While preparing a paper for a Nordic art history conference next week I found myself thinking of photo slides... The sounds of both of the fan of the slide projector and the mechanism of changing slides. The warm, dusty smell and the semi-darkness of the classroom. A sense of nostalgia for sure, but do I really miss them?

Doing digitised presentations do have so many advantages. No colleague can "borrow" your lecture's most important photo, you can have a full archive of all your presentations and still do alterations, and it is a lot easier to travel with a USB-stick than with a tray of 15-50 slides that might accidentally fall upside down, spread across the room, 2 minutes before your important conference presentation. No more reddish versions of medieval wall paintings, violet façades of renaissance cathedrals, or coloured paintings in black and white. More importantly, you can also include other media and use different tools while teaching.

Still... I am thinking of those photo slides, the sound, smell and semi-darkness, and how they were  such an important part of making me an art historian.