This week’s readings from Jaimie Baron’s The Archive Effect focused on what constitutes a “digital archive” and what this means for users and filmmakers/narrators who choose to appropriate materials from these types of digital archives. Baron wrote that the very notion of a digital archive “destabilizes the notion of an archive as a particular kind of professional institution” (139). Baron pointed to YouTube as an example of “an archive without an archon” (140) with “no unified oversight” or “significant principles of collection” (140). I’m not convinced that this is necessarily a bad thing. There are a multitude of digital archives that are now in the hands of the general population. Each individual has the ability to create an archive and develop their own unique principles of collection.

Each individual’s own personal digital archive on apps like Tumblr and Instagram (and many more) do allow for a very personalized version of the past to be told through these mediums. Like Baron and Paul, I’m inclined to believe that the difference between the material archive and digital archive is not of content, but of structure. The interactivity of apps like Tumblr and Instagram which permit users to connect and impose order via the use of hashtags “add a further level in understanding the data as information” (141). All of the theorists Baron cites (Ricoeur, Paul, Spieker) all imply that the difference between material archives and digital archives is not in the content but “in the different relationships… enabled and established among these contents by both archons and users” (141).

As Baron says, “any kind of digital object that can be accessed by a user can be easily appropriated and combined with other digital objects in a new media work” (142). It was incredibly easy for me to go onto Instagram and find a video to use for this week’s assignment. Instagram accounts permit users to share photo and video content, and then to organize them and make them searchable using hashtags. (Granted, some users like to use hashtags on materials that are not entirely relevant to what they posted…) Most of the time, hashtags serve to connect one user’s post with other similar images/videos, and also help to connect users to each other based off of similar interests. The use of hashtags here in some ways helps to deal with the problems of excess of digital materials, and makes the materials slightly more searchable and manageable. There is still no one single archon controlling this process, however I would argue that the human archivist has not become irrelevant (146). The human intentionality is still very much present, though slightly less visible.

The discussion of Mass Ornaments tied in nicely to what I decided to use for my appropriated video clip today. I chose a clip of a friend hula hooping, that she shared on Instagram for the world to see. She is performing by herself in an empty dance/work out studio, but at the same time this clip was clearly made for public consumption. Mass Ornaments consisted of multiple clips of individuals performing dance moves, which is not an editing process I was able to do for this week’s assignment. It would be entirely possible, however, to compose a similar video of hooping videos of individuals performing their own unique performance that actually could demonstrate both “individuality and conformity” (152) among these clips. On Instagram, the hooping community is able to connect with one another and through the use of hashtags and user’s account names, are able to “call out” a friend to #stopdropandhoop. This starts an almost endless series of short video hoops. One user uploads a video of them stop, drop, and hooping wherever they happen to be (at home, on the front lawn, at the park, at a festival, etc.), then in the comments section identifies which friends they are now calling on to #stopdropandhoop. It connects the users and it would prove interesting to see what happens when one follows this train of videos, and combines/appropriates them into a new visual experience, and what kinds of patterns or discontinuities would emerge when the materials are viewed together sequentially.

In any case, the clip I chose was from a #stopdropandhoop challenge by a friend (whose user name I will not share, though her account is not private.) The purpose of hooping with a color-changing hoop (especially in a dark space) is for the hoop to move so quickly that it is almost impossible to see the individual movements of the hooper and the hoop itself. This creates a “trail” of light, and another hashtag besides #stopdropandhoop that gets used by hoopers is #showmeyourtrails. With this particular video, I decided to intentionally reverse the intended effects of the color changing hoop. I slowed down both the video and the audio. The original audio was a very upbeat, fast paced song and slowing this down considerably brought an eerie quality to this video that the original clip did not possess at all.  This is a “metonymic fragment” of a human life, and “before digital video cameras and the internet” (150-151) my friend could not have posted this video for others to find (and for myself to reappropriate, with her knowledge.)