Devin Kenny Web Collection: Rationale & Archived Content

Overview of Work Completed on the Devin Kenny Web Collection

Tools for this project: Archive-It, Webrecorder (Browser and Desktop App)

Rationale

• • The Devin Kenny Web Collection was intended as a use-case for artists-archivist collaboration towards the creation of a web-based collection containing professionally significant content. It was developed to explore the potential for web-recording tools to support digital preservation for contemporary artists with a notable internet presence. Because of his involvement in internet culture, an accurate record of Devin Kenny's practice in this historical moment must include social media such as Instagram, personal streaming services such as Youtube and Soundcloud, and Facebook.

  • Since NYARC collects MoMA's website (and MoMA PS1), and Devin’s exhibition Devin Kenny: rootkits rootwork had already been captured, we established that his website was within NYARC's collecting scope.

  • I began by archiving Devin Kenny’s website in NYARC's Artists' Website collection. I created a seed for devinkenny.info, and running a one-time crawl.*

  • Next, I interviewed Kenny to determine which of his social media sites were important to his work.

  • The sites listed on the about page of devinkenny.info are:

Devin KKenny's Bandcamp

https://soundcloud.com/devin-kkenny

https://studioworkout.tumblr.com

http://www.daddybydaddy.com

https://www.youtube.com/devinkk

@devinkkenny on twitter

• • From the interview, we determined that Kenny's Instagram (@crashingwavy) and Facebook accounts contained evidence of his practice at particular historical points in time. For example, Kenny used to post repeatedly during the day, every day for a period of four years. He is now well known for his engagement in internet cultures, making the Facebook posting important to his creative persona. The same goes for Instagram stories, which he labels with a hashtag (#) and a letter—an intentional misuse of hashtag technology and, according to the artist, an intervention with tracking and surveillance technology.

  • All of the social media captures were attempted using Webrecorder. During the course of capture, I kept track in my journal of data mile markers, to be clear on when we would hit Webrecorder's 5GB “free” data cap. It was important to record how much data we required to adequately represent Kenny's web collection, since this is an important part of an overall digital preservation strategy, into which we must include costs. An outstanding research question remains, when we hit the data cap, do we end capture? The entirety of Kenny's web content is outside of NYARC's collecting scope, so we collected the data using a personal account. Our collection is currently 4.41GB, and we need to evaluate holdings before continuing to capture and re-capture materials.

Archived Content

• See Webrecorder captures of varying success on the following seeds; results recorded as of April 26, 2020:

https://www.devinkenny.info/

• Result: 100% captured

https://www.youtube.com/user/devinkk

• over 2GB of data captured, playback faulty. Requires revision; bug report filed with Webrecorder

https://www.facebook.com/devinkk

• unknown percentage captured, playback faulty**

https://www.instagram.com/crashingwavy/

• stories captured using Autopilot, “log in” issue so far unresolved, no scrolling; bug report filed with Webrecorder

https://twitter.com/devinkkenny

• content = 0%, unresolved error: “something went wrong”; bug report filed with Webrecorder

https://devin-kkenny.bandcamp.com/

• site appears, but audio doesn’t play during capture or playback; bug report filed with Webrecorder

https://soundcloud.com/devin-kkenny

• 100% - captured entirely with Autopilot feature.

http://www.daddybydaddy.com/

• 100% - 4 broken links, live-site error

• • See the captures of the above seeds in the Devin Kenny Web Collection:

https://webrecorder.io/Devin-Kenny/devin-kenny-web-collection