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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.