Metadata Ecologies. Translational Struggles in “Intelligent” Archives

Program

Monday, 02 March - Day 1: the shape of the box 

What is the shape of the Blackbox of our practices? What “tacit knowledge” of the digital have we developed to deal with the material we compile, link, and render performative? Day 1 of the workshop will consist of informal sessions where we invite participants to present on aspects of their research and practice related to the workshop themes. Speakers are organized into three key archival practices: 1) Compiling (storing, collecting, acquiring, curating, preserving), 2) Linking (databasing, searching, sharing, tagging, making-accessible), 3) Bit-Rotting (decay, disposal, enclosure, deletion, erasure).

Faculty of Architecture
Seminar Room 104 “Grüne Grotte” (1st floor)
Building 20.40
Englerstraße 7
76131 Karlsruhe

9:ooam — Coffee and Breakfast Snacks
9:30am — Introduction

10:00 - 12:30pm
Scharing session 1: Compiling,Chairing: Virgina Marano
10:00 - 11:30am
Rafael Uriarte
Wim Lowet
Felix Mittelberger

11:30 - 11:45am — Coffee Break  
11:45 - 12:30pm — Panel Discussion
12:30 - 13:30pm — Lunch

13:30 - 16:30pm
Scharing session 2: Linking, Chairing: Maryia Rusak
13:30 - 15:00pm
Jonas Zilius
Iris Ranzinger
Tomàs Rodriguez
Daniel Weiss

15:00 - 15:15pm — Coffee Break 
15:15 - 16:00pm — Panel Discussion
16:00 - 16:30pm — Coffee Break 

16:30 - 19:00pm
Scharing session 3: (Bit-)Rotting, Chairing: Anna-Maria Meister
16:30 - 18:00pm
Damjan Kokalevski
Melissa Vincent
Maddy Young

18:00 - 18:15pm — Coffee Break 
18:15 - 19:00pm — Panel Discussion
19:30pm — Workshop dinner 

Tuesday, 03 March - Day 2: Opening the Blackbox

Archival material, whether a novel digital storage medium or conventional paper drawings do not exist without the supporting practices and technologies for rendering them as stable entities while guaranteeing their status as evidence. They are not, we contend, simply objects. They are whole systems or networks. A series of three sessions will scaffold us toward a new, shared ontology of architectural artefacts. First, we will subject an existing archival ontology to a test, transforming it in the process. Then, we will work through the result of that test to describe or de-script our objects. Finally, these descriptions will provide an input for our summative collective diagram of a relational ontology for architectural artefacts.

saai | Archive for Architecture and Engineering
Kaiserstraße 8
76131 Karlsruhe

9:30am — Coffee and Breakfast Snacks 
10:00am — Introduction 

10:30 - 12:30pm
Morning Workshop Session | uncrackable artefacts
To ease everyone into the day, this session will focus more on “storytelling” through a series of demos. Participants are invited to share their “uncrackable artefact” to the group by way of a short demo.

Some ideas:
1.    Did you finally crack your “uncrackable artefact?” Show us what you did!
2.    Did the process of trying to crack your artefact render something else interesting about it? What was it, and how did you find out!
3.    Did you access your artefact in a different way that its original mode of accessing? What did you find?
4.    Did translating your artefact (eg. digitizing) render something new and interesting despite your not being able to “crack” its code? What did you find and how!

12:30 - 14:00pm — Lunch at Kulturküche

14:00 - 16:00pm
Afternoon Workshop Session | de-scripting inscrutable metadata
Current archival organizational models are unsatisfactory for the wider array of artefacts which constitute research data for architectural historians, social scientists and theorists. The “uncrackable artefacts” of the archive and beyond do not rectify well to these received ways of thinking, describing, and categorizing entities. Participants, then, will be tasked with subjecting an existing archival metadata scheme (the “Art and Architecture Thesaurus” [AAT]) to a trial of strength. Participants will swap artefacts, then try to fit this artefact into the existing scheme. Participants are encouraged to rework the AAT scheme on the fly, adding new categories or reworking categories to include descriptive elements they deem interesting and necessary. In short, we will be pushing an existing system past its limit, to the point of failure.

Each participant’s reworked metadata scheme will be used as an input for the following activity. Through the modified metadata scheme, and your own research methods/interests, describe or “descript” (Akritch) the artefact you brought. You will be tasked with writing this description on a single sided index card. Participants are encouraged to take description in its widest possible definition. One, for example, could write a Haiku, C++ Object class, first-person narrative, technical description, etc.

Participants will then reflect through the following questions:
1.    Where did the most friction take place between your artefact/object and the existing AAT scheme?
2.    What kinds of information became more important for grasping the full scope and importance of your artefact/object?
3.    What elements of your object/artefact remain resistant to organization?  

16:00 - 18:00pm
Sum Up Session | towards a relational ontology of architectural artefacts
The output of the previous session (each participant’s description) will be the input for this final session. In this final session, we will sum up by way of a collective diagramming exercise (a couple examples below). Participants will be asked to take their descriptions and derive possible archival metadata fields and their relations from them. These fields and relations will be diagrammed dynamically on a pin up board before a final discussion of the outcome.

The final outcome will be documented and shared with participants.

Wednesday, 04 March - Day 3: Archive tour

For those who are interested, there will be an Archive tour at ZKM and saai.

saai | Archive for Architecture and Engineering
Kaiserstraße 8
76131 Karlsruhe