Title Master Thesis:
Ephemeral Media and Cultural Heritage.
Current Practices of Archiving, Reuse, and Exhibition of
Dutch Television Advertisements.
Name student: Krystyna Biernawska
Student number: 10357521
E-mail: krystyna.biernawska@student.uva.nl
Supervisor: Bas Agterberg
Name degree program: Heritage Studies: Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image
Name of School: Graduate School of Humanities
Name of University: Universiteit van Amsterdam
Type of product: Master’s Thesis
Month & Year of submission: June 2014
ABSTRACT
The primary objective of the following dissertation is to examine ephemeral media texts, particularly Dutch television advertising materials, in relation to their attribution to the Dutch cultural heritage. Further, I wish to argue to what extent it is worth to consider advertising films and TV advertisements as part of Dutch cultural heritage and what the current prospects are for archiving, reuse and exhibition of these materials, also in the digital environment.
The two main and interconnected objectives of this exploratory study are firstly to determine how advertising materials illustrate, portray and refer to history and cultural values. Secondly, this study addresses the current practices of archiving, reuse, and exhibition strategies in the Netherlands and how these texts and, more importantly, their reuse might enable evoking, referring to, and even endorsing nostalgia and collective memories.
To recognize television advertising materials as an integral and significant part of cultural heritage, notwithstanding their ephemeral nature, means to acknowledge these media products as although seemingly uncomplicated, compact and precise yet powerful carriers of cultural and historical values ‘expressing different understandings of the relation between culture and society’ (Bang, 2007, p. 2).
One should not undermine the complexity of meaning in such texts. An advertisement is a precisely calculated mean of communication and a product of its particular time and contexts. It has multiple layers of contexts that come with a clear, commercial purpose. Once it is removed from its original context - the flow of broadcast TV, and then placed in the archival setting – its meaning becomes radically altered.
Consequently the question is - what is left of a commercial and what becomes a heritage in the archival environment?
In order to approach the above issues, firstly this paper will introduce the incorporated core concepts and theories, such as cultural heritage, ephemeral media, television advertisement, archival practices and nostalgia. The latter part develops the defined theoretical framework within which a brief historiography of Dutch TV advertisement and the current media landscape are introduced together with the relevant concepts to this thesis: of collective memory and of remediation. In order to further analyse selected case studies of chosen Dutch advertising texts, the concept of nostalgia functions as a cultural indicator for evoking collective memory and sentiment among the broadcast viewers. Besides case studies of advertising texts, several current Dutch exhibition practices and platforms will be introduced accordingly.
Ultimately, by incorporating both the overview of the practices of archiving, reuse and exhibition in the Netherlands, as well as the case study analysis of the selected advertising materials, this explorative study attempts to inaugurate a discourse on the aforementioned current practices and on the meaning and the value of TV advertising materials in the archival context. The obtained results allow to approach the research questions stated below. It is hoped that this study will possibly stimulate further investigation in this field.
Keywords: - Dutch Advertisement -Archives -Collective Memory -Cultural heritage -Ephemeral media -Exhibition Practices -Nostalgia -Remediation
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ... 2
TABLE OF CONTENTS ... 4
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ... 5
1 INTRODUCTION ... 6
1.1 RESEARCH QUESTIONS ... 9
1.2 METHODOLOGY ... 10
2 MEDIA LANDSCAPE IN THE NETHERLANDS ... 12
3 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ... 22
3.1 EPHEMERAL MEDIA & TV ADVERTISEMENT ... 22
3.2 NOSTALGIA: ACTUAL, BORROWED & CLASSIC ... 25
3.3 REMEDIATION ... 27
3.4 COLLECTIVE MEMORY ... 30
4 CASE STUDIES & THE ANALYSIS ... 33
4.1 DUTCH TV ADVERTISEMENTS & NOSTALGIA ... 36
4.2 EXHIBITION PLATFORMS: ONLINE & ONSITE ... 46
5 RESULTS ... 53
5.1 CURRENT PRACTICES: ARCHIVING, REUSE, AND EXHIBITION ... 53
6 CONCLUSION & DISCUSSION ... 58
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I offer my gratitude to the faculty, staff and my fellow students from the programme Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image at the Universiteit van
Amsterdam, as they have greatly inspired me throughout my studies.
I would also like to thank my dissertation supervisor, Bas Agterberg for his support, sheer patience and assistance in assembling this dissertation.
Special thanks are owed to my family: my mother, whose had continually supported me throughout my years of education and my sister Ewa, whose particularly
1. INTRODUCTION
Throughout the duration of my study programme ‘Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image’ at the University of Amsterdam, my interests were somewhat directed towards the field of moving image materials that were never thought of as cultural carriers per se. Products of no the raison d'être, with short and dedicated life span. So to speak - a discriminated margin within the audio-visual arts.
Since I can remember, advertisings have been an integral part of my daily media experience, either voluntarily or not. Although one would hardly ever pay particular attention to commercial media texts or to try to memorize them, even after the course of time I still remember very well some advertisement I saw in the past. Those commercials were of various origins, since I had a chance to live on different continents during my childhood and later – also throughout my youth.
Eventually it got me intrigued, the influence such texts can have on a viewer. An influence that did not necessarily resulted merely in altering my consumer behaviour. Some advertisements settled in my memory for many other reasons but the product or service being promoted. It led me to realize that, if one looks closer, those materials are just inviting for a throughout theorization from multiple intellectual perspectives. Advertising materials can take rich forms drawn from various sources as they ‘make use of non-advertising ideas and discourses, drawing on imagery, narrative styles, genres and techniques from art, aesthetics, movies, television and pop culture,
literature, sport and street subcultures, just to name but a few’ (Hackley, 2011, p. 89). It led me to thinking that television advertisements are entitled to gain the status of an important cultural phenomenon. Moving image and film preservation received an official status as early as in 1980, when UNESCO officially recognized 'moving images' as ‘an integral part of the world's cultural heritage’ (n.d., UNESCO, 1980), but less traditional audio-visual arts, such as ephemeral advertisements, have only recently been dedicated both scholar and archival attention at all.
Over time I have begun wanting to understand what connotations advertisements do carry and what is left of them after they are discharged from their marketing role- how are commercials from the past shown today, or even preserved?
Advertisement, in its most basic definition, serves as a media communication tool to inform consumers about products. Further we can define it as a short and precisely calculated means of communication which is used to ‘encourage, persuade, or
manipulate an audience (viewers, readers or listeners) to continue or to take some new action’ (the Century Dictionary, 2012).
For many years advertisements were considered as products of persuasive
communication and were ‘analysed and interpreted, directly or indirectly, as the direct persuasion aimed at innocent consumers to lure them into buying products beyond their needs’ (Bang, 2007, p. 2), which also hints at currently obsolete but dominant up until the 1960’s understanding of media’s effect within the hypodermic needle
communication theory perspective.
