Interview: Professor Calum Colvin

As we reported here, the University of Dundee is to benefit from a £1M infrastructure investment from UK Research and Innovation. The two grants, totalling more than £1 million in the areas of life sciences and arts and humanities, include a grant of £249,000 to allow a team from the University to obtain the equipment necessary to digitise internationally important archives and media collections. In doing so, they will ensure these resources remain accessible, enabling a longer-term strategy to support the creative economies through research projects and public engagement.

Here, Professor Colvin, Principal Investigator on the digitisation project, explains what the work will involve and the plans for public engagement.

​How did the non-traditional archives and collections that the project focuses on come to be at University of Dundee?

The material in the various archives and collections at the University reflects long-standing research interests in the University both in terms of expertise that staff have built up and a connection and engagement with the City and its strengths and history. For instance, the Comics art collection has been built up over the past 15 years by the University’s Museum Services in collaboration with the School of Humanities, for use in comics teaching and public exhibitions.

This is complemented by late 19th and early 20th local publications containing comics held by the Archives, which are currently the focus of Professor Chris Murray’s research. Since the early 1980s DJCAD has been at the cutting edge of Video Art and Animation and holds a large amount of work on obsolete formats that needs to be preserved and digitised. 

​Could you tell us more about the multi-disciplinary team that will be involved in the project and some of the roles they’ll have?

We’ve all got different backgrounds and perspectives and we’ve found that building partnerships within and outwith the University strengthens our approach to research, makes a more effective use of resources and maximises impact. The project Principal Investigator, Calum Colvin is a Professor of Fine Art Photography and Associate Dean of Research at the school of DJCAD and oversees the Art & Design collections. 

Co Investigators are Christopher Murray, who is a Professor of Comic Studies and Associate Dean International in the School of Humanities and Adam Lockhart is a Lecturer in Media Art & Archives. Chris Murray’s research and expertise drives the expansion of the Comics collection at the University. He is Director of the Scottish Centre for Comics Studies (SCCS) and Dundee Comics Creative Space (DCCS). SCCS is a research centre that brings scholars, including several PhD students together, and many projects have utilised our unique archival holding of comics resources, including artwork and scripts DCCS is a social enterprise project that supports comics artists and young people in creative learning through comics.

​What sort of equipment will the grant allow you to purchase?

Our first acquisition will be a replacement moving image film scanner to allow the highest quality archive standard sound and image resolution. Secondly, we will purchase a replacement computer for restoration of film video and audio to allow faster processing of media and to use new AI methods of restoration which are very processor heavy.  

We also intend to acquire a Umatic tape cleaning machine to replace the current manual process, which will dramatically reduce processing and restoration time. Lastly, we will acquire a new large-format overhead book scanner for digitising bound volumes and large flat documents and artworks.  We also intend to acquire a Umatic tape cleaning machine to replace the current manual process, which will dramatically reduce processing and restoration time. Lastly, we will acquire a new large-format overhead book scanner for digitising bound volumes and large flat documents and artworks.  

​Are you able to tell us about the plans for eventual public engagement initiatives and what sort of timescales might be involved?

For obvious reasons plans for exhibition activity have to be adaptable at present and our focus will move to online and publication type activities until there is a change in circumstances. The project will allow the creation of virtual spaces for our partners and the public to engage with our rich resources in Archives and Collections in the field of visual culture and the arts. For instance, Prof Christoper Murray’s forthcoming publication Comicsopolis, a history of comics in Dundee, will be accompanied by the exhibition of rare pieces of comic art and a symposium on the history of comics in Dundee, supported by online resources made possible by the project. This will include a number of ‘lost comics’ that have been largely forgotten, such as a couple of very rare publications from Valentines in 1948. There will be substantial public engagement and publication activities around the Alastair MacLennan, REWIND and Richard Demarco archives, amongst others are in progress. 

An image from Alastair MacLennan’s ‘Wave by Waive’ actuation. A live Performance at Matthew Gallery, Duncan of Jordanstone 17/1/20

 Our Baxter Fellow, Dr Judit Bodor has recently received funding from the RSE for her project What is a ‘Living Archive’? Curating the Unruly Archives of Contemporary Art which explores curatorial challenges and approaches toward how we can research, exhibit and collect contemporary art archives. This will happen in the latter half of 2021 and will consist of an exhibition, a website and series of public online workshops exploring a range of UoD’s archives and is a good example of the type of research activities that will benefit from the enhanced technical capabilities this grant allows.

As well as this, PhD students working on the comics collections will also disseminate their research through exhibitions and other activities online.

​​What are the risks to ongoing public access to archives held by universities in cases where funding isn’t available?

Access to our archives and collections for creative economies partners (such as BFI and Tate) has been somewhat limited due to restrictions on access during lockdown. The upgrade of equipment resulting from this project allows us to further enhance our comprehensive technical facilities and will maximize our capacity to make available digitised assets to a wider audience and in turn, enable a longer-term strategy to support the creative economies through impactful partnership-based research projects and public engagement activities such as online exhibitions, film screenings, virtual tours and talks.