statement

As Donna Haraway would argue, our knowledge is always partial and situated, thereby reflecting the context and conditions in which it was conceived (Haraway, 1988, p. 581). Therefore, we can as researchers never remove ourselves from the equation, as knowledge always comes from a specific viewpoint and often several viewpoints. Knowledge can depend on values, belief systems and cultural differences and reflect the particular conditions in which they are produced. Data can therefore never be seen as entirely raw, as our work collecting, processing and interpreting always greatly affects how the data is constructed and imagined, despite these choices being done consciously or unconsciously (Gitelman, 2013, p. 2). With this as my point of departure, the aim of my curational vision is to explore how our own situatedness and context or preconceptions affects the processes in which data is constructed, framed and processed, through the lens of three different assignments. To dive into this theme of the implications of our own situatedness, I was interested in exploring the many separate processes that guide datafication and exploring the ways in which we classify our data and what implications it has, with the goal of creating an explorative collection. As Rob Kitchin states, data is not only a reflection of our world, but also greatly reshapes the way we see and make sense of the world (Kitchin, 2014, p. 24).

The theme of datafication has been explored throughout the semester in different cases and through our assignments looking at the different layers of the concept and how they each impact the process. In my first assignment I explored how to represent digitized sounds in a dataset, by extracting and processing characteristics of the audio in the form of metadata and focusing on the processes of datafication. In assignment 2 I dived deeper into the concept of the quantified self and pondered about the possible issues that the datafication process can have on us, by reflecting on it with Michel Foucault’s concept of biopolitics. In the third assignment, we collaboratively created a collection of literature and an accompanying taxonomy, and herein exploring the implications that categorization and classifications directly and indirectly have on the way we structure data. Here we go into formalizing relations between different classifications and creating categories and revealing the hierarchical structure behind.

To tie this all together, the goal of my research and development area was to present and visualize the processes behind the assignments and show some of the steps along the way and roads not taken in the final work. Taking on the role of the curator, my goal was to create a form of coherence and link together all the assignments in a form that would reflect my curational theme. Choosing to illustrate the concept with a type of flowchart on the frontpage, the aim was to show the separate steps of the processes as a sequential order and how the projects are the outcome of a lot of different decisions taken along the way. Thereby creating a roadmap of my research. Illustrating how each path taken has an impact. By putting all these things together, selecting and distilling my work of the semester down to online collection, my curational goal was to create a coherent visual experience that would make sense to the viewer. In a sense this could be seen as my stage design or “mise-en-scène” as Michael Connor describes it in his description of online curation (Connor, 2013). My goal of this curational choice was to help frame the vision of my research and development area and put the viewer into the mindset of the theme, by creating an accommodating pictorial space to navigate. The aim was not to explain and deliver a concluding statement on my own situatedness in the processes, as I thought that would perhaps miss the point and defeat the purpose of my collection as a result of running the risk of not fully understanding my own situatedness. Rather the aim was to lay out the steps and processes behind (obviously missing some parts along the way), inviting the viewer to ponder on my situatedness, and how my position and context affected the processes along the way. Thereby presenting my online collection as not just a static collection, but rather inviting the reader to engage with it and start to question and reflect upon the possible causes and effects along the way. Hopefully acknowledging that we as scholars can never be objective in our work, but that we need to be always aware of how our own position and context situates our knowledge.