Category: audio / video heritage

Archival and heritage projects focussed on the preservation of audio and video assets

Brian Eno Archive Video

As I write, just before 17.00 GMT / 12.00 EST, 24th January 2025, Anamorph.com are about to go live with the 24hour global streaming premiere of creative film maker Gary Hustwit’s unique documentary feature ‘Eno’. Echoing Brian Eno’s long-running explorations of generative technology in composition, Hustwit and digital artist Brendan Hawes have created Brain One… Continue reading Brian Eno Archive Video

Pre-Figurative Digital Preservation

How do you start preserving digital objects if your institution or organisation has little or no capacity to do so? Digital preservation can at first be bit-part and modular. You can build your capacity one step at a time. Once you’ve taken a few steps you can then put them together, making a ‘system’. It’s… Continue reading Pre-Figurative Digital Preservation

Happy World Day for Audiovisual Heritage!

World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, which is sponsored by UNESCO and takes place every year on 27 October, is an occasion to celebrate how audio, video and film contribute to the ‘memory of the world.’ The theme for 2016 – ‘It’s your story, don’t lose it!’ – conveys the urgency of audio visual preservation and… Continue reading Happy World Day for Audiovisual Heritage!

Digital Video in Mixed-Content Archives

On a recent trip to one of Britain’s most significant community archives, I was lucky enough to watch a rare piece of digitised video footage from the late 1970s. As the footage played it raised many questions in my mind: who shot it originally? What format was it originally created on? How was it edited?… Continue reading Digital Video in Mixed-Content Archives

Monstrous Regiment – Audio Cassette Digitisation

Monstrous Regiment were one of many trailblazing feminist theatre companies active in the 1970s-1990s. They were established as a collective very much built around performers, both (professional) actors such as Mary McCusker and (professional) musicians such as Helen Glavin. Between 1975-1993 Monstrous Regiment produced a significant number of plays and cabarets. These included Scum: Death, Destruction and Dirty… Continue reading Monstrous Regiment – Audio Cassette Digitisation

The Genesis Archive – ¼” reel-to-reel tapes transferred

The early 21st century has been witness to numerous projects that document and interpret popular music histories. Whether dedicated to regional histories, such as the Manchester District Music Archive and Birmingham Music Archive, or genre specific, like the National Jazz archive or the English Folk Dance and Song Society’s ‘Full English’, digitsation has helped curators organise and publish material in new and… Continue reading The Genesis Archive – ¼” reel-to-reel tapes transferred

Greatbear 2016 Infomercial

Greatbear have just produced our 2016 ‘infomercial’. The 4-page document includes details of our work and all the formats we digitise. We are in the process of sending printed copies to relevant organisations. Please contact us to request a copy and we will pop one in the post for you. You can also download a… Continue reading Greatbear 2016 Infomercial

Hands On History Conference

Media scholars, tinkerers and ‘thinkerers’ gathered in London last week for ADAPT TV‘s Hands on History Conference. ADAPT is a five-year research project based at Royal Holloway, University of London that aims to capture and analyse the complex histories of TV production from the 1950s to the present. A core part of the project methodology… Continue reading Hands On History Conference

Video Tape Preservation – The Final Frontier

The UK’s audio collections have Save Our Sounds. The BFI recently launched Film is Fragile to support film preservation in the UK. Yet something is missing from these impassioned calls to preserve audiovisual heritage. As 2015 draws to a close, there is no comparable public campaign focused on the preservation of videotape. For James Patterson, from… Continue reading Video Tape Preservation – The Final Frontier

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies Audio Cassette Transfer

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is widely heralded as a classic of 20th century English literature. The book adorns English Literature syllabuses throughout the UK, its provocative events continue to inspire debate about the nature of humanity and ‘civilisation.’ We recently transferred an audio cassette recording of the Nobel-prize winning author reading his famous novel.… Continue reading William Golding’s Lord of the Flies Audio Cassette Transfer

British Stand Up Comedy Archive’s audiovisual collections

Greatbear have recently worked with the British Stand Up Comedy Archive (BSUCA) to reformat a number of Digital Audio Tapes (DATs) and U-Matic video tapes from their collection. Established in 2013 and based at the University of Kent’s Special Collections, the BSUCA aims ‘to celebrate, preserve, and provide access to the archives and records of… Continue reading British Stand Up Comedy Archive’s audiovisual collections

Save Our Sounds’ £9.5 million boost

This article is a bit late to break this news, but it is worth highlighting again in case you missed it first time round. In May 2015 the British Library were awarded over £9.5 million pounds by the Heritage Lottery Fund to help them deliver their hugely important Save Our Sounds project. We told you… Continue reading Save Our Sounds’ £9.5 million boost

Phil Johnson’s the Wild Bunch VHS video

As a business situated in the heart of Bristol, Greatbear is often called upon by Bristol’s artists to re-format their magnetic tape collections. Previously we have transferred documentaries about the St. Paul’s Carnival and films from the Bristol-based Women in Moving Pictures archive. We also regularly digitise tapes for Bristol Archive Records. We were recently approached by author… Continue reading Phil Johnson’s the Wild Bunch VHS video

