Internet Archaeology: graphic artefacts from our recent past
"Internet Archaeology seeks to explore, recover, archive and showcase the graphic artifacts found within earlier Internet Culture. Established in 2009, the chief purpose of Internet Archaeology is to preserve these artifacts and acknowledge their importance in understanding the beginnings and birth of an Internet Culture. We focus on graphic artifacts only, with the belief that images are most culturally revealing and immediate. Most of the files in our archive are in either JPG or GIF format and are categorized by either still or moving image, they are then arranged in various thematic subcategories. Currently, a major focus of Internet Archaeology is on the archiving and indexing of images found on Geocities websites, as their existence has been terminated by parent company Yahoo; who discontinued GeoCities operation on October 26, 2009. Internet Archaeology is an ongoing effort which puts preservation paramount. Unlike traditional archaeology, where physical artifacts are unearthed; Internet Archaeology's artifacts are digital, thus more temporal and transient. Yet we believe that these artifacts are no less important than say the cave paintings of Lascaux. They reveal the origins of a now ubiquitous Internet Culture; showing where we have been and how far we have come."
(Internet Archaeology)
Via Chelsea Nichols [http://ridiculouslyinteresting.wordpress.com/2011/11/26/internet-archaeology-the-best-of-90s-internet-graphics/]
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Extensive collection of vintage pocket calculators
"1970s Vintage desktop and pocket calculators listed by company (131 identified brands, 613 calculators). ..., it is crazy to think that in many of these calculators you have a chip that is bigger in size than one of the Intel Core Family processors."
(Vintage Technology)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Research through design as a method for interaction design research
"design artifacts as outcomes that can transform the world from its current state to a preferred state. The artifacts produced in this type of research become design exemplars, providing an appropriate conduit for research findings to easily transfer to the HCI research and practice communities."
(John Zimmerman, Jodi Forlizzi, Shelley Evenson)
John Zimmerman, Jodi Forlizzi, and Shelley Evenson (2007). "Research through design as a method for interaction design research in HCI". In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (CHI '07). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 493-502. DOI=10.1145/1240624.1240704 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1240624.1240704
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Brian Dettmer: book autopsies
"In this work I begin with an existing book and seal its edges, creating an enclosed vessel full of unearthed potential. I cut into the surface of the book and dissect through it from the front. I work with knives, tweezers and other surgical tools to carve one page at a time, exposing each page while cutting around ideas and images of interest. Nothing inside the books is relocated or implanted, only removed. Images and ideas are revealed to expose a book's hidden, fragmented memory. The completed pieces expose new relationships of a book's internal elements exactly where they have been since their original conception."
(Brian Dettmer)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
BFI gets Halas & Batchelor animation archive
"the husband and wife-run Halas & Batchelor, sometimes called the British Disney – which for more than 50 years produced adverts, public information pieces, feature films, TV cartoons and serious award-winning animation respected the world over.
Today, 15 years after the studio's last release, the British Film Institute will announce that it has been given the Halas & Batchelor archive, including film prints, stills, scripts, correspondence and original cells. It is the largest ever single donation of British animation and was welcomed as 'an extraordinarily rich gift' by the BFI director, Amanda Nevill. 'We look forward to working on ensuring these films and artefacts are enjoyed by the widest possible group of people in years to come,' she said. ...
Curator Jez Stewart hopes that the BFI will be now be able to open up Halas & Batchelor to new generations of animation fans and practitioners. Aardman Animation's Nick Park said he had fond memories of watching the company's animated educational films at school. 'They have always been part of my life,' he said. 'John Halas was the judge on the first animated competition I ever entered – I didn't win, but admired him and looked up to him as a great figure in British animation.'"
(Mark Brown, 3 December 2010, The Guardian)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
