On Jun 17, 2006, at 2:05 PM, Sarah Cook wrote:
> I know this is a complete detour to the debate, but I suppose what I
> am wondering is what are some of the longer term implications of
> mashing up information on the web for museum curators and the practice
> of curatorship.
>
I see AMICO (Art Museum Image Consortium) voted to "dissolve their
collaboration" in 2005 (http://www.amico.org/)
I don't know if that's a sign that museums have realized they can't or
shouldn't try to control the digital images of their collections but it
does apply to a certain aspect of what we've been addressing here. Ten
years ago there was an inordinate amount of concern about "image theft"
by museums: part of it stemmed from an older curatorial frame-of-mind
that considered any aspect of the collection to be the intellectual
property of the curator and institution, particularly when it came to
antiquities; and part of it was the idea that these images would be a
source of income just as slides and prints had been in the past.
Which brings up the important distinction between a traditional
institutional curator who is charged with collecting, conserving,
interpreting and presenting and all the others who use the term
"curating" to describe what they do. The former has a long term
investment in the quality of information on the web but is also more
capable of allowing for mashing up that information in creative and
productive ways, as in the Tate/Mongrel case.
I did a test search on "Yoko Ono + ZKM" and the "orbit" site came up
pretty close to the top (www.orbit.zkm.de/?q=node/24). I have no idea
as to the quality of the information on that site (or what it will be
in the future) so, yeah, there is that problem. OTOH, it does bring up
the information in a different context that most people would presume
to be ZKM-- I think the problem may be in the domain name.
ROBBIN MURPHY
http://post.thing.net
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