Perhaps one of the best ways to visualize the concepts of articulation and assemblage from for this week’s seminar, ‘Drawing Things Together,’ is the process of learning: by making associations and parallels between complex elements and familiar and/or simpler concepts, we are crafting and superimposing patterns that enable us to understand what appears to be foreign, new, and/or complex elements, thus ultimately gaining knowledge. As students, we spend many hours reading, writing, and discussing an array of different topics and theories, thus drawing links that are “not necessary, determined, absolute and essential for all time” (Grossberg 53) in our works, thus creating a “web of articulations” (Slack, Daryl, and Wise, Daryl, and Wise 112) in our head. Then the process of articulation and assemblage—or actor-network theory—becomes particularly relevant in terms of conducting research, considering that the works of a scholar is set in a contingent place within shifting webs of institutionalized, marginalized, and/or soon-to-be institutionalized theories.

When one goes looking for constellations, one can get lost among the stars; the multiplicity and scale of assemblages can be overwhelming. I was lucky enough, however, to stumble on a software that not only assembles my virtual social network for me, but also allows me to visualize it. This software is called ‘Museum of Me’, and this link will lead you right to it. For the purpose of my argumentation, I would encourage you to jump right in, and experience it yourself (by entering your own Facebook login), instead of viewing this generic rendition of the ‘Museum of Me’:

The impact of this ‘museum exhibit’ is of course stronger if you experience seeing your own friends and family, plus reading your own words and likes in this virtual gallery. The reason for choosing this software becomes obvious towards the end of the exhibit: robots are shown selecting and ordering the profile pictures of your friends and family into a canvas that ultimately depicts your own profile picture, which then reveals how you are linked to a web of people via your social network.

What better image to depict the concepts of articulation and assemblage as it relates to technology? (Either this is a rhetorical question or I’m challenging you to submit other examples in the comments). The ‘Museum of Me’ gathers from your Facebook account a multitude of information, but ultimately exhibit a very particular kind of elements about you (not just mere facts such as your age, profession, education); the gallery aims to show how your social interactions (on Facebook) define your (online) social identity. This ‘Museum of Me’ does not show much about yourself, but instead draws the contours of your social networks in order to reveal—much like with the canvas of your friends’ profile pictures—how your social identity is shaped by the people you interact with online. Thus this software “could be said to territorialize the articulations of…angles of relationships, space, atmospheric conditions, trajectories of movement, and a way of seeing,” thus becoming “in a sense, a contingent invention, both artificial and natural” (Slack, Daryl, and Wise, Daryl, and Wise 129, their emphasis). Every time you update certain elements in your Facebook account (a new friend, like, comment), you are eradicating the virtual exhibit that you have seen in the past—thus proving the contingency of the exhibit. By visualizing how you fit in a pattern of social networks, you see the territory that you occupy virtually and socially, thus envisioning a space that is ‘both artificial and natural’. Thus, just as a constellation “is made up of imaginative, contingent, articulations among myriad heterogeneous elements” (Slack, Daryl, and Wise 129) so is your own exhibit. The ‘Museum of Me’ reflects how “particular collection of (moving) bodies is articulated to a particular image” (Slack, Daryl, and Wise 129) by turning the profile pictures of your friends into your own, an image that is in fact a composite of social interactions and relationships that are in constant mutation.

So the ‘Museum of Me,’ what is it good for? (Don’t sing out, ‘absolutely nothing’ just yet). What is it about a museum exhibit that appears to be appropriate for representing a social network that is experienced virtually, which is both ‘artificial and natural’? Before jumping into discussing Intel’s agenda for producing such software (Justin McGuirk   in his article in the Guardian does mention “brand awareness” as one of the reasons), let’s probe at the choice of a museum exhibit to represent one’s social interactions online. The interactions and elements selected by the ‘Museum of Me’ as mentioned earlier are not matters of fact, but are instead linked to a cultural dimension. The authors Slack, Daryl, and Wise define culture as being “understood to consist of corresponding, noncorresponding, and even contradictory practices, representations, experiences, and affects…not refer to effects, as in the outcome of a causal process, but to affects as a state: as disposition, tendency, emotion, and intensity” (Slack, Daryl, and Wise127). Considering the role of affects in the definition of culture, it becomes obvious that our social interactions online (even more directly with the ‘like’ button on Facebook) have a cultural component.

