Between the Analogue and the Digital: Towards a Hybrid Experimental Media Archaeology (Keynote)

Description

How can we effectively document analogue media technologies, such as historical film devices, and capture their histories of use? What role can digital tools – like 3D and 360-degree photography – play in preserving both material and immaterial forms of media heritage? This presentation addresses these questions by reflecting on the creation of the CRAFTED-DEMA dataset, recently published on the Europeana platform for digital cultural heritage. The dataset features a range of materials produced through the University of Luxembourg’s “Doing Experimental Media Archaeology” (DEMA) project, including high-quality photos, videos, sound recordings, and 3D and 360-degree representations of various media historical objects. The presentation will explore the value of experimentation, documentation and digitization for doing hands-on media history in the digital age. Specifically, it will highlight hands-on research on the Kinora motion photography viewer (ca. 1907) and Pathé Baby 9.5mm film projector (ca. 1924). The Kinora, as an individual viewing apparatus, and the Pathé Baby, as a collective screening device, arguably present two distinct dispositifs of early-twentieth-century home cinema. In the first part of the presentation, I will discuss my hands-on experiments conducted as part of the DEMA project, including the 3D replication of the Kinora viewer and a series of historical re-enactments with the Pathé Baby projector. The second part will demonstrate how these early-twentieth-century home cinema technologies were 3D-digitized and how their functionality and user practices can be "re-animated" in virtual yet multi-sensorial ways. Ultimately, I will advocate for a hybrid approach to experimental media archaeology that is positioned in between the analogue and the digital.

Period	1 Oct 2024
Event title	FilmForum XXXI: Hands On! Engaging with Film-and Media-(as)-Matters in Research, Archives and Museums
Event type	Conference
Location	Udine, ItalyShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International