Virtual museums, new media arts and sound archives

Abstract

Virtual museums are new ways of promoting cultural experiences and are also important repositories for safeguarding new examples of artistic, cultural and social heritage, with the added advantage of being potentially global. They have been adapted to collect digital artefacts and new forms of intangible art, which are, generally speaking, media arts. In this sense, virtual museums are also a challenging place for the collection of sound contents. Considering the Portuguese example, where there is a legal vacuum in terms of archive policies for sound, this text examines the opportunity that platforms of this kind may represent for the preservation of sonic-based memories. Prepared under the scope of the research project Audire: Saving Sonic-Based Memories, which is currently being developed at the Communication and Society Research Centre, University of Minho, this text also discusses the role that governments should play in defining parameters for the creation of sound libraries.