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Silvia Heimader, Editor Multimedia ORF Archive #81 Why does the future need a memory? Sooner or later in the course of their professional lives, designers of linear works are confronted with the challenge: "Kill your darlings! Whether it's a television program, a radio show, or a screenplay, this harsh message (usually attributed to William Faulkner) must be heeded. Why? The abandonment of cherished details or aspects of a topic serves the good of a dramaturgically coherent whole. The ORF archive is therefore full of the lifeblood of creators. Interviews from which only fragments could be used, or historical recordings that never or never again found a place in a broadcast.

Internet platforms are now opening up new possibilities. "100 Years of the Salzburg Festival" was a worthy occasion to test the multi- and cross-media application possibilities of archival material, because the long shared history of ORF and the Salzburg Festival has created a rich fund of historical radio and television material, but also of written documents. "100 Pieces" was the name of the project, in which the linear television and radio world and the non-linear world of ORF-ON were to be linked. I found the prospect of escaping the imaging constraints of television or the constant need to fill the soundtrack in the design particularly tempting - by the way.

My idea was to present 100 representative excerpts from the (perceived) infinite vastness of the ORF archive on ORF-ON. Each of these "pieces" should provide a different perspective on the festival, but also tell a self-contained story in its own right. Close to the original, in order to convey the zeitgeist of the individual eras, and in a sensitive adaptation, in order to accommodate modern viewing and listening habits. And last but not least: of course with consideration for copyright, ancillary copyright and personal rights. Everyone should be able to compile their own festival story from the "100 Pieces": Festivals for theater aficionados, festivals for opera and concert lovers, festivals for those interested in glitz and glamour, and festivals for users interested in architecture, technology, media history, politics, or traffic planning.

In the summer of 2020, thanks to the active support of ORF-ON editor-in-chief Gerald Heidegger, the site https://orf.at/100pieces went online. A modern multi-dimensional digital media museum on "100 Years of the Salzburg Festival", composed of the most diverse sources of our multimedia archive. Unplanned, it also became an archive for the realization of a large art festival under corona conditions.

At the same time, the "100 Pieces" created a pool of material from which designers of linear ORF programs could draw material for their broadcasts. Madlene Feyrer used it to create a six-part television series on the history of the Salzburg Festival for the Sunday Culture Matinée, and ORFIII had art critic Heinz Sichrovsky comment on individual "Pieces" in "Kultur Heute," the daily culture program.

Did I not have to murder any "darlings" this time? Well, the laws of dramaturgy are not completely out of force even on an online platform and in cross-media use. And so some secrets of our archive are still known only to me. But certainly the online presentation of historical topics allows a much more comprehensive inclusion of archive materials. And thus for ORF viewers, listeners and users, new, more diverse and also more personal approaches to history.