Documenting Performance: the backstory

Posted on October 29, 2016 by drlynrobinson

This post first appeared on http://documentingperformance.com on October 16th 2016. It describes the background to the symposium held on 31st October 2016, at City, University of London: “The Future of Documents: documenting performance”

The Twitter hashtag relating to this event is #docperform.

Cross-posted here for reference.

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There are now just two weeks to go until ‘Documenting Performance’, our exploratory, interdisciplinary symposium on the concept of performance as a document, and the ideas, theories and practices around the documentation of performance. We are hoping that our initial event will spark further interest to form a longer term project, which we are calling DocPerform.

My initial feelings are positive, as for this event, both the response to our call for papers (27 abstracts, and I had to turn another couple away after the deadline) and the number of registered attendees (75) has been stunning. The event is now sold out, but we are running a wait-list so please email me [lyn@city.ac.uk] if you would like to come but have been unable to secure a ticket. If you are holding a ticket that you know you will not use, please cancel via Eventbrite, so someone else can join us.

We would like to say a very big ‘thank you!’ to everyone who has sent us ideas, and registered for the event. It was hard to make a choice about which papers to include, but I hope that everyone will agree that our Programme, showing the range of approaches to how we currently understand performance as a document, is pretty good! We are very excited about the day, and look forward to meeting new colleagues interested in documents and documentation.

My original idea was to host a series of seminars within our research centre, (Centre for Information Science) to examine how the conceptual view of the document is developing in the 21^st century. The question of what is / is not a document is considered in work of Otlet, La Fontaine, Briet, Buckland, Lund, Latham, Gorichanaz, Robinson and other writers within the field of library and information science, with the earliest papers having been written at the start of the 20th century. The obvious and fascinating question would be ‘what next’? I subsequently felt, however, that it would be helpful to take a step back, and to consider whether any unifying perspective could be applied to the increasing number of entities already extant upon the documentary landscape. Such a framework would be valuable to any discipline concerned with the organisation and preservation of its domain output, and could also be used to help formulate understanding of future document types, real or conceptual.

My working draft of such a framework is shown at the end of this post. Several colleagues contributed to my ideas, and I would like to mention them briefly as part of the background to our forthcoming event.

When my friend and colleague Prof Adrian Cheok joined City a few years ago, I was inspired by his work on the multisensory internet, (transmitting the sensations of taste, smell and touch in addition to sound and vision via the network), and this, plus developments in pervasive computing, wearable technology, human-computer interfaces and virtual reality, brought to mind the idea of the library as the ‘Experience Parlour’. I came across this idea in The Library of the Future, a book by Bruce Shuman, written in 1989. In his series of scenarios for the future library, he suggested one where reading a good book meant actually living, or experiencing it. I wondered if this form of immersive document was one possible future for documents, and consequently for libraries and other cultural, collection orientated institutions.

Whilst science fiction provides us with many depictions of immersive documents, (for example the holosuite in the Star Trek universe), at the present time fully-immersive documents, wherein the reader perceives a scripted unreality as reality, do not exist. However, many of the entities to which we refer as documents offer the reader a partially-immersive, or complex, experience. These documents provide the reader (broadly interpreted to include related terms player, participant, viewer, audience member) with a compelling and realistic world, but one which is delineated to varying extents from actual reality. The reader knows that they, and the document with which they are engaging, are a part of the real world (for want of a better phrase). This is in contrast to the experience delivered by fully immersive-document (as yet theoretical) where the reader cannot distinguish between the unreality and reality, and the interface between human and computer is invisible and frictionless.

A series of encounters over the past 3 years provided insight for developing a framework to help us understand what partially-immersive documents might be, and how they could relate to other documents.

Videogames

In June 2014, Adrian invited me to a seminar on the history of video games at the Daiwa Foundation. The enthusiasm with which players spoke of their interaction with early games indicated how strongly they identified with and enjoyed the ‘unreal’ worlds of the game. Whilst some games offered realistic environments, others offered clearly computer-generated spaces, yet the players still engaged time after time. Video games are an example of partially-immersive documents. They provide the ‘reader’ with a compelling world, but one which is clearly separate from reality. Even the most enthusiastic player knows the game world is constructed.

The playing of historical games was not the only point for consideration during the seminar; the issue of preservation was paramount, and discussion turned towards which characteristics of the games needed to be preserved. The list went beyond saving a copy of the software (computer program), conservation of its associated hardware or simulations of now-extinct computer operating environments, to ensuring that feelings, such as elation, despair, desire to win, anxiety, happiness or nostalgia, all possibly experienced by the player during the game, could also be guaranteed. The question then became more complex; are we attempting to preserve an historical game to be played afresh in a contemporary time, or are we attempting to preserve something more, by including something of the past environment, and even the experience/feelings of the player or players?

So, if we intend to record and preserve ‘experience or feelings’, do we mean that we are attempting to ensure that (re)playing the preserved game will generate the same sorts of feelings that were invoked generally in previous times, or are we attempting to reconstruct individual experiences of a game, exactly as they happened on a previous occasion, so that somehow the players or readers feel exactly the same as they did during a previous, specific occasion (for example the excitment of completing a level, or of a winning goal). If this latter reconstruction were technologically possible, it should also be possible to experience a game from the viewpoint of someone else, by replaying (and experiencing) their memory track, alongside the game timeline.

