A short video demonstrating the tremendous need to maintain Old Media.

Old media formats are generally considered to be niche media, the sort of pieces that only enthusiasts would use today. But in some cases the same could be said for even those artefacts in their heyday. One of the things I find most interesting is the processes of using analog media which I briefly touched on in my photo series on Analog is Beautiful. The idea there is that there is a human quality to the way we interact with analog media. My contention here is that those qualities that make the media beautiful also make it difficult, expensive and time consuming to not only maintain but just to use. In my post on Old Media is not Permanent Media I mentioned that a particular 4 track mixer I was using to playback a multi-track cassette tape or two, was not even working when I got it out. I had to ask my dad to help me fix it. We discovered that the rubber ribbon inside the machine had stretched after around a decade of simply being stored and would no longer turn the tape drives and this meant it was effectively useless. A quick fix with some rubber bands and some various other pieces fixed it temporarily. In order to use an analog synthesiser like the one at the end of the video takes similar determination. Programming an analog synthesiser is much harder than simply tweaking a few settings in a computer as you can imagine. The lens that I was modifying to work as a video lens, required a complete disassembly so that I could ‘de-click’ the aperture ring as it frequently got stuck (the lens is nearly 50 years old).

When we update our phones every two years, what place does a cassette tape mixer with busted insides or a 1960s lens have in today’s hyper busy-ness? Nathan G. Freier and Peter H. Kahn explore the effects of technological new media on children, commenting, “In 2006, the revenues accrued through MMORPGs exceeded $1 billion (Harding-Rolls 2007).” In a world where we can log into a virtual, surrealistic, perfect world, what on earth place is there for technology that takes time and care and love? Is the garage car restorer a thing of the past? In The natural life cycle of new media evolution, Sam Lehman-Wilzig and Nava Cohen-Avignore comment that “the length of each medium’s life-cycle and the time between each stage are also not uniform. Stage transitions are dependent on the appearance of new competitors; adaptation and survival is in great part a function of innate technological capabilities.” This would suggest that perhaps this technology is not worth maintaining, after all, all technology seems to have gone through similar disruptions in the past.

Nathan G. Freier, & Peter H. Kahn, Jr. (2009). The Fast-Paced Change of Children’s Technological Environments. Children, Youth and Environments, 19(1), 1-11. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/stable/10.7721/chilyoutenvi.19.1.0001