Digital Artefact

Dominic Moore – 80088945

Timeline: “The Year the World went Online“

Thoughts on the Artefact Process:

Initially when thinking about my group’s Digital Artefact, I thought it might be a good idea for us to submit a not-a-map image in a StoryMap. The image would be head-and-shoulder photographs of the group members, and embedded in each photograph would be video files (as you clicked on the eyes of the members), audio files (on the mouths) and text – marked up – (on the hands). The concern in the group however, was because these files would be created by ourselves – I had put suggested ‘our pandemic reflections’ as a topic – the artefact would not be sufficiently scholarly. By the time some clarifications as to what we were doing were received, the Storymap idea had also morphed into a Timeline. This necessitated a change in my own thinking. A Timeline is an historical document; so contributions are now factually based on a date. The thinking has to go from the ‘subjective and personal’ to the ‘objective and general’. The contributions, instead of being our own, could be the contributions of others (no less scholarly?). As I have a (vastly overdeveloped) anxiety regarding open access and copyright, I decided to make many of my contributions those that I had created myself. We each picked different subject matter relating to our different interests, and the title, The Year the World went Online, kept us rooted. The result is pleasing – the Timeline definitely works as an artefact, and successfully has an element of originality, this being the first year of the pandemic. The topic works well – the media is varied, and the contributions are well chosen. The pandemic certainly brought an additional complication to group meetings; ideas took longer to express – the ‘mood of the room’ couldn’t be judged while ideas were being tossed around; connectivity is directly interlinked with communicability. Overall though, I found the ability of the group to adapt to the conditions inspiring.