Perpetually sorting the archive is a ritual of reassurance for an insecure description of the world. What if this ritual could be used to open up new orders rather than attempt to close the archive down on a singular resolution? How can we embrace the madness at the heart of the archival impetus to give rise to new ways of seeing across the archive?

Finding order among these images may appear straightforward. Each image should be about one subject, and images sharing a subject should be placed together. Identifying some subject for each image is not difficult, but instilling any kind of authority behind this judgment is nearly impossible. One set of subjective and highly personal assessments are simply not convincing enough to suggest the order of this archive has been resolved. This project seeks to question and denaturalize the apparent obviousness of a commonsense order and reframe the relationship among these images. The feeling that this order makes sense is not good enough; I need to know this archive is in an order that transcends individual interpretation.

If subjective assessment lacks the sense of authority this archive demands, what objective measure can be employed to compare these images? How can the complex array of information in this archive be flattened and reduced to singular comparable dimensions? These images must be assigned a numerical value so they may all incontestably fall somewhere in direct relation with each other.

How do we objectively assign “content” a numerical value?

In nearly every circumstance, colour is far from the most salient or useful attribute of an archival image. As Tom Nesmith notes, “users of archives invariably want to look straight through archival institutions, their work, and their records, at something else in the past of greater importance and interest to them” (27), and colour is almost never what users wish to look for when using an archive. Indexing images by average colour is almost universally impractical, as it is such a crude and misrepresentative indicator of what we would otherwise perceive to be the subject of the image.

Colour is useful for a more objective indexing because every colour can be assigned a numerical value and placed along a Goethean colour wheel, and thus arranged along a continuous mathematically determined spectrum. For individual images, knowing the average colour appears to be only tangentially explanatory. However, observed among a broad and diverse collection, revelatory colour trends start to emerge.

Sepia-tone images are yellow, like aged paper (or sepia toner). Institution interiors are white, like a blank canvas. Satellite imagery is green, brown and grey, like a planet in transition. Also, similar to street photography, of the streets and highways that stretch across the landscape. Canadian Prime Ministers are pink, like a Caucasian face.

Average image hue was calculated by a mathematical algorithm, and the archive was then ordered by hue, from 0 to 360. Images of the same colour are placed together and group in a continuous order.

How do we objectively assign “use” a numerical value?

Here “use” refers to where images come from and where they go, and how users interact with them. In the virtual archive, where data must constantly flow in and flow out, and where filesize corresponds to a density of image information, the amount of image data points to insights about the origin, destination and lifecycle of an image.

“Aesthetic” images are large to enhance contemplation and preserve the nuances of expression. “Functional” images are small to enhance transmission and the instant conveyance of the informational qualities of the image. Images with file-sizes falling in the middle of this spectrum, neither the largest or the smallest, may represent a compromise. Alternatively, these may represent the upper or lower registers of technical capacity for groups of users with different means of access and storage at their disposal.

Images of woodpiles have a large file-size.  As do images of institutional interiors. This suggests that these images may have been created for contemplation and focused visual engagement, as details and resolution have been relatively well-preserved. They may be intended to produce a print for a gallery or be viewed in a large digital format. Although drawing a distinction between “functional” and “aesthetic” purposes or effects is often unnatural and deeply inappropriate, these large images tend to fall somewhere closer to the “aesthetic” side of the continuum.

Reproductions and photographic documentation of non-photographic artwork (such as paintings, sculptures, statues, objects, installations, etc.) represent a middle-ground. These images attempt to preserve and transmit the aesthetic quality of the original work, but also strive to be as accessible and communicable as possible. These images thus straddle the crude “aesthetic” / “functional” binary, never meant to actually supplant the original work, but which also aim to quickly and clearly express some visual quality of the original.

News images and passport photos have the smallest filesize.  This suggests these images are meant for fast and efficient communication, attempting to convey some important piece of “functional” information that does not require a high degree of nuance or subtlety of articulation.

What can we learn by comparing trends among “content” (image hue) with trends among “use” (image filesize)? These qualities do not directly suggest any conclusion regarding the complete nature or value of an image. However, when objective trends among content and use are cross-referenced (potentially matched against date of creation as an indicator of authorship), commonsense and subjectively implied groupings of images appear to re-emerge. This cross-referencing helps to refine subjective interpretation with objective, contextual clues. It is only in a wide view, when seeing across an entire fonds or a larger archive, that a particular image begins to derive meaning from its situation in a complex and multi-layered context.

This project looks to legitimize subjective assessment by objective means.

Numbers cannot lie, but alone, neither can they tell the truth.

Works Cited:

Nesmith, Tom. “Seeing Archives: Postmodernism and the Changing Intellectual Place of Archives.” The American Archivist 65 (Spring/Summer) 2002: 24-41.

