Archive of technology, entertainment and everyday life
Launched between 2004 and 2005, depending on the market, the Nintendo DS turned its clamshell design, touchscreen and wireless connectivity into more than technical features: they invited developers to rethink how games could be presented and shared.
Open storyFounded in 1950 with state, banking and technical participation from Fiat, SEAT turned carmaking into a large-scale industrial project. From the 1400 built at Zona Franca to the popular 600, and from its break with Fiat to integration into Volkswagen, the company’s history shows how industrial policy, manufacturing expertise and changing patterns of mobility intersected in Spain.
Open storyLed by the iPod’s example, digital players made it possible to carry a music library in a single device. Portable listening also reshaped less visible routines: preparing files on a computer, syncing tracks, and choosing what to hear in each moment.
Open storyThe 1990s transformed video games without replacing one platform with another overnight. 3D graphics, CD-ROMs, personal computers, and early networked communities broadened the medium, while arcades retained experiences that were difficult to reproduce at home.
Open storyFilms are works of art and sources for thinking about social memory. Preserving them means attending to how they were made, what they show and which decisions shape the versions audiences encounter.
Open storyA familiar silhouette can evoke another era without turning a new object into a historical one. A careful reading of retro design compares form, materials and function while considering the contexts that give each design meaning.
Open storyHeisei retro brings together objects and practices from Japan between 1989 and 2019, but it belongs not only to those who lived through the era. Tamagotchi, stickers, purikura, anime and music show how a reissue can revive not just a design, but ways of playing, making and sharing.
Open storyThe playing time on each side of a record shaped what could be recorded, how music was released and how listeners used their players. From shellac 78s to Columbia’s microgroove LP and RCA Victor’s 45-rpm single, changing formats altered musical publishing and home listening without dictating a single idea of what an album should be.
Open storyThe Famicom and NES noise channel handled both gameplay effects and percussion. Joseph Chang’s study of ten soundtracks from 1983 to 1987 shows how different composers turned its limited resources into distinctive musical voices.
Open storyIn Buenos Aires and Montevideo, the peinetón turned an ornamental comb into a sign of fashion, status and belonging. Its manufacture, imagery and controversies reveal how dress made women visible—and brought their presence in the streets into question—in the 1820s and 1830s.
Open storyBefore profiles and feeds, online social life took shape through email, mailing lists, Usenet groups, chat and personal websites. Each tool set a different pace and pattern of participation, while the Web coexisted with services that were already connecting communities across distance.
Open storyA historic interior cannot be reconstructed from a single photograph or inventory. Images, documents and surviving objects offer different clues about how a home was arranged, used and inhabited, while also revealing the gaps and choices that shape what can be known today.
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