Leaving the evidence visible

Text A: an original contemporary practice extract.

A wooden sign from a former greengrocer’s shop was being prepared for display in the community hall. Its painted apples were faded, one corner had lost nearly all its colour and thin pencil lines remained beneath several letters. A few people suggested repainting the whole sign so that visitors could see how bright it must once have been.

I removed the surface dirt and secured the flakes of paint that were lifting, but I left the missing colour and pencil marks visible. A short label beside the sign explains that the lines guided the original signwriter’s hand. A complete repaint would have produced a neater object, yet it would also have replaced the surviving work with our guess about its first appearance.

Text B: an original contemporary practice extract.

The sound archive received a recording of an early local phone-in programme. A chair scraped across the studio floor, the first caller began her question twice and a low electrical hum continued beneath the presenter’s voice. Modern editing could have removed every interruption and turned the recording into a smooth conversation.

I reduced the hum only where it made the words difficult to hear. The scrape and the caller’s restart remained, and I added a brief introduction explaining why they had been kept. The recording was not valuable because it sounded like a programme made today. Its hesitations and background noises revealed something about an unfamiliar studio and the nervous people using it for the first time.

These extracts describe decisions made while preparing old material for the public.

What similarities can you find in the decisions the two people make? Use evidence from both texts to support your answer.