Hi Dragan,
Thanks for your thoughtful critique of Re-collection! It's clear that you took a big bite out of each chapter, even if some of them were harder to chew than others :)
You wrote that the chapter on biological mechanisms of preservation, entitled Variable Organisms, feels "far out." I hope you're right! Rick and I decided we wanted toward the end of the book to include toward the end of the book a peek over the horizon, on the assumption that future-proofing requires us to foresee problems before they arise--and in this case, brainstorm solutions as well.
Right now, cultural stewards are obsessed with "digital preservation," which for many archivists is as mundane as whether to store images as JPEGs or TIFFs and whether to trust local storage or the cloud. But assuming the information economy continues to grow in importance, a look at what's going on in cutting-edge scientific laboratories tells us silicon may not be the only--or indeed the primary--computational medium of the future. As mentioned in the chapter, scientists have already coaxed DNA to solve computer problems and store images and Shakespeare plays. Jeremy Rifkin says wetware will be the dominant medium of the 21st century, and if he's right we might at least imagine the implications for cultural heritage.
That said, your critique of the solutions offered in the chapter reveal a deep understanding of this issues raised by biological media. Your criticism of the phone that reads a human hair to access the Library of Congress is exactly right: there's no reason the smartphone would need a person's live hair rather than a "built-in" one. That said, I like the idea of an organic USB drive always within reach under my hat.
I'm not as convinced by your skepticism of evolving software to read word-processing documents. I'm sure software derived by genetic algorithms is currently no better than Word (and that's a pretty low standard in my book ;) But I wonder whether this method might gain traction in a future in which genetic processes drive more and more of the world's computation. Perhaps it's impossible, as you suggest, to write an algorithmic fitness function for complex human-readable documents. But even if deciding whether a Word document has been rendered correctly depends on humans, perhaps we could employ Mechanical Turk-style crowdsourcing to speed up the process?
> To stay inside the oral history metaphor, not the digital artifacts
> themselves should be encoded in a dance, but how to use them should.
I think this is a really intriguing thought. Could you give an example of how this might work?
jon
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Wednesday, August 6, 2014
[Yasmin_discussions] Fwd: Dragan critique on Yasmin?
yasminers
a comment from Dragan Espenschied with response
at end from rick
roger malina
On Jul 31, 2014, at 12:37 AM, Dragan Espenschied wrote:
Dear Rick and dear Jon,
reading your book has been a very pleasant experience. There are many
interesting lines of thought in there, and it shows that you took care
to refine terms and create meaningful potentials from all the ideas
you have been writing about for such a long time already. To a degree
that I am applying some things in the Artbase's new design to see how
that will go.
There are just two chapters where I have a hard time connecting.
The first is about the Open Museum. To me this sounds like a kind of
outdated utopia, one that has moved further away into the future
instead of coming closer. I believe this is an indicator that there is
something wrong with the idea or an important step in between has been
overlooked.
Your base agitation in the book is that museums kind of get in front
of the game. Their traditional role is being behind the game and
seeing that as an asset. Even the VA's new rapid response collection
policy is behind the game, because when faced with the challenge of
conserving performance/activity, they will still collect a stand-in
object, a symbol or indexical symbol. I think museums cannot simply be
asked to copy what is 'happening' at large, but they have to rethink
their roles in a new environment.
When I have seen 'museum' and 'open' be combined, it brought out the
worst in both in some cases. Meaning that for example the creator of a
purely digital artwork would not sell two editions for $25'000 each,
or 500 editions for $500 each, but 25'000 editions for $0 each. :) Or
museums using 'open' art as a driver for funny and exciting events,
but through their power and process in fact offering the involved
artists the next step only as move into traditional art forms -- and
artists gladly taking up on this offer. (There is so much of this
around it is scary.)
Anyway, I believe that not only artists and museums or galleries or
archives have to change their ways of doing things, but the value of
digital art has to be recognized by another force before.
