Meet the Makers: Eloise Pasmore O’Pray

Eloise working with 35mm film material at Eye, a screenshot. Source: Youtube.

In this Meet the Makers event, Eloise Pasmore O’Pray will present the story of how a unique research collection formed and travelled from Britain to the Netherlands. We will learn about the obstacles that arise when trying to catalogue and make accessible a research collection and AI’s role in finding solutions.

Physical objects, specifically those that hold visual and audible memories and experiences, will be discussed in relation to AI, which is often mainly thought of within its own world of digital technology (computers and smart phones) rather than analogue material. But here we will look at AI through an archival lens that connects the analogue to the digital world.

Taken at the Eye Film Museum Depot, by Eloise the 500 cassette tapes, how they were organised and donated by the researchers (Ati and Tjitte).

For example,  this collection contains 500 cassette tapes of interviews with the film pioneer, and his contemporaries who witnessed the making and screenings of the very first films and cinemas. However, the quality is not good because many were recorded badly, are not the original source, and were recorded over 70 years ago. Based on a lack of time, money, and resources there is often a hope in archival work that AI can easily, quickly, and cheaply improve the sound quality in the future. But many things need to be considered regarding this, such as legal rights and ethics as using AI would involve giving access to the interviewee’s personal stories, experiences, and literal voices. When these interviews were conducted in the 1950s-70s there was no consent to these personal stories becoming public knowledge to the extent of a world-wide-web. Leading to questions of, how should AI be handled in relation to archival material, specifically oral history?

In regards to imagery, we are faced with questions of: do we allow AI to improve the image quality of these old films? Will this replace jobs of ‘makers’ like restorers? What would be the difference between a restorer’s own eye, opinion, and experience verses a machines? Would AI form its own version of a ‘perfect’ image, and if so then do we lose the charm and visual damage that is actually clues of how the physical material has travelled through time?

About the speaker

Eloise is a graduate from the Research Masters ‘Media, Art and Performance Studies’ and has since become a curator, archivist and researcher at the Eye Film Museum. For the last year, she has been working on cataloguing a unique research collection that focuses on the British film pioneer Arthur Melbourne-Cooper (1874-1961). From the analogue 16mm, 35mm and nitrate prints, Eloise has registered, selected and facilitated the digitising process of these films, to curate a programme that makes some of the very first films ever made freely and publicly accessible via the Eye Film Player.