Big Ideas Series: Surfacing the Page

This Big Ideas seminar consists of three short presentations
exploring the theme 'surfacing the page'.


In the first talk, Professor Maryanne Dever
looks at how the presence of digital technologies for the
reproduction and circulation of archival artefacts have placed
questions of materiality at the centre of how we value analogue
originals. New debates around the materiality of the archived
page are pushing us away from focusing simply on physical
properties of the page and toward a consideration of the page
in terms of its potential.


In the second talk, Dr Jacqueline Lorber
Kasunic looks at how attention to the materiality of
the archived page has often assumed a literal reading, one that
fails to engage with how readers come to understand a text not
only through the linguistic signs but also through the
graphical and formal properties of the text. She argues for the
acknowledgement of the role of the visual as integral to the
relationship between the archived page and its interpretation.


In the third talk, Associate Professor Kate
Sweetapple discusses her explorations in visually
manipulating existing archival documents in order to create new
objects of inquiry. These speculative artefacts are designed to
be provocative and disrupt the authority of graphic
conventions. They also reveal the affordances of archival
material in digital environments, and highlight the role design
can play in realising this potential.