Old Interviews, New Viewers: How one journalist is reinventing the archives for a realtime world

One of my favorite recent Kickstarter projects is by Blank on Blank, a team of journalists soliciting old interviews from their colleagues. They then take these “lost” audio recordings and breathe new life into them by adding animations or other visual components. Already some great examples on their YouTube channel, including one by Bono I’ll embed below. What’s so great about this initiative is it fits into my theme of “in a realtime world, archives are undervalued.” That’s to say, we get so obsessed with what’s happening now, that’s there’s actually a lot of great content which didn’t find it’s maximum audience but isn’t getting surfaced in our social newsfeeds. Blank on Blank doesn’t just publish, they embellish by taking this content and turning it into a richer work. They take old and make new. Great stuff.