The second chapter that doesn't work for me is about biology. I feel
this was simply not ripe for the book, you're oscillating between
biology as a metaphor or biology as actual digital memory ... and the
examples kind of make no sense to me. So, for instance, if this girl
that wants to know if a plant is poison ivy has all the knowledge of
humankind stored in her hair ... why would the smartphone she needs to
read this info not come with some random hair built-in and already
indexed? Every hair would be as good as any other. Or the idea to have
algorithms create versions of environments to enable digital artifacts
to perform, or have algorithms applied to the artifact itself so it
might be able to perform in a contemporary (or rather arbitrary)
environment ... this won't work. The metaphor of guided evolution
applied to algorithms requires rules that need to be described for
weeding out useless mutations, and rules for mutation. While simple,
constrained goals, like keeping a certain identifier 'alive' via
copying, or moving in a simulated 3d world, or winning at tictactoe
can be formulated as a test for the algorithms -- in the form of an
algorithm -- this cannot be formulated for an effect on the human
consciousness. Hence, all the mutations would need to be checked by
humans for 'fitness', which again means absolutely no stellar
evolutionary speed gain or self-replicating system. Then, software
works on so many levels of abstraction, and these genetic algorithms
are usually locked to one layer or scenario. To make meaningful
mutations that span several abstraction layers, the systems have to be
deeply conceptualized and the mutations be restrained. Otherwise some
evolutionary program might try for 50 years to guess the right ABI
call of its host system for displaying a letter on the screen. And
once a system is so deeply known as to formulate these rules, it is
much simpler to just create what is required than to wait for it to
come up by itself. So, I dunno, this chapter just feels far out. :)
But maybe I am totally not getting something here?
The problem is real and tangible though.
In the bwFLA Emulation as a Service research project, we constantly
try to make artifacts perform with the least possible knowledge on the
side of the user, and also the archivist. There is a minimal set of
knowledge required about a system, and the artifact. Maybe the
challenge is to make this knowledge cargo-cultable, so that some
actions can be performed with minimal understanding, but at the sime
time these actions could provide the maximum required context.
To stay inside the oral history metaphor, not the digital artifacts
themselves should be encoded in a dance, but how to use them should.
Alright, had to tell somebody! :)
I've been holding off the Yasmin list for this.
In the end, I want to emphasize again how valuable your work is and
how accessible it is written. Thanks!!
With only the best greetings,
Dragan
--
http://1x-upon.com/~despens/ >NEW!<
http://noobz.cc/
http://contemporary-home-computing.org/1tb/
From: Jon Ippolito <jippolito@maine.edu>
Date: Wed, Aug 6, 2014 at 8:06 AM
S
O
Dragan,
I want to thank you, for buying the book in the first place :) but
also reading it so thoughtfully AND taking the time to give the
authors your candid feedback (that almost never happens!) and your
discretion at sending your critique to us first before the world. Much
appreciated.
I'm not speaking for Jon here, but I'm totally cool with you sending
your critique to Yasmin, et al. Why write a semi-academic book if not
to invite debate? In fact, I believe one of our final chapter
recommendations is for academics and historians and everyone to debate
all of these issues and thus refine them into practice. Anyway, if you
choose to post; I'll follow up, naturally, with a defense of my
pie-eyed open-museum utopianism :)
Seriously, though, you open up a lot of good questions, not just for
the book as an artifact, but for how we approach the larger problems.
Thanks and onward!
Richard Rinehart
---------------------
Director
Samek Art Museum
Bucknell University
---------------------
Lewisburg, PA, 17837
570-577-3213
http://galleries.blogs.bucknell.edu
_______________________________________________
Yasmin_discussions mailing list
Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
http://estia.media.uoa.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions
Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
SBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to. In the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and password in the fields found further down the page.
HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: on the info page, scroll all the way down and enter your e-mail address in the last field. Enter password if asked. Click on the unsubscribe button on the page that will appear ("options page").
TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page, find the "Set Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or off.
