I’m honored to be giving one of the opening plenary talks— alongside the fantastic Matt Kirschenbaum — at the Library of Congress/NDIIPP “Digital Preservation 2014″ conference next week. When Trevor Owens invited me, I wasn’t sure what I could contribute — given that most attendees are likely to be technological geniuses, and I’m, well, not. But Trevor assured me that my “schtick” would be — or at least could be — of interest to all the techno-savants in attendance. So I decided to talk about aesthetics and “preservation art.” I’ve been addressing the aesthetics of archives, libraries, databases, etc., in my “Archives + Libraries” class the past several years. And I’ve been drooling over archive art and the aesthetics of organization for my entire adult life.
Trevor and I talked about “teaching with art” on the Library of Congress’s Signal blog last month. Since then, I’ve thought more about what art — both analog and digital — might have to say about preservation, specifically digital preservation. I’ve finished a draft of my talk. It’s a bit too long, so I won’t be able to deliver it in its entirety at the conference, but I figured I’d post the full text, with all the footnotes, here. With the slides, too.
Continue reading at Preservation Aesthetics: My Talk for the LoC’s Digital Preservation Conference.