I think it will be interesting to see how many of these groups each image shares in common. A kind of similarity index maybe. Hopefully I’ll get to see in time.

Relative Use (Hue)

• Yellow (30 – 90)
• Green (90 – 150)
• Cyan (150 – 210)
• Blue (210 – 270)
• Magenta (270 – 330)
• Red (330- 30)

Relative Intention (Size)

• 0 – 32kb
• 32 – 64kb
• 64 – 128kb
• 128 – 256kb
• 256 – 512kb
• 512 – 1024kb

Relative History (Date)

• 2000 – 2002
• 2002 – 2004
• 2004 – 2006
• 2006 – 2008
• 2008 – 2010

I’ve been playing with ways to visualize the relative sizes of these image files so that previously unappreciated patterns begin to emerge in a more obvious and dramatic fashion. Here I’ve set the vertical pixel dimension of the image equal to its given file size so that the larger data pictures appear to be tallest. I’ve arranged these in a grid, descending in size from left to right, and top to bottom for comparison. I think this visualization lends itself to many interesting suggestions about image use, intention and history.

Also, in a world of limited resources, what does it mean to allocate exponentially more room to one image over another?

Just as an example, the woodpile images remain among the largest (top left, 1005kb) while the 9/11 images remain among the smallest (bottom right, 38kb). At what stage in the lifecycle have these been preserved? Are they intended to be large prints to be appreciated aesthetically or small digital thumbnails to be quickly and efficiently disseminated? Are these “informational” or “artistic,” and in what way? What can we learn about the intended and actual “function” of a digital image based only on size?

This may represent the first of a few inadequate descriptive systems I’d like to cross-reference.

New Distinctions:

Intention refers to what the image-maker aims to achieve

Motivation refers to what compels the image-maker to generate the image

Use refers to how the user may incorporate the image into their lives

I’m still struggling to refine the distinctions here between originator of the referent and the originator of the digital translation. Looking at attributes contained within the data of the image file is helpful, but not totally revelatory.

Additional Categories:

• Intention: Digitization of Physical Photographic Media
• Intention: Typology
• Intention: Institutional Analysis
• Intention: Photographic Rendering of Personal Moment
• Intention: Record a Journalistic/News Event
• Intention: Photographic Record of Sculpture/Installation
• Intention: Geographical Survey
• Motivation: Personal Curiosity
• Motivation: Artistic Curiosity
• Motivation: Public Service
• Motivation: Comply with Government Demands
• Motivation: Comply with Employment Demands
• Use: Comparison
• Use: Ridicule
• Use: Appreciation
• Use: Navigation
• Use: Self-representation
• Use: Memory Supplant
• Use: Nostalgia
• Use: Witness
• Use: Investigation
• Digital Camera Data: 0
• Digital Camera Data: 1

When does a photo frame become a sculpture? What does that make the photo within it?

How do a digital image from a scanner and an image from a digital camera differ conceptually?

What is the indexicality of non-photographic media?

When is a journalist doing their job and when is a journalist documenting their life? Which moments are personal?

When do objects in a gallery become artworks? And objects outside the gallery?

How many instances are necessary for a typological comparison?

When is a photograph of an artwork “documenting” that artwork and when is it producing a new photographic artwork itself?

What does it mean to consider the intention of a photograph “functional” as opposed to “artistic”? What criteria could make these mutually exclusive categories?

INDEXING/KEYWORDS: The means through which an archive is indexed and sorted positions the user in a specific way.

Question: What alternative (nonlinguistic? nonrational?) descriptive systems can realign the relationship a user shares with the archive?

FONDS/PROVENANCE: Archives must navigate the integrity of the fonds and delimit the explanatory value of an article’s provenance.

Question: How can the integrity of the fonds be disrespected or new insights be derived from an alternate reading of a document’s provenance? How can provenance be placed in tension with the fonds?

ACCESS: The barriers, context and rituals of access defines how certain documents will be received, read and disseminated.

Question: How can an unusual context of access be used to compel different readings of documents?

MATERIALITY: The materiality of the document entails certain organizational structures and offers varying strategies for interaction.

Question: What sort of material differentiation among documents can inform provocative classificatory structures?

The pursuit of perfection is always an exercise in productive frustration.

After a failed effort to drown myself in a sea of articles, I’ve been resuscitated with a number of new directions and approaches. Here is an abstract list of oppositions meant to stand in for a proper summary of my reading of a contemporary consensus:

THEMES:

1) Functionality over indexicality

2) Intention over result

3) Process over resolution

4) Context over content

5) Dynamic over static

ENTRY POINTS:

I’ve been working through a number of recurring concerns to open up new ways of engaging with this particular set of images. Here are some of my thoughts on ways into this archive, by topic and corresponding point of inquiry:

AUTHOR: The archive is created by a web of individual human agents.

