Analogue Relics - The Imprint of Making

Abstract

This research asks how analogue making might expose tensions within the abstract digital systems that people live with today. Through a process of media archaeology, obsolete media and tools are reintroduced to contemporary design practice through transmediation, creating a digital analogue hybrid that extracts the new from the familiar. This research uses nostalgia as a critical lens rather than something sentimental by reasserting material resistance through methods involving 16mm film and ZipZap machines to provoke analogue instability; in doing so, failure is reintroduced into systems that seek perfection. These failures or ‘glitches’ suggest the materiality of media, helping to expose material traces often erased in digital production, revealing the hidden labour and invisible systems that underpin digital capitalism.