User:ThomasW/First Proposal Outline

02.09.2015

My Hard-Drive Died (working tittle)

Proposal

I am making a speaker installation of old hard-drives that will communicate peoples experience on the topic of data loss by gathering story’s from twitter. Data is not lost because it is not archived, however; it is lost because it is archived, because it is digitized and entered into the seemingly endless electronic stores that are also increasingly volatile sites of memory. Economies of erasure, as much as economies of memory, emerge with the electronic archive. We have the capacity to store everything for possible recall, but these same extended memory technologies are capable of generating oblivion in other ways—not least of which is through the technology. (Gabrys, 2007 page 120-123 )

=Introduction

We live in a world where we are storing more and more information electronically, we take photos all day long with our smart phones, we write emails and write texts on social media. But with the mass of production of information, we are hitting the problems of storing all of this over a long period of time. Printed books can last hundreds of years, but a digital text can disappear and be left unaccessible in the future on the reasons like, unsupported file formats, dead storage media or defunct “cloud” services. Cloud services are often put forward as a solution for your own personal storage problems, but they can never guaranty that they still be in business in 100 years time.

“Cloud storage is so popular, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the old-fashioned back-up drive is simply a museum piece. But if you ask users of the most popular, consumer-focused cloud storage services, you’ll get an earful. Security worries, problems synching, missing folders, and update errors, are the kinds of issues consumers reported to FixYa, a popular Q&A site.” (Snyder, Online, cio.com)

Recent observations

In 1961, the British science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke suggested that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Sure, but perhaps we could now rephrase that to say that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature,” not merely because it is “inspired” by natural processes, but also because it disappears into its surroundings. (Feigelfeld, 2015, Online)

Technology is getting more and more distance from peoples understanding of it, the first to start using a technology knows more about how it works then people how start using it later. Most computer and computer storage technology’s are mysterious for people. Its hidden away in black boxes. You are left to what the manufacture say on how long it will last, but a manufacture will never promise what they say. Marketing often use words like “life-time guaranty for storage technology. Hard-Drives for example got a five year life span, but when did you hear that in their marketing blurbs? The technology industry have always been fetishizing optimization. Already in 1952, Ross Ashby introduced his Homeostat Machine in the Macy conferences on cybernetics, and today we are still in the midst of producing—and sometimes even fetishizing—cultural techniques of optimization. (Feigelfeld,2015, Online)

Possible outcome

The visual appearance of it can take the form of a box on a table with all of its sides coved with hard-drive drives, mimicking the notions of the “black box” and external hard-drive. Most magnetic drives are made around the same configuration inside of them, with often small differences between the manufactures of the layout and colours, that maybe can be used in the sense of a pattern.

I also have been thinking on keep it small to 1 to 3 drives mounted in a way that mimics a sales stand like you find in Mediamart or other electronic stores.

Relation to previous practice

I have never really done a project using a lot of electronics and code, I see this as a project to expand on my own knowledge in the field and the making of physical objects.

Practical steps

The initial state of the project I need to refined the way I solder the hard-drives together as my first test did work, but I had some problems of keeping the connection solid. For the project I need to still keep working on collecting tweets from people, this is done on my own twitter account “My Hard-Drive Died” where I log into once I week, search for the term and retweets and by 22 July 2015 I have over 200 tweets, I can also automate this process, but there is some general difficulties using the twitter API. Twitter has made it much harder now then it used to be.

I need to research and figure out how the tweets can be read and spoken true a text to voice program out of the different hard-drives. They can be presented 1. They all speak at the same time, this can maybe be an interesting effect 2. They all speak on different times, possible map drives to different “sets of text or that if I am using three drives that etch can be one for different moods of the tweet.. (sad, comically, indifferent) The twitter accounts content will be downloaded as a CSV file, as this is still possible and allowed to download your own twitter account that you own true the Twitter menu systems. What the code language that will be used, I think it maybe will be Python code, running from a Raspberry Pi.

My Hard-Drive Died (working tittle)

Proposal

I am making a speaker installation of old hard-drives that will communicate peoples experience on the topic of data loss by gathering story’s from twitter.

Introduction

We live in a world where we make and store more and more information electronically, we take photos all day long with our smart phones, we write emails and write texts.... But with this mass of production of information, we are hitting the problems of storing all of this securely over a long period of time. Printed photos last for decades if stored secularly, but a digital photo is way more unstable. Hard-drives last only around 5 years, flash memory will not keep its information over a long periods with no use, Cloud services can never guaranty that they still be in business in a 100 years. But what happens when this devices and services that we put so much trust in fails. I want to inform people that we need to be worried about where and how we store our information, that we are the only ones that can really take care of it. "Yet digital culture brings with it a great paradox whereby it contributes as much to amnesia and collective forgetting as to remembering. "What of, ask Andreas Huyussen, to boom in memory were inevitably accompanied by a boom in forgetting?" Page 70

Recent observations

Technology is getting more and more distance from everyday people. Its hidden away in black boxes where only the experts are allowed access, its cuttings people access by hiding it behind hyper-bull and security screws self-destructing glues. A manufacture of drives can never promise more then a five year lifespan, but that will never be communicated, instead hyper bull like “life-time” guaranty and “shock resilient” are used. Its not something new, all true history of storage technology this words have been used.