Question: Who is the author? How can the author be characterized?

USER: The archive is created for an imagined or mythic user.

Question: Who is this user? How are they implicitly defined by the archive?

CREATION: The archive is generated by a series of often elided actions and events.

Question: What kind of performance can demonstrate or visualize these actions?

CONTEXT: The context from which an image is derived and comes to reside is integral to the informative value of that document.

Question: How can the affect of context on an image be foregrounded or altered?

LOCATION: The physical presence and nature of the archive determines meaning.

Question: How can the archive take up alternative physical forms or recontextualize documents through location?

USE: The history of use of a document informs the value and nature of that document

Question: How can the effects of use on a document be rendered obvious?

INTENTION: The generation of all archives and documents can be traced to human intention.

Question: How can the relationship between intention and effect be addressed?

NARRATIVE: Archival documents work together to tell historical and cultural stories.

Question: What stories can these 100 images be made to tell?

PARODY: The logic and power of an archive rests upon a fragile rationality.

Question: How can alternative rationalities be employed to disrupt the logic and presumed authority of the archive?

OMISSION: Archives actively collect as well as actively omit documents.

Question: How can the invisibility and inaccessibility of what has been omitted be made evident?

DEMOCRACY: Archives are intended to both assist and reflect democratic values.

Question: How can these images be fully “democratized”? And, the opposite?

HISTORICAL VALUE: the value of archived documents changes based on historical developments; they have “deferred value” understood only in retrospect.

Question: How can hypothetical (or actual) future events alter the relative value and meaning of these documents?

Here are the challenges:

1) Determining the subject of the image:

Just as any given image is potentially “about” any number of things, any given image is also more about some things than about others. Every viewer brings their own experience and expectations to bear upon any encounter (they both read and write meaning individually), but there is no simple way to separate the array of appropriate meanings from the array of inappropriate readings. Embracing a purely personal and subjective reading may represent the only solution here.

The available categories also seem to strongly affect the apparent subject of the images. For the sake of organization, and contributing factors like selective perception and relative cognitive salience, I will be more likely to align the subject of an image with those apparently similar to it.

What about multiple subjects? A preference for the abstract or the specific, the metaphorical or the literal? What role does composition and perspective play?

2) Determining the nature of the representation:

Images that contain representations of other images within their borders present a challenge. When are we looking at an image of an image rather than the initial image itself? Which is the original and which is the copy when everything is digital? What cues or signifiers can reliably separate the original from the secondary representation?

If the image has an exterior “frame” in which to situate it, the image is a representation of an image. Without a “frame” the image is determined to represent itself. Determining what constitutes the “frame” is where things get a little tricky.

A frame here is anything that clearly suggests the image is situated in another context than the digital form presented. This includes: a physical picture frame, a gallery environment, strong secondary graphical qualities (i.e. magazine layout elements, but not photographer credits) and any borders around the primary visual material that point to the physical print that has been translated into a digital format.

Things get really tricky in those instances where the original/reproduction division is undecipherable. This includes the realistic, but stylized museum postcard (victoria.jpg) and the image of a woman holding another image (photo 01.jpg) which appears to be scanned from a source rather than derived from a lens. Here the context from which the image is taken becomes the frame, even if no frame is visually apparent in the image.

3) Determining the intention of the image maker:

I can’t speak with any certainty about the author of any of these 100 images (other than perhaps Vid, if we accept his status as contributor of this peculiar fonds). Even if I were aware of the authors, and more, knew them personally, I would still have a difficult time discerning “true” intention (I’ll cite Andy Warhol as somewhat of an unreliable provocateur when ostensibly describing his “intention”). To determine intention is to open up the extremely tenuous binaries that haunt photography. Professional vs. Amateur, Public vs. Private, Artistic vs. Casual, Enduring vs. Ephemeral, Monumental vs. Incidental, Purposeful vs. Frivolous, Informative vs. Obfuscatory…etc.

Archives are puzzling.

Result of Preliminary Brainstorming:

• art in image = painting

• art in image = photograph
• art in image = sculpture
• colour = 0
• colour = 1
• figure skater
• grid pattern
• highway overpass
• institution
• living humans in image = 0
• living humans in image = 1
• living humans in image = 1+
• passport photo
• party
• preserved or archival (apparently)
• photographer
• Stephen Harper
• wood stack
• space = interior

• space = exterior
• representation = contextual
• representation = reproduction

This list stands as inadequate. I continued to increase the minimum number of attributes any picture must have, from 3 to 4 to 5, and further, each time fracturing the body of images into smaller and more precise groups.

I hesitate before moving into tags so specific that they exist simply to differentiate one image from another extremely similar image based on some subtle minuta. It will take further exploration and creativity to refine the list into only the most useful and essential categories.