Art + Authenticity
> A Starling Lab Case Study
This recording of Yo-Yo Ma’s performance of the Adagio from Boccherini’s Cello Concerto, is not just your typical MP3 File.
It is a vessel.
It holds within it, through the language of music, the incredible story of how Anita Lasker-Wallfisch survived the horrors of the Holocaust.
It also has in the header of the file, a content ID or CID. This string is generated by an algorithm that converts the data of Anita’s video testimony of her experience into a unique code that marks the file’s authenticity. With the CID on the dWeb you’ll always find Anita’s exact testimony file plus you’ll have a record of its origin. Its authenticity.
This autumn the Starling Lab is uploading the full 4 petabytes of the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive onto the decentralized web. From what had been stored in just 3 data centers we are now expanding to hundreds.
This effort is the largest ingestion of data onto the dWeb in the world.
And the first testimony that is on the dWeb is from Anita – over two hours, of her telling her story.
To learn more about this Starling Lab prototype and Anita story please watch this video case study, presented at the UNFINISHED LIVE conference in September 2021.
Dedicated to Anita Lasker-Wallfisch
Alive and well.
Prototype Lead: Jonathan Dotan
USC Shoah Foundation:
Stephen D. Smith, Sam Gustman, Kori Street, Anita Pace, Claudia R Wiedeman, Hoan Tran, Jon Fields, Rachael Cerrotti
Stanford:
Dan Boneh, Tsachy Weissman
Distributed Systems Team: Bofu Chen, Ethan Wu, Tammy Yang
Distributed Infrastructure Team: Kevin Huynh, Stuart Berman, Raymond Zhang
Artist: Sara Baur Harding
Storytellers: Joel ben Izzy, Wendy Hammers
Special Thanks:
Raphael Wallfisch
Benjamin Wallfisch
Jonathan Bays
Ben Mandelkern
Lara Galinsky
Libby Franklin
Dietrich Ayala
Danny O’Brien
David Choi
Marina Kostioutchenko
Brenda Lee
Robert Jan Van Pelt
Jeromy Johnson
Pooja Shah
Martin Smok
David Steinberg
Clara Tsao
Christiane Weber
and Frank McCourt