This is the text of the talk I gave on 29 January 2016 at the Institute of Historical Research’s Winter Conference. The theme of the conference was ‘The Production of the Archive‘, and I was asked to say something about sound and/or moving image archives in a section of the day called ‘Beyond text andRead More
Month: January 2016
On the deaths of famous people
The first person of whose death I became aware was Pete Duel. He was an American actor, star of the popular television series Alias Smith and Jones, which followed the adventures of two outlaws in imitation of the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Duel committed suicide on the last day of 1971, andRead More
My spine is the bassline
A while back I had fun putting together a list of favourite guitar solos that was determinedly different to the usual sort of list of these things. Now here’s another such list, this time looking at basslines. There’s an argument to be made for the electric bass guitar to have been one of defining inventionsRead More
The disappearing archive
It’s well known how vast YouTube is, and the rate at which it is growing. Recent figures suggest that 400 hours of video are added to the site every minute (back in 2013 it was a mere 100 hours per minute), and that it is serving some six billion video views per day. It isRead More