How dose collecting change in the digital age A discussion between ‘cabinets of curiosity’ and digital image collections
Qinyun Lin
BA (Hons) Graphic & Media Design London College of Communication
Year of Graduation: 2014 Time of Sumission: January 2014
Abstract
This article discusses the behaviour of collecting in digital form by comparing the tion of ‘collecting’ and emphasises the term of ‘possession’. According to their relationship with material collections, the author tries to category digital collections into three modes: ‘collections as substation of material objects’, ‘collections of collections’ and ‘collections of born-digital objects’. Digital collections and the internet are approaching a similar curation method of the renaissance cabinets. Without material body, digital collections have advantages as low burden, and disadvantage as one pixel in depth. However, digital curators are trying to make it up. Material collections and digital collections together provide a possibility
people would gradually accumulate the love for certain subjects and change into a material collector. To summary, it is reasonable to believe the revival of curiosity cabinets museums and the prevalent digital collecting is connected.
Contents
p. 01
Introduction
p. 03
Literature Review
p. 05
Methodology
p. 06
ctice
p. 07
Chapter 2. The reasons for collecting
p. 08
Chapter 3. Three categories of digital collections
p. 09
3.1. The collections of substitution for material objects
p. 13
3.2. The collections of collections
p. 15
3.3. The collections of born-digital objects
p. 17
Chapter 4. The curation of collections
p. 17
4.1. The format of digital curation
p. 21
4.2. The advantages and disadvantages of digital curation
p. 22
ownership of collections
p. 24
Conclusion
p. 26
Bibliography
p. 28
List of Figures
Introduction
der cabinet’, described by Francis Bacon(1594), contained ’whatsoever the hand of man by exquisite
of things hath produced: whatsoever Nature has wrought in things that want life and may be kept:
upon the visitor to the owner’s fortune and breadth of interests. (Peter Timms, 2013) The cabinets owners used to lead friends around the personal collections and tell rationals of acquiring every single
cabinet was highly individualized, a presentation of a world-view of the creator that was organised according to personal preference and purpose. For example, Sir John Soane explained his reason of collecting plaster ornaments as for young architects being able to ‘study the taste, character and expression of the original works on spot’. (Thornton P. & Dorey H. 1992) In some cases, like former home of Khadambi Asalache in London, the owner placed antique collections as well as everyday objects so carefully that when it was opened to the public the dated commodity became exhibits too. Tessa Wild (2013) commended as ‘it was not a work of art that was made for an audience; it’s just it happens to have found an audience, almost by chance’. Most modern museums have abandoned this concept of origins of museums and organise artefacts on the apparent horizon instead. However, recently, the ‘cabinet of curiosities’ is suddenly a hot topic again. Several examples have opened in the United States, and the Fine Art Department at the University of Leeds has established a ‘Wunder Kammer’ course, in which students are encouraged to roam freely among disciplines. The recent Treasures of the Medici, Musée Maillol in Paris, presented an unlikely mix of Roman jewelry, early Renaissance painting, Greek bronzes, medieval reliquaries, Chinese porcelains and Brazilian folk art, self-consciously taking its cue from the traditional Wun1
derkammer. (Peter Timms, 2013) There is another newly opened Museum of Innocence in Istanbul, which is nominated Design of the year by Design Museum at 2013. The curator, Orhan Pamuk (2012), states the intention of using the form of ‘cabinet of curiosities’ as gaining ‘a deeper understanding of humanity when modern curators turn their gaze away from the rich “high” culture of the past. And instead they observe the lives we lead and the homes we live in’. He also thinks that ‘the future of museums is inside our own homes’, which leads to more private and natural way of curating. As stated above, cabinets are closely related to collectors’ lives. Pamuk(2012) also held the view that the real challenge is to use museums to tell the stories of the individual human beings living in their nations now. This leads the museum to the original form of ‘cabinet of curiosities’. The sudden return of cabinets makes people wonder why this historic old term has been attractive to
has experienced the joy of using Google, discovering serendipitous connections among widely diver topics. As the biggest ever cabinets, the Internet itself has shown us the old system for categorising knowledge and to be inspired. Anyone can curate their own collections online now, in a very similar way to the Renaissance collectors. The tensions inside cabinets between chaos and organisation, between curators and viewers, between standard norms and singularity is apparent at the main pages of Pinterest or Flickr. More open than the renaissance cabinets, digital cabinets can be visited in despite the distance or any physical limitation. With the look of the internet being a better reason for the expanding of the digital cabinets, there are problems addressed especially in the digital age. The nature of digital objects is reproducibility and edibility. Cabinets used to belong to the collector fully. On the internet, the cabinets are not ‘owned’
too. In a post by media researcher Megan Winget (2009), she described vividly about how the digital cabinets are disassembled easily by viewers: “…the intent of my curated collection becomes somewhat meaningless on the Internet. Anyone can follow my boards on Pinterest, or not. And people can even follow a few select boards and ignore others… It’s as if someone threw a draped over the right side of someone’s curiosity cabinet and insisted at only examining the left side.” It seems that, in the virtual world, collectors have partly lost the possession. However could this
their own digital collections. It depends on the platform they are using and their relationship with the 2
Victorian treasure houses and private museums. Rob Walker(2011) summed in his column on New York Times - the overt display of the skill of curation is ‘the de facto announcement that someone is
sorted and mastered.’