Experience is hard to define, and even harder to code for access and reuse. This level of enhancement to partially-immersive documents remains theoretical, but it is possible to imagine that a layer of ‘experience’, general or personal, could be added to complex, or partially-immersive document formats. The concept of adding experience or feelings to a document, or record of a document (documentation), introduces the need for us to consider who the document or documentation is for. Whose point of view are we recording? In theory, a record could be made of every individual experience of every individual document, including the perspective creator(s) or author(s).

These concepts are reflected in recent developments in journalism, where 360 degree recording is used to film documentaries. The realistic, ‘immersive’ nature of these films enhances emphathy from the viewer, evoking feelings similar to those felt by those present at the time the recorded events took place. See: Virtual Reality, 360 Video and the Future of Immersive Journalism, by Zillah Watson, 1st July 2015.

At this stage then, we have the concept that video games, or simple copies of video games are partially-immersive documents, but that copies or recordings could also offer an additional layer of general ambience/sentiment, or personally specific thoughts and feelings. These enhanced copies, also partially-immersive documents, would be considered new documents in their own right, although associated with the original video game.

Interactive Narratives

At around the same time that I encountered the video games enthusiasts, I became aware of the convergence of video games with interactive fiction. These latter digital documents, which increased in popularity and number with the ready availability of consumer technologies such as smart phones and tablets, attempt to engage the reader by allowing input to or participation in the script. They offer interactive engagement across a range of platforms, and can reach out to the reader via texts, emails and phone-calls. Innovative software such as that which reads emotion from facial expressions can be used to tailor interactive fiction to the individual reader. The difference between an interactive fiction and a game is hard to specify, although one distinction I came across suggested that although many games have a narrative aspect to them, this is not required.

Interactive fictions are also partially-immersive documents, proferring experiences which are distinguishable from reality, yet which offer varying degrees of participation and immersion in compelling, unreal worlds. Like the worlds of video games, interactive narratives could be recorded with the intent to evoke time or context specific feelings, or indeed the feelings or experiences from a given player at a given instance.

Documentation

Technologies which underpin partially-immersive (and perhaps eventually fully-immersive) documents such as video games and interactive fictions, can also be used to record and preserve them. The most straightforward way to think of this is when making a copy of the software. In some ways, identical copies of video games or interactive fictions can be considered documents which are the same as the originals; compare with FRBR‘s ‘manifestation’ level for books, where the copies differ only at ‘item’ level. If we are thinking, however, also to record the ‘experience’ of the player or ‘readers’, then in adding layers of information to the original computer programs we are creating further new documents. Documents which contain a level of immersion, (experience, feelings) associated with a given reader, player, or creator.

Video games and interactive narratives can also be considered to possess temporality. They arguably exist only whils they are being ‘read’ or ‘played’. Whilst the concept of a book or paper may be considered to exist as long as its physical form is extant, there is the question of whether the video game or the interactive narrative exists as its computer program on some kind of storage media, or whether it only exists when being played. Similary, we could suppose a book only exists either in print or electronic format whilst it is being read, and that the ‘bookness’ is separate from its representative media. This is not a usual interpretation however. The concept of analogue documents, in contrast to digital, partially-immersive and immersive documents is important, and forms the basis of the draft framework suggested below.

Immersive Theatre

The increasing popularity in London and other cities for immersive and participatory theatre added performance to the mix of partially-immersive documents.

Performances, displaying some parallels with video games and interactive narratives, only exist for a given amount of time, and unless one counts their documentary containers, such as the written script, or computer programme and data records, they are intangible forms of document. Like video games and interactive narratives, a performance can offer varying degrees of participation, and feelings of immersion.

Several of my students were/are fans of immersive theatre, attending shows such as Punchdrunk’s ‘The Drowned Man’ and Thomas Otway’s ‘Venice Preserv’d’ several times over. I was invited to go along to a performance of Venice Preserv’d’ where I witnessed first hand the desire of the audience to participate in the show; they readily and willingly suspended reality to a significant extent. Again I thought of documentation, and how a performance could be regarded as a document being ‘read’ by the audience. To some extent, all performance is interactive/participatory, as the audience is reacting internally to the show even if they are sitting as passive observers. Some performance, however, offers the audience higher levels of interactivity, from singing along with the cast, to joining the actors for part of the show, and participating in the performance. Varying degrees of participation in temporal events, also offered by video games and interactive fiction, are traits of partial-immersion, and a performance could therefore also be considered as a partially-immersive document. The boundaries of ‘what is a performance’ is a valuable discussion, but left for another occasion.

In the case of performance, this raises the (unoriginal) question, that if the performance itself is a document, is documentation (recording) of a performance yet another document? And a further, also unoriginal question, does the documentation intended to reconstruct a performance actually create yet another performance? Would it be possible to recreat exactly a performance from the viewpoint of a ‘reader’ or audience member, in the same way as for recreating the exact experience of playing a video game at a particular time and place? We can consider too, the recording of a performance from the perspective of the creator, or of a performer.

