Standing on Sandia Peak (An Intro to Archiving Personal Experiences)
It was following our early morning panel at the American Studies Association that a colleague and I rented a convertible and drove into the New Mexico desert. Ten miles away from the city of Albuquerque, we found ourselves at the base of the Sandia Mountains, adjacent to the Pueblo of Sandia Indian tribe, and riding the world’s longest passenger aerial tramway. It was an experience to remember. As families crammed into the small tram and we began our ascent, children squealed at the gentle rocking of the car, and cameras flashed at the emerging vista. Reaching the peak, we hiked several miles and could see much of the state of New Mexico from the highest point. But my purpose in sharing this story is not to offer travel advice (other than for perhaps Albuquerque’s BEST burrito); instead, it leads up to what I saw and how it spurred a series of thoughts that I’ll develop over the course of several upcoming blog posts.
Earlier that day, our panel had focused on tools for digital scholarship, and with that fresh in my mind I couldn’t believe that I captured this video:
Hang Gliding over Sandia Peak from Dave Lester on Vimeo.
Floating. Gliding. Flying. I was struck by how wonderful these hang gliders were, and how brave the individuals were who flew them. My first instinct was to pull out my digital camera to record their flight, at which time I zoomed in and captured this video. You can hear a nearby tourist whose camera memory card hit capacity mid-flight, and see the great altitude of their flight as I continually zoom out more and more. The fact that I recorded a video of them flying was in itself insignificant. But unlike those around me who were content capturing a short clip, I wanted something more. I wanted to preserve that experience a greater way. Perhaps I was still mulling over earlier thoughts of how digital tools can transform scholarship, or my ever-increasing interest in digital archives had the best of me, but I began to wonder: what sophisticated ways could I document the totality of this experience? And much later I asked: what can I learn about myself and the culture I experience through a personal digital archive of such experiences? I continue to wonder.
I saved any physical documents from Albuquerque that I could, including my ticket stub and receipt from dinner. I also took panoramic video of several places. But I ultimately realized that this nagging urge to archive an experience was one that I had over a year prior, while doing ethnography in virtual worlds. While studying virtual “wild west towns,” I wondered what ways I could preserve their virtual histories and historical roleplaying. It was daunting, ill-defined, and overly-ambitious. But my impulse to archive the experience atop Sandia Peak drove me back to thinking about personal experiences and how we understand/recreate/re-experience them through digital archives. I was looking for a body of data to provide the totality of an experience; an historical var_dump() from an array of experiences.
As I researched the personal archiving of experiences, I learned that I’m not alone in my interest. In fact, some of the most most significant work in this regard was done several years prior to my original interest . . . (to be continued)
