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Digital Histories It is a truism of the post-Foucauldian world that the very existence of categories of knowledge and institutionalized disciplines shapes what and how we think. Just as the emergence of the photographic apparatus altered nineteenth-century perceptions of the world,1 increasingly powerful digital tools for storing, retrieving, and combining historical information now impact the way the past is conceived and reconstructed.2 The global reach and virtually limitless storage capacity of the Internet, in particular, has inspired universities, libraries , and archives to reposition themselves as producers and distributors rather than simply preservers and guarantors of information. As a result, institutional resources are increasingly redirected toward the digitizing and organizing of historical information into databases that are accessible via both public and proprietary computer networks. The growing conception of computers as offering access to a master network of interlocking databases points to a transformation of fundamental notions of the past and the nature of historical research. It is within this milieu that Hal Foster asks, “Is there a new dialectics of seeing allowed by electronic information? . . . Art as image-text, as info-pixel? An archive without museums ? If so, will this database be more than a base of data, a repository of the given?”3 One answer may be found in the movement toward recombinant or “database histories”—that is, histories comprised of not narratives that describe an experience of the past but rather collections of infinitely retrievable fragments, situated within categories and organized according to predetermined associations. These collections in turn offer users, whether they are artists, gamers, or geeks, both the materials and structures by which the past may be conceived as fundamentally mutable and reconfigurable. Taking advantage of the logics of remix and computational culture and the kinds of repetitions and modifications built into video games, these projects rest along a continuum, moving from serious artworks to pop-culture hacks; however, they share a staunch refusal of the stability of a single “history,” instead offering us a relation to the past that is always already open to continual revision and reinterpretation. Writings in literary theory and the philosophy of history have demonstrated that the various forms that historical writing have taken are deeply entwined with the prevailing ideologies and literary conventions of their 6 ] Digital Histories · 123 time.4 In recent decades, similar efforts have been undertaken to theorize relations between motion pictures and “history.” With the provisional incorporation of cinematic and televisual histories into academic curricula, historians have begun to recognize the unique power of media to bring the past “to life,” promoting public interest in and—with some caveats— knowledge of historical events. A degree of experimentation with form, telescoping of temporality, and character compositing is even tolerated in the interests of pursuing “serious engagement” with the past.5 Although much that is written about film and history remains devoted to correcting the media industries’ more flagrant departures from fact, larger questions pertaining to the impact of visual media on fundamental conceptions of the past lie just beneath the surface. When the perceived reality of the cinematic spectacle is mobilized against, rather than in service to, the interests of a consensual historical narrative, strategies of historical construction and rhetorics of authenticity are brought to light. This is particularly important within the realm of digital historiography, where the already problematic ontological status of photographic realism confronts even greater challenges. However, rather than focusing on the potential for artifice, the majority of public discourse surrounding the move to digital image acquisition has focused on the ability of digital video to capture or emulate the real world beyond the capabilities of conventional cinema. Returning to cinema verité’s long outworn association of authenticity with the immediacy of a newly mobilized cinematic apparatus, the Danish Dogme 95 movement, for example, eschewed all forms of Hollywood artifice, gratuitous action, and generic convention. Directly inaugurated by the high-quality images captured by small, consumer-grade mini-DV cameras, Dogme 95’s “Vow of Chastity” required its signatories to declare, “My supreme goal is to force the truth out of my characters and the frame of the action.” Considerations of the role of digital image processing in Hollywood have likewise tended to emphasize the potential for verisimilitude. Historians have approvingly noted Ridley Scott’s elaborate reconstructions of ancient Rome in Gladiator (2000) and Steven Spielberg’s meticulously researched, prehistoric microcosms created for the Jurassic Park trilogy (1993, 1997, and 2001). Computer-generated imagery, thus deployed, reinscribes these cinematic visions...

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