"i opened a gallery of anonymous memories."
– don hertzfeldt, a world of tomorrow

anonymous or known, memory serves us as a biological archive of moments in our mind and stored into bytes of data stored on a computer. this course offers a dedicated space to collect and organize a digital archive of your own. work alongside others to preserve a physical or digital artwork, tell the story of an internet rabbit hole you find fascinating, or collect relics of your own virtual dreamscape. you will learn research-based methods in digital archiving, participate in daily journaling and documentation via photo/video/audio recordings, and engage in class discussions about previous works in digital preservation and community memory.

participants will regularly engage in and be encouraged to collect, produce, and write about the work they are archiving outside of class, while keeping a daily journal. alexa will check in online and facilitate reading discussions to freely engage or disengage in throughout the week. class time will include lectures and discussions on methods of digital preservation and process documentation techniques, soft critique sessions of work-in-progress, and studio time to practice alongside one another.

you will learn both technical and non-technical skills in writing creatively about your process, photo and video documentation, digitally storing and organizing information, and 3d photogrammetry of physical objects, all correlating into a virtual exhibition space called new art city.

this class is for the casual diarist who wants to encapsulate their memory further through image and sound, for the artist wanting to challenge themselves in documenting their process, for the designer wishing to develop a portfolio piece with proper documentation, for the musician who wants to establish place and environment to further their work, for the 3d artist who wants to capture a dreamscape hidden with lore and digital relics, for the internet historian who wants to shine the light on obscure online communities, for the developer with an interest in old media emulation.

learning outcomes

- develop skills in documentation using various digital media, such as writing, photo, video, sound, and virtual reality.
- learn to edit and import high-fidelity digital assets into a 3d environment in new art city.
- strengthen your digital communication skills and build cultural connections to your work using creative research methods.
- build a living and breathing digital archive that can stand as its own portfolio piece.
- engage with a community of creatives online and encourage each other's artistic outputs.

syllabus

week 1 — introduction to archives
screening of a world of tomorrow by don hertzfeld. introduction to digital archiving and documentation as a creative practice. interactive exercises and discussions involving internet deep dives and knowledge sharing. choose a subject. introduction to creative research practices. brainstorm with one another to determine what you can feasibly complete. develop a personal plan for a gathering and documentation process.

week 2 — define your scope
explore documentation through static imagery. take photographs, images online, drawings, and other visual mediums and translate them into the form of a .jpg. studio time will be used to ideate on creative ways to present a story through image. introduction to importing media in new art city. exercise in narrative via sound. source audio recordings online, practice field recording in nature, or incorporate your own sound art. engage in each other's growing archives in lively discussion. soft critique to check in on scope of work.

week 3 — compile
lean into communication through moving image. bring the medium of video casually into your life for posterity. record video as diary, interview, observation, or go completely experimental with it. introduction to easy 3d photogrammetry to capture objects in the real world with luma ai. import all digital assets into new art city or create a listview catalog to be viewable on a website using your own design. compose your final gallery of anonymous memories. share with the group to correlate a final archive of archives.

resources

a world of tomorrow i, ii, and iii by don hertzfeldt
re-collection: art, new media, and social memory by richard reinhart and jon ippolito
the artists way: a spiritual path to higher creativity by julia cameron

alexa ann bonomo is an artist and scholar with a deep interest in methods of preservation and archiving and worldbuilding. her creative work primarily lives on the internet and other ephemeral settings in the form of net art, real-time live performance visuals, creative writing and other community driven projects. some of her work has been exhibited and presented in le cube garges in paris, centre de cultura contemporània in barcelona, montreal conference centre in montreal, and the exploratorium and gray area in san francisco. alexa teaches at the university of san francisco in the art department and is the curator of underneath.study, a wayfaring learning + arts collective. along with other design and dev side projects, she spends her studio time crafting lore and researching motion capture for performance based art in the world engines lab.