When preserving or recording a performance then, are we documenting just the performance per se, or also the thoughts, feelings, and interactions of members of the audience? Should we attempt to garner something from the actors in each performance to improve the validity of the record? A performance is clearly more than something that can be represented by a script, photographs or a video recording. It is necessary, when documenting performance, to say something about temporality and participation (new to me, but of course unoriginal from other disciplinary viewpoints). We must distinguish between a record of somthing which is intended to be experienced for the first time by a reader, and a record which includes something of how it felt to have participated on a previous occasion. The embedding of thoughts and feelings within any sort of document has yet to be fully explored concpetually, as well as technologically.

Fandom

In September 2013, Ludi Price joined the Centre for Information Science as my research student, beginning her PhD on the information behaviour of cult media fans. Our work lead me to appreciate and consider the art of cosplay as a kind of performance, and thus a form of partially-immersive document. Clearly, there are links between cosplay and participatory theatre, and the question of should anything of this be documented, and if so how, appeared again.

Dance

Adrian invited Ludi and I to a talk he had arranged by the artist Choi Ka Fai, who was interested in recording patterns of the electrical signals which generate muscle contractions (is the body itself the apparatus for remembering cultural processes?). His idea was to attempt to record the movement of dancers, and to play them back on another dancer, to see if movement could be recorded and transmitted. If this is ever possible, it would allow one person to almost become another, experiencing not just a recording of a performance, but what it felt like to be part of it. This could in theory be one of the experiential layers added to the concept of the immersive or complex document, but the work so far remains experimental.

Immersive Documents

By this time, I had published two short papers on the concept of the multisensory, immersive document. Sarah Rubidge, Professor Emerita (Dance) at University of Chichester, came across these papers and subsequently contacted me. Sarah had been developing immersive, choreographic installations for two decades, and was interested in how to document such participatory experiential works beyond using words and photographs. Sarah’s ideas of using 360 degree camera recording or virtual reality to represent these forms of performance art were similar to my own ideas; that technologies such as VR, together with multisensory rather than merely multimedia recording, might allow us to more accurately document the experiential nature of performance and related works for future scholars, students and historians.

For the moment however, the work remains conceptual, as although 360 degree recording improves the visual experience of the record, multisensory recording, especially that related to the sensation of movement, is in its infancy.

Clearly if we could make a complete, multisensory recording of a performance, the recorded document could be read either to experience the work for the first time, or to experience it again as either yourself on a previous occasion, or as someone else.

Sarah also suggested that I attend the Digital Echoes Symposium at C-DaRE, the dance research group at Coventry University. Here I met several dancers and researchers, who were interested in the documentation and archiving of dance. One of these participants was PhD researcher Rebecca Stancliffe, who introduced me to a project called Synchronous Objects, where dance movements were converted into data, then into other objects for visual representation. Rebecca had found the work of Paul Otlet, and was working on the concept of what is a document from the discipline of dance, totally unrelated to LIS. The day was fascinating, and I learnt about new things to document, such as body memory, in addition to audience recollections and dancer insights. The way dancers perceive a performance, their work, is totally different from how traditional documentalists think of it.

Performance Art

Over the summer of 2016, I attended a course at the Tate Modern on Framing the Performance, led by Georgina Guy. Georgina led the class for four, weekly sessions, in which a group of us considered how Tate had displayed and documented a range of performance art installations. We were invited as a class to consider what we needed to know about a work, in order to store, archive, preserve, access, use and ultimately understand it. A fascinating field.

Data

My most recent encounter with partially-immersive documents came as I was preparing for one of my own classes, a session for a module called Digital Information Technologies and Applications. The theme was data. In thinking about how to demonstrate data, I came across several artists whose work used a data input to bring into being a constantly changing visual artwork. See for example: http://www.worldprocessor.com/ . Participation then, does not only imply human input, but also that of data.

Interdisciplinarity

Alongside all of this, I undertook some further literature reviews, looking for work relating to documents, and documentation of performance, but from outside the LIS discipline. There was plenty. Performance artists from all fields, theatre, dance, music, performance art, were all represented in the literature on documenting performance. All these previously unimagined colleagues working on documents and documentation from a completely different background to LIS. I started to think about an event to bring the two cohorts together. On mentioning my interest to a friend, Tia Siddiqui, she put me in touch with a colleague of hers, from Rose Bruford college, Joseph Dunne, who had a background in performance, but who was also interested in documentation. I told Joe my idea of a symposium for both LIS and Theatre and Performance advocates, to share ideas on how performance can be regarded as a document, and how we can best record and preserve such partially-immersive entities for reuse if and whenever necessary.

Joe agreed to work with me on the idea, and our first collaborative outcome is this symposium ‘Documenting Performance’. The event sits within the wider consideration of the document by researchers at the Centre for Information Science, and specifically considers performance, although that is not to say video games, interactive fiction and other examples of partially-immersive documents such as performance art or information art do not warrant attention, but perhaps for another day.

