Apologise for the long winded response, but I hope that, for those
interested in the subject of documentation and in response to Annet's
direct questions, it is a useful summery.
Although invited, I was not able to make it to the conference, so I am
happy to provide some detailed post-scripts.
-----
Annet said: "It is good to hear what policies institutes like the Tate
are following."
Archiving born digital content is a relatively new thing and it is
something the institution is grappling with. In particular at the
moment, the archive department. Policies are still in development.
Annet said: "With regard to the works you name as examples, were these
bought by the Tate and taken into the collection? I presume by giving a
commission they would be?"
Commissioning to collect is not something Tate commonly undertakes. This
is true of the Turbine Hall Unilever series and other commissions as
well as the net art. In individual cases it may be that a commissioned
work is acquired. But this would usually be undertaken after the fact
and involve a separate contractual agreement. There is no net art
currently in Tate's collection or archive. The works are available via a
license to display (on the Tate website).
Annet said: "As I understand there is always a difference in status and
importance between the documentation archive and the collection
archive."
Tate's conservators undertake a lot of documentation in the process of
accessioning a work into the collection. This kind of documentation can
be different to the type of material one would find in the
archive/library.
Where documentation in a collection context is for the purpose of
supporting preservation practices and aimed at a specialist conservation
audience, documentation held in the archive/library may often be more
directly public facing or be useful to a broader range of researchers.
The relationship between an artwork and its documentation and therefore
the relationship between archive and collection becomes blurry with
works that are ephemeral. Recent acquisitions of performance works
emphasise this relationship in interesting ways. Again it is a
relatively new thing to be dealing with and largely handled on a case by
case basis.
From Annet's original summery: "Instead of saving the original code it
could be better to make a diagram that represents all the possible
states and scenarios of the work."
-and-
"'jack the wrapper': put the software in a box and describe / document
the whole thing so that someone else can clone it."
The interactive installation work, "Subtitled" by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
was recently accessioned into Tate's collection. Although my knowledge
of the process undertaken by our conservatives is not comprehensive, I
understand that in the process of documenting the software components
(which in the case of Rafael's work is open source) all of the code was
translated into natural language. Such that the function of the code was
able to be read, even if the programming language became redundant in
future.
In context of a small research network, that I am currently leading on
at Tate, which aims to discuss some of the practical challenges that new
media art presents to the museum sector, we had a couple of artists talk
through the notion of 'form' in relation to their work. David Rokeby was
describing his experience of the recent accessioning of his work, "The
Giver of Names" into the Agnes Etherington Art Centre collection, which
is attached to Queens University in Ontario, Canada. He went into a
great amount of detail about the way he had broken the code into
different sections. Two that could be meddled with - how things were
displayed, what type of font to use, basic functions etc.. And one
section that was tightly bound. This third section was felt, by the
artist, to have aesthetic and political dimensions that could not and
should not be re-interpreted by a programmer. As an artist-programmer he
felt his decision making process, in the practice of coding, was
motivated differently to someone who would look at it from a purely
technical point of view. Overall, however he emphasised a set of
documentation he provided about what the audience should be
experiencing. He also chooses to work with open source code.
Some video documentation of these discussions will be available in the
near future. I will post the links, for those who are interested, when
they are up.
Annet said: "But if not [collected], or if so, would that have made a
difference with regard to their documentation/preservation?" [referring
to net art commissioned in 2000 - 2002]
In terms of what may have made a difference to how the early net art was
documented, we need to consider the following...
I really don't think many people were thinking about documentation and
access to digital archives very much, 9 years ago.
When Honor Harger set up the webcasting programme at Tate in 2000, it
was really pioneering. So it is difficult to discuss the notion of
digital archiving policies at this time in the same way that we discuss
them now. In terms of digital video formats, there was an emphasis in
this era on live streaming. Honor had the foresight at the time to
archive as well as broadcast the material. Masters are on miniDV tape.
