Scholar Exhibits

Considering Our Tech-nostalgia

A hundred years ago nostalgia was thought to be a psychological affliction, something that had a pronounced impact on an individuals cognition and ability to function in everyday life. Typically associated with geographical displacement, nostalgia was (and to a certain degree still is) synonymous with longing and a sense of homesickness for ones "place" - figuratively and literally. Nowadays it is more likely to hear nostalgia uttered in conversations about missing a time that felt simpler, safer, and “better,” or in reminiscences of yesterdays technologies that offered a tangible interaction with its user and seemed “easier.” Herein lies the backbone of what has been referred to as technostalgia: the affinity for antiquated technologies and a desire to utilize both obsolete and modern technologies (hardware and software) to re-imagine, re-live, or outright emulate aspects of our collective history, particularly music and the visual arts. Real-life examples of tech-nostalgia’s impact on our popular culture can be seen in the myriad filters which allow for the masking of our digital photographs in veils of fauxhistory, and the use of audio manipulation programs to emulate aesthetics, such as vinyl record pops and hisses, associated with a bygone, analog-only era. With a revived interest in resurrecting and recreating the physical medium in the form of record players, rotary telephones, and obsolete computer hardware, the hope is to physically connect with the past and establish a tangibility so often lost in our wireless world. This serves to complicate the tech-nostalgia concept even further. In this collection I will explore the concept of tech-nostalgia and its ability to make the passé, popular and the imperfect, fashionable. I will also highlight the genre of electronic music called, hauntology, as a specific manifestation of tech-nostalgia. As technology and interconnectivity become more streamlined with our everyday lives we seem to be both attracted and resistant to staying afloat in a sea of rapid technological changes and development. This notion will help guide my examination into tech-nostalgia. Lastly, I hope to offer insight into how the tech-nostalgia idea could be offering archivists, conservators, and information professionals new ways of thinking about our moving image and sound heritage in the digital age.

Tech-nostalgia: An Introduction

Originally conceived as basic counting machines, computers are now seen as vehicles that move us forward – progressive machines expanding man’s technological possibilities. In the half-century since, computers evolved into a daily necessity and become more an extension of us than separate luxury. Today, there are those who view digital technologies not only as a means of progress but also a means of stepping backward - recreating and reimagining images, sounds, and aesthetics of times gone by. Whether physically reconstructing obsolete hardware (a kind of media archaeology), mashing-up and digitally regurgitating public information films, or integrating sounds associated with analog technologies (e.g., pops and cracks of vinyl records) into music created on digital platforms, a fascination with capturing media of today in a net of the past is becoming more prevalent in popular culture. This attraction to old technologies and the resurrection of faux-vintage (falsely vintage or something new made to look old) aesthetics through new mediums is often referred to as “tech-nostalgia,” and its upswing in recent years presents a notable challenge to those engaged in the management and preservation of our moving image and sound heritage.

The Wiktionary defines tech-nostalgia as a “fond reminiscence of, or longing for, outdated technology.” 1 Within this definition there exist several variations: using digital means to preserve or recreate aesthetics generally associated with analog media, and refurbishing outdated hardware such as record players, film projectors, tape decks, instant cameras, old computers, in order to connect with the past. In this piece I will 1) explore an artistic movement that I believe is fueled by tech-nostalgia: hauntological music and 2) use this manifestation of tech-nostalgia to investigate what it means to preserve, recycle, and reimagine our moving image and sound heritage, and whether the ways in which we think about restoration and curation are shifting as a result. An inescapable undercurrent of this discussion will be that of digital preservation and curating our digital assets. Physical and digital objects themselves acting as conduits for our tech-nostalgic impulses will continue to be highlighted throughout this article. Lastly, I will consider two possible agents working at the heart of tech-nostalgia: the attraction to the physicality of analog technologies, and the use of digital means to create faux-digital aesthetics.

