When visitors entered the gallery

[fatimahislam]

While some big dreams had to be let go, I was able to achieve most of the goals I set out for the exhibition. Transporting thirty-two of Nuala’s fragile sculptures to Los Angeles required two days of careful packing and a fine art shipping truck committed solely to this special load. Along with film editor Chris Jones and cameraman Scott Oller, I also created a film that documents the story of the Internet Archivists sculpture series through interviews with Nuala, Brewster and a number of the archivists who have had their sculptural portraits made.

they were greeted by three of the Internet Archivist figures and a telemarketing data full-scale shipping container (a trompe-l’oeil work of art by Makayla Blanchard) that conveyed Brewster’s often-repeated claim that he had fit the entire World Wide Web inside a shipping container. The exhibition was filled with juxtapositions of the old and new. To the right of the three archivists was a case filled with a dozen ancient clay cuneiforms and pieces of Egyptian papyrus introducing very early forms of archiving. A china hutch displayed out of fashion media formats that the Internet Archive has been converting into digital form such as record albums, cassette tapes, slides, and VHS tapes. I partnered with LMU’s librarians to bring the mystery of archiving out into the light. Using one of the Archive’s Tabletop Scribes, the librarians scanned and digitized numerous rare books from their collection. The exhibition also included displays and computer monitors so visitors could explore the Wayback Machine, listen to music from the archive’s collections, play vintage video games and test out the Oculus Rift.

clay-cloud scribe

Photograph by Brian Forrest.

In the end, I think the exhibition asked a lot more questions than it answered. Nevertheless, I hope this first exhibition will spark others to think of ways to make the abstract ideas and invisible aspects of digital archives more tangible. Who knows, maybe, a musical is in the Internet Archive’s future.

I was sad to pack up the clay archivists and say goodbye to their smiling faces. I’m sure they are happy to be back with the rest of their friends in the Great Room on Funston Avenue, but oh, the stories they have to tell of their travels to a gallery in Los Angeles.

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Carolyn Peter is the director and curator of the Laband Art Gallery at Loyola Marymount University. She curated From Clay to the Cloud: The Internet Archive and Our Digital Legacy, which was on view from January 23-March 20, 2016 at the Laband.