Preservation for the Future: Understanding the materiality of digital, audio-visual heritage

Abstract

This research has set out to analyse the environmental impact of digital, audio-visual heritage preservation. Due to the rapid developments in this field, there is an urgent need to create insight into the material consequences of using this digital space. This research has therefore executed an analysis of the policies of both the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision as well as EYE Film Museum, to understand how they approach environmental concern during the preservation of audio-visual heritage. Both archives work towards sustainable preservation, meaning the long-term safeguarding of their collections, but how environmentally sustainable is this process? To answer this question, this research has focussed on the concept of materiality. Through a New Materialist perspective that acknowledges non-human agency, this research has been able to execute a practical analysis of the matter involved in digital preservation. This framework simultaneously provided the opportunity to reflect upon the underlying relationship between our cultural practices and its materiality, between the human and the non-human, and to consider possibilities for more sustainable practices.

This research found that environmental considerations are currently not present in either preservation policy, partly because materiality and its agency are not sufficiently acknowledged. Through this New Materialist approach, this research was able to reflect upon the intra-action between material agency and human agency in the archive and highlight where the preservation of these collections is dependent on matter. This showed that materiality is approached purely as a resource, as something that can be used to serve the interests of human actors within the archive. Instead, this research argues that this agency should be acknowledged so that the collections’ dependency on this matter becomes clear. Only then, balanced considerations between interests can be made during the preservation process. Because environmental sustainability is inevitably tied to the sustainability of the collections, this research argues that there is just one form of sustainability. Only when this is acknowledged, both the collections as well as our environment, can be preserved for future generations.