Digital Dust
While I was working on the F_able archive and the social media campaign for our project, I started looking for ways to embody the physicality of research. The feel of the paper, the texture to the eye, flipping through pages are hard to translate in digital experiences. I was looking for ways to create a similar pleasure, “mise en abyme” through a platform that allows for visual and audio perception only. This feeling of embeddedness was already present in online research (as the internet is an endless well of information).
I thought of paper cities, fictional towns that would appear on maps but didn't actually exist. Some of them survived the rise of digital mapping for a while. I wanted to create a fictional digital presence of the Glasshouse, through reclaiming space online. Fake Wikipedia page, Yelp reviews, Linkedin accounts or even Spotify playlists were among the ways in which I wanted to transpose the fictional into the real. To me, it became a technique to translate information, make research or an archive more accessible.
Sadly, in order to publish any Wikipedia article, one needs to possess primary and secondary sources to corroborate the factual narration.
One other way to explore that idea of digital dust is the representation of the archive and the research created around the F_able project on its dedicated Instagram page. Indeed, this social media platform was particularly powerful in drawing in a local audience. See earlier posts.