University at Buffalo (UB)
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Fall 2024
September 18, Wednesday, 3:30-5:00: Sarah Handley-Cousins, “The Personal is Historical: Feminist Digital Public Scholarship and Nursing Clio”
More information TBA
October 10, Thursday, 4:00-5:00: Andrew Lison, “Cataloguing the Media Study Archaeological Collection.” (virtual)
As media production and transmission have become increasingly digital, the academic subdiscipline of media archaeology has sought to investigate the conditions and possibilities inherent in technologies predating the internetworked milieu we inhabit today. Key to doing so is the curation and reanimation of older technologies whose operation and media content cannot be fully experienced outside of their “original” context (e.g. through emulation, audio/video recordings, or written documentation). Familiarity with a wide range of vintage media technologies and their operational idiosyncrasies is a necessary part of the preservation and research processes associated with these artifacts. Maintenance of such “unreproducible” hardware also allows continuing access to “obsolete” content. This includes software such as LaserDisc almanacs—early PC multimedia experiments that preceded the more well-known CD-ROM encyclopedias—and programs in the literary and media arts that require original hardware to run properly.
The Department of Media Study has a long history of practice-based research through media creation and equipment used in past projects lingers around the department. These holdings have been further enriched by a recent donation of vintage hardware and software. This presentation will describe the initial formulation of a media-archaeological collection out of these objects as well as its ongoing cataloguing via the free Dublin Core-based digital humanities exhibition software Omeka and the sunycreate.cloud web hosting service (free to all SUNY faculty, staff, and students). Ultimately, our collection is intended to provide students—and eventually the public—with hands-on access to this equipment for the purpose of both study and making.