If you prefer to read the posts on a blog go to http://yasminlist.blogspot.com/
a comment from Dragan Espenschied with response
at end from rick
roger malina
On Jul 31, 2014, at 12:37 AM, Dragan Espenschied wrote:
Dear Rick and dear Jon,
reading your book has been a very pleasant experience. There are many
interesting lines of thought in there, and it shows that you took care
to refine terms and create meaningful potentials from all the ideas
you have been writing about for such a long time already. To a degree
that I am applying some things in the Artbase's new design to see how
that will go.
There are just two chapters where I have a hard time connecting.
The first is about the Open Museum. To me this sounds like a kind of
outdated utopia, one that has moved further away into the future
instead of coming closer. I believe this is an indicator that there is
something wrong with the idea or an important step in between has been
overlooked.
Your base agitation in the book is that museums kind of get in front
of the game. Their traditional role is being behind the game and
seeing that as an asset. Even the VA's new rapid response collection
policy is behind the game, because when faced with the challenge of
conserving performance/activity, they will still collect a stand-in
object, a symbol or indexical symbol. I think museums cannot simply be
asked to copy what is 'happening' at large, but they have to rethink
their roles in a new environment.
When I have seen 'museum' and 'open' be combined, it brought out the
worst in both in some cases. Meaning that for example the creator of a
purely digital artwork would not sell two editions for $25'000 each,
or 500 editions for $500 each, but 25'000 editions for $0 each. :) Or
museums using 'open' art as a driver for funny and exciting events,
but through their power and process in fact offering the involved
artists the next step only as move into traditional art forms -- and
artists gladly taking up on this offer. (There is so much of this
around it is scary.)
Anyway, I believe that not only artists and museums or galleries or
archives have to change their ways of doing things, but the value of
digital art has to be recognized by another force before.
The second chapter that doesn't work for me is about biology. I feel
this was simply not ripe for the book, you're oscillating between
biology as a metaphor or biology as actual digital memory ... and the
examples kind of make no sense to me. So, for instance, if this girl
that wants to know if a plant is poison ivy has all the knowledge of
humankind stored in her hair ... why would the smartphone she needs to
read this info not come with some random hair built-in and already
indexed? Every hair would be as good as any other. Or the idea to have
algorithms create versions of environments to enable digital artifacts
to perform, or have algorithms applied to the artifact itself so it
might be able to perform in a contemporary (or rather arbitrary)
environment ... this won't work. The metaphor of guided evolution
applied to algorithms requires rules that need to be described for
weeding out useless mutations, and rules for mutation. While simple,
constrained goals, like keeping a certain identifier 'alive' via
copying, or moving in a simulated 3d world, or winning at tictactoe
can be formulated as a test for the algorithms -- in the form of an
algorithm -- this cannot be formulated for an effect on the human
consciousness. Hence, all the mutations would need to be checked by
humans for 'fitness', which again means absolutely no stellar
evolutionary speed gain or self-replicating system. Then, software
works on so many levels of abstraction, and these genetic algorithms
are usually locked to one layer or scenario. To make meaningful
mutations that span several abstraction layers, the systems have to be
deeply conceptualized and the mutations be restrained. Otherwise some
evolutionary program might try for 50 years to guess the right ABI
call of its host system for displaying a letter on the screen. And
once a system is so deeply known as to formulate these rules, it is
much simpler to just create what is required than to wait for it to
come up by itself. So, I dunno, this chapter just feels far out. :)
But maybe I am totally not getting something here?
The problem is real and tangible though.
In the bwFLA Emulation as a Service research project, we constantly
try to make artifacts perform with the least possible knowledge on the
side of the user, and also the archivist. There is a minimal set of
knowledge required about a system, and the artifact. Maybe the
challenge is to make this knowledge cargo-cultable, so that some
actions can be performed with minimal understanding, but at the sime
time these actions could provide the maximum required context.
To stay inside the oral history metaphor, not the digital artifacts
themselves should be encoded in a dance, but how to use them should.
Alright, had to tell somebody! :)
I've been holding off the Yasmin list for this.