Regardless of medium (music, film, still photography) there exist digital tools for creating almost any perceived aesthetic we associate with our collective past, or the resources to resurrect the hardware and software now regarded as obsolete or passé. One example is utilizing digital means, such as instant filters, to create faux-vintage snapshots of today’s current events. For musicians there is no shortage of devices and digital programs capable of producing sounds reminiscent of days when vinyl records and compact cassettes dominated music retail markets. Software programs like GarageBand, a multi-track audio recording application for Apple, and Pro Tools, a digital audio workstation for Windows, allow musicians to manipulate their digital recordings with myriad filters and effects that will produce imperfect, low fidelity (lo-fi), retro sounds that many artists (often those associated with the minimalist, lo-fi, chillwave, and tropical music genres) opt for today. GarageBand effects like “Radio Microphone” give vocalists a gritty, crooning sound reminiscent of the ribbon microphone so often used by the great jazz and blues artists of the mid-20th century and emulation effects such as the “iZotope Vinyl” are touted by ProTools as being “the ultimate lo-fi weapons” allowing users to add “authentic” vinyl-sounding hisses and pops to their music by using “advanced filtering, modeling and resampling to recreate authentic ‘vinyl’ simulation, as if the audio was a record being played on a record.” Writer Mark Fisher refers to this as rendering “time as an audible materiality.” 2 This notion of materiality and the interest in tapping into our collective past is something I will explore later.

Avenues for masking the digital content we create in veils of faux-history are available not only to those creating moving images and music. Even more prevalent are services which impact the ways digital photographs are created, altered, shared, and kept. Those with an affinity for filtering their digital photographs to produce decades-old stylistic effects are experiencing some form of nostalgia or, at the very least, an interest in the past. That so many of us cast our digital photographs in a shadow of the past suggests that the prevalence of tech-nostalgia is simultaneously strong and indistinct, and this fascination with a look, feel, and sound of the past continues to permeate the ways in which we create some of our digital media. Perhaps we often perceive days gone by as somehow better or simpler, or perhaps our nostalgic filters render our memories romantic as if therein lies a purity, authenticity, and sanctity that our contemporary reality fails to deliver.

Widely popular photo-sharing-meets-social-network services such as Instagram, the iPhone’s Hipstagram, and lesser-known programs like BeFunky, offer creators of digital media faux-vintage, pre-digital filters to work with, including “Tintype,” “Instant” (referring to instant cameras), “Holgaart” (Holga cameras), “Black and White,” “Sepia,” “Vintage” and an assortment of faded colors, viewfinder effects, sun-drenching options. Similar film effects that allow the modern filmmaker to transport his digital films to a time when 35mm film reigned and signs of degradation (dirt, dust, scratches) were undesirable - indicators of wear as opposed to symbols of “hipness”. Actualizing the present through a lens of the past has meaning beyond artistic trend. These manifestations of our tech-nostalgia are anchored in a desire to express a sense of place, one’s roots in life, and one’s belonging to a collective history.

Digital tools allowing users to manipulate their media represent only a few of the ways in which people are using digital means to, as Nathan Jurgenson claims, “become nostalgic for the present.” In his extensive research into faux-vintage photography, Jurgenson found that, “we want to endow the powerful feelings associated with nostalgia to our lives in the present.” 3 Using Jurgenson’s claim as a launching pad, we begin seeing the convergence of our digital world with romanticized elements of a lost, analog world. In the same study of faux-vintage photography, Jurgenson likened the trend in photo manipulation to that of the clash between digital and analog music. “Just as the rise and proliferation of the mp3 is coupled with the resurgence of vinyl,” says Jurgenson, “there is a similar reclaiming of the aesthetic of the physical photo. Physicality, with its weight, smell and tactile interaction, grants a significance that bits have not (yet) achieved.” Jurgenson claims that tangibility can often ignite a desire to relate to the present by examining it through the past, and see it as an important trigger for tech-nostalgia and the continued co-existence between the old and new - particularly with how we create, manipulate, and relate to elements of our digital creations.

