Part 2. Interview Results Analysis

Below is the results analysis of the interview:

My assumption saying that most of the people are not familiar with digital preservation is correct. During my interview, majority of my interviewees are not familiar or never heard of it before. However, most of them would still able to guess the meaning of it by looking at the term “digital” and “preservation”. Although their guess answer is not the real definition of digital preservation, but the answer is consider correct in part of it. This is because people nowadays are living in a world full with digital objects; they are frequently exposed to it and are familiar with it. Most of the interviewee thinks that digital preservation is just saving the digital material in any media storage. In fact it is not true. Digital preservation has to ensure that the digital material can be accessed for as long as necessary and its accessibility is the most important issue in digital preservation. It comes to a surprise that most of the interviewee think that digital preservation is harder compare to preserving analogue items; only a small minority gave the opposite answer. The main reason they are giving this answer is that they aware that digital data are fragile and could be corrupted easily. Most of them always make backup of their important digital data. Other reasons that they are saying digital preservation is a challenge are copyright issue and too much of digital data to be preserved. They able to give the correct answer despite they have not been told about digital preservation. This is also mostly because we are living in a world full with digital technology. Almost all of the interviewees do not know anything about digital dark ages. This is something very new to them. They did not notice that a lot of important digital objects are lost forever. This happened simply because people are often focusing on the latest and new technology and digital materials, they will neglect those old one since they are being replaced. This is one of the main problems for digital preservation as the society is taught to invest time and effort in creating the new thing rather than preserving the old school items. This is an obvious society phenomenon where people will focus on creating the new, forgetting the old. All interviewees have different expectations if digital preservation is a topic of an art project. But there are a few expectations which are interesting. One of the interviewee points out that it will be interesting if the preservation processes are being showed in the project. Another one said that music can be used as the concept. “Music” never comes across my mind when I was brainstorming for digital preservation idea, then I only realize that “sound” is an element which I had forgotten. Besides that, interviewee also expects to have interaction with the art project. Interactivity is very important as this will engage the users more.