Abstract

Digitized Diasporic Memory explores the relationship, intersections, connections, and divergencies of experiences between Black diasporic people. With an understanding of diaspora as networked, rhizomatic, and tentacled, the project seeks to create a space for connection, in an environment where connection is not easily accessed or sustained across these communities of people. The thesis draws heavily from the idea of personal networked thinking and expands into collective thinking, or what Anne-Laure Le Cunff describes as mind-to-mind networks, wherein several individuals connect their ideas.

The following document details the conception of open-source and open-access technologies which illustrate how our individual pasts weave in and out of each other. The first is a proof of concept for a relational database of crowd-sourced audio memories, and the second is a web application that maps and visualizes the connections between the submitted stories. The document also details the thesis study in which the technologies are put to the test by people of African descent residing on Turtle Island. “Digitized Diasporic Memory” is part database, part conversational archive, part open-access library, part collective memory bank, part digitized memory, and part chain of memories which bring to the fore the possible connections between Black diasporic experiences and narratives. It addresses the need for intra-diasporic validation, belonging, understanding across differences, and knowledge-sharing.