Material Culture in an Increasingly Digital World Recap
MaryKate Smolenski
Citation: Smolenski, MaryKate. “‘Material Culture in an Increasingly Digital World’ Recap.” The Coalition of Master’s Scholars on Material Culture, April 16, 2021.
CMSMC hosted our spring symposium, “Material Culture in an Increasingly Digital World” on April 10, 2021. We had six fantastic speakers and over 180 attendees. Thank you to all who participated, we truly appreciate it! For those who could not attend, below is a short recap of this wonderful event. You can also find a recording of the symposium here.
Erica Robert Pallo started off the morning with her presentation titled, "Digital Media as Intangible Material Culture of Women." She earned her MFA at University of Texas, Austin where she focused on digital media and all stages of film production and received a double-BA in Anthropology and Interdisciplinary Studies from UC Berkeley. Erica Robert Pallo’s work argues that material culture is more than the tangible and she seeks to recover women’s stories that have previously been misinterpreted, ignored, and silenced from the global historical record. She hopes to soon start a PhD on this research and has already developed a prototype database where she will document women’s stories and an accompanying blog where she will reflect and share self-ethnography about the process (see the site here!). Consulting with historians to create narratives in the women’s native languages as well as English, the database will include a variety of media, and will also have an opportunity for the public to contribute narratives and resources.
Next, Claudia Escue presented on the, "The Role of GIS in Remote Archaeological Research: Geospatial Analysis of Traditional Taro Farming in Rurutu, French Polynesia." She is earning her MA in Historic Archaeology from the College of William and Mary and earned her BA in anthropology from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Integrating geospatial analysis, Rurutuan oral traditions and previous archaeological research, Escue explored how Rurutu’s modern taro terraces can illustrate pre-European contact Polynesian substance and inform modern decision making on food sovereignty in Oceania & beyond. Her research demonstrated that while the environment may constrain food production and carrying capacity, it does not determine how people negotiate food security and that rather, food preference is a key factor in food security. Furthermore, GIS and previous archaeological research made remote research and analysis possible.
Following Escue, Anna Talley discussed her and Fleur Elkerton’s Design in Quarantine, an online archive founded in April 2020 to document, preserve and provide a research resource for design responses to the Coronavirus pandemic. Talley received her MA in the History of Design from the Royal College of Art and her BFA in the History of Art and Design from the Pratt Institute. Her presentation entitled, "'A Disorderly Archive:’ Digitally Archiving Pandemic Design on Design in Quarantine," discussed the creation of the archive, which they quickly pulled together to archive responses in real time. Talley discussed the concept of an archive, how to categorize material beyond type, and concern with the digital afterlife of Design in Quarantine. The archive has been saved on the Way Back Machine and through the UK Web Archive so that it will live on and Elkerton and Talley are looking for collaborators to help analyze the data and archive the site. Anyone can submit a design to the archive, via this form here.
Kayle Avery then presented, “History as Database: BioShock and the Significance of the Composite Digital Object.” He is currently earning his Master’s degree as the Lois F. McNeil fellow in the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture and received his BA in History from University of Wyoming with minors in Museum Studies and Asian Studies. Avery discussed how video games are a primary method for many adults to interact with material culture and about the thoughtful development of digital, often composite, art in games. He specifically looked at background objects in the game BioShock and how they were inspired by historic physical objects. Avery highlighted the need to challenge our concepts of materiality and methodological framework for examining material culture.
Next, Abigail Epplett shared, “‘'I Want Truth': Best Practices for Creating an Online Exhibit” Epplett is currently earning her MA in Museum Education from Tufts University and received her BA from Wheaton College, double majoring in Creative Industries and Creative Writing & Literature. Her presentation worked through the problems and solutions of digital display of physical objects, best practices for online curation, and concerns for accessibility. She highlighted the difficulties surrounding copyright as well as the difficulty of searching for digitized material. Overall, she emphasizes using common sense to consider the online visitor’s experience and meeting people where they are in regards to content.
To end the panel, we heard from Sherri Berger, our keynote speaker. Berger currently serves as the first Digital Program Officer at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, where she oversees the museum’s digital collections team in support of 1.8 million objects and 22,000 square feet of archival material. In 2019, she led the museum to release the entirety of its object records and images to the web, ushering in a new era of transparency at the institution. She is currently building workflows for born-digital collecting, including a forthcoming project to document American women’s history through web archiving. She holds an M.S. in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a B.A. in American Studies from Northwestern University.
Berger’s presentation was entitled, “Paradoxes of Digital Collecting” and the difficulties with keeping the ephemeral forever. She explored how digital preservation is the constant act to prevent data loss and gave examples such as the death of Adobe Flash to show how technology’s life ends and digital material is inherently at risk. She recommends considering five questions when collecting digital material: 1. Who are we collecting it for and why? 2. What about it is at risk of loss?, 3. What kind of magic could happen if we collected it?, 4. Does it have artifactual value or informational value?, and 5. Will people access it, experience it, or use it? Ultimately, Berger argued that the audience should drive what and how things are collected. Furthermore, she encourages discussions surrounding technology ethics, such as privacy and security, if we are to collect this material.
The speakers then came together for a Q&A session where they discussed what “material culture in an increasingly digital world” meant to them and their work, including changing the definition of material culture itself, as well as answered questions from the audience. Discussion included image rights, creative commons, and the dissemination of online material in the future. Panelists also discussed inclusivity and accessibility. The digital is not going away and museums and other institutions need to work towards supporting research, presentation, and preservation of the digital.
Special thanks to our Symposium Committee: Peri Buch, Christine Staton, Reb Xu, Maille Radford, and Sarah Henzlik.