In order for a commercial to serve its purpose effectively, a viewer-consumer must be able to comprehend the intended message and to identify with its content so that he or she is driven towards, the desired effect by the producers, consumer behaviour. Thus advertisements, as communication products of their time, social and cultural contexts, to some extent illustrate and represent society: trends, social changes and shifts. They can be ‘conceptualised as mirroring society’ (Bang, 2007). As cited by Jørgen Bang (2007):
‘The reasoning so far expressed, concerns the question as to what extent the total characteristics of advertisement justify conclusions about conceptions within society-that is to say, the general cultural climate. Content in
advertising is understood as determined by the culture at large, and the content studied (the indicators) is consequently presumed to provide
knowledge about ideas and concepts outside of the world of advertisements’
(Nowak & Andrén, 1981, p. 95)
For the purpose of this dissertation I am looking into advertisement from cultural studies’ perspective, i.e. I am looking into how advertising materials and TV commercials can be analysed and interpreted as cultural indicators, beyond their commercial function. Cultural studies’ perspective approach was at first applied to analysing commercials as early as the 60’s. Raymond Williams suggested (as cited in Bang, 2007) that ‘advertisement is also, in a sense, the official art of modern capitalist
society’ (Bang, 2007, p. 7). In line with this argument, we can consider
advertisements as form of contemporary popular culture, which is accessible to general public and does not challenge ‘commonly accepted values and public opinion […] As such, advertising constitutes a basis on which the challenges of the art in the same period become visible.’ (Bang, 2007, p.8).
Television advertisements, in their form and by their nature, are media products meant for a precise purpose, in exact time and context. Their rapid pace, short running time and intensified imagery are meant to hold the attention of television viewers who step away from the television between regular programs. They depart as suddenly as they enter the screen. In this work I am looking into advertisements as ephemeral media, given their short life span in their natural environment of constant flow of televised imagery.
Screen ephemera, or ephemeral media, and short-lived moving images have been part of a media experience already for decades, in the form of, for example,
advertisements screened at cinemas, thus even before the emergence of the television. However, over the past two decades, the emergence of new media technologies and specifically the rise of the Internet and digital technologies in the 1990s and 2000s have profoundly changed the media environment in every way: from storage and archiving to access and reuse. This media shift has also intensified viewers’ exposure to media ephemera, which are now omnipresent: ranging from TV screens on public transport to screens of our cell phones within reach of our thumbs. It feels as if ephemeral media has been brought much closer to the user, it has now become an integral part of one’s everyday media experience and one’s media landscape even more than before, hence the technological advances, and beyond the limits of proximity in time or space.
This new and digital media environment, transitory screen and ephemeral experience of moving image culture, introduced yet another concern that has recently been acknowledged amongst both media professionals and scholars, leading to more profound queries: what should we preserve and in what ways? To what extent and for which objectives? For whom should we capture and preserve these texts? How should we archive and then reuse them?
1.1 Research Questions
The adapted working definition of television advertising used for the purpose of this paper finds advertisement principally as a persuasive and commercial form of communication. I will also put the emphasis on the relationship between
advertisements and society with advertisements analysed as cultural indicators and also with the consideration of advertisements as popular culture dedicated for the general public. As any other form of art, advertisements offer certain open empty
spaces to allow their viewers and their imagination some level of agency of various
readings, interpretations and experience within the structure of the deliberately commercial message.
Within the scope of this work I focus exclusively on moving image advertising materials for specific trademarks, that is to say on product branding and the
corresponding short narratives. I will also be looking for the indicators of nostalgia (the concept introduced in the following chapter) in broadcast TV advertisements from the 1980’s up until contemporary texts promoting Dutch products such as food and beverages as well as chosen example featuring also children.
The narratives of advertisement concerns products, brands, and organizations, and is ‘paid for and in which the medium television is used, with the intention to influence the knowledge, attitude and ultimately (and ideally) the behaviour of the target group in a direction which is favourable to the advertiser’ (Schreurs, n.d., forthcoming). Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behaviour with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising are also common practices.
Additionally, the challenge will be to examine how such advertising materials evoke and utilize the notions of nostalgia and refer to collective memory, and what the corresponding additional value is in the archival context.
For the purpose of this study, selected case studies of Dutch TV advertisements as well as their reuse through several exhibition platforms will be discussed.
The above has eventually led me to the following research questions:
How do present ways of archiving and reusing TV advertising texts capture and endure their cultural values in the archival context?
- How and to what extent can TV advertising texts be viewed as part of cultural
heritage, with regards to their cultural and social values?
- In what ways do examined Dutch advertisements attempt to provoke nostalgia
and appeal to collective memories of their targeted audiences through televised texts?
In order to grasp the notion of nostalgia and intertextual hints referring to the shared and collective memories of the Dutch TV audiences, I selected and analysed
accordingly a couple of examples of broadcast TV advertisements.
In the following chapter a brief overview of the media landscape and the history of television advertising in the Netherlands will be introduced. Subsequently the concepts of ephemeral media, nostalgia, and remediation as well as of the collective memory will theoretically frame this study before proceeding to the case study analysis.
1.2. Methodology
In order to pinpoint those features of TV advertisements that could function as a cultural and symbolic indicator and a tool for evoking collective memories of targeted audiences amongst the public, I will particularly be looking into advertisement texts that incorporate elements of nostalgia and appeal to the notions of sentiment.
Case studies analysis
An exploratory research in the qualitative tradition within the paradigm of the cultural studies perspective seems the most appropriate approach to this particular study matter. Given the specificity of certain elements within this study, exploratory
research is necessary as there is an insufficient amount of available secondary data and previous research on the topic, in particular on use of nostalgia and collective memory in Dutch advertising.
Exploratory study allows in-depth examination of complexities and processes of little-known phenomenon, a problem that has not yet been clearly defined (Marshall & Rossman, 2006), and also tests the feasibility of undertaking a more extensive study on this topic in the future (Babbie, 2008).
For the exploratory process, given its fundamental nature, the qualitative tradition’s prominent advantage is not only the possibility of being flexible and adaptable with regards to the studied matter and to alter the questions and methodology along the way, but also the fact that this method is unstructured, ‘emergent’ rather than fixed, and the results of qualitative research can at times be unexpected (Marshall & Rossman, 2006). Qualitative design allows collecting data that is richer in meaning, detail, an in-depth than are quantitative data (Babbie, 2008) and seems suitable for obtaining accurate results in an exploratory study.
The research method in which I carried out this qualitative study was a case study. A case study research ‘emphasizes detailed contextual analysis of a limited number of events [or products]’ (Yin, 1984, p. 26). Such research, in exploratory fashion, excels at bringing us to an understanding of a complex issue or object.