In the case presentation of the ‘Museum of Me,’ its creators mention that “we created a new form of storytelling” (around 20 seconds in). Here we seem to be touching something. If our social interactions online have a cultural dimension, and that culture is defined by affects rather than effects, then creating a ‘storytelling’ of that which is without causality becomes interesting. Picture the ‘Museum of Me’ thus as a narrative without a beginning nor an end, without plotlines or characters’ arches, but pure exploration of networks of affects, emotions, tendency, and intensity.

To create a narrative without causality and/or plotlines necessarily implies ruptures, breaks, and inconsistencies from the lack of a linear structure. This is particularly relevant for scholars who must situate their works in a history of theories and events that is not linear; how should we structure and order what is intertwined with culture—with affects and tendency, with emotions? How should we situate and present our work, which is always influenced to some degree by the culture we have internalized? While I have no answers, these questions could be informed by exploring the ‘form of storytelling’ that takes place in a museum—or in this case the virtual one.

Let’s consider how museums ‘communicate’ to its audience certain kind of information. According to Peter Walsh, museums have “traditionally ignored an important aspect of communication: that communication is not a monologue, but a dialogue,” (Walsh 234) and as such “Museums are almost unique among educational institutions in that they still are using a one-sided method of communication” (Walsh 234). This lack of reciprocity produces a certain kind of power, enabling the institution to impose a vision/structure into a firm one-sided discussion with its viewers—and students/scholars. Maria Roussou argues for this conversation to include its viewers by allowing them to directly communicate with the museum through the use of technology. This presents a perfect case of “technological culture” (Grossberg 128, his emphasis) that allow us to understand better the foundations of the ‘Museum of Me,’ as it directly uses technology and bypasses the institution itself. Roussou argues for the need of interactivity in museums, which she defines as the “reciprocal action…to act on each other, to act together or toward others or with others. Reciprocity can takes place between people, people and machines, people and software, or even machines and machines” (Roussou 249). This interaction is not only “seen as an intrinsic feature of educational practice” but also as “an inherent property of any interactive multimedia or virtual reality environment that promises physical and sensory, in addition to mental, activity and response,” which characterizes “learning as a process of making meaning through personally constructed or socially co-constructed knowledge (Jonassen 2000)” (Roussou 249). The use of technology hence branches out onto our ability as humans to interact with our environment—in this case archeological objects and/or works of art—in order to understand and learn from it. In the ‘Museum of Me,’ there is no direct interaction possible between the viewer and the exhibit itself, and this is essential to understand the purpose behind creating this institution as a format.

Why is it a museum of me? As an institution, museums thus refer to a historically “particular formation, anchored very directly in relation to a number of different forces,” (Grossberg 54) hence the museum’s “meaning—political and ideological—comes precisely from its position within a formation” (Grossberg 54). As discussed, museums are in a relation of power with its audience in the way they communicate the cultural objects that they have ordered. The discourse of a museum exhbit seum exhbit ibit hence might allow for a better control over the kind of ideology that is articulated by the use of this formation/structure. The ‘Museum of Me’ could hence re-conceptualize the non-interactive, one-sided, ideological, and authoritative elements of the museum discourse into a site of advertisement.

