New media art preservation
Encyclopedia
New media art preservation, a form of Art conservation, is the study and practice of techniques for sustaining artworks created using digital, biological, performative, and other variable media.
Artists' increased use of multi-media, digital
, and internet
media since the 1960s has called into question the conventional strategies by which society preserves, cares for, and redisplays cultural artifacts created with or on ephemera
media formats. While the most obvious vulnerability of new media art
is rapid technological obsolescence
, the study of its other aspects that defy traditional conservation—including hybrid, contextual, or 'live' qualities—has provoked investigation into new strategies for preserving conceptual art
, performance
, installation art
, video art
, and even to a limited extent painting
and sculpture
.
within preservation strategies, the idea that certain artworks incorporating an array of media elements could be variable opens up the possibility for experimental standards of preservation and reinterpretation.
Nevertheless, many new media preservationists work to integrate new preservation strategies with existing documentation techniques and metadata
standards. This effort is made in order to remain compatible with previous frameworks and models on how to archive, store and maintain variable media objects in a standardized repository utilizing a systematized vocabulary, such as the Open Archival Information System model.
While some of this research parallels and exploits progress made in the practice of Digital preservation
and Web archiving
, the preservation of new media art offers special challenges and opportunities. Whereas scientific data and legal records may be easily migrated from one platform to another without losing their essential function, artworks are often sensitive to the look and feel of the media in which they are embedded. On the other hand, artists who are invited to help imagine a long-term plan for their work often respond with creative solutions.
and performance art
.
Variations on storage include:
The periodic transfer of an audiovisual or digital file from one cassette or disk to another device of identical format.
The cleaning or repair of an existing artifact or file, especially when the new version supersedes or replaces the original.
The use of computers linked by a persistent data loop to keep critical files in circulation or as multiple copies cloned on multiple hard drives.
. As in migration, the impetus behind emulation is to keep a work alive though its original media may become obsolete; unlike migration, however, emulation of computer-based art preserves the original code underlying the artwork. Emulation software is currently in various stages of development and efficiency.
, in conjunction with the Daniel Langlois Foundation
, held an exhibition entitled Seeing Double: Emulation in Theory and Practice as a trial of emulation. In the exhibition, artworks operating on their original physical media were displayed alongside versions emulated on newer physical media. The exhibition was organized with the participation of computer researcher and emulation specialist, Jeff Rothenberg. In 1998, Rothenberg had published "Avoiding Technological Quicksand: Finding a Viable Technical Foundation for Digital Preservation".
, associate curator at the Guggenheim Museum
, the Variable Media Questionnaire http://www.variablemedia.net/e/welcome.html is an interactive form linked to a larger database, which is designed to capture behavioral information about digital, performative, and other variable media artworks upon their acquisition by a museum. The goal is to specifically define ‘what it is’ and ‘what is needed’ when the museum is acquiring a work of this kind. The goal of the Questionnaire is to assist artists and museum professionals in understanding which attributes of an artwork may change and how best to make those changes when future re-creations necessitate them.
Based on the premise that some aspects of an artwork's logic or presentation can be considered independently from the physical context and equipment used to display that artwork, the Questionnaire captures information about the following behaviors or medium-independent aspects:
Covers glazing; coating; support/structure/mounting; frame; acceptable change in surface.
Covers space; boundary; access; lighting; sound; security; base/s; distribution of elements; display equipment for inert elements; architectural placement; equipment visibility.
Covers props; set; costumes; performers; number of performers; format of instructions; instructions apply to…; documentation of new performances; audience location; boundary; synchronization of performance.
Covers user input; interaction mechanism; maintenance.
Covers relationship to artist master; location of master; status of master; acceptable fabricators and vendors; acceptable submasters or exhibition copy; permission to create submaster; fate of exhibition copy; permission to compress/digitize.
Covers inert
material; physical attributes of inert material; authorized fabricators and vendors; materials duplicated according to…; electronic equipment and hardware; fate of exhibition copies.
Covers screen resolution; color palette; external data source; fonts; source openness.
Covers exhibition context; external data sources
; non-standard protocol; minimum bandwidth
; network model.
Using the metaphor of the musical score
, as a form of declarative and conceptual notation of music, Rinehart likens Media Art to musical compositions that are able to maintain their original integrity while being realized by different instruments or in different arrangements, over evolving time periods; in this sense, scores are considered to be inherently variable. In Rinehart’s view, Media art (in which logical information is considered separate from physical hardware) is able to be ‘scored’ based on the information acquired from a document like the Variable Media Questionnaire to be realized by different media-equipment.
