Long abstract:

All scientific experimental processes involve a kind of intentional loss, as substances are concentrated, condensed, and distilled. In bioscience specifically, experiments are a lossy practice, for example when DNA is extracted from tissue in chemical reactions. This production of smooth and commensurate elements, which we label data, is informed by, and enacts, scientific values of abstraction and standardization. Yet, all data are not simply materialized but emerge from acts of transformation and translation (cf. Callon 1984), and decontextualization (Loukissas 2019). In this way, information is simultaneously contracted and expanded, as it both sheds and absorbs new characteristics in the process of becoming data.

To demonstrate the ways data are always degrown and regrown, or territorialized (Deleuze and Guattari 1972), this presentation focuses on experimental practices with, and care for, laboratory animals. For example, as bioscientists record information about live mice to a computer database, the slippery relationship between digital reproduction and animals demands a continual recalibration. Similarly, mice behavior deemed irrelevant by scientific models is left out of data production processes and noted only anecdotally, while those of concern to project research questions are carefully documented and datafied; further, these variables of relevance are not fixed but similarly drift. Drawing from two years of ethnography in a bioscience laboratory located near Tokyo, this presentation argues that imaginations of data as an smooth space, and its use and circulation as an objective and autonomous matter, fails to capture the ongoing vacillation of data in production and practice.

Long abstract:

The digitalisation of social relations has been precipitated by the mass collection, creation and storage of data through bulking physical infrastructure known as data centres. Data centres and their expansion are as much a certainty in the public imagination as the growth of grass. However, these centres, often obfuscated in their existence by the very terminology used to describe and naturalise their positionality and function, such as “silicon forest”, expose critical fault lines in the localities burdened by their resource-intensive nature, such as post-colonial Ireland. Their very existence in these localities poses the question of what utility they provide, how much of the data within these centres actually serves a daily function, and how much is simply sitting dormant, never to be retrieved again. In conversation with critical discard studies, critical data studies, and with a decolonial lens, this research will conceptualise “Data Landfills” as the inevitable consequence of this era of systematic datafication. This paper aims to open a modern-day black box by interpreting and classifying the wasteful industrial practices behind the data that resides within the data centre nexus of post-colonial Ireland and its contemporary developmental landscape. In doing so, this paper challenges the logic of growth that underlies data centre expansion in the face of an unfolding climate and biodiversity crisis. Data landfills provides an alternative framing of data centres’ purported functions, re-contextualising our understanding of the utility of data centres by uniquely positioning their data-driven processes in the realm of pollution and waste economies.

Long abstract:

When we pass away, we leave behind digital remains. Sometimes our digital existence stays online, but not all traces we leave behind are considered as our personal digital heritage. There is also a lot of digital waste (un)intentionally generated that could pre-emptively be discarded such as screenshots of your travel schedule, text messages with verifying codes and accounts on websites you last visited years ago. This would not only declutter a person’s digital legacy but also degrow our pile of personal data which in turn limits the ecological impact of digital technologies. Right now, what our personal digital heritage consists of, and more importantly what it could do without, are not yet a big concern in our current save-by-default society. In this talk I will draw from preliminary findings informed by ongoing research in a grassroots volunteering community of people experiencing (temporary) socioeconomic hardship located in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. Through ethnographic fieldwork and participatory action research in collaboration with a theatre collective, I focus my attention on individuals’ preservation practices and the normative assumptions behind decisions on what we cherish, discard and what might be left behind. I show that the specific experiences of this local community provide a unique point of view on the present and future of our digital past. By providing a space for their stories, acknowledging the precarity of their situation, I aim to change the conversation from save to delete.

Short abstract:

An exploratation of involuntarily intentional data loss, which reflects the biases, often unconscious, of the person/s gathering and/or interpreting the information, rather than wllful action. This relates to artistic practice and digital curation conducted at Malta's National Museum of Archaeology.

Long abstract:

Intentional data loss seems anathema in the context of the work of the Digital Curation Lab (DCL), where the impossibility of archiving everything regularly informs work on archival retention policies. Nevertheless, retention and preservation policies are not adopted widely and consistently in the heritage sector, where the DCL is engaged. One recent project with Heritage Malta, revealed creative possibilities when working with data loss, specifically data loss that is involuntarily intentional. By this we mean data that reflects the biases, often unconscious, of the person/s gathering and/or interpreting the information, rather than wllful action. This is one aspect of the intentional data loss discussed in Data Feminism (D'Ignazio & Klein, 2020), where challenging binary gender norms involves questioning hierarchical classification systems.

DCL work through Wikidata on the conventional data about prehistoric female figurines captured at the National Museum of Archaeology in Malta, has provided an opportunity for art making, which is as much an interpretation of lost data, mishandled data, and data that has actually been captured for official purposes (Sant & Tabone, 2023). The artist creates data art (visual and/or aural) to interpret both what is and what is not present in the data. The subjective description of what an archeological anthropomorphic object depicts thus becomes a medium for the creation of new art interpreting the involuntarily intentional data loss.

In this presentation, DCL Director Toni Sant and the artist Enrique Tabone continue to explore the work initiated by Tabone in 2019 on exploring Wikidata as an artistic medium.

Short abstract:

The presentation investigates how mundane practices of data destruction in public bureaucracies are simultaneously challenged, transformed, and re-evaluated in the wake of digitalization. These developments raise questions concerning cultural memory and accountability that beg academic reflection.

Long abstract:

If the production of knowledge constitutes a key characteristic of institutions, so too does its destruction. In the context of democratic states, this dynamic is exemplified by regulatory norms concerning the (selective) preservation and potential destruction of public records for reasons of both government accountability and cultural memory. Rather than giving rise to public controversy, the continuous destruction(s) of information guided by such simultaneously legal, bureaucratic, and archival regimes constitute a deeply institutionalized element of bureaucratic praxis. However, as both the practices of government and the communication of public officials increasingly rely on digital technologies and platforms, mundane forms and procedures of data destruction in the public sector are being simultaneously challenged, transformed, and re-evaluated. Digitally enabled correspondence (e.g., emailing), ephemeral messaging facilitated by private platforms (e.g., the case of “government by Whatsapp”), and emergent concerns around data privacy thus all – in different ways – unsettle pre-existing norms for administering public records and other types of government data. Exploring these normative and practical disruptions, this presentation lays out a framework for the ethnographic study of mundane practices of data destruction in public bureaucracies. In particular, it centers on transformations in how data destruction is practiced and valued within increasingly digitalized democracies and the role of technological affordances in shaping these transformations. From these developments, questions emerge pertaining to both cultural memory and political accountability in the wake of digitalization.

Long abstract:

To what extent, when and how may intentional data loss (non-recording, non-transmission, deletion) constitute decolonial and anti-capitalist practices? Drawing on field research in diverse Pacific Islands, including sites in Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and Vancouver Island, Canada, this paper showcases multiple examples for practices aimed at intentional data loss, digital and non-digital alike. Simultaneously, this paper seeks to uncover diverse underlying values linked to data loss, deletion and related practices and demonstrates how these values are entangled with broader histories of anti-colonial and anti-capitalist resistance. By so doing, it empirically and conceptually challenges the overarching, often proclaimed ‘moral good’ of long-term, secure data storage and preservation. Finally, this paper poses critical questions to open data movements and their entanglements with capitalist, colonial data management.