Type IV Metal Cassettes and Robert Chenciner’s Daghestan Collection

We recently received a fascinating collection of tapes from the archive of Robert Chenciner, an ethnographer with over thirty years experience studying the cultures, human rights and current affairs of Daghestan. Daghestan is located in the north Caucasus region, its neighbouring countries are Azerbaijan, Chechnya and Georgia, while its eastern border is flanked by the… Continue reading Type IV Metal Cassettes and Robert Chenciner’s Daghestan Collection

Re-animating archives: Action Space’s V30H / V60H EIAJ 1/2″ video tapes

One of the most interesting aspects of digitising magnetic tapes is what happens to them after they leave the Greatbear studio. Often transfers are done for private or personal interest, such as listening to the recording of loved ones, or for straightforward archival reasons. Yet in some cases material is re-used in a new creative project, thereby translating… Continue reading Re-animating archives: Action Space’s V30H / V60H EIAJ 1/2″ video tapes

Videokunstarkivet’s Mouldy U-matic Video Tapes

Last year we featured the pioneering Norwegian Videokunstarkivet (Video Art Archive) on the Greatbear tape blog. In one of our most popular posts, we discussed how Videokunstarkivet has created a state of the video art archive using open source software to preserve, manage and disseminate Norway’s video art histories for contemporary audiences and beyond. In… Continue reading Videokunstarkivet’s Mouldy U-matic Video Tapes

IASA – Resources and Research

There are an astonishing amount of online resources relating to the preservation and re-formatting of magnetic tape collections. Whether you need help identifying and assessing your collection, getting to grips with the latest video codec saga or trying to uncover esoteric technical information relating to particular formats, the internet turns up trumps 95% of the time.… Continue reading IASA – Resources and Research

Digitising small audiovisual collections: making decisions and taking action

Deciding when to digitise your magnetic tape collections can be daunting. The Presto Centre, an advocacy organisation working to help ‘keep audiovisual content alive,’ have a graphic on their website which asks: ‘how digital are our members?’ They chart the different stages of ‘uncertainty,’ ‘awakening’, ‘enlightenment’, ‘wisdom’ and ‘certainty’ that organisations move through as they… Continue reading Digitising small audiovisual collections: making decisions and taking action

Save our Sounds – 2030 and the threat of audiovisual extinction

At the beginning of 2015, the British Library launched the landmark Save Our Sounds project. The press release explained: ‘The nation’s sound collections are under threat, both from physical degradation and as the means of playing them disappear from production. Archival consensus internationally is that we have approximately 15 years in which to save our sound collections… Continue reading Save our Sounds – 2030 and the threat of audiovisual extinction

Videokunstarkivet – Norway’s Digital Video Art Archive

We have recently digitised a U-matic video tape of eclectic Norwegian video art from the 1980s. The tape documents a performance by Kjartan Slettemark, an influential Norwegian/ Swedish artist who died in 2008. The tape is the ‘final mix’ of a video performance entitled Chromakey Identity Blue in which Slettemark live mixed several video sources onto… Continue reading Videokunstarkivet – Norway’s Digital Video Art Archive

Significant properties – technical challenges for digital preservation

A consistent focus of our blog is the technical and theoretical issues that emerge in the world of digital preservation. For example, we have explored the challenges archivists face when they have to appraise collections in order to select what materials are kept, and what are thrown away. Such complex questions take on specific dimensions… Continue reading Significant properties – technical challenges for digital preservation

UNESCO World Audiovisual Heritage Day – 27 October

In 2005 UNESCO (United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) decided to commemorate 27 October as World Audiovisual Heritage Day. The theme for 2013 was ‘Saving Our Heritage for the Next Generation’. Even though we are a day late, we wanted to write a post to mark the occasion. UNESCO argue that audiovisual heritage is a… Continue reading UNESCO World Audiovisual Heritage Day – 27 October

Greatbear Studio Visit – Archive for Mathematical Sciences and Philosophy

This week in the Greatbear Studio we are being visited by Michael Wright, Director of The Archive Trust for Research in Mathematical Sciences and Philosophy. The Archive Trust for Research in Mathematical Sciences and Philosophy holds an extensive collection of audio and video recordings on subjects in mathematics, physics and philosophy, particularly the philosophy and… Continue reading Greatbear Studio Visit – Archive for Mathematical Sciences and Philosophy

Quarter inch reel to reel tape audio archiving

We’ve been a bit quiet since last year on our blog here primarily because we have been processing a large, ongoing audio archiving digital migration job for Mood Media Ltd In essence audio archiving, digital migration, transfer or digitisation, whatever term you prefer, is conceptually simple: one analogue or digital format is moved to another,… Continue reading Quarter inch reel to reel tape audio archiving

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