Living Archives critiques our current understanding of archives as something objective, and of importance, exploring how intangible, transient, and hidden, narratives and everyday experiences can be archived and their significance.
It aims to transform archive from a noun, complete and stagnant at any point, to the verb (to) archive, highlighting the significance of the process, and decentralizing it so anyone and everyone can decide what is worth documenting.
The archives here are living - because they are about living people and their everyday lives, but also because they will themselves keep growing.
How is it decided what should be archived and made part of our collective understanding and memory?
How can we archive intangible, transient, and subjective experiences?
These questions were prompted by the concept of Data Humanism, developed by Italian designer Giorgia Lupi. Her data humanism approach critiques the impersonality of a merely technical approach to data and begins designing ways to connect data to human narratives and stories.
Graphic created by Giorgia Lupi to explain her concept of Data Humanism
An archive of newspaper articles and text messages between March 2020 and December 2021 revolving around the Covid-19 pandemic and the themes of political restrictions, international travel, mental health, virtual learning and socialization, in times of isolation and distancing
Each entry is marked by a date and creates a collage of articles, published on that date, then overlaid with all the personal text messages concerning the pandemic from that same date.
The newspaper articles featured several prominent newspapers from United States and India. These included: New York Times, The Washington Post, Times of India, Hindustan Times, CNN, NDTV, The Hindu, and Reuters.
The text messages were collected from personal chats on WhatsApp and Instagram filtered by the following keywords: covid, corona, virus, visa, vaccine, vaccination, online, class, time, pratt, cycle, email, test, flight, home.
This takes the form of a 200-page 11" x 17" spiral-bound book. The shocking red pages symbolize the state of prolonged emergency, chaos, and abnormality we found ourselves in. The massive size and weight represents the chunk of time that was changed due to the 2-year long pandemic. Furthermore, the blue spiral binding represents the cyclical passing of time, alluding to the everyday and mundane aspects of each day even in this unusual situation.
A collection of receipts of mundane objects and products used by individuals capturing the traces of daily use.
This project was developed by asking 15 people in my friend and family circle to document an object they use every single day, that changes shape or form with use, for 28 days through photographs
Inspired by the decay seen in the objects, I designed a typeface called Wither, that captures the organic shapes and decay in each letterform, and further gradually degrades with its font weight variations.
VIEW FONT DETAILS
Each photo series along with its metadata was printed in the form of a receipt to highlight human consumption. The material is also meant to highlight the decay, as the ink will rub off the receipt paper over time.
A collection of microscopic crystals of dried tears collected from friends along with anecdotes of their last memories of crying.
16 participants were asked to produce a tear on the spot in whichever way they felt most comfortable, the tear was collected onto a small glass slide, allowed to dry, and then viewed under a handheld microscope. The process also involved asking them to write down their chosen method of producing the tear, as well as their last emotional memory of crying.
The 80" x 80" hand-sewn habotai silk blanket comprises of the particpants' tears and date and time of collection. The blanket is a medium to bring these experiences together into a collective shared experience, adding to it the labor and process of sewing it together, as well as drawing on the themes of comfort associated with a blanket, that we seek in moments of vulnerability.
The 2" x 2" book records all the collected information in a deeply personal form that is true to the microscopic size of the tears allowing the audience to engage with the stories in a personal and intimate form.
A GROWING ARCHIVE OF ARCHIVES
These three different visualizations taking different shapes and forms have been collated in the form of a website, creating an archive or archives. The idea is to capture the traces of the user’s interaction with this form, so they are able to create their own versions of this archive.
As I keep on documenting more and more visualizations of different aspects of everyday life, this website is a flexible medium that will keep on growing.
To view interactive prototype, click on link below:
Despite being mundane and seemingly insignificant, archiving these transient experiences reveals important aspects of our everyday lives that we don’t pay attention to or shy away from reflecting upon. Furthermore, the process of sharing these creates stronger ties through shared experiences.