Maintaining the notion of the musical score, the Media Art Notation System is derived as (and has as its underlying structure) an interpretation of computer programming languages, drawing primarily from Digital Item Declaration Language
(DIDL), a type of Extensible Markup Language
(XML) that allows for greater, more granular descriptions of a multi-component digital object
. MANS has three layers; the conceptual model of documentation, the preferred expression format (vocabulary) for the model (the interpretation of DIDL XML) and, its top layer, the score, which serves as a record of the work that is database-processable.
It is hoped that by interweaving the ideas of a declarative language and a more procedural language, MANS is able to act as a backbone to the artwork by being specifically suggestive though not overly prescriptive of how to best delineate and then, later, reinterpret an artwork.
She took care of her collection with much care and effort which we now call it is beyond conservation. As a deputy director and chief conservator, she led her laser research of a monochromatic painting by Ad Reinhardt and project on conservation of the works of László Moholy-Nagy. She later won the CAA/Heritage Preservation Award for Distinction for Scholarship and Conservation for her work on Ad Reinhardt's technique.
Pip Laurenson, the Head of Time-based media conservation at Tate, is currently working to achieve her PhD in the care and management of time-based media works of art at University College London.
Director of Collections & Conservation at SFMOMA, Sterret is now an avid collector and preserver of artworks made by contemporary artists. She also is committed to the vital collaborations between artists, curators, technical experts, registrars, and conservators that support contemporary art conservation practice.
's collection. In 2002 the Guggenheim partnered with the Daniel Langlois Foundation
for Art, Science and Technology in Montreal to form the Variable Media Network, a concerted effort to develop a museum-standard, best practice for the collection and preservation of new media art
. Apart from Stringari and Ippolito, other key members of the Variable Media Network included Alain Depocas, Director of the Centre for Research and Documentation, Daniel Langlois Foundation; and Caitlin Jones, former Daniel Langlois Variable Media Preservation Fellow at the Guggenheim Museum.
Around this time similar investigations into the preservation of digital/media art were being led on the West Coast by Richard Rinehart, Digital Media Director and Adjunct Curator of Digital Art at the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, who published an article on the subject, The Straw that Broke the Museum's Back? Collecting and Preserving Digitial/Media Art for the Next Century, in 2000. Rinehart had also established Conceptual & Intermedia Arts Online (CIAO) http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/about_bampfa/avantgarde.html with Franklin Furnace, the New York based performance art-grants giving organization and archive/advocate of performance, 'ephemeral' or non-traditional art under the directorship of Martha Wilson
.
Members of the Variable Media Network and CIAO subsequently joined forces with other organizations, including Rhizome.org, an affiliate of New York's New Museum of Contemporary Art
, for collective preservation endeavors such as Archiving the Avant Garde http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/about_bampfa/avantgarde.html. This broader coalition, operating under the rubric Forging the Future, is managed by the Still Water
lab at the University of Maine and offers free, open-source tools for new media preservation, including the 3rd-generation Variable Media Questionnaire.
In 2002, Timothy Murray founded The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art. Named after the pioneering critic of the commercialization of mass media, the late Professor Rose Goldsen of Cornell University. The Archive hosts international art work produced on CD-Rom, DVD-Rom, video, digital interfaces, and the internet. Its collection of supporting materials includes unpublished manuscripts and designs, catalogues, monographs, and resource guides to new media art. The curatorial vision emphasizes digital interfaces and artistic experimentation by international, independent artists. Designed as an experimental center of research and creativity, the Goldsen Archive includes materials by individual artists and collaborates on conceptual experimentation and archival strategies with international curatorial and fellowship projects.
Other important initiatives include DOCAM
, an international research alliance on the documentation and the conservation of the media arts heritage organized by the Daniel Langlois Foundation, and the International Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art (INCCA), organized by the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage (ICN).
Artists' increased use of multi-media, digital
Digital
A digital system is a data technology that uses discrete values. By contrast, non-digital systems use a continuous range of values to represent information...
, and internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
media since the 1960s has called into question the conventional strategies by which society preserves, cares for, and redisplays cultural artifacts created with or on ephemera
Ephemera
Ephemera are transitory written and printed matter not intended to be retained or preserved. The word derives from the Greek, meaning things lasting no more than a day. Some collectible ephemera are advertising trade cards, airsickness bags, bookmarks, catalogues, greeting cards, letters,...
media formats. While the most obvious vulnerability of new media art
New media art
New media art is a genre that encompasses artworks created with new media technologies, including digital art, computer graphics, computer animation, virtual art, Internet art, interactive art, computer robotics, and art as biotechnology...
is rapid technological obsolescence
Obsolescence
Obsolescence is the state of being which occurs when an object, service or practice is no longer wanted even though it may still be in good working order. Obsolescence frequently occurs because a replacement has become available that is superior in one or more aspects. Obsolete refers to something...
