annet dekker capturing online cultures and storytelling as a method
"'Content' that is isolated, de-contextualized and shuffled around in databases
of social networking sites is the main form of communication; to be useful an
artifact has to work as a 'post', it has to become impartible and be brought into a
format that is accepted everywhere. And that is a screenshot."24
The circulation was done in different ways: they opened an automated Tumblr blog
that every twenty minutes uploads a new screen shot of a Geocities homepage; the
screen captures are liked and reposted by the Tumblr followers, and the most
reposted or liked are then presented next to related research on their blog One
Terabyte of Kilobyte Age while at the same time distributed through Twitter.25
the day will come we will fix the snow
q n v
The Geocities archive became a spiral in which Lialina and Espenschied reflect
on the Tumblr archive of the torrent archive of the Geocities archive, people reblog,
retweet, like and save the posts, and it just keeps going on. While Geocities was
almost a forgotten world on the Web, due to several enthusiasts and thousands of
followers and users it became not only visible but also an important marker in the
Web's history, and through liking, sharing and redistribution Geocities keeps
circulating and popping up in new contexts. Next, the project introduced a whole
new folksonomy through tagging - for example, 'alive' and 'under construction' - of
how this new archival material could be categorized and analyzed.27 Lialina and
Espenschied's project provides all kinds of information on how Geocities was used
and misused, in terms of frames, banners, navigation elements, GIF's etc.
One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age provides a means of archiving over 500,000 screenshots
of homepages, and (re-)viewing the home pages through contemporary interfaces
says much about the humour that drives online culture - at least in those days.
Instead of purely collecting the material for the purpose of preservation the project
became about questioning what 'archive' could mean in the context of making work
accessible. The artists specifically chose to represent Geocities' history as a dynamic
and still evolving project, rather than have it exist as static 'back log' of data. As
described by Espenschied this form was explicitly selected as a curatorial and
conservation method, because
"Digital Culture is Mass Culture; it is also more about practices than objects.
In order for artifacts to survive culturally, they need to become useful again in
contemporary digital culture."
Interesting questions arise concerning traditional concepts such as provenance and
authenticity. As Espenschied also acknowledges, the screenshots have 'authenticity
issues', but he goes on to say, 'this is greatly outweighed by their accessibility and
therefore impact'.28 The other way to experience the online archive would be to
emulate the Netscape browser, but this would be costly and require complex
emulator setups. While accepting the losses, applied in a generative and circulatory
way, One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age keeps creating new forms and interpretations, at
times pushed forward by humans, at other times by bots (Twitter is supposed to have
millions of bot accounts, comprising at least 15% of all its accounts). In this way,
the digital archive becomes a carefully designed mass re-enactment. The light
interface allows for easy re-circulation, and allows ever more forgotten moments
and new experiences to resurface.
The project is driven by a desire to use technology as a tool to make visible and open
up content or conduct that is neglected, forgotten, discarded or deliberately
concealed. In this way, it makes sense - as also pointed out by Bethany Nowviskie,
director of the international Digital Library Federation at CLIR - to "take the notion
of cultural heritage not as content to be received but also as technology to be used".
This means that artefacts and events are no longer merely about the past, but are
tools that can be used to imagine alternative pasts and futures.29 What does this say
about the feasibility of preserving online cultures?
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Figure 3. Screencapture of reposting One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age on Twitter26
24 Espenschied in Trevor Ownes, 'Digital Culture is Mass Culture: An interview with Digital Conservator
Dragan Espenschied', in: The Signal (2014, 24 March) https://blogs.loc.gov/thesignal/2014/03/digital-
culture-is-mass-culture-an-interview-with-digital-conservator-dragan-espenschied/ last accessed
13/10/2018.
25 For the Tumblr page see http://oneterabyteofkilobyteage.tumblr.com/, the blog http://blog.geocities.
institute/, and the Twitter page https://twitter.com/geocities_txt, last accessed 13/10/2018.
148
26 https://twitter.com/GIFmodel/status/973663631018774531 post was in 13 maart 2018
(the day will come we will fix the snow).
27 Lialina, 'Still There. Ruins and Templates of Geocities'.
28 Ibidem.
29 Bethany Nowviskie, 'Speculative Collections' (2016, 27 October) http://nowviskie.org/2016/
speculative-collections/ last accessed 13/10/2018.
149