Pulling all of these threads together, I think we can understand a partially-immersive document as one which affords the reader a compelling and engaging environment, for which the boundaries between reality and the imaginery, scripted world are blurred. Such documents present in varied media formats, and some of their characteristics may overlap with those of fully-immersive documents. Partially-immersive documents are interesting, because they already exist, and because of the questions they raise in respect of description and indexing, recording, access, preservation and use. They push at the boundaries of traditional documentation and demand that we reconsider our definition of documents in the age of VR, AR and mixed reality. Documentalists need to embrace the characteristics of participation and experience in our work, if we wish to fully maintain the 21st century record of humanity.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of performance as a document is the capture and recording of the thoughts and feelings of those participating, whether as reader, (audience member), performer or creator, alongside the more usual physical representations such as a script, or a video. Understanding and rendering of this participatory layer is arguably what will allow us to move forward in the documentation of performance, in that it will move us closer to the construct of an acutal performance from a given viewpoint, so that we can offer a reader a more perfect copy of an original experience.

A (Draft) Unifying Perspective for Documents

It is perhaps helpful at this stage to construct a unifying perspective which includes all documents, encompassing also those which are neither partially- nor fully-immersive. I think we need two further categories: physical/analogue documents, and digital documents. The latter category being comprised of counterparts to the physical entities, and also of born-digital works.

As a starting point for discussion, we now have a unifying framework comprising four categories of documents:

physical/analogue

digital

partially-immersive/complex

fully-immersive

Exact definitions of these categories, and the identification of any overlaps or non-sensical implications needs further work. It is likely that the definitive placement of a given type of document within any given category will be problematic, as the interpretation of a document type will suject to context and viewpoint.

At first glance, the main categories seem self-evident. We can, for example, notice two main, straightforward ways in which physical or digital documents may be differentiated from paritally-immersive or immersive works.

Firstly, they are documents which do not change. That is, that a physical book remains the same book over time, as does a digital text, or artwork. No input or participation from the reader is anticipated, or even possible, so the work remains as it was originally created, unaffected by input or participative interaction.

Secondly, physcial/analogue or digital documents do not possess temporal characteristics, apart from those associated with the natural decay which affects all material objects. In contrast to a performance or an exhibition for example, which reach an end point beyond which, arguably, they no longer exist.

The straightforward delineation between the categories of documents becomes subtly problematic however, if we think more closely about the concepts implied by the axes of characterisation. Although the book (physical or digital) demands no active participation, are we not participating by the mere act of reading and construction of the bookish world in our minds? When we refer to a document as a physical entity, are we not implying the container, in contrast to the idea, the informational content, or the ‘bookness’?

Consider also temporality. Is it possible, for example, that the interpretation of a text changes as the reader ages? Is the document or painting encountered as a child the same as that encountered by the same person, but in adult life?

Whilst further thought is necessary, we can suggest that within each of the four categories of documents, further characterisation can be made by placing every document at a point along each of four axes:

temporality: the document exists for a limited time

tangibility: the extent to which the document has a material form

degree of input or participation required: the extent to which interaction is afforded

immersion: the extent to which reality is suspended

The exact understanding of, and the scale or values for these axes are as yet undefined. How does participation relate to immersion? One can surely be immersed in a document, whilst remaining un-participative. There is unquesionably more work to be done to understand the nature of documents and the processes of documentation, and the draft framework above is suggested as a tool with which we can elucidate and explore concepts at a more specific level.

DocPerform

This symposium, focusing on performance, is a part of this work. It is the first of the documentation events at City, although it has grown into a collaborative event, somewhat larger than I originally envisaged.

The symposium is divided into three sessions. Firstly, we look at some existing projects in key memory institutions. Secondly, we examine less traditional aspects of performance which we could try to document, and finally we consider some newer types of performance and ways to understand what we should be documenting. We hope that you enjoy the day, and that it will encourage learning and cooperation from both fields of LIS and Theatre and Performance.

Note: This post was updated on 9/1/17 by LR

“A different kind of knowing”: speculations on understanding in the light of the Philosophy of Information

Posted on July 16, 2016 by drlynrobinson

Note: This paper first appeared on David Bawden’s blog the ‘Occasional Informationist‘ on July 4th 2016.

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This is a slightly updated and extended version of a paper by myself and Lyn Robinson, presented at the 9th Conceptions of Library and Information Science conference, CoLIS9, Uppsala, 28 June 2016. It includes some additional points raised in discussion of the paper.

Introduction

This is a different kind of knowing… It’s like understanding, I suppose
Lyra Belacqua in (Northern Lights, Philip Pullman, Scholastic, 2011)

Bawden and Robinson (2015) have argued that library and information science (LIS) should focus on the promotion of understanding, as much as on the provision of information, and the sharing of knowledge. But there is a lack of clarity and consensus, both in general discourse and in the LIS literature, as to what is meant by understanding. This short and speculative paper considers some philosophical approaches to understanding, particularly those related to Floridi’s Philosophy of Information, and based on the general idea that understanding is, in the words of Pullman’s Lyra, a special kind of knowledge.

