The Question

For my thesis, I’m interested in exploring the following question: “How can Black culture be preserved in this hyper-digital age of media?” When I look at the world around me, much of what drives the current culture is found through the internet – from TikTok to NFTs even to VR. As more people gather and cultivate culture within virtual spaces, I become more and more concerned with how it can all be archived, especially with Black history and traditions already not being chronicled as well on top of many of the people being driven out of their original spaces because of gentrification.

Brainstorming

Possible Designs Exercise from Class 1

Experimenting

Weekly Experiment Sketch #1

This idea came from talking with family about my thesis project when I went to visit them last week. My cousin talked about her love for printed photos, and the large collection of family pictures she’s had since she was a little girl. She also mentioned that she, like myself, has a certain level of disdain for most photographed moments being captured and retained digitally on sites like Instagram and other social media alike, because of all of the possible ways that those memories can be erased.

 

Weekly Experiment Sketch #2

As a lover of printed and collectible media, this idea/concept was inspired by my print magazine collection. In the past, people would sit around and listen to music through vinyls, CDs, or cassettes, see some of the latest fashions or learn about celebrity affairs through magazines, and read new stories in printed books. Today, however, we experience all of these things on streamable and/or digital platforms. This shift makes me often think about what will be available to pass on in the future, while still having something enjoyable to experience in the present.

Relative Practitioners & Inspiration

  1. Makiba Foster – A manager of the African American Research Library & Cultural Center (AARLCC) in Ft. Lauderdale, who is spearheading the “Archiving the Black Web” project, which is an effort to bring equity to the practice of archiving by effectively documenting the Black online experience.
  2. Live Portrait (Robert Nunn & Samuel Zariban) – Live Portrait is an app, which is also named after the founding company, that provides an augmented reality experience to printed photos. Through the app people can scan a printed photo to see video(s) that are a part of the captured moment. As shown above in my Weekly Experiment Sketch #1, this is closely related to an idea that I had about capturing a video moment with a photo.
  3. Christoph Niemann – An illustrator who specializes in very simple, thick-lined drawings that are sometimes turned into animations. One of my favorite works of his that’s relevant to my thesis question is with The New Yorker, where the cover art drawn for their issue released on May 16, 2016 can be scanned in the publication’s app and experienced as an augmented reality animation.
  4. Archive 81 (Daniel Powell & Mark Sollinger) – Although Archive 81 was introduced to the world as a podcast, my inspiration is drawn from the show that was produced by Netflix. Archive 81 tells the story of Melody Pendras and Dan who are disconnected in time but connected through archived videotapes that were recorded by Melody, who interviewed residents of a historical Manhattan building, and restored by Dan.
  5. Chris Wray – His project “ByeLine” allows people to have “on-the-go memorials of their loved ones.” When he summarized his thesis project for us in our last class, I was inspired by the storytelling aspect of the project, especially thinking back to the importance of oral history within Black culture.