Literature review
These objects should be linked with certain reasons decided by the collector. Developing Pearce’s idea, Jean Baudrillard(1996) emphasised the concept of ‘possession’. He thinks that only if an object’s function of use is fully abandoned, the object can be ‘possessed’ by the owner and held as part of his collection. With that statement, he also indicated that there are two functions of objects - ‘to be use’ and ‘to be possessed’. The behaviour of collecting is due to various motivations. Baudrillard(1996) stated that ‘For what you really collect is always yourself.’ And some psychologists think that memory is a process by which we, as individuals, make sense of our lives through time. (Terry L. Shoptaugh) Other than that nostalgia
and as ‘systematics’. The reasons for collecting haven’t changed much. There are two examples for
digital form, Instagram user Hipster26 created a collection of photos. In the collection, she recorded
Things Magazine is an online journal who claimed itself to be ‘about objects and meanings’. To collecting’s new format as digital collections, they stated that the virtual world contains fewer objects to be collected for a ‘lack of depth’ in 2007. And after 4 years, they described digital collections as more than simply assembling a set of objects and about presentation characterised a ‘Victorian treasure houses’ atmosphere. 3
Although the internet is trying to mimic all the behaviours of the real world(Things Magazine, 2007), including collecting, it has its limitations. Walter Benjamin(2008) argued the two sides about technological reproductions, which suit the Internet situation as well. On the bright side, the reproduction can reach the situation beyond the original itself and take the original closer to the audience. It also can provide unusual aspects of the original. On the other side, the ‘aura’ of genuineness and ‘here and now’ is fading with replication. To understand what is digital collections in details, I shall try to distinguish three categories of digital collections, depending on their relationship with material collections, to which most of the digital collections belong: ‘collections as substitution for material objects’, ‘collections of collections’, ‘collections of born-digital objects’. Things Organized Neatly is a blog displaying images of well-designed, carefully arranged material collections. Another example is a personal project called ‘A collection a Day, 2010’. Benjamin(1931)
objects and photograph the moment, the collector can give an object a temporary identity as part of a collection. The curating concept of 21st century digital collections is very similar with the renaissance ‘cabi-
hung cheek-by-jowl without regard to their historical or cultural context’. (Peter Timms, 2013) It is a principle pointed out by the Greek philosopher Socrates, and noted by his student Xenophon: even objects that were of little interest individually, could look good when arranged together.(Spalding, 2002) The pleasure ‘wunderkammer’ can bring to the public is undeniable, so it continues from private museums to the virtual world. As a good result, it freed our minds to wander, commented by Peter Timms(2013).
their collections, like Sir John Soane rebuilt his house for four times to maintain his personal collection.(Thornton & Dorey, 1992) Digital collectors wouldn’t be troubled by the physical form of collection.(Rob Walker, 2011) The main issue that all kinds of digital collection is facing is individuals’ discontinuity of interest. There is a focus on the immediate needs of users and little in the way of digital equivalents of physical storage spaces in which material can be laid down and later re-discovered, forgotten or discarded. (Beagrie, N, 2005) 4
About the necessity of owning a physical book collection, Benjamin(1931) stated that the ownership is the most intimate relationship that a real collector can have with the objects. Kazys Varnelis(2011) took the opposite site by making a metaphor of a personal library as an SUV, which is big and un-
to that, the amount of stories of miserable, bankrupt or crazy collectors won’t be as many as it was.
