Opinions

December 19, 2023

Reflection

It’s a traditional activity at the end of a year to review, reflect – and then look forward. 2013 has been a year of transformation at the Foundation in many ways – not least, it now has its own space – albeit as yet un-adorned with the wonders that are to be hung on its walls and placed carefully to divert and interest visitors. The space is within the new workshops of Factum Arte and it is exceedingly hard to describe these without reference to a medieval artist’s workshop – but with computer aided designers and digitally controlled routers and high resolution scanners taking the place of some more recognisably artisanal objects and processes. But the people in all the workshops are artisans just the same.

February 17, 2023

From feasts to palimpsests

We have just passed through the intense period of holidays around the World and are back facing the year now well under way. We might even have contemplated the beliefs and historic celebrations that mark the Winter Solstice, the re-born solar year and this week Lupercalia – the Roman end of winter (hard to believe in freezing Europe) and how we know of them. This cycle is a clear indication of how our culture has not only historic depth but also undergoes processes of capture and usurpation and, simple reality.  Festivals, punctuation marks give clarity to a calendar. They graphically and physically define the passing of time and they also, by their constant and increasingly profound absorption into our cultural cycle – define that culture. When we celebrate something, tradition and culture have a place in that process – the talismans we use, the images we remember, the ideas that define are all passed down to us and as we increase in numbers and skills so does the variety of the media and interpretation we use. Imagine if we stripped away some of those images, ideas – or if they were destroyed and they no longer existed – we would have lost not just the comfort and pleasure they bring but also the history that makes them so important to what we are – to what we call our culture. Facing a new year would be more bland, more bleak.

March 1, 2017

Digital Protocols

I tried to find a good image of the Rowland Lockey painting, painted in 1593 – after Holbein the Younger’s contemporary work – of the Sir Thomas More, his father, his household and his descendents prompted by an article in the Sunday Times (Nicholas Hellen) about the interventions made at the order of Sir Roy Strong – then Director of the National Portrait Gallery in London. Of course there are many high resolution photographs of the present, altered, object – it is in the Gallery and is well documented – an iconic image (3m x 2.25m), a marvellous and strangely intimate painting of a Tudor household – Erasmus said it was like being in the room with the family. What I couldn’t find was a good record of the painting before the removal of the Catholic artefacts (five shields and two scrolls) which Strong was apparently advised were later additions and which he instructed should be removed as there were ‘horrid’.

Serendipitously, on the same page as the article about the Lockey painting was another piece – this by Dalya Alberge – which concerned a work that can be seen (from March 15th to June 25th) in the National Gallery – the re-creation of the Borgherini Chapel from the church of San Pietro in Montorio. This is very nearly a contemporary work to the Holbein – but in this case is still a truly Catholic image – painted by the partnership of Michelangelo and his protégé Sebastiano between 1516 and 1524 – The Transfiguration and Flagellation of Christ.

February 2, 2017

Contemporary Heritage

In the Spring The Wallace Collection, in its educational programme for children, is presenting a programme called: Technology and Techniques in Sculpture where the young participants will see how works of art were made and the complex processes that were necessary. The study of techniques used to create two and three dimensional works has long been a fascination for many and museums and institutions are constantly researching as well as providing programmes to increase our understanding.

As the 21st century develops one of the great changes that we are witnessing is the acceleration in many areas of technology – communications, medical, industrial, imaging, computing, transport, cryptology and, of course, in the creation and preservation of works of art. In the middle of the last century ‘science’ was still not seen as a subject that had relevance to art – Sir Kenneth Clarke – then Director of The National Gallery in London was eventually persuaded to include scientific research into the Gallery’s armoury – though his comments were not on the positive side. The impetus for science in conservation had started in Germany with Friedrich Rathgen at the end of the C19th (though people like Pasteur and Faraday had done early analysis) and was now unavoidable – well, at least its tacit acceptance was.

This is clearly not the attitude now and the importance of technology (or science) in both conservation and preservation of our heritage is now a fully accepted good.This is clearly not the attitude now and the importance of technology (or science) in both conservation and preservation of our heritage is now a fully accepted good.

