Preserving Ukrainian-Canadian Music

In 2013, I embarked on a project to digitally preserve the Wolf Fifth collection of avant-garde classical music by making it available on UbuWeb, an avant-garde media archive. That project is still on-going and can be found here. Wanting to continue my efforts, I focused on preserving the small collection of Ukrainian-Canadian vinyl records in my personal collection, which had been sourced from my own parents and grandparents who grew up enjoying the same music.

So far, 25 vinyl records have been digitised and are now available on The Internet Archive for download. I hope you will listen and enjoy!

View the collection here

The selected records are from a variety of now-defunct Canadian recording labels, including Winnipeg-based labels such as Melody Records and V Records. I have yet to do much research on the history of these recording studios, but one company still exists; Sunshine Records on Selkirk Avenue in Winnipeg. The covers tell fascinating stories and the music gives the listener a window into Ukrainian-Canadian cultural life on the prairies through wedding songs, kolomaykas, and comedy.

If you’re Winnipeg-based and have a Ukrainian-Canadian record you would like me to digitise, please get in touch with me through justin at takaji dot ca.

View a collection of album covers below:

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MoRM goes to Brazil

Fresh off the performance of the Museum of Random Memory project in Aarhus earlier this year, the MoRM team has submitted a proposal for an installation at the Bienal de Arte Digital in Brazil for 2018, titled The Museum of Random Memory: Subtecnologias. Notes from the submission are included in part below.

Subtecnologias is a site-specific intervention and participatory performance proposed
by the Museum of Random Memory (MoRM) collective for FAD Brazil 2018. The MoRM is a temporary museum that is constructed by popular participation. It explores the hybridity of contemporary life and the connection between real/simulated socio-technical worlds by asking people to donate memories of their connections/disconnections: “What do you remember of being networked? What is your first memory of living in a hybrid culture? Do you remember feeling disconnected?”

The memories that constitute the museum take the form of analogue or digital objects, images or stories. They are contributed through the intervention’s website or collected in-person by the MoRM “curators.” During the first phase of the iteration of the museum for FAD Brazil 2018, curators will visit diverse sites and communities, for one week before and during the opening of the festival, collecting artifacts and stories.

During the second phase, the display of these memories will be assembled prior to the Festival’s opening, with the collection continuing and the display growing during the first three days of the festival. At the site of Oi Futuro Flamengo, the memories will be made visible as a network of objects inside the vitrine and 3 acrylic boxes. The objects and stories will attest to the hybridity of our communication: from high-tech to slow media, from pervasive to forgotten. At the intervention website, people from all over the world can contribute their memories and see the archive of memories/connections. Memories will also be analyzed by participants and a neural network algorithm to be connected by similarities (words, topics, etc), creating an innovative network visualization of collective memory. The website’s visualizations will be presented on the old and new technology screens installed at Oi Futuro Flamengo and as a large-scale projection on the opening night.

After the period of the exhibition in Rio, the final phase of the project will be the visualization of the network of submitted digital memories and their connections at the LED screen on Atmosphera (Belo Horizonte).

More updates on this project will come once the team confirms approval of the installation.