Although this method is appreciated particularly within social sciences fields, I feel that in this case and in-depth and complex analysis of specific events and texts on their multiple levels was the most appropriate and practical way to explore Dutch advertising texts which incorporate nostalgia and aim at evoking collective memories, as well as specific cases of reuse and exhibition practices.
As this study does not attempt to formulate theory, neither to deliver generalizable findings, another advantage of case study results is that they relate and are
understandable to the common reader and facilitate an understanding of complex phenomena.
2. MEDIA LANDSCAPE IN THE NETHERLANDS
Although the growing interest in television advertising and recognition of both its importance and influence, also for its cultural values, there has been hardly any interest in the history of television advertisement (Schreurs, n.d., forthcoming). According to Schreurs television historians until now have perceived television advertisements as problematic and insignificant by-products with multiple stakeholders, often with conflicting interests. In part 1 of the Ephemeral Media:
Transitory Screen Culture from Television to YouTube book (2009), William Uricchio
in the introductory chapter ‘The Recurrent, the Recombinatory and the Ephemeral’, defines and contextualizes the ephemeral media by remarking the struggle between networks’ ‘attempts to control content and participatory communities’ abilities to recapture and reinvent this material’ (p. 35).
The text corresponds to the idea of dynamic meaning of media texts’ and that with each reuse of the archived materials - an entirely new object is produced. Julia Noordegraaf’s Performing the Archive: Tracing Audiovisual Heritage in a Digital
Age will be further discussed in the latter ‘Theoretical framework’ of this paper.
Amongst the uncertainties of technological changes, Uricchio predicts ‘a continued slippage between the clearly defined textual forms that we today take for granted, and an increased value for the form that we take as ephemeral’ (p. 35).
Firstly, for the purpose of sketching a broader background for the history of
development of television advertisement in the Netherlands and in order to introduce those developments in possibly the clearest way, one cannot omit the spectrum of cultural, social, and economical circumstances in which they took place.
In 1951 television started in the Netherlands. At the time of the introduction of colour television - first television advertisements were shown in 1967. The first years of television advertising were the years when commercials were still primarily text-based and lacked the entertainment and excitement elements for the viewer (Schreurs, n.d., forthcoming). According to Alfred Heineken as he was recalled in The New York Times in 2002 ‘[a]t the time [1967] it was believed advertising was an
unnecessary luxury, because a good product sells itself’ (Meller, 2002). As opposed to the Netherlands, in the United States for example TV advertising already had an established tradition. That is where Alfred Heineken got his inspiration for his advertising and marketing efforts, which helped to make Heineken one of the world's biggest beer giants.
However, Heineken was an exception and a pioneer in this field as most of advertising practitioners at the time seemed content with the existing ways of influencing consumer behaviour (through text rather than image) and somewhat felt reluctant towards the new ways and new possibilities offered by the televised moving image.
Between the late 1970’s and 1980’s, largely due to professionalization in the field of advertisement production, increased budgets, and the breakthrough of the image that made advertising professionals more aware of the persuasive power of image
(Schreurs, n.d., forthcoming) the Dutch advertising professionals had gradually succeeded in mastering the medium and learned how to produce advertisements that were both attractive and effective. Over the course of those two decades, advertising professionals began to emphasize the need for originality, innovation and
entertainment. Subsequently, television advertising became stimulating, playful, less explicit and more of an open experience, leaving some room for the imagination (Schreurs, n.d., forthcoming), so the open empty spaces for the viewer to fill in. Also, after the two initial decades of television advertisement in the Netherlands, instances of intertextual references became apparent: humour and in-jokes, use of local and commonly recognizable celebrities, etc.
Although the content of television advertisements had ‘the explicit commercial objective [and] the format itself differed from the rest of what television had to offer’, eventually Dutch television advertising ‘took on the form of short movies’ that were broadcast during separate breaks in the broadcast programming, and had a lot in common with the rest of the broadcast programming. According to Wyers (1998, p.63), ‘mimicry was [and still is] one of the main features of television commercials (as cited in Schreurs, n.d., forthcoming).
The discourse in early years of television advertisement in the Netherlands was linked closely to ‘the debate in society on television advertising […] and [this] interaction has influenced the content of television advertising’ (Schreurs, n.d., forthcoming). The subject of television advertising received much public attention almost instantly and was already perceived as problematic due to the multiple stakeholders involved (advertising agents and their clients, producers, broadcast programmers) and their conflicting interests: ‘Seen from the viewpoint of the advertiser, television advertising
could be valued as an additional channel for distributing information about their brands and products’. For the advertising agencies and the production companies ‘it was both a source of income and a new terrain on which they could show their talents’.
From the perspective of the television stations it was ‘[…] an additional source of
income that made it possible to produce more and/or more expensive television programs’, and both politicians and opinion leaders in society ‘also viewed television advertising as a threat to the cultural and moral stability in society’.
Finally, for the consumer, ‘[…] it was both a new and variable form of broadcast and an often annoying type of program’ (Schreurs, n.d., forthcoming).
Hence an important aspect of the early years of Dutch television advertisement, besides the commercial effectiveness, was the constant tension, distrust and general reluctance from the society towards TV ads. This particular, and among others, feature of the media landscape at that time might have been a determent force for the choice of content for television commercials: level of entertainment, creativity and innovation, etc.
Currently and over the past decades, one can notice growing interest in television advertising, alongside with growing recognition that television advertising is part of our contemporary and popular culture. In some cases, advertisements gain status of works of art and are considered of high, creative and artistic quality. According to McAllister a television spot can ‘perhaps be the most consistent and pervasive genre of content – maybe even of all modern culture’ (2010, p. 217). As a matter of fact, producers have more creative freedom than in film, which in some ways is a more conservative industry - for example because of higher budgets (unequivocal with greater pressure) and more professionals involved in the production. With the course of time television advertisement has to be constantly re-invented in order to remain innovative, attention catching and entertaining. But even being closer to the status of
popular culture and audio-visual arts it does not mean television advertisement producers have an infinite creative freedom and are unimpeachable from public opinion or other stakeholders. Also today some tension is present and several and often conflicting interests must be compromised. Some advertisements seem to manage to ‘cross the line’ and to stir controversy in the Netherlands, even resulting in being banned from the broadcast. This happened in case of, for example, ‘Adam & Eve’ commercial produced by DDB, an advertising agency based in Amsterdam, in 2008. The client and commissioner for the advertisement, a Dutch insurance company Centraal Beheer Achmea, is well known for their funny television commercials, many of them have won the Gouden Loeki award, the so-called Academy Award for Dutch commercials (the award will be discussed in more detail in latter section of this dissertation). This time the client rejected this particular advertisement because it was considered too controversial and it could offend the feelings of some viewers. The advertisement portrays the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve meet for the first time. Eva wonders through the garden, and when she finally encounters Adam, he greets her in a high-pitched voice ‘Hii! I’m Adam!’ suggesting the viewer that Adam is a homosexual (fig.A).
