Identity and Authenticity of the Digital Theatrical Object in Digital Collections: I_PAD Italian Performance Archive in Digital. Mapping and Dissemination of the Iconographic and Audiovisual Heritage of Italian Media Performance: Giacomo Verde’s Archive

The volume addresses a central challenge of contemporary performance studies: the documentation and preservation of digital and multimedia theatre. Moving beyond the notion of the audiovisualrecord as a neutralrepresentation, it argues that every document is an interpretative construction shaped by its technological and cultural context. In digital performance, technology is not merely a tool for recording, but an integral part of the dramaturgical process, making archival practices complex both theoretically and methodologically. At the heart of this collection isthe I_PAD (Italian Archive of Digital Performance) project, which uses the legacy of Giacomo Verde—a pioneer of Italian technotheatre—asits primary case study to propose an innovative framework for mapping, preserving, and valorising Italy’s media performance heritage. Bringing together perspectives from performance studies, archival theory, digital humanities, and media archaeology, this volume reconceptualises the archive as an active site of knowledge production. Moving past the idea of a passive repository, the archive emerges as a dynamic space where memory is continuously negotiated and performative knowledge is transmitted.