Thanks for this summary Simone.

There were some smart people presenting at the ZKM event but strangely they
seem to have been rather uncritical of their subject and its relation to
time. Concepts like longitudinal and uchronic time (I guess this is a little
like synchronic) set up a duality for debate but nevertheless miss a key
aspect of the technological, which is its relationship to the ideologies of
modernity and the teleological model of time. Having worked closely with
technology most of my life, and with those who develop, market and theorise
it, the yearning for singularity that underpins the modernist faith always
seems apparent and lingers in its apparatus, like a ghost. The Californian
ideology...

Was there any discussion of this, of the role of memory and the archive to
teleology, at the ZKM event?

Best

Simon


Simon Biggs
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Research Professor  edinburgh college of art
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Creative Interdisciplinary Research in CoLlaborative Environments
http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice
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Centre for Film, Performance and Media Arts
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/film-performance-media-arts


> From: Simone <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: Simone <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2010 09:16:27 +0100
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] The Digital Oblivion - brief review
> 
> *The Digital Oblivion: substance and ethics in the conservation of
> computer-based art 4 ­ 5th November 2010, ZKM
> *
> Jeremy Pilcher and I were able to attend this interesting event at the end
> of last week at ZKM, and the talks prompted some interesting questions for
> us that are directly relevant to the variety of interwoven issues engaged
> with by this list [new media curating].
> 
> Peter Weibel opened the symposium and expressed that we have reached a
> critical point in relation to restoration in the digital age.  He expressed
> hope that discussion could be facilitated so that we may try and avoid
> reaching ³tipping point² ­ the point of no return - through raising
> awareness and recognising the problem.   He introduced topics such as memory
> and time, which resurfaced in several of the papers presented.
> 
> In engaging with the importance of digital technologies for the conservation
> of digital art works Edmond Couchot observed that such technologies have
> ³shaken our relationship with time². He proposed that we are torn between
> chronic time (³the longitudinal time of history²) and the virtual or
> ³uchronic time², that belongs to machines and in which ³events give way to
> eventualities². This has the effect of compressing the past and the future
> leading to a focus on the present: the Ohere and now¹ and also consciousness
> of forgetting when deciding what is chosen and what is not.   Siegfried
> Zielinski also engaged with the significance of time to the preservation of
> culture and its challenge of the relationship of the past to the future.
> However, he suggested that while Couchot argued for an expansion of the
> present he understood digital technologies as tending to lead to its
> disappearance. In arguing that instant recording compresses the present and
> leads to Oinstant archaeology¹ he referred to the work of Chris Petit and
> Ali Kazma.
> 
> These talks led to questions from the audience relating to the nature of
> ³forgetting², and how this is what we are hoping to avoid by preserving.
>  Zeilinski also suggested that the concept of the traditional archive now
> needs to be seen as obsolete, suggesting that some compromise will always
> have to be made if things are going to change.  He thus raised the question
> of what focal point can we choose if we cannot deal with everything?
> Questioning the idea of selection processes.
> 
> Hans-Dieter Huber pointed to terminology as another problem, or obstacle in
> the preservation of new media, he attributes largely to the idea that new
> media is aging faster than old media.
> 
> It seemed to us that such arguments relating to time, past, present and
> future, invite an engagement with Bernard Siegert¹s proposal that the
> increasing speed of technology undermines art because it was ³the
> impossibility of technologically processing data in real time is the
> possibility of art² (Siegert, 1999:12). However, engaging with Thomson and
> Craighead¹s work OShort Films about Flying¹, Charlie Gere by contrast sees
> net.art as ³not simply another genre or practice that presents challenges to
> the gallery or museum, but which eventually succumbs to recuperation and
> institutionalization.  It is, rather, a means of investigation of the very
> conditions of representation and archivization in the age of real-time
> systems, and thus ­ by extenstion ­ of memory and mourning² (Gere, 2006:
> 174).
> 
> This reminded us of Charlie Gere¹s post to this list earlier in the year in
> which he commented that he ³would like to think of time-based art as
> referring to works that acknowledge finitude, entropy etc...²
> 
> Law was very briefly mentioned by Peter Weibel in his paper, adding a
> further dimension to issues raised in relation to time and memory.  Attempts
> to preserve either the original material form of art or to ensure a record
> of its existence in an archive may employ the law. This may be argued to be
> an iteration of the law¹s disavowal of the contingency of its origins, in
> the process undermining the critical potential of art.  Yet, Weibel
> suggested that the law may serve to balance the interests of individual
> artistic expression with those who do not regard it as compatible with
> existing social values. The significance of this may be approached in terms
> of the comment by Bernhard Serexhe that, with the explosion of storage
> capacity, came the implosion of storage times.  Weible concurred that there
> will always me more storage space compared to what is and can be stored.
>  Therefore there is an attack of the present time on time ­ storage time in
> a real-time culture.  Thus oblivion is inherent ­ as storage space
> increases, storage time becomes shorter.  Because of this, selection by
> quality is giving way to random selection.
> 
> This implosion is (at least partly) a product of the way in which
> capitalistic innovation in technological means of storage increasingly leads
> to defunct archives, on which huge quantities of data are stored but cannot
> be accessed, raising further questions in relation to memory as storage
> technology.  When a storage medium loses its monopoly it fights with new
> storage capacities ­ digital versions can maintain the memory, yet few
> institutions have the time or money to do it.   Yet by defining a difference
> between analogue heritage and digital heritage including an historical view
> reminding us that we cannot now choose what was preserved in the past,
> Weibel suggested that the pressure of selecting what aspects of digital
> culture should be preserved will actually lead to more ³amnesia² (this
> relates to Klaus Weschenfelders suggestion that the desire to preserve
> complete collections to fight this amnesia will actually lead to ³bulimia²
> where entire collections are forgotten because of a surplus which lead him
> to suggest the approach of thinking HOW to collect rather than WHAT, thus
> directing emphasis away from one aspect of selection).   Yet at the same
> time, if we do not digitise we are also in danger of losing some of our
> analogue heritage.
> 
> Because of this destructive innovation (ref to Schumpeter and creative
> destruction), Weibel proposed that there should be laws requiring
> corporations to provide the technology necessary to continue to be able to
> access our digital heritage.  Jeremy noted that perhaps such an appeal to
> the law may be understood in terms of Jean-François Lyotard¹s distinction
> between avant-garde experimentation and capitalist innovation. Of course any
> appeal to Lyotard at this point may be regarded as problematic given that he
> questioned whether art using new technologies was capable of invoking the
> sublime feeling, which was the ³undoing of the presumption of the mind in
> respect to time² (Lyotard, 1991:107).
> 
> This is a brief summary of some of the main points (particularly from the
> first day) interspersed with ideas that Jeremy and I discussed at the time
> and are by no means meant to be exhaustive.
> 
> 
> Best,
> 
> Simone
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Dr Simone Gristwood
> Scholar in Residence 1st September - 30th November 2010
> ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie
> Karlsruhe,
> Germany
> [log in to unmask]



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