{"id":75,"date":"2023-11-23T14:38:34","date_gmt":"2023-11-23T14:38:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/e-muse.it\/blog\/?p=75"},"modified":"2023-12-08T17:11:20","modified_gmt":"2023-12-08T17:11:20","slug":"access-and-recall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/e-muse.it\/blog\/2023\/11\/23\/access-and-recall\/","title":{"rendered":"Access and Recall"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Anyone who creates digital experiences should read Cory Doctorow<\/a>, particularly his blog, Pluralistic<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently he wrote this essay<\/a> which touches on immersive digitization efforts for museums, which obviously hits close to home for us. In particular, this linked presentation<\/a> by Aaron Cope explains the important concepts after which we’re titling this post. Check out his blog more generally if you’re interested in digital humanities and museums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We want to provide access<\/strong> to works and places, bridging over limits of time, space and economic resources. This has both a technical aspect, related to the digitalization of 3D objects, of their shapes, visual and acoustic properties, and a legal aspect, related to the various ways in which powerful entities attempt to extract rents from what should be a public good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The beauty of the web is that it allows regular people to bypass the agenda-setting role of media, we can independently publish, but also independently choose what to focus on, at a time of our choosing. We don’t have to follow the zeitgeist, we can focus on any point of the past, we can recall<\/strong> what we want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The kind of server technology we choose, with the exception of this blog, is oriented towards permanence<\/strong>. While cloud providers and server-based dynamic technologies have significant recurring costs, our static client-based solutions can just keep going for decades. We don’t participate in the “metaverse”, we put artworks and experiences on the open web, for all to partake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quoting Aaron Cope<\/a> once again:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

<\/p>\nThe web gave us the ability to return to a thing outside the shared (or master) narrative at a time of one’s own choosing. Of shifting time in the service of one’s own interest or in the service of simply coming to an understanding of one’s own interests.
It lowered the barrier to speak to the future and to listen to the past. Not because we know why or can quantify its return in advance but because we believe what is most important is simply the ability to do so.<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Our visitors don’t have to be online at a specific time, they don’t have to use a specific device.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Offline museums are obviously massively important, they are unparalleled at preservation tasks, but the access they provide is limited in several ways. The most obvious ones are geography, time and money, but we cannot forget about sensory accessibility, and the sheer lack of space. Most items in any museum collection just sit in an archive, and they will never be shown. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is also very hard to show items in their context, and particularly in their working contexts. We have worked on the digitalization of a dynamic sculpture<\/a>, that would be rapidly destroyed if visitors were allowed to physically manipulate it. Similarly it is possible to share digital reproductions of working digital artefacts. For example Dominic Pajak<\/a> created this BBC Micro<\/a> that works both on regular devices and in XR<\/a>. It is a full reproduction of both the hardware and software of a seminal 1980s computer, that none of us have ever had an opportunity to interact with in real life. The only place to experience this kind of computing history physically is the Computer History Museum in Cambridge, UK, but there are massive limitations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That brings to the legal aspects. Italian legislation places heavy restrictions on the reproduction of cultural heritage artworks, that go way beyond the already draconian copyright regime we live in. For software conservation the situation is even worse, the source code is generally not available, without maintenance everything stops working relatively quickly, and often the only viable conservation strategy is a combination of emulation and blatant piracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our promise is to deliver accessible web experiences that take advantage of immersive technologies, but are not beholden to them, and to do so at a price point that is competitive with regular websites, with no lock-in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anyone who creates digital experiences should read Cory Doctorow, particularly his blog, Pluralistic. Recently he wrote this essay which touches on immersive digitization efforts for museums, which obviously hits close to home for us. In particular, this linked presentation by Aaron Cope explains the important concepts after which we’re titling this post. Check out his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/e-muse.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/e-muse.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/e-muse.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e-muse.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e-muse.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/e-muse.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96,"href":"https:\/\/e-muse.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions\/96"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/e-muse.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e-muse.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e-muse.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}