Today, it seems that digital technologies are created, changed, and become outdated almost overnight. Perhaps the rate at which these technologies emerge and shift triggers nostalgic impulses for the familiar while simultaneously generating resentment for the new still unfamiliar. John Tierney suggests in a 2013 article4 that nostalgia might serve as a viable coping mechanism for life's transitions. In the same article, Dr. Hepper, a psychologist at the University of Surrey in England, maintains that, “nostalgia helps us deal with transitions,” and that “young adults are just moving away from home and or starting their first jobs, so they fall back on memories of family Christmases, pets and friends in school.” Could it be that part of the fascination with things like home movies, technologies of our youth, and recreating certain antiquated aesthetics, lies in this desire to resist today’s rapidly changing technological landscape? A longing for the familiar - technologies that facilitated tangible interactions such as, for example, the intimate experience of handling and playing a vinyl record - may directly connect to the root of tech- nostalgia. Thomas Bey William Bailey argues that,

The attachment of utopian hope to machinery and circuitry is far from dead, although it must compete more strongly than ever against the critique of constant technological novelty. For every Wired reviewer who lauds the "liberating" potential of the latest generation of iPods and their ability to serve a number of functions with no movable parts, there is a skeptic like Tapeworm's creative director Philip Marshall, who denounces the widening rift in the producer-consumer relationship that these devices create. 5

As I will explore in a bit more depth later, it seems that for many a resentment for the ever-expanding sea of new technologies underlies our tech-nostalgia. Yearning for a tangible connection to our cultural heritage and those who create it hearkens to the kind of emotional displacement or loneliness for which nostalgia was originally associated back in the 18th and 19th centuries. A lack of physical companionship with physical media (vinyl records, analog cameras, film projectors, VHS tapes, and so on) evokes a similar kind of abandonment, leaving users in a state of longing for a more substantive connection to their media. As an antidote to the lack of tactility, aesthetics of the past can be either redesigned to fit present media or recreated by one of the faux-applications already mentioned. As author Ann Mack argues, the more time we spend surfing around the digital universe the stronger some of us feel about preserving or rediscovering elements of the past. Mack proposes that,

As digital becomes more pervasive, it seems that we are increasingly fetishizing the physical and tactile. We’re embracing things like old-time typewriters, wristwatches, physical books and face-to-face time with friends and loved ones—things being rendered obsolete in the digital era. As we spend ever more time in the digital world, we increasingly value the time we don't spend in front of a screen—the time we spend with real people and real things. 6

Only when obtaining the authentically vintage technology proves unfeasible (how many of us would actually carry around an Eastman Kodak Brownie or Canon 310XL Super 8 to document our daily lives?) do we see an interest in actualizing nostalgia through creative and interesting ways. What’s more, while manifestations of tech-nostalgia appear interchangeable, there do exist different motivations and end products in terms of how our nostalgic impulses materialize.

Considering Restorative and Reflective Nostalgia

Any conversation concerning nostalgia is incomplete without mention of Svetlana Boym’s critical analysis of the subject, The Future of Nostalgia. 7 In it she explores the origins of nostalgia and, of particular significance here, two types of nostalgia relevant to the tech-nostalgia discussion: restorative nostalgia (restoring the past through the present) and reflective nostalgia (realizing the past in conjunction with the present). Boym posits that such nostalgic modes represent two possible relationships to our past – relationships often in flux and determined by time and space. “Restorative nostalgia manifests itself in total reconstructions of monuments of the past,” writes Boym, “while reflective nostalgia lingers on ruins, the patina of time and history, in the dreams of another place and another time.” Examined through the tech-nostalgia lens, one application of restorative nostalgia is the act of finding, restoring, and using a piece of outdated
or obsolete hardware, such as a desktop computer capable of reading floppy disks or a Laserdisc player as a video playback system in an academic film program. Engaging in a form of digital archaeology (not the practice of archaeology using digital technologies, but rather unearthing physical hardware and making it functional again) also falls within the realm of restorative nostalgia.

