The
digital world is one of representation that relies on the abstract
use of binary numbers over a computer-based network. We treat the
digital as we treat the real world, i.e. in a largely visually
dominated environment, so perhaps we can phrase the question as an
off-shoot of what is really
real
and not just visually there. Yet archaeology is uniquely placed to
utilise the digital; namely to reconstruct
the
past.
So what is the ontological difference between an interaction with an
archaeological object in real life and one based in the digital
domain? Are we addressing these challenges in archaeology? By using
a philosophical framework I will analyse this question through Jos De
Mul's four characteristics of the digital world, and by relating it
to archaeology through photogrammetric models and photography.
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Humans
struggle to visualise the scale of the digital. To quote The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy;
“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely,
mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down
the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space”.
Traditional analogies do not work for the digital realm for a variety
of reasons; Jos De Mul proposes that a better analogy for cyberspace
is space travel as they both contain spatial and temporal
characteristics that we don't experience on Earth. For example, if we
are recording this session, you could watch this session from another
planet and this session could be listened to in the future. However,
this argument falls down because you can use analogue technologies to
do some of these tasks, e.g. analogue radio. It is also difficult to
comprehend digital space - space is an abstract notion of nothingness
but also it is situated within our reality. It is possible to travel
through space, but you are still subject to physical laws.
Nonetheless, outer space is so large and the amount of information we
can store in the digital realm is so large that we can perhaps
compare the two in this respect. An object that can contain infinite
representations can be any size you like, and yet it can contain more
numbers than you could possibly count, like a dice with a digital
display capable of outputting any number you program it to, while an
analogue dice is limited to the number of sides it has. Much like
when staring up into the night sky; you can visualise the stars
easily enough, but could you count every known star out there? The
digital makes it possible.
Thus
we should approach digital archaeology similarly, particularly
online. Archaeologists have already highlighted the importance of the
digital image and its contribution compared to an analogue method,
showing how important the professional illustrator is to capturing
the complexities of a site. However, many studies focus on just the
visual critique of the digital, not the underlying ontology. To
balance this critique I propose De Mul's analysis of the digital,
which provides four main characteristics; Multimediality,
Interactivity, Virtuality and Connectivity.
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Multimediality
is the combination of words, sounds and (moving) images. Digital
information is in its simplest form a binary code. The digital media
can then be transported and replicated easily, which puts objects out
of their original context. Everything on this screen can be
translated into 8 binary numbers, which could then be coded into 256
different linguistic signs, which can then be used in any program
which can read a binary code. How well it will work in subsequent
programs is a different matter. Aden Evens sees multimediality as an
abstraction as well as a manipulation; by capturing information in
binary form you are also divorcing the processes of the digital from
the temporal and spatial particularities of our reality. In fact,
Evens goes so far as to say that it is THE defining feature of the
digital as all digital information is superseded by and becomes
either 1 or 0; everything or nothing.
Multimediality’s
most common function is manipulation, which isn’t a purely digital
characteristic. To illustrate my point, one of these images is the
raw image, and the other was used in the first Picture Post Magazine
in October 1938. Which of these images has been edited for
publication? The raw image (on the left) has been “airbrushed” to
spare the dignity of the young woman; an early example of an
Photoshopped image! However, analogue technology cannot combine
visual senses with audio and other senses without resorting to
different media sources. The binary code makes the digital different;
it allows all of the senses to be used in the same representational
platform. In this respect multimediality creates an easier interface
between digital computers and humans. I will come back to this point
later.
The
Picture Post image also demonstrates the media also becomes unstable
as they are in flux. The analogue and digital photographs may look
the same but they are not structurally identical, as photogrammetry
encompasses both traditional photographic methods and digital
imaging; yet these media are technologically and fundamentally
different. This leads to a common criticism of digital archaeology;
de-contextualisation. This is a serious ethical issue that concerns
the ontology of the dataset. Multimediality allows us, or a computer,
to “Photoshop” an image without us noticing the difference.
