Hiroko Akatsuki × Nodoka Sakamoto × Tomoki Sakuta × Shunya Hagiwara | Creative Utilization of the artscape Archive—Reading 30 Years of Archives (Part 3, First Part)
Hiroko Akatsuki and others discuss the creative utilization of artscape's 30-year archive, contextualizing it within internet history and technological shifts.Summary
This article presents the first part of a discussion among archivist Hiroko Akatsuki, Nodoka Sakamoto, cultural policy practitioner Tomoki Sakuta, and web designer Shunya Hagiwara regarding the creative utilization of artscape's archives. They begin by setting the starting point in 1995, the "Year Zero" of the internet, examining the social and technological context, including the launch of Windows 95 and the release of *Ghost in the Shell*. They trace artscape's evolution from its beginnings as "Network Museum & Magazine (nmp)" through its various structural changes. A key point is the 2009 renewal coinciding with major internet shifts like the rise of Google and changes in copyright law. The participants emphasized the value of having 30 years of text accessible online and introduced an initial step toward creating a "map" of the archive: extracting metadata using an AI team from DNP to visualize the site's evolution in design and structure. This effort aims to overcome the common issue of lost basic information (like publication dates) in digital archives, providing coordinates to grasp the overall landscape for future analysis and potential restoration.
(Source：artscape)