, the study of its other aspects that defy traditional conservation—including hybrid, contextual, or 'live' qualities—has provoked investigation into new strategies for preserving conceptual art
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
, performance
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
, installation art
Installation art
Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...
, video art
Video art
Video art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data. . Video art came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s, is still widely practiced and has given rise to the widespread use of video installations...
, and even to a limited extent painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
and sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
.
Relationship to other preservation efforts
The catchall term sometimes applied to such genres, variable media, suggests that it is possible to recapture the experience of these works independently of the specific physical material and equipment used to display them in a given exhibition or performance. As the nature of multi-media artworks calls for the development of new standards, techniques, and metadataMetadata
The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...
within preservation strategies, the idea that certain artworks incorporating an array of media elements could be variable opens up the possibility for experimental standards of preservation and reinterpretation.
Nevertheless, many new media preservationists work to integrate new preservation strategies with existing documentation techniques and metadata
Metadata
The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...
standards. This effort is made in order to remain compatible with previous frameworks and models on how to archive, store and maintain variable media objects in a standardized repository utilizing a systematized vocabulary, such as the Open Archival Information System model.
While some of this research parallels and exploits progress made in the practice of Digital preservation
Digital preservation
Digital preservation is the set of processes, activities and management of digital information over time to ensure its long term accessibility. The goal of digital preservation is to preserve materials resulting from digital reformatting, and particularly information that is born-digital with no...
and Web archiving
Web archiving
Web archiving is the process of collecting portions of the World Wide Web and ensuring the collection is preserved in an archive, such as an archive site, for future researchers, historians, and the public. Due to the massive size of the Web, web archivists typically employ web crawlers for...
, the preservation of new media art offers special challenges and opportunities. Whereas scientific data and legal records may be easily migrated from one platform to another without losing their essential function, artworks are often sensitive to the look and feel of the media in which they are embedded. On the other hand, artists who are invited to help imagine a long-term plan for their work often respond with creative solutions.
Storage
The acquisition and storage of the physical media-equipment, such as DVD players or computers, used in multi-media or digital artworks has proven a short-term tactic at best, as hardware can quickly become obsolete or can ‘stale’ in storage. Storage is also notoriously bad at capturing the contextual and live aspects of works such as Internet artInternet art
Internet art is a form of digital artwork distributed via the Internet. This form of art has circumvented the traditional dominance of the gallery and museum system, delivering aesthetic experiences via the Internet. In many cases, the viewer is drawn into some kind of interaction with the work...
and performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
.
Variations on storage include:
- Refreshing
The periodic transfer of an audiovisual or digital file from one cassette or disk to another device of identical format.
- Restoration
The cleaning or repair of an existing artifact or file, especially when the new version supersedes or replaces the original.
- Networked storage
The use of computers linked by a persistent data loop to keep critical files in circulation or as multiple copies cloned on multiple hard drives.
Migration
To migrate a work of art is to upgrade its format from an aged medium to a more current one, such as from VHS to DVD, accepting that some changes in quality may occur while still maintaining the integrity of the original. This strategy assumes that preserving the content or information of an artwork, despite its change in media, trumps concerns over fidelity to the original look and feel.Emulation
The process of simulating an older operating system (or by extension, other supporting infrastructure) on a newer software or hardware platform is called emulationEmulator
In computing, an emulator is hardware or software or both that duplicates the functions of a first computer system in a different second computer system, so that the behavior of the second system closely resembles the behavior of the first system...
. As in migration, the impetus behind emulation is to keep a work alive though its original media may become obsolete; unlike migration, however, emulation of computer-based art preserves the original code underlying the artwork. Emulation software is currently in various stages of development and efficiency.
Seeing Double: an emulation testbed
In 2004, the Guggenheim MuseumSolomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...
, in conjunction with the Daniel Langlois Foundation
Daniel Langlois Foundation
The Daniel Langlois Foundation is a non-profit, philanthropic organization endowed by Daniel Langlois and chartered in 1997 with the mission to support artistic and scientific projects and research dedicated to further general human awareness as well as the understanding of human relation with its...
