‘I’ve never told anybody that before’: the virtual archive and collaborative spaces of knowledge production
‘I’ve never told anybody that before’: the virtual archive and collaborative spaces of knowledge production
This chapter discusses the ‘virtual archives’ of community spaces and their potentials for collaborative, community-based knowledge production. It evaluates and problematises concepts of virtual archive engagement using a specific virtual archive project and a specific community as an illustrative case study. Experience Temple Works is a multisensory and participatory virtual archive of a Grade I listed building in South Leeds. It was intended to facilitate an analysis of the relationships between the vivid sensory experience of the building and the creative and cultural activities taking place within it. However, as this chapter attests, the project came to attain much greater social and academic impact through its later reconfiguration as a community-orientated platform for collaborative knowledge production. The overarching intention here is to explicate how new forms of virtual archive might challenge the power relationships historically associated with archives as privileged spaces of knowledge production, while simultaneously avoiding the many pitfalls associated with digitally mediated forms of experience and participation, both of which are well documented within the academic disciplines of new and digital media.
Keywords: Experience Temple Works, Temple Works, virtual archives, community-orientated platform, collaborative knowledge production, power relationships, digital media
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