Hi All,
I have been reading the past week of posts with much interest. I have
recently taken a job as the Executive Director of the Western Front in
Vancouver, BC (www.front.bc.ca), an institution with an enormous archive of
media art from the early 1970s to the present. As I work to create a
comprehensive plan for dealing with this resource I have been impressed by
the amount of research, tools and strategies -- most available online for
reference. Even thought I have been intimately involved in this field for
many years, in trying to acquaint my staff with the state of the field and
research workable strategies it seems to me that we have come very far in a
short period.
This is of course not to say that much work is not still to be done, but I
am always interested in the drive to always be creating "new" tools and
strategies, rather than evaluate and build upon the tools that are already
in existence.
In particular I have a question to Rick. I am extremely interested in this
idea of the Open Museum and would certainly like to hear more about it. But
I'm also interested in how you see it in relationship to Rhizome's ArtBase
(an online database which allows for the voluntary contribution of work and
metadata), and also in relationship to your own MANS project?
Best,
Caitlin Jones
On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 8:26 AM, Oliver Grau <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> Thank youRoger for this. You made a very important point for all of us
> here and Istrongly like to support your thought by adding my five cents.
>
> Comparablewith natural sciences, digital media and new opportunities of
> networkedresearch catapult the cultural sciences within reach of new and
> essentialresearch, like appropriate documentation and preservation of
> media art, or evenbetter, an entire history of visual media and their
> human cognition by means ofthousands of sources. These themes express in
> regard to image revolutioncurrent key questions. In order to push
> humanities and cultural sciences intheir development, it is necessary to
> use the new technologies globally and create a research infrastructure
> which is organisided much more intercontinental than now.
>
> Since the foundation of the pioneering Databaseof Virtual Art anumber of
> online archives for digitization and documentation arose:
> LangloisFoundation inMontreal, Netzspannung at the Frauenhofer Institut
> or MedienKunstNetz at ZKM * most of these projectsterminated, their
> funding expired, or they lost key researchers like V2 inRotterdam. Even
> the Boltzmann Institut for Media Art Research in Linz, faced recently
> itsclose-down after an evaluation. In this way the originated scientific
> archiveswhich more and more often represent the only remaining image
> source of the art works,do not only lose step by step their significance
> for research and preservationbut in the meantime partly disappear from
> the web. Not only the media artitself, but also its documentation fads
> that future generations of researchersand public will not be able to get
> an idea of the past and the art of our time.To put it another way, till
> now no sustainable strategy exits. What we need isa concentrated and
> compact expansion of ability. There is/was increasingcollaboration with
> these projects in a variety of areas and in changingcoalitions. But in
> the field of documentation projects - real preservationprojects do not
> exist yet (beside fantastic case studies) - the focus is stilldirected
> too much towards particularisation, instead of concentrating forces,what
> is essential strategy in most other fields (as Roger pointed out).
> Manyindividual projects are definitely innovative but too small and
> without clearlarger scientific strategy and safe financing, which is not
> their fault. Someprojects are already expired and not carried further.
> Lots of competence and culturalwealth, but too much separationism.
>
> Especially the university based researchprojects and partly also the
> ones which are linked to museums have developedexpertise that needs to
> be included in cultural circulation, not only in orderto pass it on to
> future generations of scientists and archivists but also togive it a
> chance to flow into future university education in the fields of
> art,engineering, and media history. Clearly, the goal must be to develop
> a policyand strategy for collecting the art of our latest history under
> the umbrella ofa strong, let’s say “Library of Congress like”
> institution. Ultimately, however, this can onlybe organized by a network
> of artists, computer and science centers, galleries,technology producers
> and museums. Those projects which collected culturallyimportant
> documents in the past and which often expired, were not further
> supportedor even lost their base must be supported and reanimated. They
> should beorganized like a corona around an institution which receives
> the duty ofdocumentation and may be even the collection of contemporary
> media art, such aninstitution could be in the USA, the Library of
> Congress; in Europe, besidesthe new European digital libraries database
> Europeana, it could be the BibliothequeNational, the BritishLibrary, the
> V&A or in Germany beside the ZKM for example the DeutscheBibliothek or
> even better a Max Planck Institute.Interestingly the libraries show
> increasingly interest to archive multimediaworks and their
> documentation; however, the usually complex cultural andtechnical know
> how is lacking in order to preserve principal works of the mostimportant
> media art genres of the last decades. Not only can the
> internationalstate of Media Art be a hinderance in creating common
> projects, also the FUNDINGINFRASTRUCTURE of media art documentation so
> far, has normally promotedprojects for 2, 3, or more years, neglecting
> sustainability. A structure whichupdates, extends and contextualizes
> research * whether in historical orcontemporary contexts is required.