Understanding is often associated in philosophical discourse with the hermeneutics of Gadamer, drawing on the thought of Husserl and Heidegger, and emphasising interpretation of texts; see, in order of accessibility, Zimmermann (2015), Gadamer (2008), and Gadamer (2013). Stock and Stock (2013) outline this approach, and its relevance to information science and information systems. We are not seeking to ignore or to contradict this approach, rather to suggest that there may be an alternative and complementary viewpoint.

We begin by noting that the information sciences have commonly fitted ‘understanding’ into a linear succession, or pyramid, of concepts, also including data, information, knowledge and (sometimes) wisdom. In the initial statement of this model, Ackoff (1989) placed understanding as a concept between knowledge and wisdom, characterising it as an ‘appreciation of why’. The idea that understanding is associated with a form of knowledge sufficiently deep as to be able to provide explanation is attractive as a pragmatic way of dealing with the concept. But it has been largely excluded from discussion of these kinds of concepts in LIS (Rowley 2007; Frické 2009), while the whole hierarchy or pyramid model has itself been criticised on numerous grounds (Frické, 2009; Ma, 2012; Yu, 2015). It seems sensible to look for a more firmly grounded explanation, and perhaps a definition, of the idea of understanding.

Methods
The study is based on a synthesis of philosophical literature, found from a selective literature review. Items dealing with the concept of understanding from an information-based or knowledge-based perspective were identified from searches on Web of Knowledge, Library and Information Science Abstracts, Philosopher’s Index and Google Scholar, and by following references and citations. Close reading of a set of selected articles led to a synthesis of concepts.

Understanding in Floridi’s philosophy of information
To be of value for LIS, as well as to be congruent with most pragmatically useful views of understanding, we suggest that such an explanation would have to involve the concepts of information and knowledge, and perhaps data, carefully defined. A philosphically rigorous analysis of these concepts which treats them in a way of use to LIS is Luciano Floridi’s philosophy of information, and we begin with this as our basis. We are not thereby ignoring the Gadamer/Heidegger approach to hermeneutics; rather seeking an alternative, and potentially complementary, conception.

Floridi (2010 and 2011), as is well known, defines information as well-formed, meaningful and truthful data, in his general definition of information (GDI). Knowledge, he regards as information formed into larger units: ‘Knowledge and information are members of the same conceptual family. What the former enjoys and the latter lacks … is the web of mutual relations that allow one part of it to account for another. Shatter that, and you are left with a … list of bits of information that cannot help to make sense of the reality they seek to address’ (Floridi, 2011, p. 288). The references to accounting and making sense suggest that knowledge may necessarily have explanatory power, often associated with understanding. Winograd and Flores (1986, p. 30) also emphasise this link: ‘what we understand is based on what we know, and what we already know comes from being able to understand’.

More formally, Floridi (2011 chapter 12, and 2012) argues that information may be upgraded to knowledge by being embedded in a network of questions and answers that correctly accounts for all of the information items. This is termed a theory of account, an idea going back to Plato, account here meaning simply giving reasons – causal explanations, logical deductions, didactic factual support, clarification through example or analogy, and so on – to link the individual pieces of information. The information items may be assumed to be compatible, and to form a coherent network, by virtue of their conforming to Floridi’s GDI.

Does this equate knowledge with understanding? Floridi is rather cautious here, suggesting that although we would generally say that Wikipedia or a scientific textbook contain knowledge, not just information, ‘it seems that knowing requires understanding, or at least that the two are mutually related’, and therefore textbooks, webpages and current artificial agents hold knowledge extensionally bit not intentionally, and therefore cannot be said to understand (Floridi, 2012, p. 450-451). Understanding, therefore, is a state of a conscious entity, when it has internalised knowledge, which is itself a collection of information arranged in a network of a particular nature, its nodes linked by account-giving interrelations. This is similar to the viewpoint espoused in Shera’s early formulation of social epistemology; an individual person has an emotional interaction with knowledge, and can therefore understand in a way in a society cannot (Shera, 1970; see also Furner, 2002)

Other current philosophical perspectives
Floridi’s is not the only current philosophical account of understanding which relates the idea to information and knowledge, and we now examine some others.

Jeroen de Ridder (2014) regards understanding as a kind of higher-order knowledge, in a network of knowledge with internal coherence and explanatory potential. Somewhat similar to Floridi’s conception, in its emphasis on an explanatory network, de Ridder’s idea of understanding simply takes the concept of knowledge as a given, and makes no relation with information.

David Deutsch (1997) gives an explanation, though not a rigorous definition, of understanding, as distinct from knowing, describing and predicting. He states that understanding is hard to define exactly, but it encompasses the inner working of things, why things are as they are and having coherence and elegance; it is about deep explanations and simplicity. Again there is no direct relation to information, but there is a similar emphasis to Floridi on coherent explanatory capability.