In the end, I want to emphasize again how valuable your work is and
how accessible it is written. Thanks!!
With only the best greetings,
Dragan
--
http://1x-upon.com/~despens/ >NEW!<
http://noobz.cc/
http://contemporary-home-computing.org/1tb/
From: Jon Ippolito <jippolito@maine.edu>
Date: Wed, Aug 6, 2014 at 8:06 AM
S
O
Dragan,
I want to thank you, for buying the book in the first place :) but
also reading it so thoughtfully AND taking the time to give the
authors your candid feedback (that almost never happens!) and your
discretion at sending your critique to us first before the world. Much
appreciated.
I'm not speaking for Jon here, but I'm totally cool with you sending
your critique to Yasmin, et al. Why write a semi-academic book if not
to invite debate? In fact, I believe one of our final chapter
recommendations is for academics and historians and everyone to debate
all of these issues and thus refine them into practice. Anyway, if you
choose to post; I'll follow up, naturally, with a defense of my
pie-eyed open-museum utopianism :)
Seriously, though, you open up a lot of good questions, not just for
the book as an artifact, but for how we approach the larger problems.
Thanks and onward!
Richard Rinehart
---------------------
Director
Samek Art Museum
Bucknell University
---------------------
Lewisburg, PA, 17837
570-577-3213
http://galleries.blogs.bucknell.edu
_______________________________________________
Yasmin_discussions mailing list
Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
http://estia.media.uoa.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions
Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
SBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to. In the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and password in the fields found further down the page.
HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: on the info page, scroll all the way down and enter your e-mail address in the last field. Enter password if asked. Click on the unsubscribe button on the page that will appear ("options page").
TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page, find the "Set Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or off.
If you prefer to read the posts on a blog go to http://yasminlist.blogspot.com/
Sunday, August 3, 2014
[Yasmin_discussions] Fwd: Yasmin
yasminers
fro Johanne goebel
Ion and all,
Adding a few thoughts to what Jon wrote in response to my longer litany.
Indeed, everything is happening in time. And a picture in a vault
changes over time and under this perspective no art work and indeed
nothing at all is static. I think differentiation is needed in order
to talk about specifics. Yes, "pantha rei", everything is in flux –
but in different relationships between "everything" and us as the ones
who make such statements.
For that reason I introduced "heart beats" into the discussion. My
passing life-time, my experiential time in conjunction with the
time-line that is inherently shaped as material of an art work. The
two time-lines are intentionally meant to be in reciprocal exchange in
time-based art. The passing of time and the change over time in
time-based art is created specifically and intentionally to relate to
the heart-beats of those who encounter the work. Time is part of the
material that is used and shaped by an artist – like paint, marble,
gold or grease – and then to meet in the time-structure it creates
(unfolding, interpretation, interaction etc.) with the flow of time of
an audience, visitor, spectator, interactor.
So it is not the same like the change of a 500 year old statue through
the suds of burning coal for heating in the ever-growing cities of the
18th and 19th century or the acidity in air and rain of the 20th
century stemming from cars.
Time-based arts demands the conjugation of its time with our and my
time in reciprocal modification. That is the whole "purpose" of it –
to abduct into the present, the moment as conspiracy and confluence,
where both sides are in movement. Whereas a "static" work of art waits
for me to envelope it with my time, to unlock its contained, frozen
time into the time of my experience, where I structure the time where
it meets me and I meet it – and "it" does not change in its material
and temporal appearance in a for me perceivable way in the moment I
put my time towards it. And indeed – I see "it" differently than
before after I spent time with it.
I am happy to learn about like your work and proposals for notation
and the common thoughts that arise from it, the meeting of traditional
time-based arts with its 20th century expansions.
Discussing the difference between notation, which is aimed for and
asks for interpretation (like in music or in concept art), and
notation as documentation of something that moves on a time line for
the purpose of creating an exact as possible record, may be helpful.
Maybe it is the difference between language-based notation (written
words) and scientific notation (mathematical, chemical etc.).
