'Get a record player, listen to vinyl and be cool' - Restorationism in the age of digital reproduction

This dissertation explores nostalgia, how closely it is tied to human nature and how this tie is effectively and evidently used and marketed as personal identity. Presently, with the majority of media being consumed digitally, nostalgia for specific objects of material culture of the past has begun to rise. This nostalgic longing is highlighted with the examples of vinyl-records and film photography, against their contemporary digital counterparts. This nostalgia is called restorationism, it is the restoring the loss that people feel for youth, it is the idea that using “aspects of the past and the present” will help “create a holistic future.” (Calcutt, Andrew – Nostalgia/Futurism from White Noise – An A – Z of The Contradictions in Cyberculture, Macmillan Press, 1999, Pg. 94). This dissertation also explore why new technology incorporates elements and aesthetics of old ones with the help of Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction to show that now that we live in the age of digital reproduction, people are using any means to try and recover a once lost 'aura of authenticity' once more.