Conversely, reflective nostalgia might be actualized in the digital creation of faux-retro aesthetics as a way of acknowledging or honoring our collective memory. It could be argued that the inclusion of a USB port on a vinyl record player, where the exterior resembles older hardware yet the software functioning within it supports the digital transfer of audio output to a connected computer, is a positively modern feature. Both restorative and reflective nostalgia offer insight into tech-nostalgia: the attraction to obsolete media, and the use of digital means to support and preserve aesthetics from a pre-digital world. These approaches to connecting with our past, while similar in motivation yet different in application, form the foundation for my analysis of tech-nostalgia and its connection to how we think about, preserve, restore, and provide access to moving image and sound heritage.

Tech-nostalgia Expressed: Hauntological Music

“Haunting is historical...but it is not dated, it is never docilely given a date in the chain of presents, day after day, according to the instituted order of the calendar.” -Jacques Derrida8

Described as an attempt to “mine the past for the music of the future,” (also the title of Mark Pilkington’s article, “Hauntologists mine the past for music’s future” 9) the musical sub-genre known as hauntology originated in England during the early to mid 2000s and is a strong example of the nexus between nostalgia and technology. The term was then adopted as the name for a sub-genre of electronic music dealing heavily in atmospheric sounds and the reinterpretation of elements (or ghosts) of the past. The modern philosopher, Jacques Derrida, first coined the term “hauntology” in his book, The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning & the New International. At its core, Derrida conceived of hauntology as the paradoxical state of being and non-being as related to “spectres” or ghosts of time and space (i.e., our history). A sub-genre of electronic music, hauntological music is almost uniformly regarded as a direct offshoot of mid-twentieth century electronic music influenced by the often forceful British Public Information Films (PIFs), the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and library music. 10

The relationship between hauntological music and some of the archetypal characteristics of electronic music is germane to the tech-nostalgia theme. Often electronic music evokes feelings of futurism and otherworldliness - a glimpse into the portal of a possible destiny. As the 2000s rolled in, however, it seemed electronic music’s ability to transport listeners to future times had weakened and many of the stylistic offerings from artists within the genre had become hackneyed. Mark Fisher comments,

Twenty-first-century electronic music had failed to progress beyond what had been recorded in the twentieth century...practically anything produced in the 2000s could have been recorded in the 1990s. Electronic music had succumbed to its own inertia and retrospection. 11

Hauntological music was, in part, born out of a growing desire to push a musical genre forward by employing memories (images, sound, and so on) from a not-so-distant past as a primary compass. There exist several fundamental artistic approaches for hauntological musicians who possess a curiosity for history and a “contemporary culture restless in temporality.” 12 First, there are those focused on content, whether it be reinforcing the themes from the original source material used in the new compositions, dissecting and reassembling previously recorded material and re-working it into new electronic compositions. The result is often a fresh take bursting with newly imagined atmospheres, void of the original messages, moods, or meanings of which the source material consisted. There are also artists whose work is manipulated by a variety of faux-vintage analog aesthetics (mentioned earlier) in order to give the music the quality of age or decay. One writer likened the experience of listening to hauntological music to “seeing the past through a dusty pane of glass as before, with this hauntological method we see it through a twisted, shattered lens.” 13

Hauntological music is just as much about resurrecting the past as it is honoring a future that could have been. Some of hauntology’s biggest artists, such as Belbury Poly, The Advisory Circle, and The Focus Group, possess an uncanny ability to mold previously recorded content so “that the most mundane, ordinary, seemingly safe environment can suddenly intersect with strange other dimensions.”14 On an artistic level this music seems to be created with the hope of pushing the envelope of electronic music - to allow for the inclusion of all kinds of ephemeral media into newly conceived works. From an archives perspective, hauntological music represents one of many new and interesting ways primary source materials (in this case moving images) are being used by artists.