, held an exhibition entitled Seeing Double: Emulation in Theory and Practice as a trial of emulation. In the exhibition, artworks operating on their original physical media were displayed alongside versions emulated on newer physical media. The exhibition was organized with the participation of computer researcher and emulation specialist, Jeff Rothenberg. In 1998, Rothenberg had published "Avoiding Technological Quicksand: Finding a Viable Technical Foundation for Digital Preservation".
Reinterpretation
The most powerful, but also most risky, preservation strategy for new media art is to reinterpret the work each time it is re-created. Reinterpretation may require rewriting code for a completely different platform, following site-specific instructions regarding installation, or recasting a work in a contemporary medium with the metaphoric value of an outdated medium. Reinterpretation is a dangerous technique when not warranted by the artist, but it may be the only way to re-create performed, installed, or networked art designed to vary with context.Variable Media Questionnaire
First developed in 2000 by Jon IppolitoJon Ippolito
Jon Ippolito is an artist, educator, new media scholar, and former curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Ippolito studied astrophysics and painting in the early 1980s, then pursued Internet art in the 1990s...
, associate curator at the Guggenheim Museum
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...
, the Variable Media Questionnaire http://www.variablemedia.net/e/welcome.html is an interactive form linked to a larger database, which is designed to capture behavioral information about digital, performative, and other variable media artworks upon their acquisition by a museum. The goal is to specifically define ‘what it is’ and ‘what is needed’ when the museum is acquiring a work of this kind. The goal of the Questionnaire is to assist artists and museum professionals in understanding which attributes of an artwork may change and how best to make those changes when future re-creations necessitate them.
Based on the premise that some aspects of an artwork's logic or presentation can be considered independently from the physical context and equipment used to display that artwork, the Questionnaire captures information about the following behaviors or medium-independent aspects:
- Contained
Covers glazing; coating; support/structure/mounting; frame; acceptable change in surface.
- Installed
Covers space; boundary; access; lighting; sound; security; base/s; distribution of elements; display equipment for inert elements; architectural placement; equipment visibility.
- Performed
Covers props; set; costumes; performers; number of performers; format of instructions; instructions apply to…; documentation of new performances; audience location; boundary; synchronization of performance.
- Interactive
Covers user input; interaction mechanism; maintenance.
- Reproduced
Covers relationship to artist master; location of master; status of master; acceptable fabricators and vendors; acceptable submasters or exhibition copy; permission to create submaster; fate of exhibition copy; permission to compress/digitize.
- Duplicable
Covers inert
Inert
-Chemistry:In chemistry, the term inert is used to describe a substance that is not chemically reactive.The noble gases were previously known as inert gases because of their perceived lack of participation in any chemical reactions...
material; physical attributes of inert material; authorized fabricators and vendors; materials duplicated according to…; electronic equipment and hardware; fate of exhibition copies.
- Encoded
Covers screen resolution; color palette; external data source; fonts; source openness.
- Networked
Covers exhibition context; external data sources
Database
A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...
; non-standard protocol; minimum bandwidth
Bandwidth (computing)
In computer networking and computer science, bandwidth, network bandwidth, data bandwidth, or digital bandwidth is a measure of available or consumed data communication resources expressed in bits/second or multiples of it .Note that in textbooks on wireless communications, modem data transmission,...
; network model.
Media Art Notation System (MANS)
Developed by Richard Rinehart, Digital Media Director and Adjunct Curator, Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, MANS is described as a ‘formal notation system for media art’ that is in keeping with existing preservation frameworks and vocabularies currently being used to document and preserve other forms of art by museums.Using the metaphor of the musical score
Sheet music
Sheet music is a hand-written or printed form of music notation that uses modern musical symbols; like its analogs—books, pamphlets, etc.—the medium of sheet music typically is paper , although the access to musical notation in recent years includes also presentation on computer screens...
, as a form of declarative and conceptual notation of music, Rinehart likens Media Art to musical compositions that are able to maintain their original integrity while being realized by different instruments or in different arrangements, over evolving time periods; in this sense, scores are considered to be inherently variable. In Rinehart’s view, Media art (in which logical information is considered separate from physical hardware) is able to be ‘scored’ based on the information acquired from a document like the Variable Media Questionnaire to be realized by different media-equipment.
Maintaining the notion of the musical score, the Media Art Notation System is derived as (and has as its underlying structure) an interpretation of computer programming languages, drawing primarily from Digital Item Declaration Language
Declarative programming
In computer science, declarative programming is a programming paradigm that expresses the logic of a computation without describing its control flow. Many languages applying this style attempt to minimize or eliminate side effects by describing what the program should accomplish, rather than...
