Online Magazine of the Visual Narrative - ISSN 1780-678X
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Online Magazine of the Visual Narrative - ISSN 1780-678X |
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Issue 17. The Digital Archive |
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Introduction |
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Author: Jan Baetens, Pascal Gielen, Rudi Laermans |
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In human societies memory is organized in two basic forms: material forms (tablets, paintings, books, etc.) on the one hand and immaterial forms (oral history, dances, songs, etc.) on the other hand. These forms represent two organizing principles that function in different ways. While material forms of memory are fixed, immaterial ways of remembering are fluid. Tablets, paintings, texts, … are affirmative and stable, while conversations, oral traditions, ... have a more ambiguous or 'dialogic' character. Especially in western societies, the first organizing principle has gained more authority. 'Material memory' has laid the foundation of modern bureaucracy and of every industrial or post-industrial company. Contracts and laws are the most evident examples of 'material memory' which guarantee the relative stability necessary for every modern organization. In this context, the classical archive often functions as a 'library of proof' on which societies can always rely when appointments are discussed, rules are violated or facts are disputed. In other words, the classical archive as a reservoir of material memory is one of the crucial foundations that have made modern society … modern.
The introduction of digital databases transforms the way Western societies use their archives. The most visible result of digitization is of course the fact that the classical archive, once digitized, becomes a more fluid one. Although it may not become as instable as conversations, oral history or urban legends, the possibility of permanent transformation is real. As soon as new data enter a networked archive, the database can reorganize itself just as oral legends transform over time when the storyteller or the audience changes. At least we can say that the digital archive is a strange hybrid between material and immaterial memory machines. But in the digital era 'classical' archives do not disappear. Just as the 'paperless' office has proven a fiction (utopian or dystopian, following the sources), the world of archives is not one-dimensional. Classical and digital archives coexist, not always pacifically, their respective logics, areas and scopes interact, and their users have to switch permanently from one type of archive to another.
The essays in this collection theorize the consequences of this new hybrid on (late) modern society. Some of the texts gathered in this book are revised version of lectures given during an international conference at the "Centro di Semiotica" of the University of Urbino (Summer 2003) (a selection of French lectures of this bilingual meeting will appear as a special issue of the international journal Protée , Autumn 2004). These texts are here completed with essays written by internationally renowned scholars whose work is often hardly known by English-speaking readers. |
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