In recent decades, digitization has been presented as an important strategy both for the preservation of historic documents and for giving increased access for researchers to such materials. In the Norwegian context, this has not only implied the digitization of printed matter but also the digitization of audiovisual material like photography and analog tape recordings. From a technical perspective, ...

This paper discusses how different ways of defining the ontological status of recorded sound have developed throughout the 20th century. My claim is that even within the period of analog technology, sound recording was moving away from its purposes of preserving and documenting real life musical performances. I will illustrate this by using three different examples. First, I will look at how John ...