Luke, Actually, mobile responsive websites was probably a bad example, as even with our meagre funds for Play It Again, we managed to do this….
In terms of your questions about what archived digital art ought to look and perform like, these are important questions, but there is also lots already on this, in terms of variable media, etc. Engagement is, I think, a more interesting question. With Play It Again, we have really tried to emphasise people’s memories, oral histories, and the surrounding artefacts and documentation as important parts of the historical and preservation undertaking of digital games, ie. not just fetishising the playable game itself (though we want this too). Our Popular Memory Archive asks the public to contribute their memories and artefacts to help build such an archive. (Please browse and contribute yours, if you haven’t already -- http://playitagainproject.org – and share with potentially interested others.) We have had several papers published on our approach if people are interested, eg. Stuckey, Helen, Melanie Swalwell, Angela Ndalianis, Denise de Vries (2013) “Remembrance of Games Past: The Popular Memory Archive”, 9th Australasian Interactive Entertainment Conference proceedings, ACM Digital Library, http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2513570 (For those without ACM access, it’s also available at https://flinders.academia.edu/MelanieSwalwell) In terms of your question about delineating categories, yes, criteria and significance matter in selection, as do appropriate means of access. Actually, I’m interested in going broader and talking about digital heritage, generally – ie. it’s not just art that is at risk of being lost and forgotten. There are synergies to mine between people who may be concerned with similar digital collection and preservation issues but have different categories of object in mind. To this end, I am auspicing postdoctoral research on the local demoscene, local game publishing, and have just heard I have a new PhD student starting on local educational software history at mid year, which is exciting. I’m also wrapped that one of the media arts archives I am working with for my Future Fellowship research – the ANAT – has recently been accepted by the State Library of SA. Finally, and more practically, we are in the process of setting up a Digital Archaeology research Lab at Flinders, and it will be equal opportunity as far as all these categories of digital heritage materials go! The media arts materials are very much on my mind, though. I am keen to hear from anyone whose institution would consider participating in a network to build and/or advance the media arts preservation infrastructure in this part of the world. I am particularly thinking of cultural institutions and AU/NZ universities with researchers who would use a network of historic media arts resources if one existed. I’m looking towards a grant bid. Melanie From: Luke Munn [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, 13 January 2015 2:18 PM To: Melanie Swalwell Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Ada_list] another ADA Yes definitely not an easy task, and a lot of these questions are ones I'm asking myself, as contributor to a couple different arts organisations and their respective archives. But I suppose for me the limited funding just reiterates these questions. If you don't have money to do everything, what are the real priorities? What does a piece of archived 'digital art' need to look (and more importantly) perform like? Does it make sense to maintain digital art or its genres (media, tactical, net) as separate delineations? And what are the core features which users actually need in order to engage with an archive in any meaningful way? To take your feature of responsive sites as just one quick example, we could look to our favourite tech overlord, Google, who decided that mobile wasn't just a 'nice to have' but took absolute precedence, and for years have developed everything on mobile first, then other platforms like desktop and tablet second. On 13 January 2015 at 14:58, Melanie Swalwell <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Hi all, Just quickly, and coming at this from a slightly different angle... It really concerns me that there is very little collection and preservation of media arts heritage going on (almost nothing, in fact, in Australasia). I am centrally engaged in trying to build a discourse locally on born digital cultural heritage, because I think this is part of the problem. Some of you might recall the Play It Again team ran a conference in Melbourne on this last year to which a few NZers came (most talks are online at playitagainproject.org/blog/conference-report<http://playitagainproject.org/blog/conference-report>). And I currently head up the Aus-NZ coproduction to preserve and remember locally made 80s games. So wearing these hats, I'd say that it's easy to critique. The realities are that it is hard to get money to do this sort of thing, which takes multiple skill sets so involves managing lots of people/sub-projects/dealings with institutions, let alone the money to do it really well (having mobile responsive websites, etc etc). Always ready to hear new ideas if others can see better ways... Melanie _______________________________________________ Ada_list mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://ada.net.nz/ Manage your list membership (Subscribe, Change to digest, Unsubscribe) http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/ada_list
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