Michael’s quote of Lorenzo stood out for me, “I believe that ultimately it is the artist who needs to make the decisions about their commitment in a particular technology.” 

I wonder what folks here think about some conservators recently recommending de-emphasizing the artist’s viewpoint in preservation decisions: http://www.voca.network/artist-intent/ <http://www.voca.network/artist-intent/>


Richard Rinehart
Director
Samek Art Museum
Bucknell University
570-577-3213
http://museum.blogs.bucknell.edu <http://museum.blogs.bucknell.edu/>


> On Aug 24, 2015, at 8:34 AM, MIchael Century <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
> 
> I am not a curator, but a musician and historian. The musical perspective informs part of what follows.
> 
> I have three thoughts:  1) listen to artists, and the lesson is, helpfully, "It all depends";  2) consider the issue of "authenticity" as developed for almost 100 years in musical performance practice;  and 3) see upcoming seminar in NYC at Bard Graduate Center, which has promise to link together media arts and performance in important ways.
> 
> Last point first -- link to Sept 21 Symposium—Revisions: Object—Event—Performance—Process since the 1960s
> https://www.bgc.bard.edu/news/events/revisions-symposium.html <https://www.bgc.bard.edu/news/events/revisions-symposium.html>
> 
> 1) Rafael Lozano Hemmer's methodology and insights are precise and helpful, http://www.inflexions.org/n5_lozanohemmerhtml.html <http://www.inflexions.org/n5_lozanohemmerhtml.html> -- relevant quote comes from near the end
> Conservation seems to be an issue that I have now when museums acquire my work. I believe that ultimately it is the artist who needs to make the decisions about their commitment in a particular technology. Take for example Nam June Paik’s piece where a Buddha watches himself on a short circuit TV monitor. Many of his pieces were about the importance of the cabinet. The question is does that piece die in thirty or fifty years when the TV monitor cannot be repaired? Can a current flat screen replace the cabinet and does it matter? Perhaps this particular work is about the circularity of vision, not the cabinet? The only one who can really answer that is Nam June Paik himself, and he is dead. So in light of that, whenever I make a piece I very carefully specify which parts can and should be replaced easily. When Tate acquired my piece Subtitled Public, they wanted spare projectors in case any broke. But I consider this is more like Sol LeWitt’s Art of Instructions. As far as I am concerned, for this piece you can generate the same experience with whatever projectors come up in the future, which will probably have even more resolution.
> 
> On the other hand with the incandescent light bulb, I am completely tied to its iconic shape, to the heat it gives out, to the attack of the tungsten filament, to its colour temperature, to its short life span. The moment the incandescent light bulb no longer exists that piece should die. I don’t believe in vampire art. I very much believe in the honorable death of artworks. The incandescent light bulb is banned now in half of the world and it will be banned here too soon. Some of Dan Flavin’s coloured fluorescent tubes were also banned, but because they were seriously toxic. The incandescent light bulb is being banned because it is inefficient. I fundamentally think that in the future, people will have an artisanal production for artworks like mine and many other people who work with incandescent light. For this reason, the typology of blown glass, inert gas and tungsten filament will always be preserved.
> 
> 2)  for the live arts,  before technological reproduction, there is no longer any question that the aim is not to find out the truth of "authentic" originals, but to produce re-creations, always informed by scholarship, changing technical standards and formats, and enriched by the creative spirit and spark of the contemporary.  Just as true for current media arts, in my view.  Forget about innate properties.  
> 
> 
> 
> On Aug 20, 2015, at 5:30 PM, "Goebel, Johannes" <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
> 
>> Oh - I seem to have REALLY misunderstood Johannes and Jon and barked up the wrong tree. Well, be it as it ma - let’s rename the tree - I think what i wrote may hold some thoughts worthwhile to consider….
>> 
>> From: <Goebel>, Johannes <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>>
>> Date: Thursday, August 20, 2015 at 5:26 PM
>> To: "[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>" <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>>
>> Subject: Re: A clumsy question about media art history
>> 
>> Ahhh - Johannes - this is the other Johannes:
>> 
>> I think all time-based arts have changed within their medium and have cross-dressed constantly, so to speak. And even the “static arts”, sculpture, painting etc. have undergone major changes in the age of “technical reproduction” and even before that when gypsum copies were made of "static originals".  We don’t even know what music sounded like before we started to have recording devices. We just made up ways how they might have sounded, we interpret again and again (which is always a re-interpretation, because life always is a re-interpretation) or we re-arranged, sampled (yes, before the invention of the digital sampler). Theater plays became movies, were edited, expanded - whatever.
>> The museum collection of originals is a fiction of the 19th century :) Only kind of kidding …
>> And the digital medium is per se a medium which cannot stand still.
>> 
