Dossier: Materiality and the Archive

Dossier: Materiality and the Archive

Archives

Kit Hughes and Heather Heckman solicited several film and media archivists to describe critical challenges facing both media scholars and preservationists of analog and digital media. Each essay in this journal addresses the technical necessity for digitizing analog media and illuminate scholarly areas of study that investigate the cultural and aesthetic differences between the digital and the analog. In addition to discussing the technical aspects of migrating analog to digital, the archivists suggest economic factors need to be balanced against the ethics and aesthetics of preserving celluloid and tape. Preservation of media requires the collaborative input and expertise of technicians, historians and scholars, scientists and archivists. As each essay proposes, media scholars need a greater understanding of the technical challenges and costs of preserving analog media, while archivists must balance the need for long-term preservation and access against the potential loss of “affect” and “presence” when digitizing analog media. In the concluding essay, the author proposes using the traditions of art restoration and curation as models for digital media archives.

Hughes, Kit

Heckman, Heather

Velvet Light Trap

2012

Polk, Victoria

2012 University of Texas Press

Journal Article

Hughes, Kit and Heather Heckman. "Dossier: Materiality and the Archive." The Velvet Light Trap, v70 no.1. (2012): 59-65.