The Rutgers-Camden Archive of Digital Ephemera (R-CADE) is a collection of hardware and software made available to scholars for research purposes. Unlike many archives, the R-CADE does not necessarily aim to preserve these artifacts, at least not in the traditional sense of this word. Scholars are free to take apart, dissect, and repurpose artifacts in the R-CADE as they attempt to understand their historical and cultural significance. While the R-CADE does not preserve in the sense of keeping objects in their “original” condition, the archive is in fact an exercise in the preservation of digital culture. By allowing for the study and exploration of digital ephemera, the R-CADE aims to ensure these digital artifacts a place in our histories and our various scholarly conversations.
Each year the DSC hosts an event during which invited scholars discuss some piece of digital ephemera. Scholars and artists work over the course of many months by researching and/or repurposing a shared object of study, and they share this work during the annual R-CADE symposium.
R-CADE Symposia
2015: The Gameboy Camera (Patrick LeMieux, Grant Wythoff, Meredith Bak, Elizabeth Demaray, Paul Johnson)
2016: Uncle Buddy’s Phantom Funhouse (Steph Ceraso, Stuart Moulthrop, Darius Kazemi, Robert Emmons, John McDaid)