Jonathan Kvanvig (2003) distinguishes understanding from information, knowledge and truth. He suggests that ‘understanding requires the grasping of explanatory and other coherence-making relationships in a large and comprehensive body of information. One can know many unrelated pieces of information, but understanding is achieved only when informational items are pieced together’ (Kvanvig, 2003, p. 192). The object of understanding (that which is understood) is not constituted as a number of single propositions, but rather as an ‘informational chunk”‘. He refers to the grasping of the structure within this chunk as an ‘internal seeing or appreciating’ (Kvanvig, 2003, p. 198). This approach is able to cope with ambiguity, contradiction, missing or false information, and all the other messy features present in real-world information collections. It is not inconsistent with the typical pragmatic understanding noted above, but it goes beyond it. It emphasizes that in understanding we are always: (1) dealing with a large and complex set of information; (2) going beyond a simple ordering and enumerating of the contents of that set; and, (3) gaining some holistic ‘grasp’ of the contents of the set. This seems to be the sort of conception of understanding of value for the pragmatic needs of LIS. There are many similarities here with Floridi’s conception, but one distinct difference: whereas Floridi insists on that data must be true to count as information, Kvanvig’s approach allows for contradictions, and for false information to be managed on the way to understanding.

Adam Toon (2015) takes understanding to be a cognitive state; understanding feels different from just knowing, requiring not merely possession of information or knowledge, but also an ability to see or grasp the connections between them. This is reminiscent of Floridi’s ideas, though Toon does not ground his view in any distinction between information and knowledge, writing of what is to be grasped as ‘relevant facts and theoretical principles’, ‘relevant information’ and ‘various items of knowledge’. Toon argues that understanding should be seen as extended cognition; not merely what happens in a person’s mind, but also involving real world items. He exemplifies this with the use of pen and paper, but it is tempting to extend this to suggest that understanding may involve more complex information tools. However, as Toon points out, having the address of a website of a online course for a subject is not at all the same as understanding the subject.

Christoph Kelp (2015) uses a knowledge-based account of understanding to deal with the evident fact that there can be different degrees of understanding. He, like the other authors mentioned here, equates understanding to connected knowledge; the more comprehensive and well-connected the knowledge, the greater the degree of understanding. While most people’s understanding of a topic will be less than maximal, because their knowledge is neither comprehensive nor entirely connected, Kelp suggests that we may argue that someone understands something if they can perform a contextually relevant task.

Understanding for LIS
Of the conceptions of understanding reviewed above, only Floridi’s is rooted in carefully defined ideas of data, information and knowledge. Since this approach seems the most appropriate and acceptable for the LIS context, we suggest that Floridi’s philosophy of information could be used as the basis for a conception of understanding suitable for LIS.

However, Floridi’s networks of well-formed, meaningful and truthful information seem at first sight perhaps too idealistic for the situations encountered in LIS. In particular, the veridicality requirement seems onerous. We know that much information, even the best information to hand at any time, is not necessarily true. Even scientific theories, often held as the most reliable form of our knowledge, are open to correction and improvement. This was the point made by Karl Popper, when he insisted that his World 3 of objective knowledge must encompass error and contradiction (Popper, 1979). We may follow Floridi’s terminology in seeing information science as dealing with ‘semantic content’, itself composed of information (true), misinformation (false) and disinformation (deliberately false). However, this is not how most of those involved in the information disciplines would naturally regard the contents of their collections.

For this reason, Kvanvig’s conception of information, with its acceptance of the intrinsic messiness of most bodies of knowledge encountered in the real world seems more in line with Popper’s ideas, and hence more helpful for LIS. What is needed, it seems, it a reconciliation of the ideas of Floridi and of Kvanvig, in providing an account of understanding helpful for LIS.

This may be approached, we suggest, by adapting the ideas of Kelp on degrees on understanding. Where Kelp takes the comprehensiveness, and the extent of connectedness, of knowledge as the criteria for degree of understanding, we may add truthfulness as a third criterion. Thereby, complete understanding is characterised by a collection of information which is comprehensive, optimally connected, and entirely truthful; when any of the three criteria are less than a maximum, the degree of understanding is thereby reduced.

Finally, we adapt Floridi’s categorisation of understanding as a state of a conscious entity, by adding Toon’s recognition that it may be enhanced and extended by availability and use of information tools and systems.

We are therefore able to propose a tentative account of understanding, to be of value for LIS as follows:

Information is taken to be well-formed, meaningful, truthful data. Knowledge is taken to be information organised in a network of account-giving inter-relations. Understanding occurs when a conscious entity, supported as necessary by information systems, appreciates the totality of a body of knowledge, including its interconnections. The extent to which the knowledge is incomplete, contradictory or false determines the degree to which understanding is less than complete.

While this account is not formally stated, it does seem to satisfactorily reconcile the perspectives of Popper, Kvanvig and Floridi, in a way which should prove acceptable for the pragmatic purposes of LIS. It also poses a useful counterpoint to the hermeneutic conception, so that the complementary nature of the two could usefully be examined.

Conclusions
The pragmatic value of an account of understanding, of the kind developed here, is that it may prove useful in developing new generations of information systems and services which may directly and explicitly support the gaining of understanding. This will require systems which go beyond the provision of facts, knowledge fragments, and documents, and beyond the answering of specific queries (Bawden and Robinson, 2015). Development of such systems will require studies of the information behaviours and practices, and the information literacies, associated with the gaining of understanding, rather than simply the acquiring of information. A careful formal account of what we mean by understanding, of which the tentative proposal presented here is a starting point, is needed to underlie such developments, and to contribute to their success. This is likely to require a synthesis of the conception outlined here, based on Philosophy of Information, and the arguably complementary conception based on hermeneutics.

