The Pararchive Project

In this piece by Gina Fairley, not only is the link between archives and culture made explicit, but the role of digitisation in facilitating broader access to and wider engagement with shared heritage is highlighted. The following comments from a contributor to the piece appear to capture this well: “Archives are unsettling, and have within…

Loss of control of the personal archive means a loss of societal control of the cultural record. … The job of an archivist is work outside interfaces, working with the documents outside their native context, often to make sense of a previous generation’s cast-off data for the interest of the current and future ones. thenewinquiry.com/essays/the-collection-and-the-cloud

The UN’s High Commission for Refugees recently launched Tracks, a Medium-esque collection of stories on refugees and aid workers. The collection of twenty-four stories documents the impact of UNHCR’s work in distressed communities and conflict zones across the planet; everything from themes of migration, education hope and faith to places as far flung as Angola and Syria. The…

From the BBC’s Ian Forrester… As part of my investigations into Perceptive Media, myself and other colleagues are deconstructing storytelling down to its most logical parts. Part of this is understanding the history of storytelling and other aspects of storytelling which are outside the mainstream consciousness. Storytelling through different types of frames  

“Digital activity is forcing us to rethink our creative practice. For over a hundred years our activity has been grounded in collections displayed in buildings.The affordances of digital means we are rethinking this.” Native’s report on where digital technologies is disrupting practices and creating opportunities for innovation in the arts and culture economy identifies preservation and archiving as…

Cultural institutions such as museums, and even galleries, will have the opportunity to become platforms, co-existing in both the digital and physical realms. WIRED’s recent The Getty and Google Unleash Free Art — And Your Creative Potential touches on some issues we’re beginning to explore receso with Pararchive, notably the benefits of a culture of openness around art collections…