Information is a verb (continued)

The beginnings of a digital dark age? Just came across this perceptive piece about digital archives in SAP INFO “Digital Information Will Never Survive by Accident” – an interview with Neil Beagrie of the British Library. (This came to me via the excellent blog – Stoa.org.) Here is an excerpt: Mr. Beagrie, in modern societies…

early photography and archaeology – a matter of hygiene

Chris (Witmore) has sent me some comments about his fascinating research into early photography and archaeology – Conze at Samothrace Although photography had been used in the context of archaeological practice for some time, it was only with the Samothrace excavation volumes that photographs were placed directly into the publication (Conze, Hauser and Niemann 1875…

the color of the past – technicolor and the physiognomy of nostalgia

  The color of nostalgia? I mentioned last week our visit to Stanford Theatre and the showing of “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (and incidentally this movie appeared in my book “Experiencing the Past”). The technicolor print was stunning. Boonville September 2004 Of late, and in connection with my Metamedia Lab’s project to explore the…

the archaeological imagination

Some years ago back in Lampeter Julian Thomas and I used to talk about something we called the archaeological imagination. We were close to a host of superb human geographers in the next corridor who were reshaping their field (Chris Philo, Ulf Stroymeyer, Catherine Nash, Ian Cook, Tim Cresswell, Hester Parr, Miles Ogborn, Joe Painter,…

Graflex Speed Graphic 1947 – media archaeology

I have decided our lab needs to take seriously the materiality of media. Not just the picture – but its texture, style, feel, ambience, aura, substrate – and its instrumentality – how it came to be made, by what means, agency, mechanism. So I have been buying old cameras. The Graflex Pacemaker Speed Graphic arrived…