At the end of the commercial we see the contact details of Centraal Beheer - as an insurance company it can help in a situation when things do not go accordingly to one’s plan (n.d., centraalbeheer, 2014).
As explained by Feasley (1984) television advertising has been perceived as the ‘unpopular art’ since most of us are genuinely annoyed by interrupting, commercial spots. This, however, should not imply that we ought not to consider it part of our culture: ‘If art is enrichment and an intensification of life, as well as reflection of our lives, then television commercials fit that niche’ (p.5). Advertising materials, in their precisely calculated format, derive from a particular time as well as from cultural and social background. It could then be seen as a mirror of the contemporary, consumerist society and its needs. However, as already suggested in the introductory chapter, this relationship between advertisement and society is ought to be viewed as mutually influential.
An illustration of this amplified interest and attention dedicated to television advertisements is the fact that starting in the late 1990’s the public became
increasingly attracted to looking back at the history of television advertisements and at advertisements from previous years for the purpose of valuation and nostalgic validation. This amplification came along together with more broad changes in the media landscape not only in the Netherlands but also internationally. Satellites and private, commercial broadcast TV stations, which are able to sustain themselves through commercial and competitive TV programmes and increased advertising in between the programs. In October 1989 RTL Véronique (before re-branding to RTL 4 a year later) was launched on the Astra A1 satellite (satellitemagazine, n.d.). RTL was one of the first private (although private broadcasters were not allowed in the
Netherlands until 1992, officially RTL broadcasts from Luxemburg) commercial broadcasters in the Netherlands and until today it remains the major and the most watched commercial TV station in the Netherlands. The channel is a general
entertainment channel with infotainment, television drama, talk shows, games shows, news and talent shows (kabelraden, 2014). Today the programming involves
internationally popular game and talent shows. RTL also owns the rights for popular American TV series as well as popular Dutch programmes including new formats by big producing companies such as Endemol or John de Mol.
In more recent years, the Dutch broadcast television has begun broadcasting high budget national programmes dedicated exclusively to Dutch advertisements; ‘in 2011 and 2012 there even was a daily series on TV advertising which was titled Veronica’s
Funniest Commercials […] The response of the public confirms the growing
popularity of television ads’ (Schreurs, n.d., forthcoming). Therefore, the public has also become increasingly engaged, and yet another form of casting verdicts upon television advertisements is the opportunity to select the best Dutch television advertisements during the annual election of the ‘Gouden Loeki’ (Golden Loeki the lion), which is the prize for the favourite Dutch advertisement (Schreurs, 2004).
In line with the outlined above changes in media landscape, the archival and reuse practices regarding television advertisements have also evolved in the Netherlands. Although in Europe the first television stations that broadcast television
advertisements on a regular basis were introduced as early as in the 1950’s, in the past ‘television advertisements had been preserved and archived in a much less consequent way than, for instance, press advertising […] The lack of archives that offer a
representative overview of television advertising in the early years, makes it difficult to give a balanced picture of the state of television advertising [in the Netherlands]’ (Schreurs, n.d., forthcoming). A similar point is made by Jørgen Bang (2007), who states that on the European level, ‘what has been preserved from the first half of the twentieth century is rather accidental. Unlike movies from the same period, as commercial products they were not considered of any particular cultural value and therefore not preserved systematically’ (p. 1). In the Netherlands, cinema
commercials are kept in the collections of two major archive institutions, EYE and Sound and Vision. However, the collected commercials have hardly been described or made accessible to the public as of yet.
There are a few Dutch institutes that have preserved and archived television
advertisements as well as made them more accessible, such as the Reclame Arsenaal which is ‘an institution that dedicated itself to the preservation of the Dutch national advertising heritage since 2001, has placed a collection of more than 2000 Dutch television commercials online […]. But in 2012 only 18 commercials in this archive dated from the first five years after the introduction of television advertising in the
Netherlands’ (Schreurs, n.d., forthcoming). In the section on their website, called The Virtual Museum, users can browse through descriptions and/or digitized versions of over 50.000 advertisement items from ca.1850 onwards
(http://primary-sources.eui.eu, 2014).
Reclame Arsenaal, based in Amsterdam, came to existence through a merger between the Nederlands Reclamearchief (founded in 1981) and the Nederlands Reclame
Museum (founded in 1975) (reclamearsenaal, 2014). The people, who started Reclame
Arsenaal, were in fact professionals from the advertising industry.
Another institute that dedicated its efforts to preserving national audio-visual heritage is a cultural-historical organization of national interest: Sound and Vision, which archives all programmes of the Dutch public broadcasters (including a large collection of Dutch TV advertisements). Today it manages over 70% of the Dutch audio-visual heritage and since 2007 the institute has been engaged in large digitization project – ‘Images for the Future’ to enable new and digital forms of reuse and exhibitions. A platform dedicated exclusively to broadcast Dutch television advertisement is a foundation with a large collection available online: The STER, (short for Stichting
Ether Reclame, ‘Foundation for Ether Advertisement’) broadcasts radio and television
advertisements on the NPO (Nederlandse Publieke Omroep) which stands for Netherlands Public Broadcasting and refers to o the country's public-service broadcasting system. STER is best known for its mascot (Gouden Loeki) and for hosting the annual ‘Gouden Loeki’ commercials’ contest for the most beloved Dutch TV commercial of the year.
An increased interest and recognition of cultural significance of ephemeral media text gave rise to new demands and challenges that archival institutions have to face: ‘The researchers are challenging the assumption that it is sufficient to preserve only individual programmes’, and that no type of production can be considered too insignificant to study (Bergeron, 1986, p. 42) including television advertisements. It was acknowledged an almost three decades ago that TV advertisements and other ‘interruption of a programmes are also important to understanding how television conveys meaning’ (Bergeron, 1986, p. 43). However, ‘as much as researchers do not wish to hear it, selection for archival preservation is necessary […] archives, with their limited resources, simply cannot take everything in and retain the total output of television’ (Bergeron, 1986, pp. 45-46). This obviously introduces many ethical and
political issues regarding acquisitions and selection of materials to archive. Not to mention the enormous pressure put on heritage and archival institutions in terms of quality, representativeness and accessibility of their collections.
On the other hand, a dedication to preserving all the products of national television broadcast, as does the Sound and Vision, seems almost an impossible practice to many institutions with a similar mission. Foremost, it introduces many practical problems in archiving audio-visual and cultural heritage and, as argued before, does not make an archive a perfectly representative, neutral and transparent entity
regardless.