Methodology
To illustrate how the collecting behaviour has been changing in the digital age, this approach will compare material collecting and digital collecting, and examine historical theories about collecting in the digital situation. The ‘digital collecting’ and ‘digital collections’ in this discussion is mainly in a form of digital photo-
not included in the discussion. These forms are more complex when comparing with material objects. The main research areas are in material culture, collecting and museum history for theory and historical examples of collecting and collectors. Personal digital archive area has been researched for acknowledge in the features of digital technology. As a new and still developing phenomenon, there are not many academic books or journal articles been found. Opinions from bloggers, column writers and online published articles are being referenced as recent understanding on the subject.
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Pearce wrote that: collections are sets of objects, and, like all other sets of objects, they are an act of the imagination, part corporate and part individual, a metaphor intended to create meanings which help to make individual identity and each individual’s view of the world. Collections are gathered ... lifting them away
the right word ... The imaginative link which holds material together may be purely personal or may engage the wider world (Pearce, 1995, p.27) In the sense of ‘lifting them(collections) away from the world of common commodities’, it was similarly said by Baudrillard in his 1968 essay ‘The System of Collecting’. He indicates that every object has two functions - ‘to be put to use and to be possessed’. However, only the function of being put to use is fully abandoned by the subject, the object can be ‘possessed’, as part of the collection. Legibly, Baudrillard wrote: “If I use a refrigerator to refrigerate, it is a practical mediation: it is not an object but a refrigerator. And in that sense I do not possess it.” (Baudrillard, 1996) He regards these two functions as a contradictory unity. On one hand, they ‘stand in inverse ratio to each other’. On the other, all the objects owned by the subject partake the abstractness of being lifted from its function and will still be brought into a sole relationship with the subject, in that sense these two functions coexist in most functioning objects. Computers and the internet appear to be doing a great job of mimicking of real world behaviour -
Baudrillard - ‘to be use’ and ‘to be possessed’ - are not so determined by what the object is and why the object is created. It becomes complicated, which shall be discussed later. Constructed by binary digits, the 2D virtual world contains much fewer kinds of objects because of a ‘lack of depth’. A world with an atmosphere just one pixel thick that has reached out across all forms 6
of media and turned everything into a vast, shallow pool that stretches as far as the eye can see. (Things Magazine, 2007) The inevitable advantage of the Internet as a modern medium is the speed and convenience of gathering information. However, there’s an emerging consensus about what digital collections mean; i.e., it’s much more than simply assembling a set of objects. Increasingly, it appears to be about presentation, a form of composition. In many respects this presentation seems no
museums, where typologies and materials trumped more complex data like location, function and date. (Things Magazine, 2011)
words: ‘For what you really collect is always yourself.’ (1996) Collecting can be a way to picture oneself a portrait. The collection can include everything about the collector and the collector only. Then some collections gesture to nostalgia for previous world. These collections loses its meaning if it loses its personal owner.
in the morning was the same as waking up to a new day. It was a moment he treasured most everyday, and therefore he could not bear to throw away the tins which contained the beans that triggered this experience. As personal as it is, nobody else other than the collector himself would conjure up a joyous sequence of Venetian dawns. Some psychologists feel that memory is a process by which we, as individuals, make sense of our lives through time. (Terry L. Shoptaugh, 2004) The ephemera we could not bear to throw away is the physical prove of our memory we do not want to forget. In the digital age, to individuals, memory is still as important as it was. But rather than the heavy cof-
by an Instagram user called Hipster26. She created a collection of photos by hashtag ‘CupOfHipster’.
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pleasing and interesting to be compared with another.(Fig. 1) From the point of intention, the collection ‘CupOfHipster’ can be seen as a
Both the collections are attempts to ‘create a satisfactory private universe’, to deny the process and to freeze time. The essential passion for our lives and for nostalgias stays the same during the history, no matter the change in media.
means, three categories of digital collections will be described in details.
The subject of digital collections can be disparate in kind. According to their formats, digital collections can be assorted into three categories: the collections of ‘substitution for material objects’, the collections of collections and the collections of born-digital information. The categories are determined based upon the distance of collectables to our material lives. The collecting practice of ‘substation for material objects’ is a digital derivative of our material collections. It shows that, in the digital age, we still care about tangible things, and we are using the internet as one more way to express our love. The substations are usually photographs of material objects, which partially carry the original collectables’ aura. As the collections are usually built on a range of shared internet resources, they appear as
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Fig. 1. Screenshot of #cupofhipster collection on Instagram, created by Hipster26.
collections’. To build this form of collections, collectors assemble and arrange material collections in a particular way to make a digital representation, mainly through a digital photograph. It is separated from the previous two kinds of collections because it relies on material collections as much as on the digital representation. The initiative design behaviour involved in these collections adds certain artistic meaning to them. The last, the ‘collections of born-digital objects’, is for the beings without physical bodies. They are created in digital forms and can be fully reproduced in a digital way. Leaving our physical life behind, it carries on our habits of keeping records of our lives by collecting and storing digital documents, images, audio and videos about ourselves. In the following three sections, these categories will be illustrated in details.