Post-conference addenda
In discussion after the paper, it was pointed out that different groups might reach entirely different understandings, based on essentially the same body of public knowledge; climate change pressure groups were noted as an example (thanks to Geoffrey Bowker for sparking this discussion). Even more dramatically, conspiracy theorists may form entirely coherent and inter-connected knowledge frameworks, which have little to do with truthful information as generally understood. Maintaining these frameworks of understanding seems to rely on selective information seeking, and on active avoidance of potentially contradictory information, as shown in the paper presented at this CoLIS9 conference by Bhuva Narayan and Medina Preljevic on anti-vaccination pressure groups. It seems reasonable to regard such an understanding as deficient compared with one which is able to accept and consider all potential relevant information. Perhaps a further, fourth, criterion for the extent of understanding; a Popperian commitment to accepting, indeed actively seeking, potentially disruptive knowledge, which could amend and extend the framework of understanding.

The question was also raised as to whether the kind of understanding outlined here is necessarily an attribute of an individual, or whether it could also apply to the understanding of a social group. It is clear that the concept of understanding which we present here is that of a conscious entity; an ‘inforg’ in Floridi’s terminology. Whether it is appropriate to regard a group of people as such an entity seems doubtful, and therefore this is strictly an account of individual understanding. However, where we find groups defined by a common knowledge-base, as in the socio-cognitive basis of domain analysis, it may be reasonable, and helpful, to apply some of these considerations to the understanding of the group as a whole, provided that we do not imply that we are dealing with a group consciousness.

References

Ackoff, R. (1989) From data to wisdom. Journal of Applied Systems Analysis 16(1), 3-9.

Bawden, D. & Robinson, L. (2015) Information and the gaining of understanding. Journal of Information Science, online first area, DOI 10.1177/0165551515621691.

de Ridder, J, (2014) Epistemic dependence and collective scientific knowledge. Synthese 191(1) 37-53.

Deutsch, D. (1997). The fabric of reality. London: Penguin.

Floridi, L. (2010), Information – a very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Floridi, L. (2011), The Philosophy of Information. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Floridi, L. (2012) Semantic information and the network theory of account. Synthese 184(3), 431-454.

Frické, M. (2009) The knowledge pyramid: a critique of the DIKW hierarchy. Journal of Information Science, 35(2), 131-142.

Furner, J. (2002) Shera’s social epistemology recast as psychological bibliology. Social Epistemology 16(1), 5-22.

Gadamer, H.G. (2008) Philosophical Hermeneutics (2nd revised edition). Berkeley CA: University of California Press.

Gadamer, H.G. (2013) Truth and method (Bloomsbury revelations), London Bloomsbury.

Kelp, C. (2015) Understanding phenomena. Synthese. 192(12), 3799-3816.

Kvanvig, J. L. (2003). The value of knowledge and the pursuit of understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ma, L. (2013) Meanings of information: the assumptions and research consequences of three foundational LIS theories. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 63(4), 716-723.

Popper, K.R. (1979), Objective knowledge: an evolutionary approach (revised edition), Oxford: Clarendon Press

Shera, J. (1970) Sociological foundations of librarianship. New York: Asia Publishing House.

Stock, W.G., & Stock, M. (2013). Handbook of information science. Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 50-57.

Rowley, J. (2007) The wisdom hierarchy: representations of the DIKW hierarchy. Journal of Information Science, 33(2), 163-180.

Yu, L. (2015) Back to the fundamentals again: a redefinition of information and associated LIS concepts following a deductive approach. Journal of Documentation, 71(4), 795-816.

Winograd, T. & Flores, F. (1986). Understanding computers and cognition: A new foundation for design. Norwood NJ: Ablex.

Zimmermann, J. (2015). Hermeneutics: a Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fanfiction in the Library

Posted on June 27, 2016 by drlynrobinson

Image of title slide, created by @ludiprice

Here is a brief synopsis of the paper which @ludiprice and I presented at the Fan Studies Network Conference, University of East Anglia, 25th-26th June 2016. We are hoping to publish the full paper in the conference proceedings. Further information about the conference can be found on the Fanstudies Network site, and on Twitter #fsn2016 .

In our 20 min session, we outlined and discussed the results of a small study that aimed to take a snapshot of the extent to which libraries within the UK collect fanfiction, and to gain some insight into the reasons behind this.

The study is part of a wider investigation into the information behaviour of cult-media fans. The first two stages of this three-part research project are described in:

Price L and Robinson L (2016). “Being in a knowledge space”: information behaviour of cult media fan communities. Journal of Information Science (in press). http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/14906/

Background

The question of fanfiction in the library arose from a somewhat anecdotal feeling that general knowledge of, and interest in, fanworks has increased significantly over the past five years. This time period is notable to us as the timeframe during which we have discussed and collaborated on communication of fanworks. Over this time, there has been an increase in reporting of fanwork related news and issues in the media, doubtless fuelled by the encroaching of a previously niche domain into mainstream concerns including copyright and publishing, media industry interest, education, and policy development.