The question remains: what to preserve? As argued by advertisement professionals, 80% of advertisements are just bad, but if we decide to only save the good ones, we will not have a representative sample (like in the case of Reclame Arsenaal’s
collection of 18 advertisements from the earliest years of television advertising in the Netherlands). Apart from selection of materials, more problematic could also be an acquisition of commercials and where to find the material, especially older
commercials.
If we address contemporary materials: How do producers, advertising agencies, foundations or platforms like STER deal with the commercials they make or distribute? Are they even willing to see them as something that is worth to preserve and make accessible outside of television context?
Another aspect of high importance is a matter of contextualizing and documenting collections, i.e. should we, besides saving an advertisement, also document when it was aired, at what time, and between what other programs it went on air? Such a collection could potentially provide a food for, for example, a longitudal research on possible patterns in broadcast programming.
The impact of archives and their practices on preserved material is indisputable and the question is how to approach and advocate it, so that the impact and interference with the archived content is transparent and acknowledged by the users?
In the introductory chapter of ‘Performing the Archive’ Julia Noordegraaf advocates the performative character of audio-visual archival materials. That in fact their meaning is dynamic (as I will argue in the following section, so is collective
different strategies of display ‘destabilize the meaning of audio-visual records’ (p. 2), as well as practices of migration and duplication (or iteration), including digitization, alters the meaning of the audio-visual, archival materials. In order to account for the changes introduced to archival materials, and thus altering their meaning, a thorough documentation is necessary as well as metametadata - metadata about the metadata; ‘they [archival records] acquire their meaning in the process of their use and go through a lifecycle of uses that can be traced and mapped out, for instance in a documentation model or metadata scheme’ (p. 4).
Perceiving the archival records as performative entities ‘requires first a rethinking of the object of audio-visual archives: rather than objects with a stable meaning we should conceive of them as dynamic and performative’ (p. 4).
In line with this argument, one can argue that archival audio-visual materials are records of mediated reality, rather than stable evidence of history and the past. As cited in the article, Claire Waterton also claims that archives not only provide
documents of the past, but also actively shape people’s interpretation of reality ‘using the concept of performativity, we can see the archive as a technology that constitutes not only a record of our representations of the world, but as an active and iterative making of the world and of entities and selves within it’ (as cited by Noordegraaf, p.4). In the article the author goes on arguing that audio-visual heritage serves as an important source of knowledge about the history and culture within societal groups, and it allows us to create opinions about things and events we never witnessed personally. Thus it impacts shaping collective memory and understanding of the world. As also argued by Huyssen (2007) ‘audio-visual material widely circulates in the private and public sphere and audio-visual media are our primary source of information about the world and largely shape our perception of events’ (as cited by Noordegraaf, p. 8). I must agree with the following inference: ‘Whatever shape the archive takes, and archiving audio-visual documents is a process characterized by a number of decision-making moments, selection some aspects over others,
contextualization, and framing […] digital media can store objects, data, and documents separately and link these to one another […] linking objects, data,
documents may clarify, obscure, and create contexts’ (p. 9). Thus the high potential of manipulation of information and importance of contextualization is recognized. Another aspect of digital media that is important for my discussion is that new media enables development of polyvocal (multiple) and alternative narratives and ‘afford
keeping different interpretations side by side’ (p. 8).
The above argument concerns archival institutions and their practices as a whole. The important point is that, first archived and then reused, audio-visual materials and their meanings and our understanding of them are dynamic and determined by many and not always apparent factors. These archival heritage materials, also advertisements as tools for persuasive communications, are used for and take part in a process of the understanding of history and past events, both on an individual and aggregate level. This introduces yet another aspect that needs to be taken into account when analysing archival moving image materials from the cultural studies perspective. The emerging practice of thorough and systematic documentation can, to some extent, resolve the problem of reading and studying such texts and to help better understand their ‘original’ content and their intertextual references.
3. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The presumption of this thesis is that, despite the ephemeral nature of TV advertisements and their apparent evanescence, the mass audience provided by television broadcast means a particular advert can be made as part of the collective memory and become embedded in the psyche of the public for decades after. The following parts of this dissertation invite reflection on the cultural significance and value of the ‘screen ephemera - on those forms of screen and moving image culture that, whilst momentary, remain active and integral components of media experience’ (Uricchio, 2009, p. 23) I would also like to add to this: integral
components of our collective media culture and memory. The following concepts will theoretically frame the next steps of this research. Particular focus within the scope of this study is dedicated to the aforementioned, promotional and commercial ephemeral texts.
3.1 Ephemeral Media & TV Advertisement
Ephemeral as a concept suggests ‘the evanescent, transient, and brief […] in
definitional terms, it describes anything short-lived’ (Grainge, 2011, p. 3). The term
ephemeral media is mostly associated with media texts considered as peripheral and
disposable, such as non-theatrical genres like advertisements (Grainge, 2011).
As further argued by Grainge (2011) ‘the internet provides a platform where texts that might previously have been considered fleeting become more permanent and
accessible by vastly increasing the opportunities for their distribution and
remediation’ (p. 3). Thus the new and digital environment also allows for new modes of preservation through digitisation of media ephemera such as broadcast TV
advertisements, including advertisements’ collections containing non-digital but analogue carriers.
Over the recent years many audio-visual archives and institutions which hold national broadcast audio-visual heritage have become dedicated to recuperating, collecting and
preserving ephemeral moving image materials. They also have focused on the designation of ephemeral media as a ‘rubric to explore, and claim as significant, moving image forms which exist in relation to the more solid and substantial film and television content traditionally privileged within screen studies scholars’ (Grainge, 2011, p.10).
In his article from1986 Bergeron already indicates that television advertisements and even ‘all television recordings, have historical value, and therefore warrant
preservation’ (Bergeron, 1986, p. 43). Even though this early forecast and the recognition of television advertisements for their cultural value, a view that was not widely acknowledged at the time, until today the topic of advertisements is often omitted within the discourse of moving image heritage. By focusing on the growth of the momentary or ‘ephemeral’ texts that exist beyond, below and between the films, television programmes, and broadcasts more commonly isolated for scholarly analysis (Uricchio, 2009), this paper approaches theses texts as important carriers of cultural and historical values, which can affect or evoke collective memories amongst the publics.
Nevertheless, there seems to be a growing recognition of television advertising materials as part of our culture (Ellis, 1982, p.118). According to Ellis, watching advertising materials ‘is often an exhilarating experience because of their short span and their intensity of meaning: they are expensive (more expensive than the
programmes they come with) and precisely calculated (often better than TV drama)’ (p. 118). It is interesting to notice that although the change in the attitude towards the production – the effort and the thought dedicated to obtain desired quality of
television advertisement as early as in the 80’s, they still remain their momentary function – to be filled in between the gaps of regular TV programmes.