> The funding and support infrastructureswhich have been built in the end
> of the last century are not suitable forscientific and cultural tasks in
> the Humanities of the 21st Century.
>
> What is needed in the (Digital) Humanities isan institutional support
> equivalent to that in Astronomy, Biology or ClimateResearch, in order to
> create enough momentum and adhesion the main fundingorganizations like
> NSF, NEH, the European Research Council, DFG, VolkswagenFoundation etc.
> have to support on an international level the necessaryresearch
> structure for research in Media Art and the Digital Humanities ingeneral
> needed in the 21st century.
>
>
> oliver
>
>
>
>
>
> >>> roger malina 13.03.10 13.45 Uhr >>>
> Rick
>
> Look forward to seeing the book. Re the Open Museum discussion,
> i recently posted my Open Observatory manifesto
>
>
> http://www.leoalmanac.org/index.php/lea/entry/an_open_observatory_manifesto/
>
> I am heavily influenced here by my work as an astronomer over the last
> thirty
> years. Thirty years ago astronomers viewed the data they took ( in those
> days
> photographic plates) as their personal property and their careers hinged
> on
> their
> controlling this data ( and their students careers depended on their
> access
> to their
> professors data). Today NASA and NSF now have a contractual stipulation
> that
> all data
> funded by NASA must be made publically available= its funded by public
> money
> so the public has a right to access it. This has led to a scientific
> revolution in
> astronomy= more science is now done on the hubble data archive, than
> with
> new observations= and more science is done by other people than by the
> astronomers who took the data. The international virtual observatory
> movement
> has generalised this and there are now shared data analysis tools that
> are
> open sourced.
>
> This open data is still not the case in many fields of science even
> though
> the data was funded by public monies, but its a growing trend (even in
> the
> genome project). And indeed
> the model is that the scientist is funded up front to take the data, and
> then
> its open sourced. In the humanities its still not the case often= and
> access
> to collections is tightly controlled ( cf the ongoing debate about the
> dead
> sea
> scrolls..)
>
> So a first piece of your open museum proposal could simply be that
> any work commissioned using public monies must be open sourced
> on the ideological basis that the public paid for it so they have a
> right
> to it. And indeed the artist is paid up front ( just as the scientist is
> paid
> up front)
>
> This approach obviously ignores the fact that in art ( as opposed to
> science)
> a lot of the art economy depends on speculation and that a small tiny
> fraction
> of artists get very rich because the intellectual property can be
> controlled
> and
> monetarised in speculation. I guess in science the equivalent is that a
> few
> scientists have benefited from very lucrative patents that they have
> filed-
> which are not so much speculative but are market driven. Patents that
> result
> from government funding are tightly regulated, with the inventor and the
> institutions
> getting their share.
>
> Many of these issues were discussed at the CODE conference some years
> back and in the book edited by Ghosh in the leonardo book series
>
> http://leonardo.info/isast/leobooks/books/ghosh.html
>
> Open source software is considered by many to be a novelty and the open
> source movement a revolution. Yet the collaborative creation of
> knowledge
> has gone on for as long as humans have been able to communicate. CODE
> looks
> at the collaborative model of creativity -- with examples ranging from
> collective ownership in indigenous societies to free software, academic
> science, and the human genome project -- and finds it an alternative to
> proprietary frameworks for creativity based on strong intellectual
> property
> rights.
