Scrapbooking The Post-Reality

An Archive is not what it was when they first came to be. Archives and archiving are flourishing as a medium; For creative intent, Government, social, and historical preservation to list a few, the archive is a juggernaut `that often goes overlooked. An obvious example of this can be found in the rapid rise of social media. Those that partake in the use of social media build themselves a mythology through the tiny chunks they upload, a single fragment at a time. These instances be they photos, musings, even their re-posting of fellow users content form the mythology of this archivist, for it exists as a whole. The mythology that is brought to life through this process is not by any means required to be an accurate reflection of its archivist.

It is born only from its parts. It is in this understanding of the archive as a surrogate womb for new content that drives this project. This project seeks to do this via the creation of a Mythos.

The word mythos is borrowed from ancient Greek. Although it is used as another word referring to myth or mythology the word also applies to the tangled web of values, beliefs, stories, and any other components that are relevant to or have a specific meaning or truth to a certain culture, set of people or idea. By utilising the ideas of theory-fiction, this work seeks to explore the concepts revolving around archiving by taking on the mantle of a private detective to investigate a mystery in his world, and build up an archive of documents to explore the theory, content, and nature of being for the objects to create a Hyperstition which communicates theory whilst acting autonomously as in-universe documents.

The idea of a Hyperstition, that is: something that exists to bring itself into being will be applied to the construction of an archive to explore how the medium can utilise objects to bring about new realities using the fragments of a case left behind by a Private Eye as the narrative vessel.