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It has never been the societal role of the historian, art or otherwise, to
collect and organize the raw materials from which they work. This has been
the role of the archivist/librarian.

Taking nothing away from the amazing discussion of this list over the past
three years, it's still lacking a significant participation on the part of
that community. When I sought out the art librarian's community as a venue
to explore the ideas of how best to document and preserve — for the art
historians and scholars — "such stuff as dreams are made on" it was clear
that many of the members of that community were, willfuly or otherwise, not
paying close attention to the emergent trends in the art community itself.

The good news is that in the past five years, there HAS been an increase in
awareness of the need to systematically collect and preserve these
materials. The bad news is that we're playing "catch up" to do it and
digital materials are actually more susceptible to destruction than analog
ones ...

I'd like to think that the community of this list is more willing to
participate in the kind of "cross disciplinary" outreach that is needed in
the years ahead. Given the  underpinnings of the works in question, greater
technical expertise will be required of those who work with these
materials, whether they are fulfilling the artist's creative role, the
archivist's role, or the scholar's analytical role. One has to wonder if
"the powers that be" are willing to invest in the time and energy needed to
insure that the practitioners are being trained and that the needed
infrastructure is being supported to see that this happens.

We may be at the point for "new media" where we were for analog materials
in the late 1990's. That was a period of rapid realization that the
librarians and archivists were realizing that digital technologies allowed
a means of at least capturing the content for access of the vast analog
collections under their care. (Of course, none of that was happening fast
enough to satisfy everyone and Google and others have only exacerbated the
problem such that now there is the expectation that everything IS on the
Internet)

If we are at such a point, then the efforts of the handful now who are
trying to begin the work of collecting, organizing, and preserving these
materials must be seen as laying the groundwork of what will follow.
Efforts to train  such as the number of programs that are emerging, as seen
here on the list and elsewhere, (U-Maine's New Media program with Jon
Ippolito, programs in the UK and the EU, etc.,), and the work of places
like the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, Rhizome,
DOCAM, the Walker's Media Lab, and growing host of others would suggest
that we may be heading towards the critical mass needed.

One hopes, anyway ...

Best to all,

Dennis


~~
If your first move is brilliant, you’re in trouble. You don’t really know
how to follow it; you’re frightened of ruining it. So, to make a mess is a
good beginning. — Brian Eno