After a number of years, a significant and valuable archive began to
emerge out of this ongoing activity.
Around the time I came in to the institution in 2003 the archive was
only just starting to become more significant than the live broadcast.
It was, at the time, a real shift in thinking about the programme.
Broadband roll out in the UK was only just starting to become a reality
and so people's ability and desire to watch long play video files online
was only just beginning to expand.
Now of course there is YouTube, dozens of institutional archives,
broadcasters hosting online tv channels etc... It is very easy to forget
that this was not at all the case not so long ago.
Of course video is not the only medium through which you may document a
work of art. But I still think this is a valuable point, in thinking
about what differences there were then, compared to now. At the time
that Graham Harwood and Susan Collins were commissioned, Mini DV was
only just emerging as an affordable medium, digital still cameras were
brand new, and many people were still accessing the internet via dialup
connections.
These days, as Myron alluded to, the difficulties to be addressed often
involve meta data standards, data base system development, archival
format transcoding, the provision of server space and effective search
functionality. Which for institutions, brings about a crisis in terms of
the different kinds of expertise and resources needed to manage it in an
ongoing way.
From Annet's original summery: "Standardise: with the same indexing
standards access will become easier"
Implementing technical standards which allow people to search across
multiple archives has been an aim in the context of EU funding for some
time. However across a breadth of content, taxonomies can become
unwieldy. Semantic standards are difficult to define when content is
often very particular or unique to a context.
Intelligent data base systems emphasise the relationships between
content, such that a simple search can be more fruitful and users with a
limited vocabulary are able to dig deeper via the lateral connections
presented to them. However meaningful relationships become difficult to
evolve, across multiple archives.
Still I believe these concepts to be worthy pursuits.
I instigated a research project between Tate and Goldsmiths University
Computer Science department some years ago. This research is currently
looking at the development of social tagging systems such that users are
able to add tags to the database and the archive can in effect learn
from its use / and its users.
Social tagging systems are not uncommon, but the research aims to enable
tagging in real-time, across a timeline, rather than tagging the entire
video object. This, we believe, will be particularly useful when
searching long play content, which in the case of the webcasting
archive, can be up to and over an hour in duration. The software is
still in an early prototype stage.
Effective tagging is best done by someone with knowledge of the subject
needing description. When the content of an archive is diverse, this can
be difficult, especially because those tasked with the day to day
maintenance of archives often come from a technical background and not a
subject-specific background. Devolving the ability to tag content to a
public (many of whom have a large amount of knowledge of the subject
area) is a useful management tool, which can help to make this kind of
maintenance task more feasible. At the same time it can have the effect
of de-centralising authority. Although there are still questions to be
answered around motivation, misuse scenarios etc...
The growth in the amount of digital content produced has been
expediential over the last decade. And the interest in digitising
previously analogue material for the purpose of access is just as high
as the need to preserve material that is born digital.
Although governments (in the UK at least) are now emphasising access
through the use of digital technology I think there is limited address
to the important issue of sustainability at that level of policy. Even
if one is able to win capital in order to facilitate the development of
suitable systems and undertake digitization. It is very difficult to
obtain support for the ongoing hosting expenses as well as the
additional staff required to maintain and manage such systems at any
sizable scale.
Kelli
-----Original Message-----
From: annet [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 18 June 2009 09:16
To: Kelli Dipple
Cc: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] documenting and archiving - results
archive 2020
Hi Kelli,
Thanks very much for your response. It is good to hear what policies
institutes like the Tate are following.
With regard to the works you name as examples, were these bought by the
Tate and taking into the collection? I presume by giving a commission
they would be? But if not, or if so, would that have made a difference
with regard to their documentation/preservation?
As I understand there is always the difference in status and importance
between the documentation archive and the collection archive. Going back
to the initial question posed by Sarah, the difference between
documentation and preservation, what would that mean in terms of works
that are only documented?
