Oh, I see, thanks for the explanation, passionate work.
-----Original Message-----
From: Therapeutic Communities
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Fees
Sent: 15 November 2005 00:47
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: 1,000 flowers
"I don't really understand what you mean by:
"Time isn't on our side"?"
Four things come immediately to mind:
1) Technology - As soon as you say 'digitisation', you say 'obsolescence'.
We have a set of videos in the Archive from the 70s, a standard format of
the time, which we had to send to the States ten years ago to have
transferred to current video format - and that was to one of only two places
in the world (the other in Japan) which still had working equipment to play
the tapes on. Sooner rather than later the formats we took for granted
yesterday will have disappeared similarly: VHS, S-VHS, Beta, audiocassette,
reel to reel (got any eight-track cartridges to hand?);
2) The material: Film, video and audiotape are all sandwiches of material,
bonded for temporary convenience, but itching to go their separate ways. If
God had meant there to be film and magnetic recording tape, they would be
growing on trees. Instead, depending on how they have been stored and
handled they are slowly or rapidly coming apart, becoming brittle,
stretching or tearing. With the magnetic tapes, it is even more devilish,
because to play them you have to wipe them across a metal surface; and each
time you do that, it quietly abrades away a bit of the recorded signal.
Ideally, if you have an old video or audio-tape (reel to reel or cassette),
you should not play it except to make a preservation copy, after which you
put it away. Each time you play it, you risk the machine eating it,
stretching, breaking, or tearing it; but you're absolutely guaranteed to be
destroying a little bit of it.
3) Loss and destruction: Someone just has to be having a clear-out, or a
helpful person is assisting with a move, or a hot water pipe running through
the room bursts, or a small fire breaks out, or you store your tapes near an
electrical outlet or by a live flex or a set of speakers, or dust gets in,
or rats decide to make a nest in it, or your material is stored in the
loft/attic where it gets hot in the summer and cold in the winter and
sometimes both in 24 hours, tearing it apart...Just about anything really.
Time destroys. And the longer you wait, the greater the likelihood that the
stuff will be gone.
4) People: The people who appear in the films and videos, or on the tape; or
who made them; or who could explain stuff, or were affected by them, slip
away. It's inevitable; it's already happening. Irreversible.
That's what I meant. Tomorrow's already too late, although it's the best we
have.
Craig
|