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The
second of De Mul's characteristics, Interactivity, focuses on the way
in which the user navigates through the digital. If humans will
interact with computers in new ways, then we should investigate how
this might be an ontological issue. In this case, interactivity is
best described by hypertext; a non-linear network of fragments
through which the user can navigate. Unlike a book, where the author
has put the words in a set order, you can intervene on a web page or
digital medium, such as a computer game. A book in the digital
requires no page number; you may navigate them as you please. Evens
argues that this is a significant break from analogue media, as page
numbers are considered secondary to the text in the book itself. The
referents are the text themselves. In a computer game you can
determine the actions and outcomes of the game much more so than a
book; the player is free to determine the objective of the game. You
are free to set the rules of what you are looking for in, say, a
photogrammetric model, becoming your own author and creating an
unique experience that may be shared with others. It is also possible
to do this with board games too; as long as you are create your own
rules. What this also shows is that the viewer in a sense becomes an
“author” of the work. The original author becomes a creator of
narrative spaces that allow multilinear paths to be taken.
Other
definitions of interactivity only occur when the audience actively
participates in the control of an artwork or representation. Such an
example is crowd-sourcing; a photogrammetric model can have multiple
contributions of photographs from a variety of users who are
contributing to the final product. We see such active examples in
Google Earth where models of existing structures have been
crowd-sourced, but there is no rigourous way of checking whether a
photograph is acceptable or assessing this data against the
objectives of a grander strategy. Conceptual models are also used to
fill in gaps in the model, which are entirely created in the digital
medium, which are true proxies of our reality as there is no true
basis in reality for them.
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Now
we must move on to virtuality. Here it is concerned with, to quote
Heim, “an event or entity that is real in effect but not in fact”.
In computer sciences reality and Virtuality are considered part of
the same continuum. A virtual world is a simulation of a world which
is not real in a physical sense but its effects come across as real;
think of nausea from flight simulators, or the stories of PTSD
effects from drone pilots in an army. Virtual reality takes
multimediality one step further by becoming the interface that humans
can use to access the digital. However, the consequences for
archaeology are far-ranging. Western philosophy has traditionally
made an hierarchical opposition between being and illusion, but the
digital subverts this opposition. The digital image is created from
its representation, which is then used to judge reality, creating a
positive feedback cycle where the representation can gain more
credence than the original it was based on. We may fall into this
trap if we overly rely on the virtual.
What
about virtual entities? Jeff Buechner argues that if we see reality
as a purely phenomenological experience then augmented reality is any
change in the totality of our sensory and cognitive experience that
is produced by some form of technology, via addition, manipulation or
deletion, thus augmenting
reality, like wearing rose-tinted spectacles. This definition
excludes hallucinations or illusions, of what is created by the mind
but is not real. If virtual entities are modelled on people or
objects, what happens is that you question whether the virtual entity
is a different entity from the thing it is modelled on, or whether
there is only one entity. If we believe the latter statement (there
is one entity) then you accept that a recording of said entity is the
actual entity, and the actions of the virtual entity are also the
actions of the real entity, contradicting the idea that Augmented
Reality is not reality but a change to the totality. If you believe
the former statement (there are two distinct entities) then you
encounter issues of what is natural; our reality or the virtual
entity, especially if the latter does actions that may be considered
“unnatural” to the former. For archaeology, it is particularly
problematic as it is impossible to psychoanalyse the dead; how can
you say the real person would have or not have done that action in
the past when you have never observed them doing those actions
yourself? There are no principles in defining what is considered more
ontologically “natural”. This argument creates a form of
scepticism which ultimately questions the basis of reality itself;
something that Buechner ultimately denies as the image is simply a
pictorial representation of an entity. Note however the creation of
multiple identities in the digital realm (just look at how many
overlapping or contradictory social media profiles you may have), so
individuals may not necessarily see your actions in reality in the
same way they do with your online presence, even if your actions in
reality and the virtual are identical.
What
about printing your digital model? A 3D printed model is based on the
numerical representation of the object in a virtual environment,
which is then converted into a model through a separate process. At
what point can you accept the model as a true representation of an
object or site? By creating a model you are creating an unique
creation. In a certain sense every “copy” is an “original”.