(DIDL), a type of Extensible Markup Language
Extensible Markup Language
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
(XML) that allows for greater, more granular descriptions of a multi-component digital object
Digital object identifier
A digital object identifier is a character string used to uniquely identify an object such as an electronic document. Metadata about the object is stored in association with the DOI name and this metadata may include a location, such as a URL, where the object can be found...
. MANS has three layers; the conceptual model of documentation, the preferred expression format (vocabulary) for the model (the interpretation of DIDL XML) and, its top layer, the score, which serves as a record of the work that is database-processable.
It is hoped that by interweaving the ideas of a declarative language and a more procedural language, MANS is able to act as a backbone to the artwork by being specifically suggestive though not overly prescriptive of how to best delineate and then, later, reinterpret an artwork.
Individual efforts
Numerous contemporary art conservators have contributed individual efforts toward new media art preservation:- Carol Stringari of the Guggenheim in New York
She took care of her collection with much care and effort which we now call it is beyond conservation. As a deputy director and chief conservator, she led her laser research of a monochromatic painting by Ad Reinhardt and project on conservation of the works of László Moholy-Nagy. She later won the CAA/Heritage Preservation Award for Distinction for Scholarship and Conservation for her work on Ad Reinhardt's technique.
- Pip Laurenson of the Tate GalleryTate GalleryThe Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
in London
Pip Laurenson, the Head of Time-based media conservation at Tate, is currently working to achieve her PhD in the care and management of time-based media works of art at University College London.
- Jill Sterret of the San Francisco Museum of Modern ArtSan Francisco Museum of Modern ArtThe San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art...
.
Director of Collections & Conservation at SFMOMA, Sterret is now an avid collector and preserver of artworks made by contemporary artists. She also is committed to the vital collaborations between artists, curators, technical experts, registrars, and conservators that support contemporary art conservation practice.
Consortium efforts
The variable media concept was developed in 1998, first as a creative strategy Ippolito brought to the adversarial collaborations produced with artists Janet Cohen and Keith Frank, and later as a preservation strategy called the Variable Media Initiative that he applied to endangered artworks in the Solomon R. Guggenheim MuseumSolomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...
's collection. In 2002 the Guggenheim partnered with the Daniel Langlois Foundation
Daniel Langlois Foundation
The Daniel Langlois Foundation is a non-profit, philanthropic organization endowed by Daniel Langlois and chartered in 1997 with the mission to support artistic and scientific projects and research dedicated to further general human awareness as well as the understanding of human relation with its...
for Art, Science and Technology in Montreal to form the Variable Media Network, a concerted effort to develop a museum-standard, best practice for the collection and preservation of new media art
New media art
New media art is a genre that encompasses artworks created with new media technologies, including digital art, computer graphics, computer animation, virtual art, Internet art, interactive art, computer robotics, and art as biotechnology...
. Apart from Stringari and Ippolito, other key members of the Variable Media Network included Alain Depocas, Director of the Centre for Research and Documentation, Daniel Langlois Foundation; and Caitlin Jones, former Daniel Langlois Variable Media Preservation Fellow at the Guggenheim Museum.
Around this time similar investigations into the preservation of digital/media art were being led on the West Coast by Richard Rinehart, Digital Media Director and Adjunct Curator of Digital Art at the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, who published an article on the subject, The Straw that Broke the Museum's Back? Collecting and Preserving Digitial/Media Art for the Next Century, in 2000. Rinehart had also established Conceptual & Intermedia Arts Online (CIAO) http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/about_bampfa/avantgarde.html with Franklin Furnace, the New York based performance art-grants giving organization and archive/advocate of performance, 'ephemeral' or non-traditional art under the directorship of Martha Wilson
Martha Wilson
Martha Wilson is a Philadelphia feminist performance artist. She is the founding director of Franklin Furnace. Over the past four decades she has developed and "created innovative photographic and video works that explore her female subjectivity through role-playing, costume transformation, and...
.
Members of the Variable Media Network and CIAO subsequently joined forces with other organizations, including Rhizome.org, an affiliate of New York's New Museum of Contemporary Art
New Museum of Contemporary Art
The New Museum, founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, is the only museum in New York City exclusively devoted to presenting contemporary art from around the world...
