Apropos our discussion in yesterday's class re: medium specificity in the digital archive...

Apropos our discussion in yesterday’s class re: medium specificity in the digital archive…

Via Rhizome: “Video of this weekend’s panel discussion, Born Digital: Conservation in the Computer Age, is now online, featuring computer arts pioneer Lillian Schwartz, and digital humanities scholars Matthew Kirschenbaum and Lori Emerson, with Ben Fino-Radin chairing. Some highlights: Lillian’s opening remarks at 28:00, Lori discussing Ralph Ellison’s use of an enormous portable Osborne 1 computer in his writing of Juneteenth (54:21), and Matthew sharing slides of his summer vacation to an underground nitrate film vault.

At 1:05:53, Ben also recounts one of the heroic moments of the recent XFR STN media conservation project: the recovery of artwork by Phil Sanders from an obsolete 10 Megabyte hard drive. It was a Herculean effort, ultimately successful thanks to computer historian Jason Scott’s knowledge of the Apple II system and Doron Ben-Avraham’s understanding of magnetism.”