Possible outcome

The visual appearance of it can take the form of a box on a table with all of its sides coved with hard-drive drives, mimicking the notions of a “black box” Even that most drives are made around the same configuration, there is always some difference in how the look on the visual side, there is possible to work with that as making some drives stand out, or pattern can be made.

Relation to previous practice

I have never really done a project related to electronics and code, I see this as a project to expand on my own knowledge in the field.

Practical steps

The initial state of the project I need to refined the way I solder the hard-drives together as my prototype did work, but I had some problems of keeping the connection solid and stable. For the project I need to still keep working on collecting tweets from people, this is done by my own twitter account “My Hard-Drive Died” where I log into once I week, search for the term and retweets and by 22 July 2015 I have over 200 tweets, I can also automate this process, but there is some general difficulties using the twitter API. Twitter has made it much harder now then just for over a year ago to make a bot for retweets. I need to research and figure out how the tweets can be read and spoken true a text to voice program out of the different hard-drives. 1. They all speak the same time, this can maybe be an interesting effect 2. They all speak on different times, possible map drives to different “setts of text” The twitter accounts content will be downloaded as a CSV file, as this is still possible and allowed to download your own twitter account that you own true the Twitter menu systems. What the code language that will be used, I think it maybe will be Python code, running from a Raspberry Pi.

17.05.2015

Dead Media Wall

• 1) There is no permanent storage device yet made, but company’s always promises eternal, permanent, life time guaranty for storage of your digital information. Been looking into people own experience when this lies break their promises with their user.
• 2) Collecting peoples own experience of data-loss on-line on twitter .
• 3) A wall that show ads of storage devices on different types of screens together with re purpose storage devices as speakers.. (Speakers of old Hard-Drives)

Found Media Log

• 1) All around us there is old disc, drives, cds, tapes ++ with your collective memory's, but what happens when they get stock on them. Do we remember whats on them? Do we remember the formats?
• 2) Make an online collection of peoples old storage media, ask people to send in their objects with the stories around them, where they are from, what they think is on them and also show what's on them if I can get access to them (kryoflux, VHS to Mac adapters +)
• 3) A online website, printed book/magazine with the collection, or both.. as paper is fare better storage medium them digital for long-term preservation.

The Printed Cybernetic Library

• 1) Computers come and go, that's the nature of technological development, but old machines form the 70s. 80S and even 90s are long since been driven to the dump. A lot like the Acorn Computer, Atari, Osborne and more are slowly dissipating, but the irony is that the computer manuals still exist, the printed word outlast the electronics..
• 2) Collect old manuals, books for computer system
• 3) Make a box, “storage device” or shelf (maybe of old computer cabinets) on where to show them and display them..

The Unlimited Drive

• 1) There is no permanent storage device yet made, but company’s always promises eternal, permanent, life time guaranty for storage of your digital information.
• 2) Collect information and knowledge around current and dead storage devices.
• 3) One or a collection of “fantastic” storage devices, the USB stick hat got 1000000000tb, but will never store it, but content delete the “old” information on them. (fake usb sticks from China)

The Unlimited Cloud

Same as The Unlimited Drive, but only as a “cloud” storage

10.05.2015

1) what have been your current areas of research?

• “Personal” Digital Archive [1]
• Over-promises of Cloud Services
• Video Games – Digital legacy / Specific Games...
• Creations of digital memory’s and social media
• Where designers role are and how not to go total mad in [Technocultures, +++
• The renaissance of paper printing in the digital society
• The role library have now?

Bruce willis itunes

2) how do you intend to build on them?

• Look at people gut feelings about data loss by looking at social media
• What language does cloud services use when they market themselves?
• How does archive store materials, physical, visit places?
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3) formulate an (im)possible project (or projects) that address 1) and 2)

• A screen wall that show text from the Internet (social media) with texts from the internet about loss of personal data and the text is being transmitter true old dead hard-drive as audio.
• An online magazine/site +++ where I ask people to send in their old dead media objects that they cant access no more. They send in there objects with a description on where, why and what they think is on there. The object is photograph, and it get put online (if I can get the content of I show that as well) as a collection.
• Show a collection of “lets plays” video game footage , video cube where you are in the games. Video walls (screens of different sizes and type)
• Fake ads for cloud services put in the stress twisting the promises of the cloud (ad busting)
• Fake websites for cloud services put in the stress twisting the promises of the cloud (ad busting)
• Use the marketing for cloud services in a new way, to mock them.
• Never saving “storage solution” that never saves the content but just deletes it
• Mock online storage solution where content are being mined for data and being sold on a data “stock-market” (not real)
• Hybrid laser/ink printer where you can print out content from > for offline storage
• Video-photo-text about the library, record the living and the dead archives