Abstract
The article explores different facets of digitizing historical films, where digitization is not only seen as a technological process but rather understood as a cultural practice with economic, institutional, social as well as (memo-)political implications. The goal of this article is not to give an absolute definition of what is essentially "new" about digital processes.
On the contrary, the focus of the article is on exactly the openness and the ambiguity of the term "digitization" and the heterogeneity of connected practices that constitute the analytical focus of this practice. "Digital" can be used as a label e. g. to promote new experiences; the term can be defined by its technical specifications; it can be understood as an aesthetic quality or as a means of distribution. With a polysemic idea of the term "digital", the article examines specific contexts where this phenomenon manifests itself: How is the "digital" modeled in relation to film and media history? How does the relationship between a digital realm and media history affect our notion of temporal differences, by which is meant the mediated relation between a digital present and a pre-digital (analog) medial phenomenon.
Subsequent to an introductory passage modeling digitization as a cultural practice, the article also discusses the problem of choosing and defining a film-historic reference within the digitization processes. Switching to the level of (digital) distribution and presentation, this article then analyses re-edition practices within the framework of TV.
Here the term "digital" can be seen in the context of programming practices, which induce certain rituals which have an impact on collective and cultural memory. This argument is then put forward by a curatorial analysis of specific DVD and Bluray- Disc editions.
The conclusion sums up the previous examples by pointing out that "digital" doesn't stand for teleological progress and that every manifestation of the concept of "digital" is fundamentally intertwined with practices of film and media historiography. The practices around "digital" are not (brand) new: imaging, restoration and curatorial practices within the digital realm slightly shift our ideas of what "film" and "history" are.
Every new media environment shapes our experience of time and our notion of memory, which need to be seen not as a "revolution", but rather as a shift within existing discourses. Therefore, the lesson is twofold: 1) one must always be aware of the specific (medial) context in which "digital" as a phenomenon manifests itself, and 2) "digital" cannot be new without the old: the digital present is almost always put in a dialectic relationship with a past that serves as the background for differentiation, within which a specific, context-driven image of the past is construed.