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ISEA2010 RUHR Conference
P13 Still Accessible? Rethinking the Preservation
of Media Art I
Tue 24 August 2010
10:00–12:00h
Orchesterzentrum|NRW, Dortmund
Hosted by imai – inter media art institute, Düsseldorf
Funded by the federal state North-Rhine Westphalia.
Moderated by Renate Buschmann (de)
This panel assembles experts concerned with the complex issue of conservation and restoration of media art installations, who will present their recent research on restoration practices.
- 10:00h | Renate Buschmann (de): Welcome and Introduction
- 10:10h | Rudolf Frieling (de/us): Between Remake and Reperformance. Emerging Narratives in Media Art
- 10:35h | John Bell (us): Archiving Experience. The Third Generation Variable Media Questionnaire
- 11:00h | Rony Vissers, Gaby Wijers (nl): Obsolete Equipment. The Preservation of Playback and Display Equipment for Audiovisual Arts
- 11:25h | Tiziana Caianiello, Julia Giebeler (de): Conserving Interactivity. imai Case Study on Bill Seaman's Exchange Fields
Renate Buschmann (de)
Welcome and Introduction
ISEA2010 Conference Proceedings | Still Accessible? Rethinking the Preservation of Media Art (PDF)
Since 2008 Renate Buschmann, Ph.D. in Art History, is director of the imai – inter media art institute, a foundation for video and media art located in Duesseldorf/Germany. Up to that she worked as a free-lance curator, lecturer and editor of several books regarding modern and contemporary art.
Rudolf Frieling (de/us)
Between Remake and Reperformance. Emerging Narratives in Media Art
No other term has worse connotation than the remake of an original film, inviting an unflattering comparison to the older original, a comparison it rarely survives. We immediately suspect a flawed and lukewarm aesthetic, and a dubious revisionist interest compromising whatever dear memory we might have of what only then becomes identified as the original. But prompted by media and contemporary art, this pattern has fallen apart. And maybe it was never true in the first place. The urge to go back to zero and do it again might be prompted by a much more complicated affair that emerges from the narratives of contemporary and media art.
Rudolf Frieling is Curator of Media Arts at the SFMOMA and Adjunct Professor at the California College of Art and the San Francisco Art Institute. He was curator of the International VideoFest Berlin (1988-1994), at the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe /Germany (1994-2006) and headed the restoration and exhibition project 40yearsvideoart.
John Bell (us)
Archiving Experience. The Third Generation Variable Media Questionnaire
Archiving Experience looks at the third edition Variable Media Questionnaire, a database designed to determine how an artwork can be preserved when its initial form decays. Unlike most cataloging tools, VMQ3 focuses on preserving the experience of an artwork over maintaining artefacts. In addition to physical parts, VMQ3 recognizes environments, user interactions, motivating ideas, and external references as integral aspects of an artwork. Expanding the scope of the data in the questionnaire influences the way that artists, collectors, and scholars approach the artwork it catalogues.
John Bell is a Senior Researcher at the University of Maine's Still Water Lab and a Senior Developer at the Variable Media Network. His recent work focuses on areas including distributed knowledge systems, credibility in anonymous environments, and interdisciplinary design patterns.
Rony Vissers, Gaby Wijers (nl)
Obsolete Equipment. The Preservation of Playback and Display Equipment for Audiovisual Arts
The aim of the project is to improve and to secure the long-term preservation and the digitisation of audiovisual art works that are threatened by the obsolescence of the necessary playback and display equipment. Based on the research results and the case studies, guidelines will be created for the storage, migration and emulation of video- and computer-based works and their display and playback equipment.
Rony Vissers coordinates since January 2009 PACKED vzw. Platform for the Archiving and Preservation of Audiovisual Arts, a collaboration between argos-centre for arts and media (Brussels), eDAVID (expertise centre for digital archiving), SMAK (Ghent), MuHKA (Antwerp) and MDD (Deurle).
Gaby Wijers is coordinator of collection, preservation and related research at the Netherlands Media Art Institute (NIMk), coordinated the project Preservation of Video Art in the Netherlands 2001-2003, participated in projects as 404 object not found, Inside Installation and GAMA.
Tiziana Caianiello, Julia Giebeler (de)
Conserving Interactivity. imai Case Study on Bill Seaman's Exchange Fields
The imai – inter media art institute initiated a case study on Bill Seaman’s Exchange Fields, an interactive installation in the collection of the Museum Ostwall in Dortmund. The case study was carried out in cooperation with the Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences. It aimed at a sustainable conservation of the work and at the definition of the parameters for its re-installation. The paper will interdisciplinary discuss questions about the conflict between the preservation of material equipment and the preservation of functionality as well as about the description of interactivity.
Since 2007 Tiziana Caianiello, Ph.D. in Art History, has been Gerda Henkel research fellow at the imai – inter media art institute Düsseldorf, where she has conducted the research project Konkretionen des Flüchtigen (Materializations of the Fugitive) on conservation and presentation of media art installations. Since 2009 she is working as a research associate at the ZERO foundation, Düsseldorf.
Julia Giebeler obtained her diploma in paintings and sculpture conservation at the Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences /University of Applied Sciences in 2009. Her diploma thesis was about Interactive Video Installations. Documentation and Re-Installation on the example of Bill Seaman´s work Exchange Fields. She currently is conservator trainee of contemporary outdoor sculptures at the Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach.
Please see here for the second part of the imai panel: P20 Still Accessible Rethinking? The Preservation of Media Art II
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