Additionally, conversations with Library School masters students over the years revealed increasing awareness of, and active participation in fandom, although we have no hard data to enable us to compare cohort awareness and involvement over the past 5 years.

Despite the expanding reportage, discussion and engagement with fanworks, collections and collection policies for fanfiction, perhaps the most notable subset of fanworks, within memory institutions in the UK seemed scant, although we were aware of notable zine collections in the US, and the zine/fanzine collections at the London College of Communication, and at the British Library.

In order to gather some empirical evidence about the extent to which fanfiction is considered by the library and information (LIS) sector, we carried out a small investigation comprising a literature review, examination of a sample of collection policies, and a survey of members of our Library School cohort.

Findings

Our survey of both the LIS and fanstudies literature found very little on the generic concepts of collecting fanfiction, confirming our view that formal collection of fanfiction, let alone fanworks, is somehow overlooked by the mainstream LIS sector, and that there is little dialog between the LIS discipline and the community associated with fanworks. We did find some papers concerned with the specific zine collections that we were aware of, (Sandy Hereld, University of Iowa) and we also encountered reference to the ‘anti-collection’, where archives and collections are maintained by those outside the main memory institutions; in this case, the fans themselves. Indeed, fans do an excellent job of collecting and organising fanworks; some collections, such as Archive of Our Own rival professional digital archives. Nonetheless, most such collections rely on ad hoc funding and resources, often personal, and can disappear overnight.

The literature gave us several indications as to why fanfiction is largely ignored by libraries:

Not proper books
Does not fit library processes
- No ISBN
- No standard metadata
- Not available through standard acquisition processes
Concerns about intellectual property

Nonetheless, despite the lack of representation of fanfiction collecting or collections in either the LIS or fanstudies literature, there was evidence that libraries are showing an increasing interest in catering for fans as library users: recommending sources and examples of fanfiction, using fanfiction as literary instruction, and running in-house fan events.

Examination of a representative sample of of UK library collection policy documents confirmed what we found from the literature, that fanfiction is not formally collected. The main fan-related collections in libraries are fanzines.

In order to understand the reasons behind this paradoxical situation, where there is a noticeable body of work and interest in fanfiction, and yet a limited interest from the LIS community, we invited our current library school students, and alumni to complete a short, online questionnaire. The idea here being that our cohort represents the next generation of library and information professionals, and their views on fanfiction would therefore be likely to be representative of future collection policy.

The survey showed that although 88% of the 25 respondents had heard of fanfiction before joining the course, and 59% read or had read fanfiction, only 52% felt that memory institutions such as libraries should collect fanfiction.

Thus, despite a high awareness and engagement with fanfiction, opinion on its value as cultural heritage was mixed. Reasons for this correlated with the reasons ascertained from the literature review. One participant suggested:

I’m torn on the subject. On the one hand it is an important cultural institution at this point, and provides wonderful insight for those studying fanworks, feminism, LGBT issues among other subjects. On the other hand, part of the reason fanfiction is so diverse and weird and sprawling is its inherent illegality and not-for-profit status.

Conclusions

There are no national plans or policies for the collection of fanfiction within the UK. At institutional level, some collections of fanzines exist, but the limited collection, indexing, archiving and preservation of a wider selection of works leaves a black hole in our cultural heritage. Fanfiction, and indeed all fanworks, instantiate a significant body of creative talent across a wide variety of disciplines including art, creating writing, poetry and music. The technical skills needed to create fanworks can be considerable, involving sound, video, animation and a high degree of internet, web and social media savvy. It is perhaps worth considering whether more should be done to comprehend the scope of fanworks, and to at least understand what we are not collecting.

The issues associated with collection of fanfiction and fanworks are inarguably complex. The body of work is enormous, and institutions are pressed for resources. Funding for this type of research and practice is minimal to non-existent. There are not just digital works to consider, many works exist only in printed, analogue format, often in limited quantities.

Two main areas for further investigation arise from this study.

First is the set of questions regarding copyright and publishing. Although fanworks are challenging restrictive limitations on creativity, distribution, and commercial activity, little seems to be changing in reality, and the issues surrounding the rights of canonical authors are important and valid.

Secondly, is the question of how we define documents. Although memory institutions include analogue and digital media, such as images, audio and video, in addition to printed documents in their collections, the rapid escalation of digital resource formats is challenging how we define a ‘document’, and hence what we collect. Many fanworks are multimodal texts, and others can include art installations, performance art and performances. The increasing availability of technologies associated with virtual and augmented reality offer yet more possible media formats for fanworks. The question is not only should we collect and preserve these works, but how.

The initial question of fanfiction in libraries is deceptively simple, and not one which will be answered by either the LIS or fanstudies disciplines alone. We suggest that it is a conversation that we should have together.

Photos by @lynrobinson cc-by

Dr Lyn Robinson

Category Archives: Research

Documenting Performance: the backstory

“A different kind of knowing”: speculations on understanding in the light of the Philosophy of Information

Fanfiction in the Library