Therefore copies are not truly representative of the original work.
But what does this mean for the biography of the original as well?
Moreover, digital models are often made separate from their spatial
and temporal environments, which are often full of human detritus,
which may aid our interpretations of the site. This is not to devalue
copies, as they can still enhance our understanding of archaeology.
Nonetheless in the digital the manipulation of the image has taken
precedence over the exhibition value or cultural value of an object,
which are both central to how we display and interpret archaeology.
What
about the consequences of all this digital data? If our aim is to
record the world as it is, then we may reflect on Cripps's statement
that “information that goes into databases is far too perfect and
too often a perfect view of the world”. This is interpreted as our
methodologies of data collection are flawed by being too
representative; we are seeing what we want to see. This is difficult
to quantify as we extrapolate from an incomplete datasets and this is
difficult to scientifically test without having the whole dataset to
work with; in archaeology this data is often destroyed before it can
be recorded- a catch 22. However, by using the digital realm to
record our world we are creating a new world, not just a copy. This
is reflected somewhat in the modern/postmodern dialectic of the
mimesis/poiesis; i.e. the idea of recreating an object against the
idea of creating new ones. The computer is traditionally seen as a
modernist ideal; Nelson Goodman argued that an analogue object is
impossible to differentiate in a finite manner; it can only be
absolute in a continuum, like a thermometer. A digital computer's
strengths lie in giving definitive readings and repeatability. Can
scientific methods, such as photogrammetry, be used to create new
worlds, rather than just recording them? Archaeology's raison d'etre
is being a steward of the past, which seems a modernist ideal.
However, interpretations from archaeological features are often
multilinear, even though we are only trying to record our supposedly
unilinear world! This multilinearity is arguably a form of poesis. So
not only is the digital realm giving us the space to record our
world, but that this “recorded world” is a new world altogether.
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The
final characteristic, Connectivity, links everything we do within in
the digital realm through the medium of the internet. This brief
synopsis will highlight some further considerations. As mentioned
before digital models are de-contextualised; with connectivity a
scenario may arise when a group of schoolchildren are given a tour of
a virtual excavation with inhumations in their classroom. Without
proper supervision, education or advice from an informed person, the
children could start reciting Hamlet with the skulls. Does it matter
whether you use an unique model or a copy of the original? Should the
digital models be given as much respect as analogue ones? What about
virtually teleporting oneself into an archaeological site? Even if
you were fully immersed in a simulator, your body is still not on the
site, but you may feel the effects as if you were there. Furthermore,
this positionality
may allow the mind to occupy multiple bodies at once; excavating
multiple sites, attending multiple conferences at the same time. A
flight simulator isn't real, but the effects of it are. Could our
minds cope with multiple spaces? Even today some of these scenarios
are possible!
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To
conclude, is there an ontological difference between analogue and
digital models? With apologies to Douglas Adams, The
digital space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely,
mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way to
the computer but that's peanuts to digital space.
The abstract is made possible and apparent. The digital doesn't work
to our laws, and should be treated as such. All information is either
everything or not-(everyt)hing. Although the digital is pure
representation, the characteristics of multimediality decontextualise
everything you record; interactivity makes the participant more of an
author of the work. Using nothing more than human interaction the
representation of reality becomes the yardstick we use to judge
reality itself, creating a positive feedback cycle. It becomes
difficult to believe historical characters in a virtual reality
simulator. You can break out of your human limitations and experience
the world in a trans-geographical and trans-historical arena that
surpasses anything possible in the real world, although its effects
are apparent. Perhaps the most devastating outcome of this question
is whether we are actually using the digital to record the past, or,
in using multiple interpretations of archaeology as an analogy, we
are creating new worlds altogether that seek to enhance the human
experience through the digital medium. This dichotomy of recreation
versus creation is perhaps the question that will define digital
archaeology in years to come. It all feels real, but that should not
distract from the abstract nature of the digital.
