Curiosity Preserved the (AV) Memories

Curiosity Preserved the (AV) Memories

“When did I get my first TV? When I was eight?”
*Mom laughs* “More like when you were one…”
Screenshot of Kayla Henry-Griffin as child from a collection of family Hi8 tapes.
Family and technology have always been in the picture for me. They are intertwined, connected, and that bond can never be broken. I have always been interested in how technology works and how I could use it not only in my artistic practice, but also how I can save family memories. I look towards pictures of my grandmother whom I never met to understand my family and how we are dispersed globally. I look towards camcorder-recorded home movies of me to understand my role and my place in the Henry/Griffin/Toney family. I picked up skills from the Mac computer in my childhood home, I learned about pop culture through the TV with the wooden cabinet in the living room, and I picked up my love of video games when I bought my first game at the age of eight (it was
Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life
for the console GameCube).
Screenshot of gameplay in Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life (Gamecube English version).
All of this to say- I have been immersed in audio-visual technology to the point that I wanted to preserve the memories behind it. All forms of technology are a vessel for me to get closer to how I memorize math equations to even how I recollect that major move I did from California to Mississippi. Of course, this took a while for me to truly understand that this was a personal and professional path I wanted to take on. At my alma mater, I created my own major to encompass my love for photography and optics (my degree literally says ‘Photography and Optics’). I learned about art conservation during this time and since then, I have been on this professional journey of preserving cultural heritage.
In 2018, I attended a
Software Preservation Network
(SPN) workshop in Texas that focused on emulation and preservation. I met a multitude of folks in the cultural heritage field that worked with non-traditional materials from VHS tapes to computer software like Microsoft Golf. After talking with someone who works for Strong Museum of Play, I was more than elated to hear that I could preserve video games if I wanted to. That moment, in combination with all of my heartfelt experiences with technology, led me to pursue this dream of preserving memories from non-traditional mediums.
During the pandemic, I attended the
Moving Image Archiving and Preservation
(MIAP)
program at New York University. During that time, I interned at various organizations (
Los
Herederos
,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
,
Third World Newsreel
, and
The Museum of the Moving Image
) that shaped my philosophy on preserving cultural heritage. Even though I mostly worked with magnetic media in the internships, I also had experience with software-based art and film. I found a love for mysterious and obscure formats like the
HIPAC
, and soon learned that my love of video game…