at the risks of diverting the discussion i wanted to mention that we just started
a parrallel discussion on the YASMIN list about the conservation and restoration
of new media art- details below

one of the areas that was identified by the canadian consortium (led by jean gagnon) on conservation
and restoration of new media art was the inadequate training of new media arts
on how to document their own art works at the time of creation - so that curators
and conservators have the needed information to even try to conserve.restore.emulate
key works in the history of new media art

when the pioneers are still alive there is a possibility- but for the pioneers that
have died - its often impossible to conserve/restore new media art because the
artists themselves did an inadequate job of documenting their own work

and hence the recommendation to art and design schools, and programs
in art and technology to develop curricula in this area

anyway- for those of you interested in the conservation/restoration issues
hope you will join us on the yasmin list

roger malina



Colleagues

I wanted to bring to your attention this new leonardo book which addresses
the complex issues surrounding curating, conservation, restoration work in new
media- rapidly our own memory is becoming fragmented by not being able to
experience the seminal and key works from the last fifty years of art
and technology.

we are having a yasmin discussion around the problems faced by artist
and institutions of how to make sure the key works of the last fifty
years can still be experience in the future

TO SUBSCRIBE TO YASMIN DISCUSSION LIST
http://estia.media.uoa.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions

roger malina

ART, NEW MEDIA, AND SOCIAL MEMORY

RICHARD RINEHART AND JON IPPOLITO


http://www.amazon.com/Re-collection-Social-Memory-Leonardo-Series/dp/0262027003


Overview
How will our increasingly digital civilization persist beyond our
lifetimes? Audio and videotapes demagnetize; CDs delaminate; Internet
art links to websites that no longer exist; Amiga software doesn’t run
on iMacs. In Re-collection, Richard Rinehart and Jon Ippolito argue
that the vulnerability of new media art illustrates a larger crisis
for social memory. They describe a variable media approach to rescuing
new media, distributed across producers and consumers who can choose
appropriate strategies for each endangered work.

New media art poses novel preservation and conservation dilemmas.
Given the ephemerality of their mediums, software art, installation
art, and interactive games may be heading to obsolescence and
oblivion. Rinehart and Ippolito, both museum professionals, examine
the preservation of new media art from both practical and theoretical
perspectives, offering concrete examples that range from Nam June Paik
to Danger Mouse. They investigate three threats to
twenty-first-century creativity: technology, because much new media
art depends on rapidly changing software or hardware; institutions,
which may rely on preservation methods developed for older mediums;
and law, which complicates access with intellectual property
constraints such as copyright and licensing. Technology, institutions,
and law, however, can be enlisted as allies rather than enemies of
ephemeral artifacts and their preservation. The variable media
approach that Rinehart and Ippolito propose asks to what extent works
to be preserved might be medium-independent, translatable into new
mediums when their original formats are obsolete.

About the Authors
Richard Rinehart is Director of the Samek Art Gallery at Bucknell University.
Jon Ippolito is Associate Professor of New Media and Codirector of the
Still Water Lab and Digital Curation Program at the University of
Maine.