Abstract
Oral heritage is inherently unstable: unlike written records, it persists through repetition and reinterpretation rather than through the conservation of a stable object. In post-digital cultural heritage contexts, safeguarding oral memories therefore cannot be reduced to storing audio files; it requires the socio-technical conditions to be designed that make voices interpretable, discoverable, and reactivatable. This paper develops and applies a three-phase framework ̶ Listening / Composing / Amplifying ̶ as an analytical and methodological lens for tracing how oral material is collected, translated into an questionable structure, and returned to the public through differentiated formats. The paper grounds the framework in the CHANGES programme and in the case study Around the Clock, outlining the project’s selection and validation steps; its qualitative corpus of oral and archival materials; and a multi-format public restitution. We argue that “designing the echo” reframes digital oral archives as infrastructures of reactivation for Futuring Digital Cultural Heritage.
Keywords
Oral heritage, cultural mediation, living archives, digital humanities
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1360
Citation
Bollati, I., Collina, L., and Biancardi, A. (2026) Designing the echo. Practices for oral heritage in the digital age, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1360
Creative Commons License
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Included in
Designing the echo. Practices for oral heritage in the digital age
Oral heritage is inherently unstable: unlike written records, it persists through repetition and reinterpretation rather than through the conservation of a stable object. In post-digital cultural heritage contexts, safeguarding oral memories therefore cannot be reduced to storing audio files; it requires the socio-technical conditions to be designed that make voices interpretable, discoverable, and reactivatable. This paper develops and applies a three-phase framework ̶ Listening / Composing / Amplifying ̶ as an analytical and methodological lens for tracing how oral material is collected, translated into an questionable structure, and returned to the public through differentiated formats. The paper grounds the framework in the CHANGES programme and in the case study Around the Clock, outlining the project’s selection and validation steps; its qualitative corpus of oral and archival materials; and a multi-format public restitution. We argue that “designing the echo” reframes digital oral archives as infrastructures of reactivation for Futuring Digital Cultural Heritage.