ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how Timescape stitches together its network of news stories to leverage arguments about the events following September 11. It aims to contend that the argumentative force of the network is paramount in understanding contemporary public memory practices by analyzing Timescape’s network maps in the exhibit’s ecological context. Timescape’s rhetorical act is stitching together news articles, which reflect the writers’ attitudes and subject positions. The argument Timescape advances–that visitors can understand reality through the algorithmic lens of the network–nonetheless emerges from human data points. Timescape stands as a potentially powerful memory device. Timescape offers a conception of memory based on “real” events of the past. Timescape serves a vital rhetorical function in making sense of a complex and ever-changing world of politics, culture, and current events. Timescape etches new nodes into memory by networking visitors with the physical space of the museum and with its digital galaxy of events.
