Explore the technology, entertainment and culture that brought us here.
Digitisation can broaden access and support collection documentation, but it does not replace archival work or guarantee that the history surrounding each object will survive. A cautious look at its potential and limits.
Open storyReleased in 1972, the Magnavox Odyssey brought video games into the home with an approach quite different from that of later consoles. Its history helps explain how some conventions of home gaming took shape—and why claims about the “first console” need careful qualification.
Open storyPhotography and video share composition, framing and lighting, but organize them differently. Drawing on Antoni Marín Amatller’s analysis, this article explores how movement, duration and editing turn static visual tools into a temporal, rhythmic construction.
Open storyIntroduced in 1981, the IBM PC did not invent personal computing, but it helped win corporate acceptance and established a reference other manufacturers could reproduce. Its expandable architecture fostered a compatible-computer ecosystem and reshaped the everyday relationship between computers, peripherals, and users.
Open storyLaunched in 1983, the Famicom did not just overcome the industry crisis; it established a business model based on strict licensing and support chips that transformed the relationship between hardware and software.
Open storyA study of the Nikos Skalkottas archive explored two ways to connect documents with music: collaborative digital storytelling and a virtual-reality listening and annotation experience. Its formative design work reveals both the possibilities and the tensions of that kind of mediation.
Open storyThe microgroove LP and the 45-rpm single began as rivals but settled into complementary roles: one gathered longer programmes, while the other kept individual songs in circulation. Their history shows how playing time, materials and playback equipment shaped listening at home.
Open storyFurniture, photographs and inventories can help explain how a home was organized, but no object tells its whole story on its own. Collections at Madrid’s National Museum of Anthropology and Colombia’s National Museum show why sources must be read together—and why historical evidence should be distinguished from museum display.
Open storyA study of the Nikos Skalkottas archive explored two ways to connect documents with music: collaborative digital storytelling and a virtual-reality listening and annotation experience. Its formative design work reveals both the possibilities and the tensions of that kind of mediation.
Open storyThe microgroove LP and the 45-rpm single began as rivals but settled into complementary roles: one gathered longer programmes, while the other kept individual songs in circulation. Their history shows how playing time, materials and playback equipment shaped listening at home.
Open storyElectric refrigerators and gas stoves did not enter every Argentine home at once. From the 1920s to the 1970s, infrastructure, prices, credit, local production and custom shaped access to these appliances, while radio and cars helped reorganize domestic work and leisure.
Open storyThe microgroove LP and the 45-rpm single began as rivals but settled into complementary roles: one gathered longer programmes, while the other kept individual songs in circulation. Their history shows how playing time, materials and playback equipment shaped listening at home.
Open storyFrom 1949 to 1952, José María Arguedas and fellow officials recorded around two hundred pieces of traditional Peruvian music. The acetate discs were fragile and difficult to duplicate, shaping what could be recorded, how the material circulated, and which fragments survived.
Open storyA CER.es catalogue record identifies a picture-card album titled *Historia del Circo*. The record helps identify an item, but by itself it cannot describe every variant or establish a value.
Open storyA study of the Nikos Skalkottas archive explored two ways to connect documents with music: collaborative digital storytelling and a virtual-reality listening and annotation experience. Its formative design work reveals both the possibilities and the tensions of that kind of mediation.
Open storyFurniture, photographs and inventories can help explain how a home was organized, but no object tells its whole story on its own. Collections at Madrid’s National Museum of Anthropology and Colombia’s National Museum show why sources must be read together—and why historical evidence should be distinguished from museum display.
Open storyInventories, wills and dowry records reveal how furniture in colonial Córdoba shaped visits, marked differences in wealth and helped organize domestic spaces structured by gender hierarchies.
Open storyOn the Río de la Plata frontier, a pulpería could bring together the sale of provisions and social interaction. Material culture offers a way to study these establishments without mistaking evidence from one locality for a region-wide experience.
Open storyFurniture, photographs and inventories can help explain how a home was organized, but no object tells its whole story on its own. Collections at Madrid’s National Museum of Anthropology and Colombia’s National Museum show why sources must be read together—and why historical evidence should be distinguished from museum display.
