Approximately 380 hours of rare original recordings, primarily of Fuller’s lectures and public talks, have been digitally reformatted and are being made available via the Internet. Fuller’s lectures were largely improvised and unscripted, and listeners often commented that Fuller was easier to understand in his lectures than in print. Thus, the media collection offers important insights into Fuller’s thinking and provides an accurate historical record of his activities.
The R. Buckminster Fuller Collection at Stanford contains approximately 1,700 hours of audio and video recordings, originally recorded in formats ranging from wire recordings to reel to reel tapes, U-Matic video tapes, and 16mm film. The obsolete recording formats and fragility of the materials have made the media collection inaccessible, and many of the recordings have been untouched for decades. This digitization project, funded in part by a grant from the federal Save America’s Treasures program, preserves the fragile originals by migrating them to more robust digital formats, and significantly increases scholarly access to this important historical content. “Thanks to digitization, today these recordings can be accessed by anybody with an Internet connection,” says Hsiao-Yun Chu, Assistant Curator for the Fuller Archive.
See yourself on the planet: You will need to register first, a simple process and then you can dive freely into this oceanic collection of Bucky consiousness. Find a quiet place, put on the headphones and dive in. The effect is like being in a classroom with one of the great visionary minds and teachers of the 20th century.
Take the Journey on Space-ship Earth at: R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER DIGITAL COLLECTION