Machining the Archive: [re]coding cultural memory

This paper explores the digitalisation of the archive. Building on previous iterations of the paper and longer research, it suggests a spectrum of digit[al]isation to help understand the integration of digital processes into the knowledge systems of archives and cultural heritage; a process of recoding derived from Stuart Hall's theory of encoding/decoding; a rarely explored complexity in the relationship between non-digital and born-digital archives, and the full materialisation of cultural objects and their non/digital lives; the cyborg hybridisation of the archive and human memory; the possibility of applying quantum approaches to the interpretation and description of the archive and cultural memory as a means of superseding the implied binarism and certainty of standard digital approaches. It was presented at the introductory strand of Digital Humanities @ Oxford Summer School 2026.