January 23, 2017

A Battalion of Cameras

I was reading Paul Fussell’s wonderful and wise The Great War and Modern Memory recently – it’s like a long, gentle, entirely benign tutorial of the old style. A calm and articulate text intersected frequently and intelligently with lines of verse, contemporary comment, vivid paragraphs, poignant letters, entire poems, bawdy songs, simple couplets, explaining in a literary sense how the Great War (and also the subsequent one) changed a generation and created our world. It was written in 1975 – when the author knew where we had been and where we might be headed. It is built using what was written and then its context is interpreted so that the memorial helps us understand, reveals to us at least part of what makes us what we are. That is the place that our cultural heritage – both literary and artistic – has in our lives. It is profoundly important and, sadly, often ignored or overlooked.

Here’s a section in the early part of the book which lays the ground for the later study of the various aspects of how man can be coerced into horror and what living in and with that horror feels like. The symbolism of ruined architectural elements standing starkly in view from the mud and mire and organised slaughter of the trenches was profound – this was Ypres. “At Ypres it was the famous Cloth hall, once a masterpiece of medieval Flemish civic building. Its gradual destruction by artillery and its pathetic final dissolution were witnessed by hundreds of thousands, who never forgot this eloquent emblem of what happens when war collides with art.”

October 10, 2016

The Homepage comes alive

The look of this Homepage is changing – an organic process by which Jess and Natalia are bringing it alive. The slider – the thing at the top that shows news items consecutively – and then the Highlight which is there to draw your attention to a project with current immediacy – have taken on an independent life. Clicking through the slider shows just how the Foundation is growing and how the work becomes more and more important. So much is happening and so many projects and teams and wonderful images. I thought I’d take the journey and explain it a little – all the stories are set out in more detail in the News section. So, the journey, as I write – and it changes almost daily so this Opinion piece will be out of date immediately but the scope and importance and energy is what I want to remark on  –  starts with the return from Russia of Eva and Pedro with recorded data on the unique C15th frescoes from the Ferapontov Monastery. Moving on, Alex and Ferdy can be seen (at least, Alex can, Ferdy is the less flattering shot from behind) in Nigeria from where they have just returned with extraordinary recordings of the Cross River Monoliths – that are scattered and, I hear, many sadly ignored locally, though some are still intact and some deeply cared for – though all deserve our attention.

September 4, 2016

Peril in Venice

When one goes to Venice – which for many wonderful reasons large numbers of us will this year, we think often of preservation and the peril Venice faces. That’s because we all know that the land upon which the city sits is sinking. That has been slowed by the prohibition on drawing water from the aquifer but the high tide – acqua alta – levels are becoming more frequent and the lagoon is rising inexorably as well. So we are always conscious of preservation and restoration in Venice as we are also conscious that the city still looks marvellous, floating almost and serene. Many of the buildings look worn – as they might, they’ve been there a long time – since the original slave trade made the city so rich. But many are copies of what was and many more are heavily restored. Across St Mark’s canal is the island upon which the Monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore stands – the glorious home of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini. Followers of the Factum story may know of the painting that hangs on the end wall of the refectory – where the building itself was designed by Palladio as its home. It is, of course, the Wedding at Cana by Paolo Veronese. Thought by many to be the greatest painting in the world – certainly that was true until colour reproduction, copies, became cheap and reliable – which is when the Mona Lisa became so well known that it became the greatest, a bye word for ‘art’.

July 16, 2016

Facsimiles at Masterpiece

The Foundation was at the Masterpiece event in London during July and its stand was rather different from the others who clustered around it – they were there to present some of the wonders of our heritage and they were wonders – for sale.

The diversity of objects, the levels of opulence of some and the nihilistic blankness of others presented a marvellous journey through what the world’s collectors want to see and own. The quality of all the works was breathtaking – the details of marquetry, painting, gilding, polishing, carving, engineering, metalwork and, of course artistic skill were tremendous and the sheer scale of the event and of its contents was breathtaking. Quietly placed between two of the world’s great antique dealers was the stand for the Foundation. Designed by Charlotte Skene Catling and Adam Lowe it was a discrete theatre , dramatically and beautifully exhibiting some of the work of the Foundation and its aims. The Teschen Table (now in the Louvre) facsimile enticed visitors past the Cluny Christ – created in Madrid and which baffled every inspection – and through a series of monochrome flats secreted behind which were shelves and boxes and openings containing objects that represented the variety of work of the Foundation. All the objects were facsimiles – and they all had an important place in the story of preservation.

