User:SN/Sketch 004

Sketch #004

Sketch #004 were made for an exhibition 'Boundaries of the Archive' that took place at EYE Museum 12/05 — 24/05/2016.

The piece is a manipulation of silent films from the Eye Archive and Prelinger collection. The metadata used for indexing the material provides the starting point. The formal parameters of the image source are separated from the narrative to produce sound. Motion vectors and histogram data were isolated from the source to generate an audio track and reassociate it with the footage. The categorisation processes distort the understanding of the narrative content of the silent film the same way the formal characteristics of the video distort the sound. The work emphasizes that the selective nature of any archival system is biased.

About the exhibition

Piet Zwart Institute, Master Media Design ResearchLab focuses on the boundaries of the archive. As media practitioners studying the structures and cultural impacts of our media technologies, students concentrates on the intricate and usually hidden aspects of EYE’s extensive archive.

The EYE Collection is internationally recognized for its outstanding historical breadth and quality, particularly in relation to Dutch cinema culture. Any limitations, frictions and little-noticed quirks in the archival system serve as poetic inspiration.

The timing of this exhibition coincides with the moving of the EYE Collection to new premises. It provides a starting point to explore the materiality of both digital and analog films, the poetics of cataloging them, and the fragile semantics of a vast collection database.