Capturing online cultures, or storytelling as method

Much progress has been made in developing tools, models, strategies and other methods to preserve or document websites2, but successful Web preservation also requires comprehending how the dynamic environment in which components thrive can be captured. To enable a future reconstruction of aesthetics, accountability or heritage, it is crucial to understand the context in which these websites functioned. Within the short span of a mere twenty years people have become accustomed to browsing the Web, finding all kinds of information by simply clicking from link to link. While information steams by, the context of how the information surfaces, what strata one search or the click on one link can cause is forgotten immediately since the new is there within milliseconds. The dynamics of the Web have become invisible to many of its users and the way data comes into being is forgotten. Focusing on the preservation of art on the Web, in what follows I will emphasize the importance of capturing the broader environment of platforms and social interactions in which many of these artworks thrive. Next to highlighting some of the difficulties in preserving these contexts, I explore storytelling as a method to develop and enrich a historic understanding of online cultures.