archives. I probably should have
recomendations for groups wishing to donate physical artifacts.</p>
<p>LACA itself needs some help upgrading its Drupal. It’s been busy
working on its physical space and archiving items and now needs some
help (likely financial and technical) to upgrade the backend of its web
presence, and then later likely modernize its front end. I shared the
concept of using ‘boring technology’, tried and true technology that has
been used for a long time and will likely continue to be used and
maintained.</p>
<p>One last thing to mention: many of the collections coming in to LACA
are donated without any explanation or context. But over time it’s
unclear what items are or how they relate to a space or artist. This is
similar to how I’ve found lots of photos without metadata; it’s unclear
the subject, what year or person it relates to, or the story of what
we’re seeing. Collecting this kind of info may be difficult and I’ll
have to think through ways to help people create contextual
information.</p>
<p>Many of the archival books relating to artist-run spaces I reviewed
consisted primarily of photo documentation, with a few essays or
interviews at the end. Some others were organized differently, with
receipts or emails, short welcome message, or maybe a filled out new
member/application form from each participant. Increasingly, I think in
addition to these web archives having a physical book is important as
well. It can find different audiences as it can be more easily shared.
It can act as an intentional mini-archive of sorts, displaying items or
people or collections or artifacts it deems important and providing