And to give a bit more context for the quote you're referring to: "by
changing the terminology from 'digital preservation' to 'permanent
access' might give an incentive to the importance and understanding of
the work."
This terminology came up in one of the groups and it was said that the
EU doesn't speak about digital preservation and permanent access is the
preferred terminology, because it would better describe what the
incentive of all the effort is: giving access to art and cultural
heritage. It seems formost to be some sort of marketing terminology, but
maybe some people that were in that group (with Alessandro) could
elaborate on this??
All best, Annet
Kelli Dipple schreef:
> It's an interesting discussion.
>
> Often times net art is more than just a website. Works are often
> conceptual or performative, involving elements that are not well
> captured within the browser interface. Take some of the early works
> commissioned by Tate, for example.
>
> Looking at the archived websites linked to from the Tate website it is
> difficult to understand the performative intervention that Graham
> Harwood's work 'Uncomfortable Proximity' executed, when it randomly
> opened in place of the formal Tate site, for every 10th visitor. The
> work was a replica of the Tate site as it existed then, with poignant
> variations to the imagery and text within. However the Tate site has
> changed a lot in terms of the way it looks and navigates, 8 years on
> and this relationship is lost in the current archive, unless one reads
> the accompanying text.
>
> There is no documentation of Susan Collin's year long performance as
> the Director of 'Tate in Space', although a text-based interview
> reveals the act. This project was launched at the time, with a media
> release stating, as a fact, that Tate was planning to launch an actual
> Tate in space. There was an architecture competition, live forums,
> satellite sightings etc... Even though we still, on occasion, receive
> enquiries about this project, as if it were a real thing (believe it
> or not), I think that much of the narrative and irony involved in this
> work is in danger of being lost in archive as a website on its own.
>
> Every work is different and of course many net art pieces are complete
> within the browser. It would be difficult to evolve a blanket strategy
> that would be suitable for all works. In each case a different sort of
> evidence/reference/archive/documentation may be required.
>
> I think documentation is an important consideration in commissioning
> new work and yet it raises interesting philosophical questions around
> notions of authenticity and how one might define what the work is.
> Difficulties can also arise in terms of ownership, depending on who
> produces the documentation. One can employ open content models, but
> ultimately this decision is in the hands of the artist/author of the
> original work.
>
> Documentation can be many things... anecdotal, technical,
descriptive...
>
>
> It is rarely impartial though. An authoritive, tightly edited film
> about an artist's work, compared to a more informal interview, a
> recording of the artist speaking in front of a live audience, in
> discussion with an interviewer or a conservator, or a bunch of mobile
> phone videos uploaded to YouTube by audience members will all give
> different insights into the work.
>
> The notion of a networked model put forward in Annet's summery is an
> important point. Centralisation and autonomy can put things at greater
> risk.
>
> Ironically methods employed by other sectors, say archaeology, often
> involve digitization. Capturing a stone wall that has lasted a million
> years, for example, and transcoding it into a short-lived digital
> format. I can't help but view the irony in this, but these activities
> are often tightly linked to issues of access rather than preservation.
>
> I am struck by the idea proposed in Annet's outline of thinking about
> 'permanent access' rather than 'digital preservation'. Is access about
> permenace? (certainly not in the case above) / or indeed, is permenace
> about access?
>
> Challenging our established notions of permenace may well be useful.
>
> Kelli
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Curating digital art - www.crumbweb.org
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Caroline
> Langill
> Sent: 17 June 2009 12:58
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] documenting and archiving - results
> archive 2020
>
> I think Myron is correct, there is something needed which moves beyond
> classification and nomenclature.
>
> It is for this reason I did extensive interviews with the artists
> whose work I chose for my Shifting Polarities project. For those of
> you not familiar with it, I named exemplary works of Canadian
> electronic media art from the 1970s and 1980s. The interviews
> contextualize the artist's practice and then offer anecdotal, as well
> as important historical information, about the chosen work's
conceptualization and fabrication.
