Digital memory and the archive

✍ Scribed by Parikka, Jussi; Ernst, Wolfgang

• Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
• Year: 2013
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 277
• Series: Electronic mediations 39
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

In the popular imagination, archives are remote, largely obsolete institutions: either antiquated, inevitably dusty libraries or sinister repositories of personal secrets maintained by police states. Yet the archive is now a ubiquitous feature of digital life. Rather than being deleted, e-mails and other computer files are archived. Media software and cloud storage allow for the instantaneous cataloging and preservation of data, from music, photographs, and videos to personal information gathered by social media sites.In this digital landscape, the archival-oriented media theori Read more...

Abstract: In the popular imagination, archives are remote, largely obsolete institutions: either antiquated, inevitably dusty libraries or sinister repositories of personal secrets maintained by police states. Yet the archive is now a ubiquitous feature of digital life. Rather than being deleted, e-mails and other computer files are archived. Media software and cloud storage allow for the instantaneous cataloging and preservation of data, from music, photographs, and videos to personal information gathered by social media sites.In this digital landscape, the archival-oriented media theori

✦ Table of Contents

Content: Archival media theory: an introduction to Wolfgang Ernst's media archaeology / Jussi Parikka --
Media archeology as a transatlantic bridge --
pt. I. The media-archaeological method. Let there be irony: cultural history and media archaeology in parallel lines --
Media archaeography: method and machine versus the history and narrative of media --
pt. II. Temporality and the multimedial archive. Underway to the dual system: classical archives and digital memory --
Archives in transition: dynamic media memories --
Between real time and memory on demand: reflections on television --
Discontinuities: does the archive become metaphorical in multimedia space? --
pt. III. Microtemporal media. Telling versus counting: a media-archaeological point of view --
Distory: one hundred years of electron tubes, media-archaeologically interpreted, vis-à-vis one hundred years of radio --
Toward a media archaeology of sonic articulations --
Experimenting with media temporality: Pythagoras, Hertz, Turing --
Appendix. Archive rumblings: an interview with Wolfgang Ernst / Geert Lovink.

✦ Subjects

Mass media -- Philosophy. Digital media -- Social aspects. Mass media -- Archival resources. SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Media Studies. ART -- Film & Video.