May 3, 2016

The Arch of Triumph: Palmyra

On April 19th a severely reduced scale impression of part of the Arch of Triumph in Palmyra was shown to the press in Trafalgar Square in London. While we are pleased that the terrible damage to the original in Syria is being highlighted – and indeed the risk to all of our cultural heritage – we are concerned that this particular ‘media spectacular’ exhibited a very poor example of reproduction of part of the Arch structure.  This replica was apparently routed in Egyptian marble using a 3D model which was derived from relatively low resolution photographs, resulting in the routed stone having a smoothed and even surface. We have tried, so far unsuccessfully, to get any real detail of the process and technology used in the recording or the accuracy of this work. We believe absolutely that anyone engaged in cultural preservation should share all their knowledge and technology openly, as we do, to help others who wish to do similar work or to advance our understanding of the process. This lack of information, and what looks like poor quality in itself should not be too worrying – any recording is better than none – but we feel there are questions that need to be answered so that we fully can understand this process in order to evaluate it. We would also like to comment if we feel that there are elements, processes, connections and even hyperbole that we would question. You will find a brief analysis here based on the little data that has been made available, our inspection of the object and our knowledge of the issues – we have also reproduced a brief review of the various technologies that have been mentioned by the presenters which we complied when the first reports from IDA were surfacing about their intentions and the ‘new’ technology to be used.

March 23, 2016

The difference between history and mystery is evidence

This was said to us by Ahmed, the son of Sami Angawi (great architect and heritage preserver) who he was quoting – as he showed us around his vaulting, open and multi levelled house created using artisanal traditions – in Jeddah. We were in Jeddah to talk about the possibility of preserving the record of what is now left of the old town, Al-Balad – a marvellous maze of stone houses that are all that remains of the walled city – the ancient crossroads of South, East and West and port of entry to Medina and Mecca. As you walk through the maze, spaces open – seemingly at random – but they aren’t random they are carefully positioned to catch the breeze and pass it on down the streets, like water carriers. The houses are all dressed with an intricate filigree of woodwork – designed to let in breezes but exclude the fierce sun – which makes the town’s spaces delicate, complicated and mysterious. Ahmed is working with a very forward thinking foundation, Community Jameel, in the Kingdom with whom we might also work – to do what we can to help preserve this history – he is running a workshop where children and adults can learn something of the stories the woodwork tells – through working directly with the designs and the cutting tools…

September 13, 2015

3D Cameras

We, along with many others, are looking to find ways to save and preserve heritage objects and sites that are in such danger – especially in the Middle East – using digital technology. Sadly there is a little misunderstanding about that technology and what phrases like 3D imaging and resolution actually mean and how these techniques can help. So, this Opinion is a quick review – the website links will take you to more – as the Foundation’s focus is based on the accurate recording in three dimensions and we want to remove any misunderstanding of what this means and entails. It has been possible to record stereoscopic images on what are called ‘3D cameras’ since the 19th century, but these don’t actually record three-dimensional data – they record an illusion of 3D on a flat plain that can be viewed with special glasses or as lenticular prints. Photogrammetry, multiple images taken with a decent SLR camera and a constant light source, can record 3D data when the recorded data is processed with the right software. This can be a relatively cheap and efficient method when access to sites is difficult and heavy or sensitive equipment cannot be used. What is essential, though, is the processing of the recorded raw data as it is not yet a 3D image – it is a very noisy set of data. 3D Scanning has, in recent years, become part of a coherent and non-contact approach. A number of different methods exist for both scanning and photogrammetry, each with their own advantages and limitations – see details here.

July 30, 2015

Positive Growth

A book was published recently by César Hidalgo – the Director of Macro Connections at MIT (he is based in the Media Lab where visualisation tools are his focus) called Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies” (Allen Lane, 2015) that has a central theme that is fascinating and is, I believe, a powerful area of thought for economists, philosophers and all of us. The book looks at the knowledge that has compounded since the beginning of time – and the value and use of that knowledge – or data. We have always looked at the human capital that is employed in the productive economy as the growth factor that drove our world. But if we look at the knowledge embodied in that human capital and then look beyond it – to the accumulated information in everything, everything, not just in our minds – then we have a new clue.