McGuirk in the Guardian depicts the ‘Museum of Me’ as “Entering this generically deconstructivist, what you get is a fly-through animation of a series of galleries, with pictures of you and your friends on the walls,” which ends with “a final sequence that implies, erroneously, that you are merely a composite of your social network. A soaring soundtrack turns the sentimentality dial to max” (McGuirk). Whether the implied message—or ideology—of the ‘Museum of Me’ is valid or not, what is relevant is that McGuirk pointed out that this experience started in a ‘deconstructivist’ building. If one considers the creators’ aim to craft a ‘new form of storytelling’ via the ‘Museum of Me,’ then this deconstructivist element becomes important. I believe the roots of the answer for, ‘why is it a museum exhibit’ are located there. Deconstructivism is a particular type of architecture that was inspired by the postmodern theory of ‘deconstruction’ as a semiotic analysis; it is characterized by its manipulation of surfaces in shapes that distorts typical rectangular structures and/or celebrate fragmentation. The very building that we enter in the ‘Museum of Me’ thus reflects a postmodernist vision, which articulates ‘fragments’ of ‘me’ into assemblages of social interactions on Facebook. Just like in Hall’s example of the postmodernist experience, the ‘Museum of Me’ “contains emergent ‘postmodernist’ elements, as it were, is that there is no story in the old sense,” ‘me’ does not “come from anywhere; there is no whole story about him to tell” (Grossberg 47).

By looking at the very space used for a museum exhibit—its externality—one can understand how the inevitable ruptures and breaks (inherent in the postmodern view of way) within a narrative of cultural elements (of affects) are negotiated. The ruptures are always present in a museum exhibit, but have been institutionalised; the walls represent specific artists with similar affects, and the different rooms represent different ‘ages,’ movements, or centuries. When one moves from room to room, and from wall to wall, one is navigating the both the instituted linearity (the museum’s ordering structure, such as the walls and rooms) and its ruptures (the empty space between paintings, the middle of room, the staircase between two rooms of the same exhibit) at once. What the ‘Museum of Me’ does is exactly that; by using institutionalised structures (representing virtually the rooms and walls of a museum exhibit), this software allows for a narrative displaying assemblages (your friends in one room, your likes in another) while making you unaware of the gaps and inconsistencies in its ordering. Perhaps Latour’s third criteria as the ‘Power to Arrange in Bank Order’ which specifically relates to the ‘notion of value’ can add another layer of interactions as to what the ‘Museum of Me’ does. As such, we shall briefly—unfortunately too briefly—mention “the compatibility of new propositions with those which are already instituted” (Latour 109) such as Intel’s re-conceptualization of museums befitting the ‘new’ way to communicate, and advertise ideology.

This was one small instance of an institution such as museums beings re-conceptualised to sell us an ideology—and of course the product behind it. To link this discussion to our work and research, how can we use these theories of assemblages to form the networks necessary for our work to be circulated, instead of being marginalized by what is institutionalized, contingently relevant, and/or what the majority engages with? This discussion had for goal to make us indirectly reflect on the selling and spreading of an ideology, which as consumers and scholars, we participate to. Are we not indeed attempting to selling an ideology whenever we look for funding or publication?

Works Cited

Latour, Bruno. “A New Separation of Powers.” Politics of Nature: How to bring the Sciences into Democracy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004. 91-127. Print

Grossberg, Lawrence. “On Postmodernism and Articulation: An Interview with Stuart Hall.” Journal of Communication Inquiry 10(1986): 45-60. Print

McGuirk, Justin. “Robot Cleaners and the Museum of Me: Intel’s Vision of the Future.” The Guardian. Tues 24 Jan. 2012. Web.

Roussou, Maria. “Learning by Doing and Learning through Play: an Exploration of Interactivity in Virtual Environments for Children.” Museums in a Digital Age. By Ross Parry. London: Routledge, 2010. 247-265. Print

Slack, Daryl, and Wise, Jennifer Daryl, and J. Macgregor Wise. “Causality,” “Agency,” “Articulation and Assemblage.” Culture +Technology: A Primer. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. 101-33. Print