, for collective preservation endeavors such as Archiving the Avant Garde http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/about_bampfa/avantgarde.html. This broader coalition, operating under the rubric Forging the Future, is managed by the Still Water
Still Water
Still Water is a research and development laboratory at the New Media Department of the University of Maine that studies and builds networks for artists, academics, and other creative professions...
lab at the University of Maine and offers free, open-source tools for new media preservation, including the 3rd-generation Variable Media Questionnaire.
In 2002, Timothy Murray founded The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art. Named after the pioneering critic of the commercialization of mass media, the late Professor Rose Goldsen of Cornell University. The Archive hosts international art work produced on CD-Rom, DVD-Rom, video, digital interfaces, and the internet. Its collection of supporting materials includes unpublished manuscripts and designs, catalogues, monographs, and resource guides to new media art. The curatorial vision emphasizes digital interfaces and artistic experimentation by international, independent artists. Designed as an experimental center of research and creativity, the Goldsen Archive includes materials by individual artists and collaborates on conceptual experimentation and archival strategies with international curatorial and fellowship projects.
Other important initiatives include DOCAM
DOCAM
DOCAM is an international research alliance on the documentation and the conservation of the media arts heritage....
, an international research alliance on the documentation and the conservation of the media arts heritage organized by the Daniel Langlois Foundation, and the International Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art (INCCA), organized by the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage (ICN).
Further reading
- Chin, Daryl. "Transmissible Evidence". PAJ: A Journal of Performance & Art Jan2002, Vol. 24 Issue 70, p44-51, 8p, 4bw.
- Steve Dietz. Collecting New Media Art: Just Like Anything Else, Only Different
- Oliver GrauOliver GrauOliver Grau is a German art historian and media theoretician with a focus on image science, modernity and media art as well as culture of the 19th century and Italian art of the Renaissance.-Works:...
. "For an Expanded Concept of Documentation: The Database of Virtual Art", ICHIM, École du Louvre, Paris 2003, Proceedings, pp. 2–15. Expanded Concept of Documentation - Jones, Caitlin. "Does Hardware Dictate Meaning? Three Variable Media Conservation Case Studies" Horizon article
- Jones, Caitlin. "Seeing Double: Emulation in Theory and Practice, The Erl King Case Study" Case Study
- Jones, Caitlin. "Understanding Medium: preserving content and context in variable media art" Article from Keep Moving Images
- Christiane PaulChristiane Paul (curator)Christiane Paul is a scholar in the field of digital art and an historian of art and technology. She is Professor of Visual Arts at The New School and author of the seminal book Digital Art. Dr...
. Challenges for a Ubiquitous Museum: Presenting and Preserving New Media - Quaranta, Domenico. Interview with Jon Ippolito published in "Noemalab" Leaping into the abyss and resurfacing with a pearl
External links
- BAM/PFA-Archiving the Avant-Garde
- erpanet The Preservation of Digital-Born Art
- Preserving the Immaterial-A conference on variable media
- Seeing Double: Emulation in Theory and Practice
- DOCAM- Documentation and Conservation of the Media Arts Heritage / Documentation et Conservation du Patrimoine des Arts Médiatiques
- Media Art and Museums: Guidelines and Case Studies
- Variable Media Network-A resource from CHIN (Canadian Heritage Information Network)
See also
- Art conservation
- Digital preservationDigital preservationDigital preservation is the set of processes, activities and management of digital information over time to ensure its long term accessibility. The goal of digital preservation is to preserve materials resulting from digital reformatting, and particularly information that is born-digital with no...
- Digital artDigital artDigital art is a general term for a range of artistic works and practices that use digital technology as an essential part of the creative and/or presentation process...
- Internet artInternet artInternet art is a form of digital artwork distributed via the Internet. This form of art has circumvented the traditional dominance of the gallery and museum system, delivering aesthetic experiences via the Internet. In many cases, the viewer is drawn into some kind of interaction with the work...
- Library of Congress Digital Library projectLibrary of Congress Digital Library projectThe Library of Congress National Digital Library Program is assembling a digital library of reproductions of primary source materials to support the study of the history and culture of the United States...
- National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation ProgramNational Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation ProgramThe National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program is an archival program led by the Library of Congress to archive and provide access to digital resources. The U.S. Congress established the program in 2000...
- New media artNew media artNew media art is a genre that encompasses artworks created with new media technologies, including digital art, computer graphics, computer animation, virtual art, Internet art, interactive art, computer robotics, and art as biotechnology...
- Virtual artVirtual artVirtual art is art practice using virtual reality, augmented reality or mixed reality as a medium in a digital environment..-Form:It can be considered a post-convergent art form, containing all previous media as subsets...