International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) Journal

Editorial

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A Letter from IASA’s President

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Indigenous Voices and the Archive

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Between 1914 and 1919, the British administrator and anthropologist John Henry Hutton (1885-1968) made fourteen cylinder recordings documenting the songs of Naga communities in the Naga Hills District, today part of the state of Nagaland in India. Little is known about the recording circumstances, as the documentation is limited to brief recording notes he sent with the cylinders to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, which holds the collection. Hutton’s publications, on the other hand, include transcriptions and translations of some of the recorded songs, but the poor sound quality makes it difficult to assign these to the published songs with certainty. This paper summarises the outcomes of a research project funded by the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives between January and March 2022, which aimed to reconnect Naga communities with Hutton’s recordings to elucidate the content and performance context of the recordings, and to provide digital copies of the collection with enhanced documentation to the Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology (Gurgaon) and the Highland Institute (Kohima). Fieldwork participants appreciated the opportunity to hear Hutton’s recordings, which they considered important historical documentation of Naga traditional music. Yet, most listeners struggled to identify the recorded songs, although a few were able to name and even perform some of them. The project concluded with an exhibition at the Highland Institute that featured Hutton’s recordings and more recent examples of Naga traditional music. Overall, few listeners were aware of the existence of Hutton’s recordings when we conducted our fieldwork in February 2022, although the recordings have been available online on the website of the Pitt Rivers Museum since 2013. Thus, I argue that initiatives of making historical sound recordings accessible online need to be supported by actions on the ground in countries of origin, to facilitate community engagement with audio collections uploaded to the web.

Identification and Assessment of Film Appraisal Mechanisms Aimed at the Improvement of Archiving and Presentation Processes

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Národní filmový archiv, Prague (the National Film Archive, or NFA) needs to update its core cataloguing system and potentially improve preservation processes to address new requirements related to (digital) content management. Since the NFA is also active in content digitisation and restoration, new digital tools were recently deployed for the purposes of supporting operation and management processes. In order to identify how
the new system could improve the efficiency of both cataloguing and content management, the entire workflow has been investigated and analysed. Together with a standard process mapping, the extent to which these processes are aligned with the institution’s key activities, strategies, (individual) roles and the NFA’s goals was investigated. Drawing on concepts from cultural work appraisal and practical theories, techniques developed in ethnography and organizational studies were applied to examine the way in which the value of collected material is being constructed, understood and documented; and how its perception contributes to decision-making during the organisation’s regular activities. The results were analysed and communicated using process diagrams and sets of recommendations. Along with gaining better insight into the NFA’s operations, this approach allows for the enhancement of the new data model. There were also several
mechanisms proposed which are aimed at enriching the retrieval of information related to film content origin, treatment, perception and community appraisals; as well as the improvement of strategic decision-making processes regarding digitisation, long-term preservation and distribution priorities.

Listening With/in Context

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Despite increasing attention to the preservation and development of sound archives in academic research and cultural heritage institutions, they are yet to be more substantially embraced in larger theoretical debates on archival theory and practice. Fraught with contested histories through the legacy of ethnomusicology, rooted in the enterprises of colonial imperialism, now in the era of mass digitization and distribution, many sound collections are attempting to develop ethical and empowering methodologies that support community involvement and a vigorous remediation between sound and visuality. Addressing this confluence of concerns, this article considers the ways in which contemporary digital sound archival projects are encouraging an engagement with cultural history and memory in innovative and complex ways, mobilizing the affordances
of digital tools and community-based support material with careful attention to the negotiation between its sonic and visual constituents. Through an analysis of two case studies – The Roaring ‘Twenties and Smoke Signals Radio Show Archive – this article examines how contemporary digital archival projects activate and remediate sonic documents and their contextual counterparts to invite a diverse, multifaceted, and multi-sensory encounter with history, memory, knowledge, and the past.

Ethics of Sound Quality in Online Teaching, Learning and Conferencing

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Recent developments in using audiovisual software for teaching and learning are very challenging in terms of achieving a minimum of audio and visual quality. This article will focus on the correlation between visibility and audio quality of content transmission, as well as ways of making specific experiences in choosing tools and publicly accessible methods preservable.
Each expert provides their personal and professional experiences concerning audio processing applied to an online learning environment, the challenges of teaching singing online, and the audiovisual preparation of online conferences.
The experts work in the audiovisual archives field and are all connected through their work advocating for small-scale archives in Asia. They are frequent contributors to the IASA Journal. In this article, their most recent perspectives with ethics in sound quality will be the centre of the exchange of ideas.