Ideas for a communal digital/physical archive
I’ve been trying to make an ambient digital server that exists separate from the internet. I love the idea that people, in coming together to share stories, meals, creative acts, can gently leave traces for each other and for those who come next. These traces are site-sympathetic, and require a level of proximity that the wider internet doesn’t. While this could be seen generally as an inconvenience, I think there is something important in creating porous digital/physical boundaries that respond and rely on both the physical and digital sites equally.
Hardware
The server uses low power and low tech hardware to keep environmental costs at their minimum. Currently it is a raspberry pi plugged into a wall socket and is stripped of any processes it doesn’t need so that to run it only needs to pull about 2.7w. The next version, which I’m currently working on, runs off a li-on battery so that I can experiment with a portable server and more ambulatory workshops/conversations. The third version will run off a solar panel, with the aim of divesting entirely from non-renewable sources of energy.
The server can be accessed from any phone or computer, through any browser. I want to provide a repository that has the minimum barriers for entry – technological and physical. Tech literacy is often ignored when designing digital creative projects (games using controllers with multiple buttons, programs requiring specific/costly hardware to access), but should be one of the first things to consider when inviting participants to engage with any digital project.
Why?
Archives are living shifting objects, and they are constantly in conversation with the people that use them. Stewards and caretakers for archives shape them, and this practice is something I believe sits at the forefront of how an archive operates. The archive is the container for the knowledge and history within it, and we must work out the best form for that container.
I’ve been thinking about Ursula Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, which she wrote as a counter to the science fiction trope of the theory of the sword. To very roughly paraphrase, instead of a single heroic line piercing/wounding its way from start to finish, this proposes that a receptacle, something to carry and collect multiple ideas and ideologies, is more valuable for our collective imagining.
Le Guin uses this theory as a method for subverting the traditional hero-centric form, instead creating rich and emotionally complete fictions, but I want to propose that it can also be a useful mode of thinking for fostering collective action. The Archive Object is the start of a communal and community-driven archive and also a manifesto.
Anything can be added to the archive, and through physically close conversation we can communally decide what is cherished, and what is important. The server requires a level of stewardship that I think is vital for any archive, but particularly for something that questions the internet as a whole. By putting it all in the pot, we can boost each other practically towards something truly community led.
What’s Next?
I would love to try creating a network of local servers like this. Situated in libraries and community centres around the country. Each one would be supported by a programme of workshops inviting participants to think about their personal level of stewardship for the archive, promoting communal care for our histories. I’m thinking of the server object as a little library in itself. Anyone can visit and take from it as they like. There’s another level to the project that invites participants/readers to share parts of the archive further (with the only stipulation being to consider how it is shared, ideally without using the vague mesh that is the wider internet). thumb drives become personal collections that are further curated by their caretakers.