Tutorial 4 - Week 5

When I think of archiving, I think of dusty books in some underground basement that has a flickering light and leaking pipes. I had never interpreted archiving as a mechanism by which we write the rules of society, or as Derrida says " the technical structure of the archiving archive also determines the structure of the archivable content even in its very coming into existence and in its relationship to the future. The archivization produces as much as it records the event."


I find it interesting what material gets archived and what gets discarded. As is suggested in the quote above, the material that is archived has the potential to shape the future. What sort of modern world would we have if works like Shakespeare and Van Gogh were not archived?

Source: http://cadlbusiness.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/shakespeare-blog-comic1.jpg

As Matthew Ogle explained in his blog Archive Fever, with the introduction of technology, we have obviously increased our ability to archive a greater volume of content and "open the future". However, will this alter the way in which we decide what to keep and what to get rid of? With the internet storing every tiny piece of information we upload to it, are we creating a more diverse future for later generations or are we forcing them into a life that is shaped by which shopping centre one checks into on Facebook? One of the benefits that Derrida explains about this new form of archiving is that we now have records of events as they happen. No longer do we rely on recounts being written after the event (that may result in significant details being lost or forgotten). Now events worldwide are recorded, stored and constantly accessible, as demonstrated by the archive of people's experiences of Cyclone Yasi on the ABC website. Another interesting point about modern archiving is the multitude of forms it can take. Archiving no longer involves storing away books and pieces of parchment. Now, rather, archives can consist of photographs, videos, podcasts, music files; Google is an archive of websites, resources, news, images and videos - Google Archives. 


I am thoroughly enjoying the notion of archive fever, constantly being distracted by photo blogs whilst I write this. I hope that the progression and evolution of archive fever continues as we are now able to store more, access more and experience more through our archives.