Open storyInventories, wills and dowry records reveal how furniture in colonial Córdoba shaped visits, marked differences in wealth and helped organize domestic spaces structured by gender hierarchies.
Open storyThe Carlos Vega National Institute of Musicology in Argentina organizes a symposium on musical archives in 2026, reflecting the new orientation towards active management of sound memory.
1 verified sourceSpain’s Ministry of Culture announced plans for a Cinema Museum in the former NO-DO building, envisioned as a space to preserve and present the building’s history and NO-DO’s role in Spain’s audiovisual imagination.
1 verified sourceOn March 10, 2025, the restoration of two pedal toys – a car and an airplane – from the Sauquillo factory was completed at the Toy Museum of the Universitat Politècnica de València.
1 verified sourceThe city of Requena held the 31st edition of its annual sausage fair, an event that ran from February 6 to 8 and highlights the local tradition of charcuterie.
1 verified sourceA study of the Nikos Skalkottas archive explored two ways to connect documents with music: collaborative digital storytelling and a virtual-reality listening and annotation experience. Its formative design work reveals both the possibilities and the tensions of that kind of mediation.
Open storyThe microgroove LP and the 45-rpm single began as rivals but settled into complementary roles: one gathered longer programmes, while the other kept individual songs in circulation. Their history shows how playing time, materials and playback equipment shaped listening at home.
Open storyOn the Río de la Plata frontier, a pulpería could bring together the sale of provisions and social interaction. Material culture offers a way to study these establishments without mistaking evidence from one locality for a region-wide experience.
Open storyA critical reading of the available information on Tōei Dōga: its 1956 founding, its current name—Tōei Animation—and the limits worth maintaining when recounting its historical importance.
Open storyA comparative reading of the role once held by comic magazines and of the print and digital channels that now shape publication, based on sources that stress both the format’s transformation and the diversity of its uses.
Open storyMuseums’ presence online widened access to collections, exhibitions, and documentation. Yet digitisation does not automatically equal preservation: copies, catalogue records, identifiers, and specialist interpretation are all part of an object’s meaning. A journey from early online museum publishing to today’s discussion of context.
Open storyWe analyze how prior documentation and historical context determine the ethics of intervention in heritage, preventing repair from erasing the object's memory.
Open storyA study of the Nikos Skalkottas archive explored two ways to connect documents with music: collaborative digital storytelling and a virtual-reality listening and annotation experience. Its formative design work reveals both the possibilities and the tensions of that kind of mediation.
Open storyThe microgroove LP and the 45-rpm single began as rivals but settled into complementary roles: one gathered longer programmes, while the other kept individual songs in circulation. Their history shows how playing time, materials and playback equipment shaped listening at home.
Open storyOn the Río de la Plata frontier, a pulpería could bring together the sale of provisions and social interaction. Material culture offers a way to study these establishments without mistaking evidence from one locality for a region-wide experience.
Open storyOld software presents a particular challenge: keeping its files is not the same as preserving the ability to run it. What can be documented, and what remains unverified in the available evidence.
Open storyIn the 1970s, Japanese television animation broadened its forms and audiences. The rise of mecha, the international circulation of series, and the growth of fan communities help tell that story, though the available sources do not allow it to be reduced to a single work or mapped as a complete chronology.
Open storyFilm archives and cinema museums preserve films, but also the materials, documents and equipment that help explain how they were made, circulated and reached us. Spain’s planned Cinema Museum offers a starting point for thinking about this heritage as both material memory and public access.
Open storyA look at archives, museums, and projects that treat video games as material and digital culture: games, machines, documents, software, and the decisions that shape their public memory.
Open storyThe Walkman is remembered as a turning point in portable listening, but the available sources place that change within a broader history of sound recording, personal devices and digital distribution. They also show why documented dates should be distinguished from retrospective accounts.
Open storyThe magazine, comic book, album and collected edition are not interchangeable wrappers: each format organizes the reading and circulation of comics differently. A cautious tour through the available sources, from early Spanish publications to the smaller place magazines occupy today.
Open storyStep into an eighties living room and discover every object as a documented piece from the archive.
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