Preserving Our Tech-nostalgia

The forerunners of the computing industry failed to envision, around the late 1980s when home computing and the idea of a digital universe was still the stuff of science fiction, the transience of our digital world and the vulnerability of the content we create in it. In The Machine That Changed the World, the definitive documentary from 1992 on the evolution of the computer - from stone tablets to punch cards to Steve Jobs - Robert Lucky erroneously predicted that digital technologies and the personal computer would mark the end of our preservation and information access woes. Prompted by the narrator who proclaimed that “Once in this digital form information is permanent - immune to the ravages of time”, Lucky refers to the longevity of analog and digital photographs, using the example of art conservators working on Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel painting to make his case for the supposed permanence of digital information:

Once you digitize a picture you have a permanent record of that picture that can’t age. If you took a photograph that would age over time and it would change its colors. Whereas when you change it to ones and zeros you have a perfect memory of it. For example, when they clean Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel painting they’re not sure whether they’re really putting it back like it was back in Michelangelo’s time. If they had digitized it then they’d have a permanent record and they’d know exactly what those colors had to be today. 15

Perhaps it was the inability to anticipate the ubiquitous and evolutionary nature of digital technologies that fueled many of the assumptions of digital permanence. Moreover, it seems even less likely that computer scientists could have anticipated digital technology being used simultaneously as a tool for advancing the digital possibilities of man and a vehicle for revisiting and reimagining the past. It is this relationship between tech-nostalgia and digital preservation that proves most interesting.

Much of the discourse on nostalgia, technology, and collective memory centers on the socio-cultural implications of our fascination with the past, and yet makes few references to tech- nostalgia and its complex relationship to digital curation and preservation. For those toggling between analog and digital medias, the question shifts from why are they engaging in such faux- vintage activities to what does it mean for archivists and other information professionals practicing digital preservation and providing access to born-digital media? Those involved with digital curation understand that preserving our digital heritage requires an enormous amount of upkeep, including continued migration of data to stable systems, preserving the authenticity and integrity of the raw data itself (bit streams and access to them), and ensuring the integrity of metadata in order to help promote discoverability and usability. The Digital Curation Centre defines digital curation as the ongoing process of, “maintaining, preserving and adding value to digital research data throughout its lifecycle.” 16 As a result, “preservation” of digital media cannot function as a one-time-only action for ensuring sufficient access to our digital heritage.

Rather, digital curation (of which preservation is a vital part) must be adopted in order to ensure that the digital media we create remains accessible indefinitely.

Thinking back to hauntological music and the growing interest in repurposing public domain films, perhaps we ought to consider how we approach describing as well as identifying provenance and promoting findability and usability of these digital creations. From a preservationist perspective, therein lies an irony that users are actively engaging digital resources to preserve aesthetics of the past seen as more genuine and authentic. While exploring our complex digital landscape, Steven Ricci, Assistant Professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media and the Department of Information Studies at UCLA, challenges conservators, archivists, and preservationists alike to re-examine the impact of developing digital technologies on traditional archival practice. Framing his argument within the context of film restoration, Ricci continues the dialogue about the role of the archivist and argues that they are being forced to reconsider their once steadfast adherence to neutrality and that, perhaps, the idea of “engagement with discourses on history” is shifting. He says,

If it is true that the archival field is in the process of rethinking itself, how will its core functions be altered? Even though the field has not yet explicitly conceptualized the long- term ramifications of digital technologies on its core functions of collection development, preservation, documentation, restoration, and access, it is clear that each of these will be significantly modified by new social and cultural forces. 17

That people are interested in and drawn to vintage technologies and the digital resources allowing for the creation of their aesthetics is only part of what makes tech-nostalgia so alluring. Unlike physical materials where actions of benign neglect (intentional avoidance of processing a collection until proper time or funds are made available to do so) are sometimes appropriate, our born-digital materials require much more care, continuous upkeep, and iterations of preservation as standards and technologies (hardware and software) update and obsolesce prior versions.

