Media 5 Old’s Cool studio

Project Brief 4

Reflective essay

By Georgia Cerni s3487358

Word count: 1085

The artefact that I produced for my final project is a four part reflexive documentary. This film collates together different media technologies and content (books, photographs, VHS and digital files) from my household, providing commentary on their personal significance as archived media. This documentary provides insight from myself and my mother Lindy about the various forms of media that we have elected to collect over the past decades. I have sought to highlight the similarities between our media archiving practises while also acknowledging the differences that will inevitably occur over time and within this particular generational divide.

Throughout this semester my interests in this studio have been focused upon avoiding the “old/new” binary, an idea introduced to me by Natale who proposed to “treat new media as a relational concept.” (2016, p. 585) In this artefact we see how the media that Lindy and I have collected are subject to our own definitions of what constitutes old media – for example, with Lindy it’s books whereas in my case, it’s VHS tapes. In presenting two individual’s experiences with technology I have sought to support Natale’s proposal to regard media from a more subjective point of view.

In addition to the archival material, this documentary also discussed the engagement with the technologies which led to the archival materials – for example, photography and social media use. Viewing new media as a “relational concept” gave me license to acknowledge the differences between both generation’s experience of media while still being able to link them together. My inclusion of the Kodak Starmite advertisement was central to this – I was able to acknowledge how this technology promoted ease of access for domestic photography in the 1960’s, while also later discussing how social media and increased accessibility to smartphones led to greater content production in the 2010s. There was the acknowledgment that my experience with photography is largely “a convergence of digital technology, mobile media and photographic practises” which allow me to partake in personal photography (Gomez Cruz & Lehmuskallio, 2016, p. 20), while technologies like the Starmite camera were also  made with this aim in mind, albeit perhaps with greater barriers than we see today.

While this documentary was focused on archived media, I found materiality to be a recurring theme, particularly when it came to the perceived loss of materiality in the digital age. Interviewing Lindy, I found that a sense of materiality was central to her and that her experience of books was fundamentally different to her experience with any other form of media. I immediately recalled the “trope of death” which Yochim and Biddinger described in relation to aesthetic appreciation for vinyl records – “they are not simply romanticising the past but are articulating an abstract relationship between technology and humanity by grounding it in more concrete qualities.” (2008, p. 183) I felt that Lindy was describing a similar relationship between herself and books as “a living connection to the past”. Similarly, I described my own   ”preoccupation with physical things” which defined my relationship with older technologies like VHS and DVDs. While I had set out to legitimise “newer” digital technologies as having the potential to share old media principles (for example, in their potential to be archived and evoke memories) I did notice throughout this project that physical materiality was relevant.

In exploring this within the context of this documentary where I collated content from all different time frames, I also noticed that this attachment to the physical may have some links to how we adjust to newer technologies. Brinkman was a key perspective here –  “Such attention to older media and fading historical moments strikes me as a refracted attempt at understanding our cultural zeitgeist in ways that can’t quite be tackled head on.” (2017, p. 200) I think that for both subjects in this documentary, comments about older technologies were made with newer technologies in mind – for example when discussing DVDs I made the comparison to current streaming services like Netflix. However, Brinkman also considered that there could be similarities recognised between different media forms. Much of the inspiration behind my artefact could be best described here – “Mass print objects may not function in exactly the same way as do their digital counterparts – and certainly not to the same degree (I can click a “like” button much faster than I can mail a letter of appreciation) – but there are definite connections that beg to be further explored.” (2017, p. 200)

Indeed this documentary sought to further explore these connections in two major ways. The first was by making comparisons between older and newer forms of media – by likening Instagram to scrapbooking and relating physical appreciation of books to the same feelings of appreciation for VHS tapes, the objective was to bridge the divide between how we discuss media. Additionally, these connections were explored through the overarching theme of archival. The idea that regardless of the time period, “there is a need to collect, curate and archive”. In this sense I hoped to communicate that the need to attach meaning to media and archive it is something of a universal concept that occurs irrespective of time.

While this was my aim, it should also be noted that in this process I was preoccupied with legitimising digital forms of archival. Throughout this semester I had noticed that appreciation for older forms of media was very much intact (as I have discussed above) however it was my observation that digital forms of media were often devalued, perhaps because of the need for materiality. For example, Parikka and Wolfgang argued that “the testimonial function of archival records was once firmly rooted in their material authenticity” and indeed we can recognise how “originals” (p. 88, 2013) can hold more value in different contexts. It was my aim to both acknowledge the merits of this argument while also countering it, advocating for the digital space as a legitimate mode of archival. It was through my inclusion of the folders on my hard drive and my own digital archive footage from years past which aimed to communicate this.

In conclusion, I have learnt throughout completing this project brief that while there are definitely merits to considering the digital space as an archival space (including the wider discussion about how this breaks the old and new binary), I have also noted how I might have underestimated the significance of materiality present in older media. I have observed my own interest in materiality and can see how this is an attribute more suited to older technologies.

References

Brinkman, B 2017, Poetic Modernism in the Culture of Mass Print. John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, pp. 198 – 202. Available from: ProQuest eBook Central. [1 June 2017]

Ernst, W and Parikka, J 2013 Digital memory and the archive, 1st edition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 85 – 95. Available at: ProQuest eBook Central. [30 May 2017]

Gomez Cruz, E & Lehmuskallio, A 2016 Digital Photography and Everyday Life: Empirical Studies on Material Visual Practises, Routledge, London; New York. pp. 20. Available from: EBSCOHost eBooks. [30 May 2017]

Natale, S 2016, ‘There Are No Old Media’, Journal of Communication, vol. 66, no. 4, pp. 585 – 603. Available from: Old’s Cool Media Factory Blog. [Accessed: 25th May 2017]

Yochim, E & Biddinger, M 2008, ‘”It kind of gives you that vintage feel”: Vinyl records and the tripe of death.’ Media, Culture & Society, vol. 30, no. 2. pp. 183. Available at: Old’s Cool Media Factory Blog. [Accessed: 25th May 2017]