Start with an example to explain the meaning of ‘substitution for material objects’. There was a conversation with a friend, who said he is a collector of lids of inspection wells, and he has got hundreds of them. Being asked for a visit of his collection, he replied it is all on his website. In this case, the collector is collecting images he found online with the content of inspection well lids. He doesn’t own any of the lids he is displaying in the collection. This form of collections are collecting through the internet only and the collectors have no intention to purchase for a material version of his collection. The most commonly existing form of digital collections is of substitutions for material objects. These substitutions are mostly images, which are obtained from the internet resources according to themes and exhibited on the service websites like Flickr, Pinterest and Tumbler. The integrated materiality is fairly important to calculate the value of a collection as ‘the here and now of the original constitute the abstract idea of its genuineness’.(Benjamin, 2008, p.6) Benjamin stated the term of ‘aura’ in the topic of reproduction of artworks. However, according to the history min’s theory of ‘aura’. To explain that everyday items, even something nothing cultic like artworks, obtain such ‘aura’ and is collectable just as artworks, here is a story about a passionate underwear collector. The Gallery of 9
Fig. 2. Screenshot of board ‘Fan’ on Pinterest, created by Marnie Carmichael.
Fig. 3. The Fan Museum, London
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collection on clothes in 1930s. Dr. Cunnington was particularly interested in underwear. It was rumoured that he would rummage through his patients drawers when visiting and say, ‘You won’t be
their garden. Spalding(2002, p.38) concluded the story as following: ‘Cunnington collected things
that have, until now, been largely ignored’. This passion of Dr. Cunnington, digging into daily objects like other people’s underwear, may seem a bit awkward and unspeakable in that time. However it was pure passion as a collector. The collection was not nostalgia-driving because the collectables were not related to the Dr. Cunnington until he collected them. There is some fascination of the underwear that attracted the collector deeply. His moti-
technological or social change and mass psychology’ (Spalding, 2002, p.39). Whereas, as a doctor, did he really rummage through the patiences’ underwear drawers based on a concern as an academic researcher or just followed the momentary instinct as a collector? Forget about the manner of value to the research and society. Attracted by clothes of others, he was caught on the ‘aura’ of everyday objects. The passion for collecting conceals in every existing object. There are many reasons to believe that all the material objects are being collected by certain collectors, even the quirkiest things. As proof, several museums of unusual collections can be mentioned. Most museums’ collections are self explained with their names, like Fan Museum, Museum of Brands, Packaging, and Advertising, Pollocks Toy Museum, Sewing Machine Museum, Garden Museum, London Fire Brigade Museum, etc. Digital collectors share these museums’ passion on collecting the objects that are closer to our lives, for example, both devoted into collection of Fan, Fig.2 is a Pinterest board themed on fan, and Fig.3 is the Fan Museum in London. Benjamin(1936, p.7) also pointed out that the reproductions will result in a shrink of the original work’s aura and that damage will be handed down. What happens in the reproduction, Where the
when a material object is photographed thus transferred into a digital reproduction. The ‘aura’ in ob-
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Fig. 4. Artist Wilderness Connection. 2013. Our stay in the Spruce Park U.S. Forest Service cabin in the Great Bear Wilderness, August 2012.
Fig. 5. Photographed at Herman Miller Archives. 2011. George Nelson’s Storage Wall for Life Magazine.
Fig. 6. Alamy. n.d. A cornucopia of curiosities in Sir John Soane’s Museum.
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To conclude the value of this form of collections, there are two sides of it. It shows that people still love tangible material and has found a digital way to express it. On the other side, The value of objects as a collectable is restricted to the display value mainly. The genuineness of the physical beings is damaged to a certain extent.
