It was shot by my brother, Daniel. I’ve haven't the video since the day he rigged up the cam to his TV before giving me the tape to transfer on to a CD/DVD. That was over six years ago
They don’t make the little cams that take the tapes any more. I don’t know a single person who owns one, but in 2008 they were pretty standard. I know that there’s plenty of places that convert them for you today. I could easily convert it myself (which was my original intention) if I only I knew somebody who owned one of the camcorders, but I don’t.
The tape is probably next to some old MP3 mindiscs that were bought to go in the £400 Sony separate I owned in the early 00's.
Lets say somebody comes across that tin in 50 years time. What would they do with the Video tape and minidisk? How the hell would they go about viewing those without real effort? The minidisk could have an early demo of a new Beatles on it, the video of them rehearsing. How would would they know?
We all know what negatives are, we all know what pictures are. Nobody looks at a bicycle and wonders what it does. I might be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that everybody will still know what to do with a beautifully printed picture or bicycle that they happen upon in a hundred years time. Someone will hang the picture, someone will ride the bike. They may even transport them on a train to a new home. You could do the very same with a printed picture in 1890, when the train the bicycle and the printed picture were becoming more and more important
How about in 2090 when somebody finds your Western Digital HD or an old iPhone with a dead battery and no charger?
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| Unprinted iPhone image of Diane |
Not every picture needs to be saved, not every picture should be saved. But if you want a future Ken Smith to find what you have left behind, make your intention clear, make it easier for them to see that your pictures mattered
Sean
I had a similar thing with a mini cassette I found in a drawer last year: it has a conversation with my Grandmother, mother, daughter and myself: it was recorded when when my Grandmother was still alive: wanting to digitise it, I put out a shout on Twitter to borrow a dictaphone or similar to play it on: a friend, who is a sound artist, will then record it digitally: someone came forward and I'm about to set up a date to record it and save it for me and my family: a voice from the grave!
ReplyDeletebut then there's a question ~ do I save it to a disc or hard drive and how will my future family be able to play it?
food for thought indeed
I think it was Tim Cook ( the CEO of Apple ) who warned that the technology for reading files like jpegs etc might not exist in the future, and that some thought should be given about how best to archive digital files of today for future audiences. That's nothing new to some us, it's why DNG files came about, but that's still nowhere near as stable as the humble printed picture or negative. As long as we have eyes, we have the tech to view prints.
ReplyDeleteI've been lazy in getting the tape converted. That might be something else we should consider about the future. People generally go for the low hanging fruit. I guess we need to make things as easy as we can for future viewers
Sean