It is thus fundamental to dedicate attention to the cultural and social dimension of the discussion on television advertising in relation to the archival care of these texts. Archival collections of broadcast TV advertisements and corresponding practices of their reuse is a thought-provoking matter to be delved into. There is still little
scholarly attention dedicated to advertising texts from a different than marketing or communication studies perspectives, although of all the different kinds of advertising we know, ‘TV advertising has, in the second half of the 20th century, become the most prominent form’ (Schreurs, n.d., forthcoming). Following to this argument amongst scholars is to go as far as to give advertisement almost transcendental function as religion and to compare advertisement to fetishism ‘and calling commercialism a new religion- the religion of capitalism’ (Featherstone, 1991). Besides mere preservation of the TV advertisements themselves, examining ‘the cultural life of media artifacts as they operate within cycles of time and circuits of value’ (Grainge, 2011, p. 3) and scrutinizing the contexts in which they were produced should be an integral part of studying and archiving these texts. It is especially relevant in the context of both archiving and reuse practices. In archival context, an advertisement represents entirely different set of values and meanings. Advertising materials, as any ephemeral media texts with a short lifespan, are initially precise products of their time and contexts, with a direct commercial message and a clear purpose. In audio-visual archives the collections become autonomous products of their own, removed from their original contexts the product-viewer relation, outside of the constant flow of television broadcast and without their commercial purpose, they thus gain different, historical and cultural significance worth looking into. Consequently, without studying (and preserving) the corresponding contexts of advertising materials and where they come from, as products alone they are destined to become meaningless and hard to understand with the loss of their intertextual references. This issue introduces yet another concern as to how and what to preserve in collections consisting of TV advertising materials.
Archiving has the ‘potential to affect the very meaning of the represented content in terms of the cultural image it creates’ (Kalay, Kvan & Affleck, 2007, p. 1). Thus archiving processes are not neutral activities either, as to archive is to radically remove the product from the original context and so, ultimately, to interfere with the content. The reused product is then accessed and read in an entirely different form from that which was initially intended by its producers and creators. As similarly argued by Noordegraaf (2013), the audio-visual archives intrinsically have
perfomative nature. With each reuse of archived materials new layers of meaning are added, thus the original one is being reconstructed and altered over time. To archive
(and to later reuse) a media text is ‘destabilizing the meaning of audio-visual records’ (p.2). Especially in digital environment, the act of digitization, migration, and
duplication (or iteration) alone basically means interfering with the original content. On the other hand, although archival institutions are not neutral entities, audio-visual heritage as documentation of mediated past constitute cultural legacy and our cultural DNA. Archives attribute to the common cultural heritage and participate in shaping collective memory. Without archives and their collections, there would be no heritage to communicate (Noordegraaf, 2013).
In conclusion, one could argue that audio-visual archives, through their practices, are non-neutral and dynamic. The meanings of archived materials also become dynamic, and so are collective memories. Especially in today’s dominated by moving image media landscape, cultural heritage institutions holding audio-visual broadcast archives have an enormous impact on shaping and maintaining collective memories within the publics. Audio-visual records serve as an evidence and basis for collective memories and understanding of shared history and past events.
3.2 Nostalgia: Actual, Borrowed & Classic
‘Nostalgia is an ephemeral state rather than a way of being’ (Howard, 2012, p. 643)
It could not only be interesting, but also of great relevance to examine what added value, cultural and sentimental, nostalgia used in TV advertisements offers to the viewers in their media experience.
Nostalgia as a term ‘signifies a bittersweet longing for home […] emotional state comprised of many discrete emotions produced by reflection on things (objects, persons, experiences, ideas) associated with symbolic representations of memory and with an idealized and utopian past’ (Boerstler & Madrigal, 2007, p. 423). Nostalgic advertisements relate to collective advertising and common understanding of culture and history.
For the purpose of the following analysis in the latter chapters, three different kinds of nostalgia are distinguished and categorized. To do so I have adapted the framework of Havlena and Holak (1991). The framework distinguishes two kinds of nostalgic texts:
Actual nostalgia, which can be found in an advertising text using nostalgia for ‘products or ads directly from the past [i.e.] products from or relating to the time period from which the nostalgia was taken’.
The second category is borrowed nostalgia, indicating that the nostalgic elements are used for ‘current day products […] for new products or messages that create a ‘period’ feeling’’ (p. 323).
The third category, classic nostalgia, first coined and added to the list by Boerstler and Madrigal (2007), is described as ‘the use of nostalgia for modern products using old advertisements or memories for the same products from the past’ (p.424).
Very little work so far has been done on the use of nostalgia as an advertising tactic (Boerstler & Madrigal, 2007, p. 423). However, on the other hand, ‘Social forecasters (Louv 1985; Naisbitt, 1982), literary critics (Doane and Hodges, 1987), and marketing and advertising researchers (Havlena and Holak, 1991; Holak and Havlena 1992; Wallendorf and Arnould, 1992; Holbrook and Schindler 1991; Stern 1992) have commented on the increasing visibility of nostalgia themes’ (as cited in Sharpe, 1992, p. 11) already in the 80’s. More recently it is also argued that the use of nostalgia in advertising texts might not, in fact, affect consumer behaviour in favourable to the advertiser way (Pascal; Sprott & Muehling, 2002). Although it is not clearly proven to be commercially effective - the trend remains contemporary.
Nevertheless, starting from the 1990’s, television advertisements using nostalgic references prove to be popular amongst the professionals and producers, as well as the viewers: nostalgic advertisements are amongst the top most popular television
commercials. Fiske (2003, p.262) discusses an interesting aspect of television advertising by arguing that ‘TV viewers often watch television ads without being interested in the product or brand that is advertised’ (as cited in Schreurs, n.d., forthcoming). In line with his argument, one could argue that the public is not a passive recipient, but rather practices its agency to perform negotiated or even oppositional reading by making the use of the open empty spaces within advertising texts that are open to individual interpretation and understanding as well as to individual experience. By allowing the viewers to fill up the empty space in an advertisement that offers also a nostalgic frame, the experience of the advertisement transpires on much more personal level. The viewer himself makes mental effort in order to read the advertisement which provokes nostalgic sentiments. After all, the
feeling of nostalgia cannot be achieved without the personal input on the viewers end. As a matter of fact a viewer ‘often interprets television in way that is completely different from what the ‘sender’ meant’ (Fiske & Hartley, 2003, p. 262). Apparently television advertisements can be watched and enjoyed for different reasons (for instance the feeling given advertisement evokes on a personal level) than intended by the producers’ reasons, just as is the case with art and popular culture.