The third type is called ‘collections of collections’. With the light and transferable advantages of internet, there have been some websites or projects devoted exclusively to lovely photographs of carefully arranged groups of objects. This form of collections share two principles: 1. it relies a lot on material collections; 2. it relies as just much on the artistic digital presentation. It concerns both the design
‘collections’ means what include the photographs - commonly a website or a project. The website Things Organized Neatly is a typical example. It exhibits the images of, how its’ name de-
desk, ingredients, bookshelves, and the likes. Architecture and design critic Alexandra Lange marks in Design Observer the reason she likes it so much is ‘it continues the essence of the modernist project, organising people and their things into grids, but digital.’ She said she thought of George Nelson’s Storage wall. (Lange, 2011) (Fig. 5) However it is more than a storage wall. Pinterest boards are more close to a digital form of George Nelson Storage wall, while what T.O.N represented is more of an art age, the feeling every photograph creates is just like walking into a beautiful themed room in the Sir John Soane’s Museum(Fig. 6) in London - fully occupied and also visually overall balanced. And there are surprises hidden in details for visitors to discover. It can be seen as a showcase of material personal collections and also somehow shows the collector (or curator)’s personal identity. It is not only
colour tone, the composition, the angle of shooting, the range of items selected, etc. (Fig. 7) In a bigger scale, images as collectables, the website is like an old term of ‘Wunderkammer’ which consist of numbers of individualised cabinets. While every single photograph presents a personal 13
mother and all of her ladybug treasures.
Fig. 8. Henegan, N. 2013.
Fig. 9. Emilyblincoe. 2013. My aunt terry and her rock collection. the collection collection.
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‘things organized neatly’. By arranging every object as equal the designer in fact ignore their functions and therefore possessed them for a moment. Before the item is put back to the living environment, it is a part of a collection, like a pan is a collectable before back to the kitchen. By photography them, the moment is frozen and able to be exhibit. Therefore, everything photographed is given a temporary identity as the owner’s collectable and appointed the mission to present the owner’s taste and who he is. Fig. 7-9 select three collection owners and the collections they have curated to showcase their stories and identities.
getting a text book, a man of the world buying a present for his lady’ and ‘the purchasing done by a book collector’(2013, p.62). However, in this way of digital collecting, this alterability in identities of collectables is made possible.
Within the collections of digital productions, the objects are born-digital, which means the objects have no physical bodies. People have been recording daily life by creating and storing digital information about themselves, including emails, personal documents, articles, portfolio of works, digital images, audio and video recordings and the like. For example, it can be an album of digital photos
memory thus valuable to owners. As Pearce(1994) stated for what she distinguished as ‘collections as souvenir’, ‘these are the objects which take their collection unity only from their association with a -
convenient online platforms have made such behaviour quicker and easier. With certain platforms like blog or social network pages, these personal digital creations are collected as personal archives. In the history before the digital age, for nostalgia reason, physical artefacts are always used as external memory and reference aids. With our lives been extended to the online world, it is necessary for individuals to keep digital life recorded, which is referred to as ‘digital estates’(Beagrie, 2005). With more and more services gone paperless, the material paper tickets, which commonly taken as a souve15
emails should be as much as relevant and should to be collected. So is other digital ephemera. Digital ephemera is considered less collectable for it is reproducible. However, digital data gets old with time just as material things. Without a physical body, it is even harder to maintain them. With new document formats invented so frequently, old documents would require help from the ‘computer archaeology’ experts providing tools to retrieve. An ‘archaeological era’ in computer technology means 5-10 years or even fewer.(Korhonen, 2013) And it has been suggested by research on digital data loss, that, on average, 6% of data held on all PCs is lost every year.(Beagrie, 2005)
lection) Since the company closed down, the website provided after the description is not accessible anymore. However, with it collected by the Public Collector website, the existence of the company can be proved. Born-digital objects are not like digital reproductions. It can be reduplicated and can be fully copied. On one hand, it can be very hard to make a distinction between the original work and the copies. On the other, if the original collection is forgotten, damaged or lost, there is still chance it can be found back and relive just like never gone.
behaviour, how collecting can gradually leave the material world behind. With collecting substitutions of material objects, the collectors cannot ‘own’ the collection and have only partial accessibility to the images of objects, like posting them, moving them and deleting them. The collectables are on loan from the Internet. Then, to build ‘collections of collections’, the collector has attempted to possess the objects by conquering them from the interaction like twisting the function, arranging them unnaturally, and photographing the moment of possession. To the collections of born-digital content, collectors have the ownership of the original objects in a digital format. As ‘souvenir’ carrying collectors’ memory, it is one kind of intimacy between the object and the collector. In that sense, the possession tions we can be between the digital world and the real one. 16
category the digital collections, this chapter will analysis how the curation works in the digital collections and the advantages and disadvantages of digital curation.
