What is The Golden Age Collection?

The Golden Age Collection is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, built around an offline post-modern digital media meta-art gallery; a living museum dedicated the to Golden Age in human history wherein technological breakthroughs allowed for the advancement and proliferation of recorded mediums. Within the museum lies the wealth of the collective creative consciousness spanning from the early 20th century and pressing on into present day, digitally preserving many golden ages across four mediums: music, film, television, and music videos. Formed on the opinion that we are in the midst of a media renaissance, The Golden Age Collection is never complete, but is always changing with new additions and updates. The Golden Age Collection utilizes H.264 video codec to preserve culturally relevant and/or critically acclaimed movies and television shows in digital form. The collection is curated by handpicking titles that are post-modern in scope and specializes in preserving obscure or forgotten titles alongside indies, classics, foreign cinema, and blockbusters.

These files have not been downloaded, but are created by hand, byte by byte, transcoded from optical media. Housing digitally-preserved files without any DRM, The Golden Age Collection is an independent open-source library. These files contain all of the necessary metadata useful for indexing, searching, and exhibition. Initially formed in 2006, the video collection was limited to standard definition, but due to recent technological advancements, The Golden Age Collection is currently undergoing a renovation to preserve the video in 1080p. While the HD renovation is projected to be completed by the end of 2019, the Collection will continue to add relevant titles as they become available.

What Constitutes a library of the future?

While libraries of the past were limited to the medium of books, modern libraries have grown to encompass many forms of media, such as music, films, and television shows. Libraries of the present are encumbered by physical media, whereas libraries of the future will solely be comprised of digital media. Unlike physical media, digital media is not susceptible to physical abuse like scratches and does not waste precious fuel to transport from branch to branch. Libraries of the past required rooms filled with shelves, lined with media. Libraries of the future exist in tiny boxes that plug into our computers. Libraries of the past used the Dewey Decimal System to index titles in the collection. Libraries of the future use metadata and search algorithms to index and display titles. 

The Golden Age Collection is an offline library, so it can be accessed without an active internet connection. It can be duplicated and deployed for use in rural areas that might not have access to a traditional library. The Golden Age Collection is culture in a box for areas without access to the titles contained within.

Why Create Such a collection?

The Golden Age Collection was born out of frustration with the current media paradigm. At The Golden Age Collection, we seek to rethink the boundaries of what we know to be libraries. What is a library? What the purpose behind creating a library? We believe libraries serve to culture the masses with good and thoughtful works of art. 

We are currently in the midst of a media paradigm shift from physical media to digital media. The Golden Age Collection exists to further push forward this transition. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was The Golden Age Collection. After nearly ten years of transcoding from optical media to digital media, The Golden Age Collection stands as a gallery of meta-art protesting against the the entertainment industry’s lack of legal options to obtain DRM-free digital media. Digital files are the future of entertainment, but their functionality is greatly restricted by the copyright holders using DRM. The Golden Age Collection allows consumers to reap all of the benefits of digital media, without the cumbersome limitations of DRM.

It is the aim of The Golden Age Collection that participants take away a sense of respect and admiration for the artists and filmmakers whose artistic efforts are on display. The sheer volume of the collection, coupled with its commitment to quality allows participants to take a step back and experience media from a broader prospective. Here, media does not exist in a vacuum, but rather as these titles hang together, it begins to form a narrative about media as a whole. From such a vantage point, you can see how the values of a society are reflected in their media. Each piece of media in the collection is a cultural artifact that serves to cue viewers into the societal norms and values held by those who lived at the time of the releases. The potential for media studies utilizing the collection as virtual text is exciting. As we push into the future, media is changing more than ever with streaming platforms Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon blurring the line between film and television. The Golden Age Collection is committed to digitally chronicling this media shift.

The Golden Age Collection specializes in curating many golden ages across several forms of media, particularly those which fall outside the eyes of mainstream America. The Golden Age Collection seeks to culture and inspire the masses, who have been imprisoned by restrictive media paradigms imposed by the studios and labels. The Golden Age Collection also exists as a wellspring of creative inspiration. Having access to such a wide array of titles allows future generations of media-makers to be inspired to create their own works of art. As Quentin Tarantino said, "I didn't go to film school, I went to films."

Since these files contain no DRM, the collection is a virtual playground for those who are proficient in digital media. The files can be re-cut in popular video editing programs like Apple's Final Cut Pro or Adobe's Premiere. Digital artists can apply filters and data mosh to remix and create new from old in programs like Adobe After Effects. Sound bytes can be sampled from any files and used to accent songs created in programs like Apple's Logic and GarageBand or Avid's ProTools. At The Golden Age Collection, you can put all of culture in a blender and hit “puree.”

But what about the copyrights?

The Golden Age Collection is providing access to these materials for educational and research purposes and makes no warranty with regard to their use for other purposes. The written permission of the copyright owner and/or other rights holder is required for distribution, reproduction, or other use of protected items beyond that allowed by fair use or other statutory exemptions.

Copyrights were first introduced in the US with the Copyright Act of 1790 as a way of encouraging creative efforts by allowing authors to hold the rights to their works for 14 years. After those 14 years, the creative works would enter the public domain, where they could be modified and remixed by the culture. This process of taking from the past and making it new has been at the core of our culture for thousands of years. However, in recent years, corporate studios like Disney have lobbied their way through the legislature to push copyrights to cover the life of the author plus 96 years. At The Golden Age Collection, we believe this excessive extension is not in keeping with the original intent behind copyright legislation. Not only do current copyright laws not encourage creative efforts, but they actually hinder the creation of new artistic works. Current copyright laws do not benefit anyone but the large companies that hold them. The Golden Age Collection exists as a media utopia, unhampered by draconian DRM restrictions, allowing for the creation of original works of art built upon the past.

Nearly all of the titles in the collection are bound by copyright law but are sourced under fair use. The Golden Age Collection is built out of respect and admiration for the craft of media-making. In academia, citing sources is expected, and we are no different at The Golden Age Collection. Every title comes included with metadata sourcing the authorship of the digital media. Film and television production logos remain, as do all credit sequences. Even the original release date is embedded in the file, giving users a linear path through the evolution of modern media. The Golden Age Collection isn't just a digital media library; it's a meta-art museum; the curation of which has something to say about media as a whole that is greater than the sum of its individual titles.