Recipes, archival documents, packaging and exhibitions offer different clues about food. Comparing their purposes helps distinguish commercial promotion from domestic practice without asking any source to prove more than it contains.
A kiosk, an exhibition and an archive offer different ways to encounter comic magazines. Considering these contexts helps ask what an edition changes—and what cannot be established without examining the issues—in the experience of reading.
Audiovisual archives make it possible to revisit programmes, but establishing what aired, when and for whom requires more than surviving footage. A careful reading distinguishes the available record from the schedule that still needs documenting.
Archives in science and technology museums preserve documents that help contextualize their collections. The available evidence supports explaining the value of this work, but not reconstructing the specific uses of particular devices.
A reading of video game genres through rules and play practices: images and labels can guide us, but they cannot fully describe how a game is played.
The medium, process and documentation offer clues for reading photographs and video, while also setting limits on what can be claimed. A careful analysis distinguishes what an image records from what its context allows us to interpret.
The biscuit, sweet and chocolate boxes held by the Museum of the History of Madrid document presentation and sale. To discuss eating habits, they should be compared with cookbooks, social histories and other sources, without mistaking advertising promises for what people ate at home.
From 1970 to 2009, studying photography and video means separating what an image shows from what its documentation can establish about its medium, process and use.
Archives and museums do more than preserve objects: by describing and arranging them, they shape which design and advertising decisions we can recognize.
Preserving video games means attending both to the game and to the sources that help explain how it was designed, presented and played. Museums, archives and educational projects offer different ways to study this heritage without confusing documentation with memory.
The history of technology is not simply a succession of inventions. Comparing documented tasks, uses and promises helps explain what changed—and what the available sources still leave unclear.
Photographs, catalogues and design archives can offer clues about interiors, but reconstructing a space means distinguishing what they show from what they leave unanswered.
