Today, audiovisual archives and libraries have become very popular especially in the field of collecting, preserving and transmitting cultural heritage. However, the data from these archives or libraries – videos, images, sound tracks, etc. – constitute as such only potential cognitive resources for a given public (or "target community"). They have to undergo more or less significant qualitative transformations in order to become user- or community-relevant intellectual goods. These qualitative transformations are performed through a series of concrete operations such as: audiovisual text segmentation, content description and indexing, pragmatic profiling, translation, etc. These and other operations constitute what we call the semiotic turn in dealing with digital (audiovisual) texts, corpora of texts or even entire (audiovisual) archives and libraries. They demonstrate practically and theoretically the well-known "from data to meta-data" or "from (simple) information to (relevant) knowledge" problem – a problem that obviously directly influences the effective use, the social impact and relevancy and therefore also the future of digital knowledge archives. It constitutes, indeed, the heart of a diversity of important R&D programs and projects all over the world.
Today, huge quantities of digital audiovisual resources are already available – everywhere and at any time – through Web portals, online archives and libraries, and video blogs. One central question with respect to this huge amount of audiovisual data is how they can be used in specific (social, pedagogical, etc.) contexts and what are their potential interest for target groups (communities, professionals, students, researchers, etc.). This book examines the question of the (creative) exploitation of digital audiovisual archives from a theoretical, methodological, technical and practical point of view, especially in three main directions of work: - The repurposing and republishing of existing audiovisual data. - The building of community-centric audiovisual archives. - The use of digital social media and Web 2 technology for the diffusion and sharing of audiovisual content. This book presents a series of concrete examples of creative uses of digital audiovisual corpora for education, research and cultural heritage preservation and valorization.
The Archive Effect: Found Footage and the Audiovisual Experience of History examines the problems of representation inherent in the appropriation of archival film and video footage for historical purposes. Baron analyses the way in which the meanings of archival documents are modified when they are placed in new texts and contexts, constructing the viewer’s experience of and relationship to the past they portray. Rethinking the notion of the archival document in terms of its reception and the spectatorial experiences it generates, she explores the ‘archive effect’ as it is produced across the genres of documentary, mockumentary, experimental, and fiction films. This engaging work discusses how, for better or for worse, the archive effect is mobilized to create new histories, alternative histories, and misreadings of history. The book covers a multitude of contemporary cultural artefacts including fiction films like Zelig, Forrest Gump and JFK, mockumentaries such as The Blair Witch Project and Forgotten Silver, documentaries like Standard Operating Procedure and Grizzly Man, and videogames like Call of Duty: World at War. In addition, she examines the works of many experimental filmmakers including those of Péter Forgács, Adele Horne, Bill Morrison, Cheryl Dunye, and Natalie Bookchin.
The art and science of audiovisual preservation and access has evolved at breakneck speed in the digital age. The Joint Technical Symposium (JTS) is organized by the Coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations and brings experts from around the world to learn of technologies and developments in the technical issues affecting the long-term survival and accessibility of audiovisual collections. This collection of essays is derived from presentations made at the 2016 JTS held in Singapore and presents an overview of the latest audiovisual preservation methods and techniques, archival best practices in media storage, as well as analog-to-digital conversion challenges and their solutions.
This unique book is based on the results of a workshop for an international group of administrators of research-based archives held near New Delhi in December 1999, the aim of which was to bring together archivists from audio and visual archives in industrializing countries, principally from the Southern Hemisphere, which have a relatively recent history of audiovisual archives; to take concerns of audiovisual archives outside the national and regional boundaries that so often define these archives; and to focus on audiovisual archives that document musical and folklore traditions and thus those which are involved with ethnomusicology. Pooling the experience of participants from Austria, Australia, China, Cuba, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Peru, The Philippines, South Africa, Sudan and the United States, the volume will be of interest to cultural workers both as an introductory textbook in ethnomusicology courses and as a book for specialists. The book begins with a theoretical introduction including general observations on archives, a discussion of the principal points in the participant papers, a description of the workshop itself and how the process of the workshop has been transformed into this volume. Section One deals with archive structure and operations, including a chapter on recording technology for audio archives which begins with a paper by the world-renowned expert in technology for audiovisual archives, Dr Dietrich Schüller, Director of the Vienna Phonogramm-Archiv, Austria, the oldest such archive in the world and one on issues of copyright and ethics. Section Two consists of the participants papers. The volume also includes useful material such as a bibliography of major resources on audiovisual archives and a website list of the most important professional organizations and archive sites. Anthony Seeger is Professor of Ethnomusicology at University of California at Los Angeles. He has been Director of the Archives of Traditional Music, University of Indiana and Director of Smithsonian Folkways recordings and the Curator of the archives. He has consulted internationally and published widely on issues of archiving in ethnomusicology and on intellectual property rights. He has been the President of the Society of Ethnomusicology and is currently Secretary General of the International Council of Traditional Music. Shubha Chaudhuri is Director of the Archives and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology of the American Institute of Indian Studies. She has a background in Linguistics and has been with the ARCE for the last twenty years. She has been very actively involved in issues of archiving as well as training workshops and consulting in this field. She is Vice President, International Association of Sound and Audio Visual Archives. Contributors include: Dr Dietrich Schüller (Vienna, Austria), Don Niles (Papua New Guinea), Alex Huerta (Peru), Ali Al-Daw (Sudan), Maxwell Addo (Ghana), Marialita Tamanio-Yraola (Philippines), To Ngoc Thanh (Vietnam), Valmont Layne (South Africa), Endo Suanda (Indonesia) Gert-Matthias Wegner (Nepal), J. Lawrence Witzleben and Tsui Ying-Fai (China), Olavo Alen (Cuba), Grace Koch (Australia).
Archiving has become an increasingly complex process. The challenge is no longer how to store the data but how to store it intelligently, in order to exploit it over time, while maintaining its integrity and authenticity. Digital technologies bring about major transformations, not only in terms of the types of documents that are transferred to and stored in archives, in the behaviors and practices of the humanities and social sciences (digital humanities), but also in terms of the volume of data and the technological capacity for managing and preserving archives (Big Data). Archives in The Digital Age focuses on the impact of these various digital transformations on archives, and examines how the right to memory and the information of future generations is confronted with the right to be forgotten; a digital prerogative that guarantees individuals their private lives and freedoms.
Collective Intelligence and Digital Archives DIGITAL TOOLS AND USES SET Coordinated by Imad Saleh This book presents the most up-to-date research from different areas of digital archives to show how and why collective intelligence is being developed to organize and better communicate new masses of information. Current archive digitization projects produce an enormous amount of digital data (Big Data). Thanks to the proactive approach of large public institutions, this data is increasingly accessible. Despite the recent stabilization of technical and legal frameworks, the use of data has yet to be enriched by processes such as collective intelligence. By exploring the field of digital humanities, audiovisual archives, preservation of cultural heritage, crowdsourcing and the recovery of scientific archives, this book presents and analyzes concrete examples of collective intelligence for use in digital archives.