May 31, 2015

Viewed from afar

An article in the Wall St Journal was pointed out to me last week – not a paper I am used to coming across  important cultural references in normally, but here was one. And it resonated. The article – Europe Braces for a Summer Travel Crush,  (E. Gamerman/I.Landauro/L. Moloney) is a pragmatic, fact filled, un-romatic and practical view of what is happening to our heritage sites and objects now that mass leisure has coupled with the growing ability of previously restricted visitors from newly emerged economies to create vast crowds in all the great sites and museums. And these visitors have little time, often a limited budget but they have a desire to see the important objects of the Western Heritage. Coincidentally, hence the resonance, I was in Prague over the last few days – a city that used to have the atmosphere of history’s quiet continuum (though its history was far from quiet), walking across the Charles Bridge in the evening was idyllic (and that was really not that long ago). Now it’s like the subway at rush hour, all day, packed with clearly frustrated human traffic trying to get to the next ‘attraction’ first – whilst many are there with the idea of cheap beer and all night bars – and the mixture is not good.

April 15, 2015

Nothing is new

The last Opinion piece concerned Simon Schama’s article, an article he wrote in response to the still images of the wanton destruction of sculpture in Nimrud and his reflection on our own long history of such episodes. But today we have been shocked where we thought we couldn’t be – not only the human, or inhuman, stories coming out of Yarmouk refugee camp – but the footage that has just swirled around the web. The video shows initially, yes, Assyrian sculpture being destroyed with sledgehammers – but we had already been shocked by the images, still and past, done, as they were – and it was these that were the catalyst for Schama’s piece. But then, sadly, in this video we progress beyond the terrible smashing of stone to moving images of wonderful man/animal sculptures and relief carving and script story panels, gracefully, benignly filmed from outside their protective wires, placed to preserve the 3,000 year old surfaces from human intervention.

March 17, 2015

A history of destruction

A stirring article by Simon Schama was published in the FT on March 13th – Artefacts under attack – and instead of travelling directly to Nimrud and the smashing of Assyrian statuary with sledgehammers or the even more efficient use of bulldozers in Hatra  – he first reflects on less recent but nonetheless equally wanton destruction. He talks about the first English Civil War when a Puritan military official named William “Basher” Dowsing energetically destroyed whatever he could of sacred art in the churches and colleges of East Anglia, his area of jurisdiction, which sadly included Cambridge among the many ancient towns founded there around religious institutions. Schama goes back another hundred years to the protestant Reformation in England as it continued under young Edward VI where he says England lost as much as 90 per cent of its Christian art. Civil war, religion and revolution throw up some frighteningly iconoclastic people and cults who force others to adopt their worlds of subjection and he mentions a number of these to press home the point that the present horrors are nothing very new.

February 25, 2015

Of Black Swans and Hope

One of the activities that make us different as humans from most other animals is planning – and planning requires that truly distinct and humanly defining emotion, hope. Without hope we are nothing and with hope – we have a future, we plan. We plan and we try to anticipate so that our lives can be fruitful and we can derive the greatest pleasure, fun, progress, tranquillity, grace, development, productivity – whatever is our hope and desire – from the efficient and organised use of time and resource. It is all rather dry but it works – to an extent. We are surprised when the unexpected happens – obviously – or it would be expected and not a surprise. We’ve all heard of Lorenz’s butterfly effect – we live in a big world where the contagion of events has become normal and understandable, we know every effect has a cause. But what is remarkable is how we don’t factor in Black Swan events.

January 9, 2015

From Antiope to Kardashian

The Met is staging an exhibition at the moment, Bartholomeus Spranger – Splendor and Eroticism in Imperial Prague curated by Sally Metzler, showing the works of Spranger (1546-1611) – from his early life and scrapes in Antwerp, where influences from the Met’s Collection are neatly used, through his successful life across Europe as a painter of great talent …and also great imagination. He worked in the courts of Popes and Emperors and painted a great variety of subjects – but he is really remembered for a divers body of work which represents, through his C16th, highly educated, technically marvellous painterly style that is full of narrative, allusion and gesture, wonderfully realised characters but………..not wearing a lot of clothes. The bodies are as good as they get – he created truly sensual, sexy narratives that could not be mistaken for anything else and his clients loved him. He broke bounds  – but with taste, with style and with consummate skill – the only thing missing is oil on the rounded flesh.  I will explain.