Tech-nostalgia - either the act of using digital means (software) to recreate analog aesthetics in new media or employing analog vehicles (hardware) to support digital content - is no less affected by modern issues of navigating the complicated and, at times, unstable landscape of digital content. Herein lies the fascinating duality of tech-nostalgia: the digital media created with digital means is, by its very nature, inherently less stable than its “authentic” analog counterparts, specifically with regards to its playback functionality and, therefore, requires more ongoing management and iterations of preservation. For those of us engaged in digital preservation and archiving, these iterations typically take the form of continual migration of digital content from already or soon-to-be obsolete systems (hardware or software) to stable ones. Of course the depth or level of preservation can consist of preserving look, feel, functionality, or all of the above.

In his seminal guide to digital curation, Ross Harvey asks, “How are the aims of ensuring the integrity of digital objects over time and maintaining access to them achieved?” Grounded in the essential functions of digital curation and management outlined in the National Library of Australia’s “Recommended Practices for Digital Preservation,” Harvey cites longevity, integrity, and maintaining accessibility as the core tenets for managing digital objects and points out that, in addition to managing data, new kinds of data and uses of that data continue to arise. He writes,

New forms of digital heritage and new uses for already existing types of data will emerge... Procedures, practices, and theories of digital curation must be open and flexible enough to accommodate new kinds of data and digital objects and new ways of using them. 18

Hauntological music is a prime example of where accommodating new kinds of digital objects may be necessary. It presents an interesting challenge for creators and future curators of intricate and multilayered digital objects. Digital resources involved with making available and even propagating public domain films, such as the Prelinger Archive Mashups, must apply basic metadata standards that serve to help support user findability. When a film comprises multiple films, how should caretakers of this material approach basic level description? How might provenance be expressed? When it comes to preserving the integrity and accessibility of our digital data, additional back end concerns for archivists include the instability of carriers and playback systems, and the instability of the content itself.

While digital systems allow for quicker information retrieval, mobility, and manipulative flexibility, the information simultaneously becomes unstable. That some place intrinsic value on reclaiming a sense of history through the creation of new digital content is ironic, if for no other reason than the digital stage on which this creation happens is less stable and thus its longevity more vulnerable. In fact, a hard truth about digital preservation and the risk of “losing” our digital content (that which has been migrated to digital platforms or born-digital material) is not always that our files will somehow vanish altogether, but rather that our means of accessing them (opening, viewing, reading, hearing) will become compromised due to shifts in the compatibility of software and hardware systems. At the rate at which supported technologies change, staying abreast of the most up-to-date systems for creating, managing, retrieving, and preserving our digital content is exacting yet critical. In fact, for many it is the very notion of preservation within a digital archives context that is becoming synonymous with “sustainable access” – maintaining functional access to digital content.

The performance model as presented by Heslop, Davis, and Wilson likens the functionality of digital records to that of a performance. 19 The performance model is a concept that parses out the major components that make up digital records (thus distinguishing them from their paper counterparts) and describes the combination of these components as a kind of performance. Of particular significance here is that the model also challenges the notion of originality and authenticity among digital records by separating them into 1) source, 2) process, and 3) performance elements. 20 The source represents the original data file (bit stream) while the process correlates to the means by which meaning is rendered from the source. We might think
of the process as the combination of hardware and software (the technology) to make use of the source. The process is mandatory in our digital world if we are to not only possess digital content, but also access and use it. While source and process deal primarily with the data and tools by which data is rendered useful, the performance is expressed as a combination of the two or the actualization of the data – that which is most meaningful and useful to the average user of digital content. As the National Library of Australia guidelines suggest, the approach of guaranteeing the performance of digital data over time is key to a successful digital preservation initiative. Aside from the technical implications of preserving and continuing to make available our digital heritage, tech-nostalgia could offer unique opportunities for archives to connect with those interested in relics and aesthetics of our collective past. These repositories might act as the liaisons between those attracted to “dead” technologies and the “dead” or obsolete hardware itself. Activities of this kind remind us that archival material is being used more and more as sources or artistic expression and exploration, as opposed to merely primary source research tools.