Nostalgia relates to imagery of the past, something that was once captured but is not anymore and we wish to experience and relive it again; it is a feeling of longing after moments that have passed.
In today’s environment of technological advances and rapidly changing media landscape, ephemeral media seem to become more evanescent also from technical point of view because of rapidly changing carrier standards recording and playback equipment. This brings about yet another set of challenges archives must face.
3.3 Remediation
Remediation means, as defined by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin (1999), a dialect between old media and new media, and that no medium, neither a media event, ‘does its cultural work in isolation from other media, any more than it works in
isolation from other social and economic forces’ (p. 15). In other words, the devices of previous media are always utilized when a new medium starts and to understand a new medium, ‘we should see it in the context of other, earlier media’. In other words, the concept of remediation is used in this work in a sense that one medium is the combination or representation in another, newer medium. The idea of remediation offers a relevant insights into my discussion as it undoubtedly is a defining
characteristic and an integral process that takes place in the new digital media environment as digital media is constantly remediating its predecessors (television, radio, print journalism and other forms of traditional media) and at increasing pace (Bolter & Grusin, 1999).
All the records of the past were previously documented, thus the content adapts, re-appropriates, and re-creates itself in relation to new contexts and imposed, newer technology. ‘New technologies define themselves in relation to earlier technologies of
representation, but also the latter relates to themselves to answer the challenges of the new practices, especially in the age of the new media’ (Bolter & Grusin, 1999, p.15).
In their beginnings, television advertisements were highly predictable,
straightforward, predominantly text oriented and with a very clear message – ‘Buy!’. The early challenge advertising professionals had to face was how to find a new rhetoric, also in line with all the stakeholders’ demands and expectations, that was adequate to the new medium and to consider its features: moving image on a smaller screen (Schreurs, n.d., forthcoming). This, however, does not indicate that the early development of TV advertising in the Netherlands was an isolated phenomenon, ‘the approach to adapting to television advertising was open to multiple external
influences’ (Schreurs, n.d., forthcoming). As Leiss et al (2005, p. 97-98) argues, ‘advertising as communication evolved in response to the abilities for the audience to make sense of messages and in response to the ideas, styles and forms that were being explored in other genres and other, existing and already present media’, meaning that ‘ideas or styles arising in one medium or genre were transferred to others and adapted, refined, appropriated, enhanced, or changed in forms and emphasis’ (as cited in Schreurs, n.d., forthcoming).
According to the authors, remediation can be either complete or visible. Complete remediation means that the new medium absorbs the old medium completely, without maintaining any links to its predecessor, for instance in acknowledgements. Visible remediation, on the other hand, suggests that a consumer is ‘simultaneously aware of the individual pieces' and their new setting’ (Bolter & Grusin, 1999, p. 16), thus one can see the ‘traces’ of the old media in the new production.
Thus, in a broader sense and in relation to the media landscape discussed in the pervious chapter, in order to understand the early developments of television
advertisements in the Netherlands, one must be aware of the media environment and media landscape of that time. Although the fact that today broadcast advertisements seem ‘supremely televisual products, hence another part of their exhilaration, that of seeing a medium used for itself’ (Schreurs, n.d., forthcoming), it took almost twenty years for Dutch advertising practitioners to accommodate and to make the most of the possibilities introduced by the new technology and new medium. Until that
breakthrough, the predominant form and style for advertising messages was text based, informative, and not entertaining, in line with the traditions and methods of press advertising.
In today’s digital environment with the ‘advances in technology and the growth in digital media usage’ (Cheong and Morrison, 2008) digitalization and new connecting technologies have modernized the ways we begin to think about accessing, archiving and reuse practices concerning audio-visual heritage. Technological changes also relate to the rapid pace in which new carriers enter the market whilst previous become obsolete as well as the playback equipment, without which some carriers become useless. From film reels, through videotapes, to digital carriers with software of a lifespan of about four to eight years – it introduces new challenges at increased costs. The discussion on remediation has never felt more relevant than it currently is. It is necessary to take this into account when addressing contemporary practices of archiving and reuse of advertisement materials as cultural heritage. It could also suggest new potential possibilities of the digital era that archive institutions might not be using the fullest yet, or using them in outdated and in traditional media fashion. Another interesting shift that came at about the same time as the emergence and democratization of the Internet, are the methods of display. As opposed to traditional display strategies of ephemeral media texts, providing somewhat limited access, ‘digital environment provides entirely new possibilities and reshapes the very role of audio-visual archives as gatekeepers and facilitators of knowledge: it utilizes new forms and platforms for display, how we acquire knowledge, accessibility,
possibilities of reuse, etc.’ (Schreurs, n.d., forthcoming), as well the modes and current possibilities for exhibition practices.
In line with this argument, and once again linking back to the idea of the performative nature of archives, archived materials are part of cultural heritage and are documents of on-going process of understanding the past events and shared histories. The re-presented archival materials would be placed in different socio-cultural context, thus the meaning, and the interpretation, would renovate and be determined by given and present viewpoints. Collective memory, a concept used for this thesis is basically an idea of how groups of people maintain and remember a shared narrative and
3.4. Collective Memory
Collective memory, referring to common understanding of the past and the feeling of nostalgia towards the past times are notions which are recurrent in media texts, including ephemeral commercial products. These references, or hints, are common amongst advertising professionals. Relating to the feeling of longing after the past is a result of certain trends that proved to be favoured amongst the TV viewers.
Collective memory is self-evidently distinguished from different types of memory, such as historical or autobiographical. Historic memory refers to the past ‘stored and interpreted by social institutions’, whereas autobiographic memory is ‘the memory of events people have personally experienced […] the collective memory, on the other hand, is a remembering of the past informed by shared experience and public narratives’ (Motley, Henderson & Menzel Baker, 2003, p. 46).
An article by Duncan Bell (2003) conceptualizes the collective memory and its dynamics by stating that it is essentially socially constructed by group members and is their present interpretation of events, persons, and objects from the past. The very nature of collective memory is being clearly differentiated from individual’s memory by scholars, and situated in changeable, socially and culturally constructed and constantly negotiated context; based on Maurice Halbwach theory (1992) ‘collective frameworks are […] the instruments used by the collective memory to reconstruct the image of the past which is in accord, in each epoch, with the predominant [current] thought of the society’ (as cited in Bell, 2003, p. 78).
Collective memory and ‘myths of the nation are forged, transmitted, socially
negotiated, and reconstructed constantly’ (Bell, 2003, p 65), thus collective memories are dynamic, constantly developing and open to re-negotiating.