>
> the museum issue is tangentially addressed
>
>
> roger
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 11:59 PM, Richard Rinehart wrote:
>
> > Hello again New-Media-Curating,
> >
> > In addition to the other mischief we like to cause individually, Jon
> > Ippolito and I are co-authoring a book for MIT Press, due out Spring
> '11 on
> > collecting and preserving new media art .
> >
> > I include below a brief excerpt from the book relevant to our
> discussion
> > this month on commissioning variable media art. In it, I'm proposing a
> new
> > model for an archive of new media art I call "the Open Museum" and
> > describing perhaps a new way that commissioning could be seen to
> function in
> > that.
> >
> > I was originally inspired along these lines by the V2 arts
> organization in
> > Rotterdam that had a stipulation in which new media works commissioned
> for
> > their lab space must remain open-source within the lab space for
> future
> > commissioned artists. It got me thinking, why not take that great idea
> a
> > couple steps further.....
> >
> > "Students, scholars, and the public can currently access images and
> records
> > *representations - of artworks held in museum collections, but they
> cannot
> > access the collections themselves. The Open Museum takes advantage of
> the
> > unique property of new media that allows one to share the original
> without
> > diminishing it. In the Open Museum, the source code and other files
> for
> > digital artworks from the collection are free for users to download,
> study,
> > use, and re-mix into new works. In this way, even the casual student
> can
> > peer under the hood and examine the inner workings of these artworks
> in the
> > way that previously only privileged scholars could with traditional
> material
> > collections. .......
> >
> > Intellectual property law was created to balance the private need with
> the
> > public good. It grants authors and artists exclusive rights over their
> work
> > for a limited period (not a short period, sometimes 90 years after the
> > artists lifetime) after which the rights in the work move into the
> public
> > domain. The artist has time to find ways to earn a livelihood from
> their
> > work and this is seen as an incentive to create in the first place.
> Why
> > then, could not public museums act as stewards of the public good and
> > compensate the artist earlier rather than later by commissioning works
> for
> > the Open Museum, after which they apply Creative Commons licenses and
> > release the work to the public. The museum would earn their renown not
> for
> > the quality of art they obtain in exclusivity, but for the art they
> obtain
> > and then give away. The artist gets money up front and still owns
> their
> > work. And the public is served by waiting months rather than decades
> to gain
> > access and rights to use the work in question."
> >
> > Two more items.
> >
> > Within the Berkeley Art Museum's net art portal, we were able to
> include
> > *some* of the function of the Open Museum - an open-source net art
> archive.
> > Call it a baby step.
> > (see http://netart.bampfa.berkeley.edu and scroll down to NetArtchive)
> >
> > An earlier post to this list (from Leigh I believe; I lost the email),
> > outlined how public institutions in Scotland are now using their
> muscle to
> > gain IP rights in works they commission. While public art funding and
> IP are
> > quite different between the UK, US, Canada and elsewhere, I wonder if
> the
> > Open Museum provides a more positive spin on how public institutions
> could
> > partner with artists with regard to the disposition of IP in
> commissioned
> > works - or - is the Open Museum just another step toward big brother
> taking
> > everything?
> >
> > What do you all think? What are the ways in which commissioning new
> media
> > *could* work in addition to how it already works? What are your
> dreams?
> >
> > Richard Rinehart
> > ---------------
> > Digital Media Director & Adjunct Curator
> > Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
> > bampfa.berkeley.edu
> > ---------------
> > University of California, Berkeley
> > ---------------
> > 2625 Durant Ave.
> > Berkeley, CA, 94720-2250
> > ph.510.642.5240
> > fx.510.642.5269
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Roger Malina is in France at this time
>
> I
> 011 33 (0) 6 15 79 59 26
> or (0) 6 80 45 94 47
> Roger Malina is acting Director of the Observatoire Astronomique de
> Marseille Provence and Executive Editor of the Leonardo Publications at
> MIT
> Press and member of the steering committee of IMERA the Mediterranean
> Institute for Advanced Studies.
>
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