Australian Research Council (ARC)

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/2328/27527

This is a collection of ARC-funded research publications authored by Flinders academics.

Browse

Browsing Australian Research Council (ARC) by Subject "Archiving"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Collecting and conserving code: challenges and strategies
    (Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies, Macquarie University, Sydney, 2013) Swalwell, Melanie Lorraine; de Vries, Denise Bernadette
    The collection and conservation of code is still in its infancy in Australia. Even where coded items do exist, they are almost completely invisible within local cultural institutions and archives. Born-digital heritage faces unique risks - the degradation of hardware and software, obsolete operating systems, and intellectual property laws that restrict digital preservation activities. Too often, governments and cultural institutions either fail to recognise the precarious situation of historic code-based media, or are not able to respond in an appropriate fashion, due to a lack of resources, know-how, or sometimes, will. After outlining some of the challenges - for institutions and researchers - of developing collections of games and other software, this article will detail two current research initiatives. The Play It Again project is conducting research into the largely unknown histories of 1980s game development in Australia and New Zealand, ensuring that local titles are documented, preserved and make it into national collections. The Australasian Heritage Software Database seeks to: draw together existing knowledge about locally-developed software, marshal a network of supporters, and develop an enabling discourse that supports research into histories of software and digital preservation. Whilst these projects do not provide complete solutions by any means, a local discourse about the importance of collecting and conserving code is emerging.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Moving on from the original experience: games history, preservation and presentation
    (Digital Games Research Association, 2013) Swalwell, Melanie Lorraine
    The art historical notion of ‘the original’ continues to inflect games history and game preservation work. This paper notes the persistence of this concept particularly in the game lover’s invocation of ‘the original experience’. The paper first traces the game lover’s notions of history and preservation, recognizing their commitment to games, before noting that the appeal to original experience is problematic for more critical historical and scholarly perspectives. It suggests that there is a need to liberate critical thought from this paradigm and ask different questions, such as how exhibitions of 1980s games and gaming culture might be assembled for future audiences with no memory of this period. The model proposed by net art preservationist, Anne Laforet, of the Archaeological Museum offers a way for thinking about such exhibits of game history and visitors’ encounters with these, whilst moving beyond the notion that games must play exactly as they once did.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    The Popular Memory Archive
    (Flinders University, Department of Screen and Media, 2013) de Vries, Denise Bernadette; Ndalianis, Angela; Stuckey, Helen; Swalwell, Melanie Lorraine
    Digital games make up a significant but little known chapter in the history of the moving image in Australia and New Zealand. This site aims to exhibit some of the significant local games of the 1980s era, and collect documentation in order to remember early games through popular memory. It features a curated exhibition of information about fifty 1980s Australian and New Zealand Games, and the Creators and Companies behind them.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    The Popular Memory Archive: collecting and exhibiting player culture from the 1980s
    (Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2013) Stuckey, Helen; Swalwell, Melanie Lorraine; Ndalianis, Angela
    This book constitutes the refereed post-proceedings of the IFIP WG 9.7 International Conference on the History of Computing, HC 2013, held in London, UK, in June 2013. The 29 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers cover a wide range of topics related to the history of computing and offer a number of different approaches to making this history relevant. These range from discussion of approaches to describing and analyzing the history through storytelling and education to description of various collections, working installations and reconstruction projects.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Remembrance of games past: the Popular Memory Archive
    (ACM Digital Library, 2013) Stuckey, Helen; Swalwell, Melanie Lorraine; Ndalianis, Angela; de Vries, Denise Bernadette
    Games are one of the most significant cultural forms of our times and yet they are poorly documented in Australia and New Zealand. Knowledge about the history of games is overwhelmingly held by private collectors and fans, with ephemera and other primary sources located amongst the general public. This paper presents and discusses the Popular Memory Archive (PMA), an online portal of the "Play It Again" game history and preservation project. As well as providing a way to disseminate some of the team's research, the PMA taps into what is, effectively, a collective public archive by providing a technique for collecting information, resources and memories from the public about 1980s computer games. Digital games are more than inert code; they come to life in the act of play. Collecting games and other artefacts and preserving them is thus only part of the construction of a history about games. The PMA is designed to work with online retro gamer communities and fans, and this paper reflects on the PMA as a method for collecting the memories of those who lived and played their way through this period.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Retro-computing community sites and the museum
    (Wiley/IEEE Press, 2014-03) Stuckey, Helen; Swalwell, Melanie Lorraine
    This book covers the state-of-the-art in digital games research and development for anyone working with or studying digital games and those who are considering entering into this rapidly growing industry. Many books have been published that sufficiently describe popular topics in digital games; however, until now there has not been a comprehensive book that draws the traditional and emerging facets of gaming together across multiple disciplines within a single volume.