It is noticeable that the current forms of digital curation are carrying the wind from the ‘cabinets of curiosity’. The term was originally a translation of the German word, ‘Wunderkammer’. Rather than a category of collections, it is more of a way in which a collection can be curated. Put aside the collecta-
cabinets. In the 14th century, the earliest private collections, stored in small cabinets, was built up by novelty curiosities that chosen to represent the collectors’ wealth and unique tastes. Such collections were intended to impress and entertain the visitors invited by the collectors. In the 16th and 17th centuries, exhibitions became increasingly the lavish and excessive, with paintings covering every available patch of wall, the wall itself often painted red, a method of presentation in which artworks were used as props in the creation of an atmosphere of luxury.(Schoenberg, 2004) In the 18th and 19th centuries, display became more organised and historical, and museums began their transformation into edential art critic published a virulent attack on the way art was being displayed at Vienna’s Belvedere. The curators there had been lining their collections into chronological order and writing individual description on labels for each artwork. The critic pointed out that people do not go to art museums to be educated (Peter Timms, 2011), but ‘to develop tastes and awaken the noblest instincts of the heart, and that is why it must be founded on aesthetic principles’ rather than scholarly or educational ones.
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Fig. 10. Screenshot of Google image search result on ‘antique’.
Fig. 11. Francken, F. 1636. Chamber of Art and Curiosities.
Fig. 12. Screenshot of board ‘Antiques’ on Pinterest, created by Kristy Larson.
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that occur when paintings are hung together without regard for chronology or school, this revolution, which continued to cover most of the museums worldwide, was obviously boosted by many prominent scholars. John Ruskin was asked if he approved of the way the famous Tribune gallery in Florence was arranged as wunderkammer. ’No’, he replied, ‘I think it is merely arranged for showing how many of each thing can be got together’. He believed that artworks should be seen on a level with the eye and added, ‘it is not well to have a noble picture many feet above the eye, merely for the glory of the room.’(Spalding, 2002, p.10) From Ruskin’s word, at least, the glory to the room and pleasure to
With time, the concept of cabinets of curiosities or ‘Wunderkammer’ are abandoned by most modern museums and the education function of museums is emphasised and further consolidated. However, the pleasure and inspiration one can get from a glory room is still undeniable. The visitors always queuing in front of the amazing Sir John Soane Museum in London, which is a typical example of the cabinet of curiosity, can be a prove in the part of reality. On the other hand, for we are well acquainted with that universal Wunderkammer known as the internet. Anyone who has ever googled will know the pleasures of discovering serendipitous connections among widely diverse topics. In freeing our minds to wander, the internet has shown us that the museum way of categorising knowledge for education do not make nearly as much sense now as they used to. (Peter Timms, 2011)
wall.(Fig. 11) The system has been automatically framing every image, and lining as a large amount of images as possible. In order to describe this form of curation, there is no better words than Peter gard to their historical or cultural context’(2013), but only digital. In terms of collecting, but more in the manner of vision, every time one subject is searched, Google comes back a collection curated in the way of wunderkammer. Google is on this for a ‘format following content’ reason. It can be other reasons for approaching this way. For aesthetic reason, many websites and online projects are also
information provided than Google.(Fig.10) It appears in the way that each image is framed with its own text label description and its original source. Functionally, a visitor wouldn’t need to be linked
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Fig. 13. Screenshot of a part of ‘Torn Porn’ collection, originally by Lisa Anne Auerbach.
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content, being an invisible wall. With this invisible supporting wall stretching itself until endlessly to
digital collections can expand freely.
The boundless exhibit space can be seen as one of the advantages that internet has presented to collectors and collections. Compared to old cabinets owners, the internet is doing such a huge favour by
ing personal collections. He demolished and rebuilt his own house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in order to accommodate his museum. In the quarter of a century before he dead, he had to rebuild to expand the space for four times (last one at his 81’s) and spent huge sums of money and time on arrange it. not be neglected is the fact that the strait space surrounded by marble sculptures, which allows no more than one person to pass, can barely be called a hallway. Artefacts hidden in the corners are beyond reaching neither by hands nor eyes; and the emotional enjoyment is inevitable mixed by a ghost of intimidation of accidentally destroying something valuable by the next movement. The best thing of curating a huge personal collection online can be that the collectors do not need to worry about the physical condition of collectables. As Rob Walker (2011) put it, ‘we can simply enjoy
agine that with all the pressure on space and cost management gone, the pleasure for the collectors of conquering and re-curating the outer material world is half gone. And desire grows on pondering. It can be disappointed that after studying on one thing for long and carefully, one cannot actually have it or touch it. For the low-cost of having a digital collection from the internet resources, the number of all kinds of digital collections increases in huge mount of numbers every day. As a consequence, any researchers
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lectors’ discontinuity of interest. Without maintaining, some of the links of collections have been invalid although it has been referred by other people. One invalid information can cause a faulty chain and these spaces on the internet is then wasted. Knowing the limitation of the digital collections, there are some examples for trying to improve the experience for visitors. The collector Marc Fischer, who also is the owner of publiccollectors.org, has a collection created by Lisa Anne Auerbach called ‘Torn Porn’ displayed digitally on his website. (Fig. 13) ‘ I acquired this collection of torn magazine pages on the sixth level of the main parking lot at O’hare Airport on February 27, 1989 at 1:45pm’ Auerbach explained the rationale of collecting. The collector certainly selected the ones she loved, photographed their both sides with a clean background
can get a better idea of what the collectables are, as originals in physical body. Interestingly, the images provided for collection ‘Torn Porn’ on this site cannot be found anywhere else anymore. As mentioned before, personal discontinuity of interest would possibly make a curated collection or website invalid for access. Marc Fischer saved several collections from disappearance like this. It is another way to defend the valuable digital collections.