October 9, 2014

Ruskin’s Ruins

There is a tremendous show at the Barbican in London at the moment of photographic images of modern ruins –  it is a considerable show – these images are extraordinarily evocative and their subject matter incredibly divers and exciting so a very large number of exhibits are being displayed. And the added irony is that it is housed in this monumental concrete statement to the solid 1980s. The subjects range from blighted council blocks in London, subway stations in Brazil, grandiose Chinese projects, Portuguese colonial structures in Mozambique to sad forgotten Venezuelan dreams – all statements of vulnerability and fragility – and beauty.

September 8, 2014

Bucket List

As a phrase ‘bucket list’ is now no longer just mainstream – it has become establishment. President Obama was quoted as saying, after his drop-over/photo of visit at Stonehenge that the visit  “Knocked this off my bucket list,” as he moved on. The phrase comes from the 2007 feelgood movie (released on Christmas Day!) about two terminally ill men with clichéd and very divergent ethnosocial typing crossing off things to do before they died.

August 6, 2014

By the seaside

Some of you might be reading this on a tablet whilst on holiday somewhere delicious – perhaps by the sea. And if that sea is a great ocean you might notice the fractal nature of the coastline as you sip your iced drink. It is jagged because the sea is doing its best to devour it and the coastline is fighting back where it is strongest. I was on the Atlantic coast recently – not lounging with a cold drink sadly but discussing how the sand dunes can be productive – in fact how these particular arid sand flats were very productive. We were looking at a 500 hectare (about 1,250 acres) farm whose irrigation system was intricate but very efficient and allowed for two crops a year of tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, melons and also supported nut bearing Pinus Pinea (the base of pesto so deeply important especially had we been in Italy). The farm was a example of a technology that is creating remarkable results – the sea tries to eat away the coast but the farm goes on producing.

July 18, 2014

Take Care

A glibly said and clichéd throwaway over the shoulder as we leave that we don’t really pay attention to – and that is very much the case with the history of our custodianship. Over the last few days we have been working on a number of projects (some of which appear in the newsletter – which I recommend) which remind us of many things, but amongst the most serious is the number of lost art works that we know of – that we know have been lost though they were valued (not always by all). We exhibit an extraordinary lack of care in our custodianship of great works, those works that represent a fundamental component of what makes us all human – our history and our culture. We were evaluating all the various ways that we ‘lose’ objects of such importance – and if we examine these reasons for loss we realise just how ashamed we should be.

June 4, 2014

Dinner at the Soane

The recent dinner at Sir John Soane’s Museum that both Adam and the Foundation hosted was a wonderful experience – the excuse was to celebrate the last day of the Piranesi exhibition but actually we wanted to increase awareness of what the Foundation stands for and what we are planning….. and to ask for help. The dinner took place in the Pompey red Dining Room/Library – after drinks in the Yellow Drawing Room and tours conducted by John Bridges – a really marvellous setting for any dinner but especially one where conservation and preservation of our heritage was a key topic.

May 7, 2014

The Valley of the Kings – next steps

Being on the West Bank for the installation and attending the opening of the facsimile of Tutankhamun’s burial chamber and its exhibition area has been a thrilling, tough, interesting, exciting but ultimately an incredibly successful process. And we stayed in the shadow of the hills where the nobles are buried and a quiet evening’s walk from Madinet Habu – so we felt very lucky. On the night of the opening the team were entertained in the company of 27 Ambassadors from Europe, South America and the East as well as a press corps of ninety and archaeologists and interested parties making up an audience of three hundred. The hosts were the Ministers of Antiquities and Tourism and the location was the Luxor Temple – with its powerful pylons and a new lighting display that makes the cream stone bright but not livid. The music was provided by the Cairo Symphony Orchestra – it was a lovely, balmy evening and we were delighted by the reception and response to the facsimile.

April 1, 2014

Signing in Lebanon

I was in Beirut earlier this month to sign an accord with APSAD – the Lebanese Heritage Organisation  – in a ceremony hosted by the Minister of Culture, Remon Areiji in the National Museum.  To those who know what Lebanon holds and some of its history signing such an accord will be completely understandable. This crossroads of the world – the Levant, which witnessed the trade between the Orient and the Occident – the Eastern Mediterranean littoral, the end of the Silk Road. It saw the first spring of civilisation and is made up of regions of what are now countries that include Jordan, Cyprus, Syria, Turkey and of course, at the centre, Lebanon. But, as one arrives in Beirut the most obvious initial image is of highways and massive construction.

