Very interesting discussion!
yes the main difference is the timescale, much faster as artworks made
of technological components and medium are subject to extremely fast
obscolescence...
Just to add other examples, think about all these early interactive
video installations using laserdisc and micro-computers in the 80s and
early 90s, then ported to personal computers mid-90s and distributed on
cd-roms. For instance Luc Courchesne's Portrait One, Bill Seaman "The
Exquisite Mechanism of Shivers" and Eric Lantz's "Manuskript", published
on ZKM ArtIntact 1 cd-rom in 1994. And for some of them later ported to
the web.
This port also changes deeply the status of the work, from unique
installation object to be exhibited in institutions to published objects
available for the masses (or at least for a wider audience consuming
them at home).
BTW, on 30 and 31 October in Brussels, iMAL in collaboration with
Packed.be organise a 2 days symposium on "Preservation and Access to
Born-digital Culture" gathering theorists, artists, activists,
researchers and practitioners from US and Europe...
With for instance Jon Ipolitto, Jason Scott, people from Tate, BnF, and
many others.
Check our website www.imal.org, it should be announced very soon...
With: Erkki Huhtamo (FI), Baruch Gottlieb (DE), Emmanuel Guez &
Christophe Bruno (FR), Gaby Wijers (NL), Vale'rie Perrin (FR), Jon
Ippolito (US), Ben Fino-Radin (US), Tate Modern (UK), BnF (FR), Geoffrey
Brown (US), Olia Lialina (DE), Dragan Espenschied (US/DE), Klaus Rechert
(DE), Jason Scott (US).
best,
On 21/08/15 04:41, Richard Rinehart wrote:
> Johannes (Birringer), I may be pre-empting Jon a bit here, but I'm reminded of a story that he told me. When Jon had launched the Variable Media initiative at the Guggenheim (about these very issues of course) in the context of (new) media art, then Conservator Carol Stringari pointed out that all artworks are made of "variable media", even bronze sculptures and tempera paintings change chemically over time, it's just that the timescale is much different than with a work of video art on VHS.
>
> Johannes (Goebel), I agree with your interesting tangent, we should allow some works of media art to die a beautiful death (it will happen to most anyway), but I wouldn't consign all such works to oblivion because of their medium alone. It seems there is room to decide on a case by case basis.
>
> Richard Rinehart
> Director
> Samek Art Museum
>
>
>> On Aug 20, 2015, at 7:00 PM, NEW-MEDIA-CURATING automatic digest system<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> A clumsy question about media art history
>>
>
--
Yves Bernard
iMAL, Brussels, www.imal.org
+32 2 410 30 93
|