As mentioned in the conclusion from previous discussing categories of digital collections, ‘ownership’
About the importance of owning collectables, Walter Benjamin, as a collector himself, had a strong statement in his article about collecting ’Unpacking my library’. ‘For a real collector…’He wrote, ‘ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to object.’(2013, p67) From a more recent point of view, Kazys Varnelis(2011), who is a historian specialising in network culture, takes the side against in the post ‘Against Print’ on his blog. With a vivid metaphor, Varnelis indicated, ’Let’s face it, a personal library is the academic’s version of an SUV. It’s handy for when you need it, but it’s big and unwieldy, a poor choice when it comes to ecology and not a defensible option in a world of limits except for those who really, truly need them.’ Then he listed several the journals he frequent and said 22
most of all the content can already be found digital on the web. The ‘fetish objects’, as he called them, like Junk Jet, Volume, or Loud Paper, can also be found in reduced or pirated form.
Benjamin is a serious book collector while Varnelis is probably a reader. If they ever have the same
previous owners, publishing data, and the like, and Varnelis will be standing there reading the introduction. Some books are consumed because of its content, some for its singularity as an artwork. To
PDF. However, downloaded PDFs can be very suitable for readers like Varnelis to gather information as that is all they want.
high level. Baudrillard(1996) pointed out ‘collecting is thus qualitative in its essence and qualitative in its practice’. He thinks that the feeling of possession is based on ‘a confusion of the senses (of hand and eye)’, ’an intimacy with the privileged object’ and the interaction with the object - ‘searching, or-
collector wants to get with the object. For the pursuing of content and information, through the internet, everyone can acknowledge freely. It can be seen as a, lowest, starting point of possessing behaviour. If the information gathered online inspired a deeper interests and desire, the collectors would be tempted to obtain the material existing so that he can enjoy the privilege of owning and interact with tures or videos of cats on Internet. However, a passionate cat lover will realise the desire of owning a cat as pet so that he can interact with the beloved cat, petting, feeding, living together, and the like. On the practical side, the desire of full ownership can be a bad impact on collector’s life. Clinging on the material features of objects, collectors can get very crazy and pedantry for the result of possession. Alternatively as Pearce(1994) put it, ‘The collecting practice lends itself to parody’. She described a obsessive collecting as ‘in which the accumulation of expanding collections stops only with death, bankruptcy or a sudden shift of interest’. As one example, Pearce(1994) quoted a story penned by the American poet Ogden Nash: I met a traveller from an antiques show, His pockets empty, but his eyes aglow. Upon his back, and now his very own, He bore two vast and trunkless legs of stone. 23
Amid the torrent of collector’s jargon I gathered he had found himself a bargain, A permanent conversation piece post-prandial, And when I asked him how he could be sure He showed me P.B.Shelley’s signature. (quoted in Bray 1981:227) The desire for possession is probably endless and so countless the absurd stories have been told in the history of collecting. The German novelist Jean Paul’s poor little schoolmaster Wutz (in ‘Life of the Cheerful Schoolmaster Maria Wutz’ ) acquired a large library by gradually writing, himself, all
them. Another well-known story is told by Maurice Rheims. A bibliophile specialising in unique cop-
home, he inserts this legal document in his copy, now once again unique, and goes to bed happy. (Baudrillard, 1996) Such things happen less frequently the digital age. The digital collecting is like a backup plan for colways go to a lower level of possession - curating a digital collection. However, at the same time, fewer people are devoting to collecting.