> Availability of these interviews online (for how long though is a
> question) enables scholars to situate the work beyond a taxonomic
> description.
>
> Also, and this goes back to a conversation I had with Simon Werrett on
> the Banff shuttle at Refresh!, works could be kept in a degraded
> dysfunctional state in order to keep the technical components
available.
> Simon pointed out that for scientific historians the components of
> scientific instruments - even fasteners - contain important historial
> information which speak very specifically about the historical
> narrative of the instrument. We could apply similar thinking to new
> media works which are no longer active.
>
> Finally, we lost an important artist in Canada recently. Juan Geuer,
> who worked with optics, lasers, and seismic sensors to produce
> exquisite real-time projections of the earth's activity, to name one
> part of his practice, passed away on May 2nd at the age of 92. Now,
> Juan was active until the day he died, so there is a vast body of work
> which now needs to be dealt with, placed in museums, etc. One of his
> works is permanently installed in a basement gallery of the Ottawa Art
Gallery.
> The work, Al Asnaan, has a very sensitive horizontal pendulum which
> senses the earth's movement, but also the movement of the audience in
> the gallery (this work is very close to the earth's surface since
> Ottawa sits on the Canadian Shield). The work is very complex to
> install and Juan, because he lived for so long, was solely responsible
> for installing and maintaining the work. Anyone can see what is coming
here.
> The gallery realized, due to his advancing years, that they would need
> to have a record of his knowledge, beyond the owner's manual
> accompanying the work. They had the foresight to make a videotape (is
> that what we call it now?) of Juan installing the work, two weeks
> prior to his passing. The video document will provide details which
> will be integral to an understanding of the work, not just in terms of
> setting it up in the gallery, but also how the artist's hand produced,
> and maintained a relationship with it.
>
> I expand on with some of these questions in an upcoming article in
> Convergence.
>
> Here are some links related to what I've been talking about above:
>
> Shifting Polarities:
> http://www.fondation-langlois.org/html/e/page.php?NumPage=1949
>
> Juan Geuer: www.juangeuer.com (make sure you scroll down beyond Juan's
> photograph to get to the website link).
>
> All for now,
>
> Caroline
>
>
>> Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:12:04 -0500
>> From: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] documenting and archiving - results
>> archive 2020
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>
>> I've been following along and recall that we've had similar
>> discussions in the past, often cropping up when we've attempted to
>> come to terms with just what net art is. We do of course need
>> techniques for descriptive documentation of projects. But I think
>> there's a need for more than just taxonomic and technical
description.
>>
>
>
>> If the physical presence of a work is going to disappear or almost
>> disappear, it's important to have descriptive responses which
>> recreate
>>
> the presence of
>
>> the work and the contexts which informed it. This would take some
>> curatorial management, but the tools are there for involving audience
>> and developers.
>>
>> Myron turner
>>
>> Sarah Cook wrote:
>>
>>> Sandra Fauconnier and Gaby Wijers at NIMK: how has involving the
>>> public in curatorial selection of works in the archive (through the
>>> new mediatheque, or curator for a day project, for instance) led to
>>> new ways of thinking about preservation and documentation of the
>>> works? Can you tell us a bit about inside-installations.org and the
>>> OASIS project (Open Archiving System with Internet Sharing)?
>>>
>>> Aymeric Mansoux at GOTO10: do you think the idea of 'open-sourcing'
>>> documentation tasks, by distributing them to the makers/developers,
>>> is a good solution?
>>>
>>> any thoughts from any others would be great too, thanks sarah
>>>
>>>
>> --
>>
>> _____________________
>> Myron Turner
>> http://www.room535.org
>> http://www.mturner.org
>> http://net18reaching.org/cityscapes
>> _________________________________________________________
>> Searchable Database of Art and New Media News Feeds Over 500,000 news
>> items supplied in response to queries http://net18reaching.org/artrss
>>
|
