3 - A Model for a Complementary Documentation Analysis

Summary

Introduction

In this chapter, I will distinguish between four different types of analysis. In all four analyses, all three complementary dimensions of documentation – the physical, social, and mental – and their interplay will be covered.

The first type of analysis is a diachronic analysis, where I dig into a defined complementary situation within a defined subsystem and follow the documentation process in time and space, the very creation of the document. I focus on describing the process and its distinct phases, including identifying the producers, means, and modes in making the document, and characterize it as a certain tradition of documentation. This diachronic analysis will be explorative, towards identifying complexes of agents, means, and modes, as well as a possible redocumentation process.

The second type of analysis is a synchronic analysis, where I focus on a specific document at a specific time and a specific place, acknowledging that this fixation of a document will always be approximate. I start with a short description of the document, title, date, and origin, and then classify it by determining several distinctive features, docemes, which make this document a possible representation of a number of classes of documentation forms. In practice, this analytical work proceeds as a hermeneutic circle, where one improves and elaborates more detail in each step of identification, description, and classification.

The third type of analysis is a comparative analysis in which I compare two or more different documentation processes and their resulting docu ments.

In the fourth analysis the focus is on conducting an experiment, where I examine not just a document and the documentation process behind it, but how to design and develop a documentation process and the possible resulting documents, alternative documents, and possible alternative processes behind these alternative documents. The core question is: ‘What happens if I change this and that? What will happen in each case?’ Through an experimental analysis, one can gain a deeper and critical understanding of existing document types and become able to make one’s own types of documents. Even without a full experimental environment, a laboratory, in which to conduct a variety of tests on the design of a document and different ways of using the means and modes of the documentation process, one can still consider the outcome of different types of documentation processes.