Implications of contextualisation and recontextualisation of digitised material: a case study
 
Jane Anderson and Grace Koch, AIATSIS
 

This paper combines the viewpoints of a philosopher/intellectual property researcher and an archivist/musicologist in examining the multiple levels through which cultural material in the form of field recordings has been transferred and transformed over time. Its central focus will be on enumerating aspects of assumptions about context, decontextualisation and recontextualisation as traced through the progressive versions of a specific corpus of sound recordings.

As sound recordings are moving, by necessity, from the analogue realm into the digital, the paper suggests a rethinking of perceptions of contextualisation and recontextualisation. This paper will take a case study of sound recordings of Kaytetye women's songs made in 1976 and will trace the varying stages of contextualisation and

recontextualisation that the recordings have taken. The paper proposes that the concept of an original 'context' is misunderstood, as it was never a 'stable' concept, thus affecting how the material was conceptualised in terms of decontextualisation ex situ and

recontextualisation in situ.

It will also deal with issues of practical engagement with the material, including an examination of how potential dangers arise for Australian Indigenous cultural material by the process of digitisation. Intellectual property matters arising from the distinctive qualities of the digital medium will be explored, along with some examples of how

Indigenous people in Australia are addressing some of them.