>> So I would take the rather more radical step and say: let “new media art works” die and perish as it is innate to them and actually to art in general. We lost millions of art works over the past centuries and millennia - as result of politics of power, fundamentalism and malicious stupidity like again now as most contemporary incarnation with ISIS - or through negligence or simply because the artists and their work did not bubble to the surface of the level of cultural power. And now with digital technology, we create art works which have a built in expiration date - like the fat corners of Joseph Beuys. Is that not nice? Real time-based arts, just for the moment.
>> 
>> That being said, I have invested quite a bit of my life into archiving things digital and pondering theoretically and practically on how “digital arts” may have led us back to the times of oral tradition and - on another level - remind us of the fact, that “keeping things” is always related to power and money.
>> Digital technology makes us aware of that in a heightened and sharpened way, so it almost hurts in a physical sense -  the phase of mechanical production/reproduction which developed since book printing came about seemed to suggest that we could keep “things” for ever. And the digital economy tries to convince us that now we have arrived in the age of “we can keep it all” - which from my view is very deceiving and misleading and making us believe in this myth, is an insult to our intelligence (and emotions).
>> If you don’t have time and/or money to pay for transcoding “new media art works”, then they will be gone - very quickly. Is that a relief or a burden? Should we laugh or cry? Well, maybe that is up to each one to decide - on how each one wants and/or is able spend their life.
>> 
>> I am aware that I sending this note to a list, whose recipients most likely have a different perspective. So I am not trying to start a discussion - just wanted to point out from the “outside” that there might be other perspectives as well.
>> 
>> But as you write: maybe I am really missing something - and that is where an interesting discussion might start.
>> 
>> From: Johannes Birringer <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>>
>> Reply-To: Johannes Birringer <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>>
>> Date: Thursday, August 20, 2015 at 4:55 PM
>> To: "[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>" <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>>
>> Subject: Re: A clumsy question about media art history
>> 
>> dear all
>> Jon you are joking, yes?
>> 
>> I am not sure about all the responses that came to the question, and agree that it was a very interesting question, whatever "clumsy" now means for us after discussion already ensued.
>> 
>> But "art historically" and archaeologically speaking (incl. media archaelogy), you are of course joking as many works of sculpture and painting, and photography, and I would also argue, performance, and music,
>> have in fact not changed media and medium-specificity; and this your comment seems to be wrong, or am I missing something?
>> 
>> best
>> Johannes Birringer
>> 
>> 
>> ________________________________________
>> From: Curating digital art - www.crumbweb.org <http://www.crumbweb.org/> [[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>] on behalf of Jon Ippolito [[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>]
>> Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2015 1:55 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
>> Subject: Re: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] A clumsy question about media art history
>> 
>> Hi Danny,
>> 
>> I had the same reaction as your other respondents (show me a long-lasting work that has NOT changed media). But I’m glad you asked, because only through such seemingly "clumsy" questions can we dismantle the prevailing impression that the way to preserve art is to put it in a crate.
>> 
>> The links shared so far on CRUMB are a good start. If you want a book-length treatment of the subject, try
>> 
>> Re-collection: Art, New Media, and Social Memory (MIT Press)
>> http://re-collection.net <http://re-collection.net/>
>> 
>> Good luck!
>> 
>> jon
>> 
>> On 19 Aug 2015, at 16:40, "Birchall, Danny" <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> <mailto:[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi
>> 
>> I have a rather clumsy art history  question that I'm hoping someone on the list might be able to help me with...
>> 
>> I'm looking for examples of media art works or projects that have changed their medium over time (or perhaps involve different forms of media simultaneously), for which specific forms of media are less important than their being made using (electronic) media generally. Perhaps something as simple as a longitudinal video art project that shifted from VHS to digital video; or maybe something where interactivity came to the fore as new technology became available.
>> 
>> This will highlight my ignorance of digital art history, but the nearest thing that I can think of by way of analogy would be the Grand Theft Auto series of video games, which made the shift from a 2D game to a 3D game while retaining the basic themes and objectives of the franchise - ie GTA is a recognisable series, despite the change in the type of game.
>> 
>> Thanks in advance for your help. Happy to summarise responses back to the list, of course.
>> 
>> Thanks
>> 
>> Danny
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Danny Birchall
>> Digital Manager, Wellcome Collection
>> Wellcome Trust
>> Gibbs Building
>> 215 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE, UK
>> Tele: +44 (0) 207 611 8894
>> email: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> <mailto:[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>><mailto:[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> <mailto:[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>>
>> www.wellcomecollection.org <http://www.wellcomecollection.org/> <http://www.wellcomecollection.org/ <http://www.wellcomecollection.org/>><http://www.wellcomecollection.org <http://www.wellcomecollection.org/> <http://www.wellcomecollection.org/ <http://www.wellcomecollection.org/>>> / @ExploreWellcome