Conclusion

In this paper my goal was to introduce the topic of tech-nostalgia, provide examples of how it has manifested itself in contemporary popular culture and the audiovisual arts, and highlight certain issues to examine how these ideas might erode our once steadfast adherence to certain preservation and archival norms. Just as the forefathers of the computer could never have envisioned how far the technology could take us, so too could they not have predicted that certain groups of computer users would utilize this same technology as a way of looking to and, in some instances, experiencing elements of the past. The interest in recreating aesthetics of our past with technologies of our modern day is not only intriguing because of its socio-cultural implications, but also because it presents unique challenges to those involved in collecting, describing, preserving, and making available digital information.

Endnotes

1 “Technostalgia.” 8 Mar 2012. Web. 1 Aug 2013. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/technostalgia

2Fisher, Mark. “What is Hauntology?” Film Quarterly. Vol. 66, No. 1, (Fall 2012): 16-24. Print.

3Jurgenson, Nathan. “The Faux-Vintage Photo: Full Essay Parts I, II, and III.” Cyborgology. 14 May 2011. Web. 28 May 2013. Thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2011/05/12/the-faux-vintage-photo-full-essay-parts-i-ii-and-iii/

4Tierney, John. “What is Nostalgia Good For? Quite a Bit, Research Shows.” New York Times, 8 July 2013. Web. 9 July 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/09/science/what-is-nostalgia-good-for-quite-a-bit-research- shows.html?pagewanted=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1382360092-IzpG0hRGvR8AZhDBNk8xdA

5Bailey, Thomas Bey William. “Interrogating Tech-Nostalgia (an Exchange with Alexei Monroe.)” Vague Terrain. 11 Oct 2010. Web. 15 June 2013. http://vagueterrain.net/content/2010/10/interrogating-tech-nostalgia-exchange- alexei-monroe

6Mack, Ann. “Embracing Analog: A Look at the Nostalgia Countertrend in the Digital Era.” GOOD. 3 May 2013. Web. 18 July 2013.


6Boym, Svetlana. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books, 2002.

8Derrida, Jacques. “Specters of Marx: the State of the Debt, the Work of the Mourning, and the New International,” New York: Routledge.

9Pilkington, Mark. “Hauntologists mine the past for music’s future.” Boing Boing. 12 Oct 2012. Web. 17 May 2013. http://boingboing.net/2012/10/12/hauntologists-mine-the-past-fo.html

10Recorded music handled by music libraries and made available, through licensing, for use in radio, television, and film.

11Fisher, Mark. “What is Hauntology?” Film Quarterly. Vol. 66, No. 1, (Fall 2012): 16-24. Print.

12Joanne McNeil. “Past and Present in “Strange Simultaneity”: Mark Fisher Explains Hauntology at NYU. Rhizome. 18 May 2011. Web. 19 August 2013. http://rhizome.org/editorial/2011/may/18/hauntology/

13Adam Harper. “Hauntology: The Past Inside The Present. Rogues Foam. 27 October 2009. Web. 20 September 2013. http://rougesfoam.blogspot.com/2009/10/hauntology-past-inside-present.html

14Tristan Eldritch. “Hauntology Rising Part 1: Ghost Box Music. A Few Years in the Absolute Elsewhere. 19 May 2010. Web. 29 May 2013. http://2012diaries.blogspot.com/2010/05/hauntology-rising-part-1-ghost-box.html

15 “The World at Your Fingertips.” The Machine That Changed the World. WGBH Educational Foundation. 1992. Television.


16The Digital Curation Centre. “What Is Digital Curation?” Web. 2013. http://www.dcc.ac.uk/digital-curation/what- digital-curation

17Ricci, Steven. “Saving, Rebuilding, or Making: Archival (Re)Constructions in Moving Image Archives” The American Archivist. Vol. 71, No. 2, (Fall - Winter, 2008): 433-455. Print.

18Harvey, Ross. Digital Curation: A How-To-Do-It Manual. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc, 31 July 2010. Print.


19Heslop H, Davis S (2002) (unpublished). An Approach to the Preservation of
Digital Records. National Archives of Australia, Canberra

20Guidelines for the preservation of digital heritage. National Library of Australia, P. 34; 7.4, Mar. 2003.