When I wrote that a notation maybe can only aim for re-imagination I
was meaning that in a quite limited personal way – not as
re-intepretation, re-creation, but as taking in all the documents that
describe a work (texts, scores, videos, sketches) and then conjuring
all that up in front of my inner eye to "see and hear" it as if I had
been there at the moment of its performance or my interaction with it.
As curator commissioning new works we have to do that all the time in
the opposite direction of time. We get all these proposals for not-yet
existing works and we have to imagine how it all may come together,
may work together, can be produced to reach what I as the person in
power over means think the artist proposes who is asking for the means
I have at my disposal. – And I will most certainly fail to imagine
it in my mind the same way as the artist imagines it. And then we
talk about it to potentially make these two imaginations come closer.
With growing expertise I get better and better in this process of
pre-imagening. And with growing age (which usually goes together with
growing expertise) I may be more and more prone to pre-judice ("oh,
this is just like …), which may prevent me to see to the heart of a
proposal.
Maybe looking at a documentation/notation of a time-based art work of
our time can take that as point of departure. It allows me to
re-imagine what it must have been or would be like if I were to
experience the work right now, this moment. With all it's necessary
short-comings. And here the video and audio documentation comes in as
most important. Again, with all its shortcomings – but we can talk
about it long after the work was accessible as a complete work.
Johannes
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Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
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If you prefer to read the posts on a blog go to http://yasminlist.blogspot.com/
Thursday, July 31, 2014
[Yasmin_discussions] Re=Collection
yasminers
paul fishwick brings this to our attention
roger
Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Cornell
University Library and the Society for the Humanities (Cornell) have
been collaborating on a project that aims to develop scalable
preservation strategies for complex, interactive, born-digital media
artworks. Given our emphasis on use and usability, we recently
administered a survey targeting researcher, artists, and curators to
expand our understanding of user profiles and use cases. The key
finding of the study are summarized at the following site:
http://blogs.cornell.edu/dsps/2014/07/30/interactive-digital-media-art-survey-key-findings-and-observations/
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Paul Fishwick <metaphorz@gmail.com>
P
From: Humanist Discussion Group <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
To: humanist@lists.digitalhumanities.org
Subject: [Humanist] 28.239 results from survey on preservation strategies
From: Oya Yildirim Rieger <oyr1@cornell.edu>
Subject: Cornell's Digital Media Art Preservation Survey Results
Dear Colleagues,
Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Cornell
University Library and the Society for the Humanities (Cornell) have
been collaborating on a project that aims to develop scalable
preservation strategies for complex, interactive, born-digital media
artworks. Given our emphasis on use and usability, we recently
administered a survey targeting researcher, artists, and curators to
expand our understanding of user profiles and use cases. The key
finding of the study are summarized at the following site:
http://blogs.cornell.edu/dsps/2014/07/30/interactive-digital-media-art-survey-key-findings-and-observations/
We would like to thank our colleagues who responded to the survey and
invite comments and questions from all interested parties.
Warm regards,
Oya
On behalf of the Cornell project team
Oya Y. Rieger, Ph.D.
Associate University Librarian
Digital Scholarship & Preservation Services
arXiv Program Director
Cornell University Library
http://vivo.cornell.edu/display/individual23129
_______________________________________________
Yasmin_discussions mailing list
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Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
SBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to. In the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and password in the fields found further down the page.
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TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page, find the "Set Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or off.
