Supervisor:
Joakim Formo & Herman Billett
Preservation for posterity is the great societal mission of Norway’s cultural heritage sector. To preserve our culture is to preserve our societies history and identity, combining the endless spiral that is the past, present and future. As our lives are becoming more digital, our culture is increasingly created, experienced and stored in digital spaces.
All our data of conversations, images and files are a part of our history and make up our digital selves. This part of our cultural heritage remains inaccessible due to closed infrastructure and opaque design. The project investigates agency in the digital shift, exploring the question – what would it look like if personal data was a part of our cultural heritage, on what premises do we wish to be preserved?
The outcome of the project is a design proposal consisting of two concepts, alongside two artefacts, created through experiments. The first design proposal, Digital declaration is a consent form related to our digital ID, through which individuals can set premises for how their data is treated and preserved. The Collective Memory is an archival platform for navigating that data in context, that speculates on the societal value of viewing our digital traces in relation to one another. It serves as a starting point for feeling ownership, agency, and re-connecting our data. Combined, the concepts reframe regulation and policymaking as something built from the bottom up.
The experiments helped shape the two proposed digital tools. The Ten Commandments of Digitalisation is a symbolic interpretation of the content of Norway’s Digitalisation Strategy. This is a rock from my personal collection is a semester-long experiment that explores the act of preservation; of what an archive is and what it could consist of, resulting in a booklet.
The main ambition is to investigate agency in the digital age; how design can challenge and de-mystify existing narratives and expand imagination for alternative digital futures – shifting the conversation from passive technological adoption toward active civic engagement/approaches grounded in democratic process.
Contact
Anine Lystad
aninelystad@gmail.com / +4795840511