On Sun, Oct 13, 2013 at 11:22 PM, Bureaud Annick <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Collecting the source material is different from writing art history (just
> look at how many books there are on the same topic/movemnt/artist from the
> past where the material = the artworks have been collected).
>
> Building up an art history is not only based on the analysis on the
> artworks but also on all different kinds of documents.
> And in our field, it should include also history of technics and devices +
> soft/hardware, right ?
>
> Oral history is also part of the tools used by art historians.
> Somehow what has been done in this discussion is a collective oral memory
> excercice that included the re-collection of source material (that
> probably someone should edit and publish on paper ...).
>
> The art history work is still open ...
>
> Sorry for the short notes, I am in a rush.
>
> This discussion has been great !
>
> best
> annick
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > I suppose partly what I'm asking is who the historian of digital and new
> > media art is/is going to be?
> >
> > Simon Biggs rightly points out that the art critic and the art historian
> > perform different tasks but as Johannes Goebel also explains, the
> > contextual archive for online art forms, for example, is extremely
> > unstable.
> >
> > But if art historians have generally been trained to work with more
> stable
> > media, who is going to shore-up the decaying archives of digital and new
> > media art forms if not an art historian who is also critically active in
> > the field? Does the art historian who aims to historically situate
> > contemporary art forms like net art not have to take an active role from
> > the start - swapping between, say, critical and historical modes? Because
> > doesn't that critic/historian have to ensure they can make their way back
> > through the collapsing archives before it's too late? Or maybe it's
> better
> > to suggest that the collapsing archive makes unwitting art historians of
> > us all? Take for example Josephine Bosma's work. She was very much active
> > in critiquing net art forms as they were emerging, but given 15 or so
> > years distance, she is also well placed to write an art history of this
> > type of work. And as this month's discussion has shown, it takes an army
> > of active participants in online art/art discussion to piece together its
> > networked histories which are already only partially available online or
> > in books. And if the art historian has to be involved now, or if she is
> > all of us, what does her/our contextual work look like? Art history has
> > always involved accounting for multiple view points, but has generally
> > been written by a single author, but what if post internet art history is
> > by its very nature a collaborative affair? And what if half of the work
> of
> > the post-internet art historical practitioner (if she still exists in any
> > distinct way) is the organisation of group recollections and archive
> > rehabilitation. And what if, like the discussion on this list, the aim is
> > not to produce a chronology, or consensus on what happened and when, but
> a
> > document or archive that is necessarily open to change and, down the
> line,
> > emulation…
> >
> > So I guess what I'm asking is can art history online look like this? Look
> > exactly like this list discussion even though few of the participants
> > might call themselves 'art historians'? Or is there an emerging practice
> > of online art contextualiser that straddles the existing activities of
> > artists, critics, curators, historians, conservators…And if the latter,
> > were the skills for such a role developed at least in part by the
> > pioneering owners/instigators of lists?
> >
> >
> >
> > On 10/10/2013 20:25, "Goebel, Johannes" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> >>Pondering.
> >>
> >>This very interesting discussion ­ how it meanders and find its ways a a
> >>result of all our thinking and pondering and experiences in the discussed
> >>fields.
> >>
> >>If "history" (= talking, collecting,writing, researching, thinking,
> >>constructing, sharing about things past - how ever small or extent past
> >>might be) is seen as being totally dependent on and under the direct
> >>influence of and shaped by funding, political power, media used and the
> >>interest of those who are gate keepers and those who feed the gate
> >> keepers
> >>­ then the digital age makes this extremely clear. "Everyone" can put
> >>things online ­ but how that is kept available is a plain matter of
> >> power
> >>and thus of political interests. Books are much easier smuggled through
> >>the cracks of power structures than digital information. Digital
> >> platforms
> >>allow very fast production of "content in media" and an extremely
> >> powerful
> >>distribution (and reception) in the moment ­ but the half-life of this
> >>information being available is in direct relationship to the funds
> >> (power)
> >>which allow to port the information to new platforms, to maintain the
> >>information, to archive etc.
> >>
> >>The digital technology promises that we can collect and distribute
> >>archives "for ever" because it is "all digital". In the end digital
> >>storage evaporates faster than acetate film or acid-free paper because
> >> the
> >>"substrate" information is carried by is in constant flux (literally).
> >>
> >>The only power that can actually preserve (port, adapt to changing
> >>operating systems, check for bits corrosion etc.) their digital
> >>information is the military (most likely limited to the world-wide top 5
> >>military spenders). I think even banks still print their most important
> >>documents out on acetate-free paper and store it deep in mountain. Many
> >> of
> >>us have tried to keep archives and lists backed-up, have seen works
> >>disappearing once the CD-ROM ran only on certain chip-sets and operating
> >>systems etc etc.
> >>
> >>Maybe we are back to the mediaeval  ages in Europe where information was
> >>copied by humans fed by the most powerful organization at the time (the
> >>church) - only those who can feed the monks of the digital age can ensure
> >>that their view of what is important get transported to "future times".
> >>Where these future times have now shrunk to maybe something like 10 ­ 20
> >>years.
> >>
> >>Maybe the promise of digital technology ("its all just bits") is showing
> >>us the real conditions of human life as being bound to heart beats (or in
> >>digital technology to the ever faster and thus ever quickly dissipating
> >>clock of computer technology).
> >>
> >>So maybe digital technology restructures how time  is used and seen and
> >>thus how power structures have shifted to a greater divide of "in the
> >>moment" and "for continuity". It is available in the moment to everyone
> >> ­
> >>but gone after we sent the tweet and before we die unless we can support
> >>monasteries with thousands of people copying and porting what other
> >>generations (digital generations that is ­ very short life spanŠ)
> >>produced. That the US Library of Congress is collecting tweets displays
> >>the great helplessness and the power structure at the same time. And
> >>Google seems to indicate another power shift. And maybe only the NSA is
> >>smart by understanding they cannot keep all the collected data for ever
> >> :)
> >>
> >>So maybe the promise of the "all digital archives" is not that things can
> >>be kept "for ever" but that we are "liberated for the moment" while being
> >>under the dictate of those who can port and save what has been thought
> >> and
> >>made. Maybe the digital age is the age of a life where communication and
> >>distribution has again reached the the fundamental level of time passing
> >>and an erosion of memory which is bound to media which disappear slower
> >>than our lives do.
> >>
> >>What could be a positive consequence for us little people (the ones
> >>without power to port what we discovered) out of this? Liberation from
> >>creating our own monuments and making and living time-based arts which
> >> are
> >>only good for the moment when they are happening. (So now we are thinking
> >>performing email lists!)
> >>
> >>The down side? We are enabled by digital technology to change system of
> >>political power and share thoughts in a moment. But the structures of
> >>global power can grow inversely into dimensions unknown before ­ because
> >>they can afford to "own time" (the clock of computers) whereas we can
> >>"only" live time. So digital technology has potentially brought us back
> >> to
> >>realize our own vulnerability in ways which show us that the past five
> >>thousand years of "making history" (from clay tablets to computer
> >> tablets)
> >>were a unique phase for humanity and now we might enter a phase where the
> >>real power of holders of information becomes even more obvious because it
> >>becomes time-dependent at incredible small intervals.
> >>
> >>Johannes
> >
>