Conclusions
The importance of collecting in human culture is undoubtable, as Pearce(1994) put it, The social world itself has always relied on its appointed collectors. Civilization could not exist without tax collectors and gatherers of information, harvesters and hoarders, census takers and recruiting tries and of populations; a country is a collection of regions and people; each given people is a collec24
tion of individuals, divided into governed and governors - that is, collectables and collectors. With our lives largely involved into a newly developed media, the internet, it is very necessary to look into the changes that is happening in the are of collecting. From the discussions, it can be concluded that the world of collecting has now split in two, material collecting and digital collecting. The digital collections can be divided into three categories: the collections of substitution for material objects, the collections of collections, and the collections of born-digital objects. And the three categories indicated the three positions digital collections can be between the material world and the virtual world.
of collecting attempts. Collectors used to devote their whole lives into collecting. Now, the digital collecting is providing an opportunity to showcase the love for objects, with less cost and easier process than before. Thanks to the internet’s nature of free sharing, the information about anything, even with the small-
reproduction, ‘Above all, it makes it possible for the original to come closer to the person taking it in…
hall or in the open air can be heard in a room’. That is what makes it possible for the interest to grow. To a certain point, digital collectors may start to collect tangible objects when he found the desire to interact with the collectables. The way, in which digital collections are curated, blend in the system of ‘cabinets of curiosity’ to our daily lives. It has been maybe too long, since we are educated in major museums where the world is organised in chronological order and displayed one by one in geographical rooms. Internet users are amazed by the pleasure from discovering something connected to oneself from all the data chaos, and from being inspired from unintentional browse. The tension between organisation and chaos in and between cabinets are thus appreciated. Therefore, it is reasonable to connect the revival of curiosity cabinets museums and the increasingly created digital collections.
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Bibliography
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List of Figures Fig. 1. Screenshot of #cupofhipster collection on Instagram, created by Hipster26. Fig. 2. Screenshot of board ‘Fan’ on Pinterest, created by Marnie Carmichael.[image online] Available at: http://www. pinterest.com/marniecar/fan/ [Accessed: 27 Jan 2014]. Fig. 3. The Fan Museum.[image online] Available at: http://hidden-london.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/FanMuseum-664.png [Accessed: 27 Jan 2014]. Fig. 4. Artist Wilderness Connection. 2013. Our stay in the Spruce Park U.S. Forest Service cabin in the Great Bear Wilderness, August 2012.. [image online] Available at: http://thingsorganizedneatly.tumblr.com/post/63098641919/ submission-our-stay-in-the-spruce-park-u-s [Accessed: 27 Jan 2014]. Fig. 5. Photographed at Herman Miller Archives. 2011. George Nelson’s Storage Wall for Life Magazine. [image online] Available at: http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2011/10/nelsonwall.jpg [Accessed: 27 Jan 2014]. Fig. 6. Alamy. n.d. A cornucopia of curiosities in Sir John Soane’s Museum. [image online] Available at: http://www. cessed: 27 Jan 2014]. izedneatly.tumblr.com/post/50361389237/submission-my-mother-and-all-of-her-ladybug [Accessed: 27 Jan 2014]. Fig. 8. Henegan, N. 2013. [image online] Available at: http://thingsorganizedneatly.tumblr.com/post/59027163415/ submission-photoshoot-by-neil-henegan [Accessed: 27 Jan 2014].
http://thingsorganizedneatly.tumblr.com/post/59121146260/emilyblincoe-my-aunt-terry-and-her-rock [Accessed: 27 Jan 2014]. Fig. 10. Screenshot of Google image search result on ‘antique’. [image online] Available at: https://www.google.co.uk/ search?q=wunderkammer+wall&espv=210&es_sm=119&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=phrmUvGlM5KshQf8k4HIB Q&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1158&bih=774#q=antique&tbas=0&tbm=isch&imgdii=_ [Accessed: 27 Jan 2014]. Fig. 11. Francken, F. 1636. Chamber of Art and Curiosities. [image online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ File:Frans_Francken_(II),_Kunst-_und_Rarit%C3%A4tenkammer_(1636).jpg [Accessed: 27 Jan 2014]. Fig. 12. Screenshot of board ‘Antiques’ on Pinterest, created by Kristy Larson. [image online] Available at: http://www. pinterest.com/skiesthelimit1/antiques/ [Accessed: 27 Jan 2014]. Fig. 13. Screenshot of a part of ‘Torn Porn’ collection, originally by Lisa Anne Auerbach.[image online] Available at: http://publiccollectors.org/Torn%20Porn/TornPorn.htm [Accessed: 27 Jan 2014].
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