A perspective from the performing arts on the issue of emulation/re-creation/new version etc.:
Quite a few composers n the 20th century established the system of multiple premiers of a piece with the same title (like Boulez, Stockhausen et al.). They get a comission and they deliver a work (in these cases usually a score, in the case of Boulez also a score for traditional insruments with live-electronic schematics). After the first performance, a composer may change for instance instrumentation, extend the piece, adjust the elctronics to a new level of technology - and this revised version is then branded as another premiere. A premiere means to you as composer that you can get a commissioning fee - whereas if a revised piece of yours is performed (like porting the electronic part to a new platform and improving also the muscial role the electronic play), you usually do not get extra money for doing the revision. The process of multiple premiers is financially only interesting for composers on the top level - since festivals are interested in programming new premiers by famous composers. And this mechanism provides the composers with a way to keep working on a piece. - So in the end there are several versions with several premieres, all under the same title.
Generally, the term "interpretation" form the preforming arts may become applicable to art forms which are electronics (computer) based and are "time-based arts". Playing a video may not count as a new interpretation. But as we know from dance (choreography) and music (composition), interpretations of given rules/sketches/programs/symbolic representations (all of these terms e.,g. may apply to a notated composition in music) can vary greatly. And in the theater world, one actually goes so far as to edit the piece, cut text, add text etc. and it is still "Shakespeare".
Maybe any dynamic art, that is art which changes from occasion to occasion, and most of the time-based art, that is art which changes on a time-line perceivable to our senses in the moment when we are with the work, can be inspected under the practises of performing arts. Maybe those of us who come from the visual arts should once again look to the old time-based arts and see how practises from these areas (all the way down to cataloging) may shed light on issues which are relatively new to the visual arts.
Johannes
(PS: "performing arts" and "performance arts" are not identical - just a friendly reminder coming from my experience of interviewing curators for time-based arts where this distinction was not part of their way of speaking and thinking about the field.)
________________________________
From: Curating digital art - www.crumbweb.org on behalf of Sarah Cook
Sent: Sat 9/16/2006 4:29 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: self-emulation -- from jon ippolito
On 14 Sep 2006, at 5:06 pm, Jon Ippolito wrote:
> Caroline,
>
> By way of introduction, I'm an artist and curator who has worked with
> the Variable Media Network since its inception. I'm grateful to the
> Langlois Foundation and CRUMB for organizing this discussion, if only
> because it has brought more attention to
> important questions like yours.
>
> While the term "self-emulation" is amusing, personally I would
> describe Back's re-creation as "self-migration" or better
> "self-reinterpretation," since he deliberately altered the look (the
> direction the character faces) and feel (the slickness) of
> the work in the process. In contrast, emulation to me means
> re-creating as closely as possible the original experience of the
> work--even if that means a completely different technology from the
> original.
>
> In the context of computer science, emulation focuses on software, but
> in the context of real-world preservation, an emulation approach often
> means teaching new hardware to play old tricks. When a team from the
> Variable Media Network replaced the
> analog laserdisc players in Grahame Weinbren and Roberta Friedman's
> Erl King with digital hard drives, programmer Isaac Dimitrovsky had to
> write a software delay into the response time of the hard drives in
> order to emulate the "seek time" of the
> original laserdiscs. Sometimes emulation means rubbing the polish
> right off those slick new devices.
>
> That said, I'm not sure whether emulation would have been the right
> choice for Back's work. In many new media contexts, artists aren't
> able to get their installations/Web sites/performances working as
> planned the first time around. (Some don't get
> them working at all--just ask some of the exhibitors at last summer's
> ISEA). Feedback from viewers and exposure to different venues can also
> inspire an artist to change her work. For example, between 2000 and
> 2002 I counted twenty-odd variations on
> the work Apartment by Martin Wattenberg, Marek Walczak, and Jonathan
> Feinberg. In a short 18 months, this "single" interactive piece ranged
> from single- to multi-user interfaces and from Web-based to
> gallery-based installations.
>
> As you note, such changes over time wreak havoc with the traditional
> cataloguing systems of art history. Does that mean we should pour
> molten bronze over an artwork the first time it's displayed, so it
> will never be altered? Hell no. In my opinion,
> what we need to do is crack the bronze that's hardened on art
> historical categories.
>
> In particular, we need to break out of the straightjacket currently
> known as the wall label (and its relations the catalogue caption and
> collection management record). We need to start crediting people who
> re-create older works, giving version
> numbers instead of just years, and describing media and dimensions in
> terms that clarify both their installation-specific and
> installation-independent properties. I propose such a system in a
> forthcoming essay entitled "Death by Wall Label"--but the
> details are less important than that we teach historians to dance
> according to the drums of artists rather than vice versa.
>
> Thanks again for bringing up this excellent question.
>
> jon
>
>
>>> Self-emulation, which I am considering as work that has been
>>> reproduced by
>>> the artist at a later date, poses particular problems for the
>>> scholarship of
>>> this genre of art.
> ...
>>>
>>> My dilemna is in referring to the two works. For the artist they
>>> exist as
>>> one work, in a sense, just a newer version, but for me they embody
>>> competely
>>> different worlds, tied very much to time and available technologies.
> ...
>>>
>>> How do scholars refer to the works? Can one
>>> speak about the original, while ignoring the new and improved
>>> version. Don't
>>> get me wrong, both works are interesting, in fact, Back has stated
>>> that
>>> Version II is much closer to his original conception of the work,
>>> but is it
>>> incumbent on the art historian to refer to both works at all times?
>
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