Archive

A website that organizes a collection.

The web is a big place. Think about how one sifts through it all, in ways that help us learn and connect. How do we save things from this vast repository? How do we organize things within its systems? How do we prioritize (or deprioritize) what we have found? How does one make sense of it all?

The web is also inherently a community. This community is built, in large part, upon tools that facilitate interaction, collaboration, and rearrangement. The tools (and thus the community) have structures of their own, which one can work with, or against. Think of the ways you can use these tools for their utility, within their limitations. Think also of how you can use them to connect and to collaborate.

Collection

You will first start an archive on a theme.

• Use your own first project as a jumping-off point—maybe it is a color, a subject, a location that will be the basis for your theme.
• Include a brief text explaining the idea behind your collection.
• Have at least 20 items. They should not all be the same medium—so a varied mixture of audio, image, link, document, text, video.
• **Everything should be collected—things you did not create.
• There should be a cohesive, identifiable theme.
• Everything should be loaded/linked in an Are.na channel—this will be our CMS.

Website

The collection will then be handed off to another student, who will use it to make a website.

• Incorporate all the items from the original collection, and the introductory text.
• Credit the original curator, and yourself.
• Be intentional with your organization, keeping in mind the theme.
• Consider how more items could be added in the future.
• The website should work on mobile.
• Include a favicon, of course.
• Add at least 10 items on your own, participating in the same theme.

Students should make every effort to use the technical skills they’ve learned in the class up to that point, and of course, are encouraged to go beyond. However if code is presenting an insurmountable barrier—whether practically or conceptually—students may discuss alternatives with the instructor.

Considerations

• When working with content that is not your own, how does your view of it change?
• How do you embrace an existing theme within your own expression?
• How will you incorporate, differentiate, and relate the different content mediums?
• Can you develop a narrative within the theme?
• How will you order/organize the collection?

Schedule

• Week 6 (March 4): Introduce the project
• Week 7 (March 11): Collection presentations
• Week 8 (March 25): Work-in-progress review
• Week 9 (April 1): Final project review

Special thanks to Tuan, as usual, for roughing this out.