Multiple Viewpoints and Other Digital Collaborators

Collaboration is a process in which different perspectives matter. Who, what, why, where, when, and how, are a few registers indicating the diffractive possibilities surrounding the notion of collaboration. These imbricated factors, over which some actants have disproportionate impact, responsibility, and authority, fundamentally affect the direction projects and other matters of importance will take. Here, we endeavour to extend the knowledge derived from collaborations into a much richer multivocality, surrounding two artefact assemblages, both held in institutional settings with restricted access. One is a carved stone, called the Nessglyph, currently lodging in the University of Southampton. The other is a distributed assemblage of Blackfoot belongings held by several UK Museums. We helped make both these collections available to invested collaborators via remote viewings employing in the first case an open crowdsourced collaboration model, and in the second we consider some of the dynamics of a closed collaborative group. We conclude that both collaborations require an openness that is only afforded through constant work and constant re-working as the artefacts and images in these projects constantly fold into their own omissions so that the work can respond to the politics and ethics of image making.

• https://mootookakiossin.ca/
• https://www.arts.ac.uk/research/current-...