www.deappropriationproject.net is the third archive of the (de)Appropriation Project: the continuing documentation of a wall fronting the jail cells of the former Mission Police Station at 1240 Valencia Street, San Francisco.

Earlier versions of the archive, Archaeographic Collage 1 & 2, explored different ways to interact with the photographic record of the wall beginning with a year of images that included 9-11-2001. For Archaeographic Collage 1, the user’s cursor marked interaction with the digital images by scratching temporary lines modulated in width by the speed of movement. Areas of increased detail highlighted as the cursor passed over them, allowing the user to open new windows for a closer look.

Archaeographic Collage 2 employed an archaeological strategy of “portals” for digital excavation. Content was locked “geographically” in its proper place on the wall, while portals to a given day moved and cut though layers of time, allowing for the chronological reorganization and isolation of content of interest. Users could view images in sequence or in collage. These early versions of the archive have been exhibited on several occasions in galleries and lectures, and are included as a part of the web site for reference. While visually interesting, these versions lacked essential search features, making them ill suited to serious research.

The wall as a resource for a range of disciplines has become more evident over time. As a dynamic artifact, time has been a key aspect to understanding its value. The range of imagery and subjects seems to be unlimited, triggering considerable dialog with neighbors and colleagues. As new cultural issues arise, the archive expands to incorporate them, becoming a living record of our culture and concerns.

Reciprocally, the documentation and organizational technologies used have changed the archive over time, allowing it to evolve in a way different from traditional photography. The project began with color print film and slides taken with a 35mm Kodak Retina IIIc. Later images were taken with a Canon PowerShot S110 Digital Elf and a Canon Eos 20D. The Eos has captured the most acute detail, showing the subtle or inflammatory comments handwritten by passersby with pencil and ballpoint pen. Yet while image quality varies wildly between cameras, all photographs are included in the archive.

As there are 1,000’s of images in the archive and it continues to grow, the challenges to organization, adding metadata, and keywords are significant. The most recent images are the most completely notated, whereas the oldest images are the least well notated. The dates for the oldest images are in some cases notated as year/month/day, with the day being “00”.

The current version of the (de)Appropriation Project Archive lives here on Flickr at www.flickr.com/photos/daparchive/ to enable a reassembly of the content based on various searches and community interaction with the project through tagging, commenting, image sharing and reuse, online community building, and beyond. As resources permit, the development of the project on Flickr will continue to expand the design and interactivity of the first two versions.