There is not a single collective memory as there can be as many collective memories as groups in societies: the closest and the first social circle we enter as members of society, i.e. family first, then friends, neighbours, school peers, colleagues, etc. and with today’s new and connecting technologies: even people one would never meet in person. When television became a global and universal, mass entertainment medium in the 1950s and 1960s, the collective memory of former cinema spectators increased when various films or television programmes as well as TV advertisements together
with other interruption of a programmes, could be repeated endlessly and worldwide on television broadcasts.
Such feeling of identity with others through sharing common experiences and collective memory favours evoking the feelings of sentiment and of nostalgia.
The fact alone that there are ‘multiple and coexisting collective memories is a primary reason these memories should be examined and discussed’ (Motley, Henderson & Menzel Baker, 2003, p. 46). Especially in the context of media texts, public heritage institutions and archival practices, there is an obvious threat of a dominant collective memory (McKemmish, Gilliland-Swetland & Ketelaar, 2005). Thus the audio-visual archive should strive for pluralizing and diversifying their collections as well as to be dynamic and to continue fulfilling multiple purposes in society through their practices of preserving and reusing audio-visual heritage. Current and diverse possibilities of collecting and displaying not only the archival materials but also their surroundings, contexts and individual micro-histories can assure diversity of narratives and
avoidance of a single, enforced and dominant narrative.
On the other hand, advertisements offer also open empty spaces which allow for consumers’ individual interpretation and for negotiated reading, thus for creating their own and personal experience. This fills the division between the two groups that both are the target market for the producers and advertisement professionals. The ‘insider’ audience, which collectively understands e.g. the inside joke or recognizes a local celebrity featured in the commercial, and the audience that is not a part of the ‘insiders’ group.
The open empty spaces universalize commercial content through allowing consumers’ to personalize their meaning so that it fits one’s mental structure of schemata and associations, allowing for identification and feeling of empathy on personal level and yet for different readers:
Commercials ‘communicate with consumers by trying to persuade them to buy partly
through enlightening information about the pleasures related to the consumption of the product and partly through consumers identification and sympathy with the featured characters and the promise of a ‘better life’ […] by purchasing the product, the consumer is promised a share of glamour […] On the one hand, the ad refers to
the real world in which the consumer is able to buy the product, while on the other, the content of the ad offers a world of fiction to which the consumer may relate.’
(Bang, 2007, p.3).
Advertisements propose us to transform ourselves with the means of consumerism, and they provoke and awaken our personal association and longings; ‘[…] as in
fiction, the reader fills in more or less open symbols, images and structures with his or her own experiences and fantasies. […] [Advertising] is aesthetic communication offering the reader an opportunity to invest his or her own experiences, dreams, longings and hopes in the text’ when filling out its offered ‘open empty spaces’,
while, at the same time the ‘text itself constitutes a framework – a fictive world – in
which meaning and insights are presented to the reader’ (Bang, 2007, p. 4).
In conclusion, a unique aspect of advertisements, if they are to be recognized as part of cultural heritage and popular culture, is that they are, let me say this once again, strongly based within their specific contexts and their content often refers to
collectively understandable, intertextual hints that are understandable to certain target groups.
In the above subchapter, three kinds of nostalgia were distinguished: actual nostalgia, borrowed nostalgia and classic nostalgia. Actual nostalgia is a kind of sentiment that relates to products or brands taken directly from the past and refers to a given period. Borrowed nostalgia is practiced, when nostalgic sentiments are applied to current day products to create a certain period feeling. Lastly, the classic nostalgia can be defined as the practice of applying the feeling of nostalgia to modern products, but by using, for instance, old advertisements, film footage or memories about the same products but from the past. In the following chapter examples of Dutch advertisements will be analysed in order to illustrate the use of each type of nostalgia. The concept of remediation grasps the idea of the ‘traced’ media past - relating to something that is no more, either technology or its aesthetics. Referring to the other media contents, such as commonly recognized film productions or songs, can function as a method for evoking collective memories and nostalgia.
4. CASE STUDIES & THE ANALYSIS
Case studies, i.e. examples of advertising texts, were selected and acquired from the large assortment of the Collection of Commercials at Sound and Vision. Advertising broadcast material archived in Sound and Vision as the Collection of Commercials is a large assortment, however so far it has been hardly reused and most of the collection is only described in databases and not in the public catalogue
(zoeken.beeldengeluid.nl).
Besides the advertising texts for the analysis, the modes of (re)use and exhibitions, both online and on-site, practiced by the Sound and Vision will also be discussed as a basis for answering the research questions and delivering a conclusion.
Sound and Vision is one of the largest audio-visual archives in Europe and as described on its web page, is a ‘cultural and historical organization of national interest. It collects, preserves and opens the audio-visual heritage to as many groups of users as possible. Amongst the mentioned and targeted groups are: media
professionals, scholars and students, and also to the general public as well as for research purposes.
Sound and Vision functions both as a museum and an audio-visual archive. One of its main ambitions is to develop and implement best practices on collecting, preserving and publishing TV heritage materials for a wide range of audiences. In order to pursue this ambition Sound and Vision cooperates with various European moving-images archives, as well as libraries, universities, broadcasters and education and knowledge centres at occasions of diverse projects. Recent means and tools to preserve audio-visual legacy is to digitally create and archive replicas of the physical objects and their corresponding metadata. In order to deploy preservation activities offered by the possibility of digitization – the Sound and Vision’s ‘Images for the Future’ project came about in 2007: ‘digitalization is an essential part of conservation [...] For this purpose, ‘Images for the Future’ started in 2007, a joint project of Sound and Vision, Eye Film Institute Netherlands, the National Archive and the Foundation Netherlands Knowledge Land with the object to preserve and digitize audio-visual material on a
large scale. At the end of the project in 2014, 91,183 hours of video, 22,086 hours of film, 98,734 hours of audio material and over 2.5 million pictures will be digitized and made accessible to the public’ (Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision Website, 2013).
Sound and Vision has developed different educative cross-media programs and products about one hundred years of audio-visual history, but not only on the materials and the history of TV broadcast itself, ‘[…] In addition the institute develops and disseminates knowledge in the area of audio-visual archiving,
digitization, and media history’ (Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision Website, 2012). Sound and Vision is involved in promoting Dutch audio-visual heritage amongst youth as well as professionals, but apart from their collections alone, the institute seem transparent in its archival activity and the collection policy, thus allowing broader understanding of not only the archival objects but also how they are being preserved and what happens to them once they are in the archives. The ideas of
transparency and openness come across as a kind of institutional motto, even in form
of the Sound and Vision’s modern building in the city of Hilversum (fig. B) The building consists of the archive in an underground vault and above ground: research facilities and public areas are housed in a huge cube made almost entirely of glass (including some of the office and working space).
