Page 252 - The Black Box Book

The process of critically making media architectures at the level of
This should be taken into account when designing and choosing
exhibition spaces for digital archives of cultural heritage. Corporate con-
tent platforms failed to provide a place for cultural discourse or educa-
tion. Instead, they were strengthened and reinforced as attention-driven
tabloid advertising services. As private walled gardens, they deliberately
lack transparency and interoperability based on technical standards. Even
if history is showing us that the walled gardens are disappearing and in
the long term are replaced by open ecosystems that eventually bring
more value, they are often the way to the most profitable business in
the early days of any industry.
Although information infrastructures had undergone a long develop-
ment from monolithic and isolated systems to modular and interoperable,
the general use of prefabricated and presumptive tools still inevitably
interferes and inhibits critical, independent, thinking. As Johanna Drucker
puts it:
“The cultural authority of digital technology is still claimed by the
fields that design the platforms and protocols on which we work.
These are largely fields in which quantitative, engineering, and
computational sensibilities prevail. Tools for humanities work have
evolved considerably in the last decade, but during that same pe-
riod a host of protocols for information visualization, data mining,
geospatial representation, and other research instruments have
been absorbed from disciplines whose epistemological foundations
and fundamental values are at odds with, or even hostile to, the
humanities. Positivistic, strictly quantitative, mechanistic, reductive
and literal, these visualization and processing techniques preclude
humanistic methods from their operations because of the very as-
sumptions on which they are designed: that objects of knowledge
can be understood as self-identical, self-evident, ahistorical, and
autonomous.“ (Drucker, 2012)
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computing, design, technology, information modeling, data structures,
interface, and protocols should transform the theory and practice in dig-
ital curation. As fundamental tenets of cultural platforms, inclusive social
tools of digital curating and preservation should permit critical reading,
qualitative methods, support paratextual apparatus, invite widespread
performative involvement, and promote conversation.
Media artists and free software developers, previously the first in-
habitants and thinkers of the empty internet space, continue to create
and shape ethical networks. There are already several open social proto-
cols being used by websites to talk to each other, which could connect
archive repositories and collection systems. Open public standards in
federated social networking already provide solutions without contro-
versies of deplatforming or dividing corporations and digital curators are
starting to incorporate them into digital art infrastructures. In thousands
of repositories spread out across memory institutions and present in
their cultural preservation strategies, social networking can offer infra-
structure for equitable and environmentally conscious communication
and activities. Aware of the fact that what determines art is often found
in relation to broader social alliances, Annet Dekker pointed out, that it is
not uncommon for networks to form around artworks that are collected
by museums, large institutes, or private collectors:
“I suggest that such a network could evolve into a network of care
that maintains or conserves (parts of) an artwork, consists of a com-
bination of experts and non-specialists, and introduces knowledge
from a variety of fields and backgrounds.” Conservation thus “ is
less about conserving materials and more about the preservation
of social information and relations.” (Dekker, 2018, p. 14)
However, carbon imbalance measures the time to rethink long-
term preservation strategies. Because the only possible digitization and
long-term preservation projects are those that are within the limits of
sustainability. The trustworthy repositories and curatorial practice should
be seen from the perspective of their ability to maintain art together with
the biological livability of the interconnected environment.
One of the strategies of datacenter operators is increasing efficien-
cy and optimization. That is not difficult to accomplish, it saves money,
and it does not change too much the existing system. It is promoted that
hyperscale or AI utilization control make datacenters more environmen-
tally friendly. However, that is nothing new and will not seriously tackle
greenhouse gas emissions. Efficiency is a factor that is already present
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