Object biographies in the digital age: documentation, life-histories, and data

Abstract

This paper explores how the framework of object biographies can be used to analyse our digital activities, both disseminating and expanding these same biographies. During the digitisation and cataloguing processes, biographies are not only–and in limited format–recorded, but are also expanded by the affordances of the digital medium. Similarly, digital interpretation and engagement programmes, and their reception by museum audiences contribute to the establishing of new relationships around the object and the emergence of new narratives. User-generated content is also a witness of contemporary interpretation and networks emerging from public interest in, and use of, cultural heritage objects. The case-study of the Victory of Samothrace, and its traces in the Louvre’s own digital offer and among audiences’ data is used to discuss the range of digital content surrounding an object. This paper argues that all these instances of an object in the digital sphere are worth studying as adding new chapters in its life-history, in an ever-changing scenario of both ephemeral and meaningful digital representations. The relationship between originals and this digital content is considered as multifaceted, documenting, mediating, and expanding the original object biography, but also enabling digital surrogates to develop their own independent biographies.