| An archive is an accumulation of history that can take many different physical forms. Traditionally, we think of archives as a room in which primary source documents may be found, but as digital technologies have developed and evolved, archives have undergone a tremendous transformation. There is now less need to explore a physical room with the advent of user-friendly graphical user interfaces, which means that more and more people have greater access to archives. An archive typically contains powerful records that have been naturally generated as a product of regular legal, commercial, administrative, or social activities. However, not all histories or communities are preserved in archives. Instead, we have seen that marginalized communities have lost pieces of their past through the destructive forces of colonialism, capitalism, and white supremacist patriarchy. This thesis presents Communal Living Archive, an interactive and accessible website with virtual reality capabilities that addresses these issues by acting as a digital archive of the experiences of sexually heterodox and gender variant migrant farmworkers in agricultural California. |
