Kudos to the Goldsen Archive at Cornell and the Internet Archive for downloading the soon-to-expire Turbulence.org <http://turbulence.org/> site. Yet as my friends at both institutions know well, there is a difference between "archiving" a site and preserving its contents. Turbulence commissions have run the gamut from interactive installations to augmented reality to performative reenactments. In none of these cases is saving files on a hard drive even close to preserving the original experiences.
If any institutions want to write a grant to do more--or even if individual artists or curators want to contribute on their own—here are some free resources I can bring to the table:
1. The Variable Media Questionnaire (http://variablemediaquestionnaire.net <http://variablemediaquestionnaire.net/>) is a free Web service for recording opinions on how a work should be preserved, whether from the artist, a curator, or a third party. I’m happy to talk you through how it helps plan for future migration, emulation, and other strategies.
2. The University of Maine’s Digital Curation graduate program (http://DigitalCuration.UMaine.edu <http://digitalcuration.umaine.edu/>) offers its students opportunities to do real-world preservation as part of its all-online program. They can contribute as a class assignment: for their final project in my digital preservation course this term, I have students helping to preserve works by Mark Napier, John Simon, and Liz Rywelski. Or they can work with an organization or individual as part of their required semester-long internship.
I’m happy to help think through other ways to support future access to this venerable and important resource. Contact me on- or off-list if I can help.
jon
|