March 11, 2014

From rabbit skin glue to point mapping

The last Opinion piece was about seasons and the Solstice – it was hard, when that was written, to anticipate what is happening now, just a few weeks later. Spring has arrived and the seemingly endless Winter is behind us. You can feel the re-birth in the air. So it wasn’t a coincidence that last week saw the opening of an exhibition at Sir John Soane’s Museum in London of work by the Factum Arte workshops – work in materialising concepts that the extraordinary Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) designed but rarely realised except in wonderful and evocative prints. In doing this work – and I really urge you to visit the exhibition which is on until late May – Factum Arte developed techniques and processes that are now part of the workshop’s repertoire. The porphyry altar, bronze and gilt tripods, the impossible silver coffee pot computer modelled from various living and still objects, the extravagant, shimmering, chair – all of these required the application of old and of completely new artisanal skills.

January 27, 2014

Faded glory

The damage that may be suffered by objects that are important to us – us as individuals or as the human species  – is often gradual and almost imperceptible. This is what makes it so easy to accept – even prefer. Many, if asked, would admit a predilection for faded glory – for the subtle and smoothing effects of time. That’s natural as it shows us the object has a career, a biography which we are still part of. It is that continuum that makes the objects so important to us, just like an institution such as a monarchy, for instance – if it’s managed well and skilfully, has a purpose in quietly aligning the future with the past. We can see the various world religions in that light too – bringing comfort that things are ordered and in place and the proof of that is their longevity – they’ve been here since time immemorial and their changes are vast but, individually each change is generally slight.

November 18, 2013

Read all about it!15,000,000 m2 of paintings preserved!

A great deal of newsprint columns (and social media texts) were devoted over the last few days to the extraordinary prices achieved at auction by the Bacon and Warhol paintings – and the prices are truly extraordinary if one uses any reference in the real world. But that is why it is so beyond the normal, extraordinary. These are unique and iconic works that can never be re-created by the now dead artists – they represent a time, state, culture, taste and society that we can only experience through objects like this. They carry the code.

October 10, 2013

Now you see it!

When we visit places and things that we think of as beautiful or important we think less about how they may have looked in the past – or may look in the future – but of what we see now. What we see is an object solidly in front of us. Well, if we look a little harder we will realise that it’s not just an object, it’s a subject – it is susceptible to forces and influences and changes just as we are. Of course, we know that many artefacts from our cultural heritage are damaged by some intervention , some accident, some change in the environment, some act of desecration, some seemingly benign restoration.

September 16, 2013

From Tutankhamun to Martian relaxation pods via Veronese

Suddenly last week our relationship with Egypt came alive again – the Egypt that directly concerns the Foundation. In November last year Baroness Ashton, the European Union High Representative handed the facsimile of the Tomb of Tutankhamun, which had been carefully recorded in extraordinarily high resolution in Luxor and then recreated in the Madrid workshops of Factum Arte, as a gift to Egypt. In her speech she said “The gift of the facsimile is a metaphor for the relationship between Europe and Egypt – the skills and technology that have been developed in Europe to create the facsimile are going to be transferred to Egypt where the local workers will be trained and those very skills and technology will become Egyptian”. We heard last week that the process is now under way, that the installation is imminent and that we can plan new recordings in the tombs of Seti I and Queen Nefertari. The facsimile will allow the original tomb to be preserved without the constant damage it is suffering from visitors for which it was never designed.

September 6, 2013

Let’s save Shakespeare’s folios

Jerry Brotton wrote an insightful article for the Guardian this week (read article here) concerning the Shakespeare Folios at the Senate House Library, which we heartily welcome – it is written at a time when the use of digital technology in the conservation of our cultural heritage is becoming widely accepted (but not yet universally, clearly). Museums and other custodians are realising the importance of high-resolution digital recording and this is starting to be integrated into professional protocols – our work in the National Gallery in London we mention in the header to this webpage is a good example of its acceptance. By coincidence another article appeared in the Financial Times also this week – concerning the British Library and the loss of audio records which highlights a similar tragedy that can be avoided if only we can all embrace and support the idea. (read FT article here)

What Jerry’s article highlights is the very recent inflexion point which we have now passed in our ability to conserve using this harmless, contactless, permanent and flexible medium. He is right and we should listen.

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