If you prefer to read the posts on a blog go to http://yasminlist.blogspot.com/
paul fishwick brings this to our attention
roger
Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Cornell
University Library and the Society for the Humanities (Cornell) have
been collaborating on a project that aims to develop scalable
preservation strategies for complex, interactive, born-digital media
artworks. Given our emphasis on use and usability, we recently
administered a survey targeting researcher, artists, and curators to
expand our understanding of user profiles and use cases. The key
finding of the study are summarized at the following site:
http://blogs.cornell.edu/dsps/2014/07/30/interactive-digital-media-art-survey-key-findings-and-observations/
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Paul Fishwick <metaphorz@gmail.com>
P
From: Humanist Discussion Group <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
To: humanist@lists.digitalhumanities.org
Subject: [Humanist] 28.239 results from survey on preservation strategies
From: Oya Yildirim Rieger <oyr1@cornell.edu>
Subject: Cornell's Digital Media Art Preservation Survey Results
Dear Colleagues,
Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Cornell
University Library and the Society for the Humanities (Cornell) have
been collaborating on a project that aims to develop scalable
preservation strategies for complex, interactive, born-digital media
artworks. Given our emphasis on use and usability, we recently
administered a survey targeting researcher, artists, and curators to
expand our understanding of user profiles and use cases. The key
finding of the study are summarized at the following site:
http://blogs.cornell.edu/dsps/2014/07/30/interactive-digital-media-art-survey-key-findings-and-observations/
We would like to thank our colleagues who responded to the survey and
invite comments and questions from all interested parties.
Warm regards,
Oya
On behalf of the Cornell project team
Oya Y. Rieger, Ph.D.
Associate University Librarian
Digital Scholarship & Preservation Services
arXiv Program Director
Cornell University Library
http://vivo.cornell.edu/display/individual23129
_______________________________________________
Yasmin_discussions mailing list
Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
http://estia.media.uoa.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions
Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
SBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to. In the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and password in the fields found further down the page.
HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: on the info page, scroll all the way down and enter your e-mail address in the last field. Enter password if asked. Click on the unsubscribe button on the page that will appear ("options page").
TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page, find the "Set Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or off.
If you prefer to read the posts on a blog go to http://yasminlist.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Re: [Yasmin_discussions] re-collection continued
Hello again Yasminers,
I read Johannes Goebel's text with interest and have a few responses that I hope are relevant and will further the current discussion.
First though; I had to chuckle, Johannes, when I read that, in the EMPAC venue as a time-based arts venue, you tend not to leave exhibitions up for a long time in part because of the nature of much of the work and in part because everyone comes to the opening night and then maybe the weekend after and thereafter is little foot traffic. But of course, this last part is also true of many standard museums, especially smaller ones, despite our best intentions in adhering to the museum default of a 2.5 month long exhibition (which, I suspect, has less to do with a theoretical notion of how much time is needed to activate these objects, and more to do with how much work a director can drive their staff to do over the course of a year :)
Your thoughts on time-based media/arts were especially interesting because upon these theoretical points hinge real tractable decisions about how to preserve new media artworks. I'm reminded of a comment Jon received (Jon, correct me if I'm wrong) when he was at the Guggenheim initiating the Variable Media Initiative and their Conservator Carol Stringari said to him something to the effect that no artworks are actually static; that all artworks are time-based - in how they are created, how they are perceived, and how they change (even when in a vault) that it's only a difference in the quantities of time. But at the other end of this continuum is another truth - that quantitative differences among classes of works (ie time-based) necessitate qualitative shifts in thinking about preservation. Seeing these two views on a continuum rather than as a binary led Jon and I to frame the topic of our book (http://re-collection.net) as having new media at the center (where the most urgency and newest challenges lay) but having other time-based arts and even traditional art forms at the edges because the enclosed strategies may apply to them too.
Johannes; regarding your thoughts on notation as it relates to preservation documentation; yes, yes, and yes. I think you'll find much concord in our book. You mention that musical notation requires context and interpretation whereas computer code is executed in a less ambiguous process....yes! And this distinction between prescription and description is exactly why we/I use musical notation and not code as the analogy for the type of preservation documentation needed for media art. The Media Art Notation System, as proposed, does not attempt to function as the code that may have been used in a specific work, nor to represent the code, but to represent the work at another level - a human language recipe, not a machine-language executable. We need a form of documentation that exhibits this level of abstraction, (and here I feel that I'm merely paraphrasing you) that through repeated interpretive acts, remains fluid and avoids attempting to freeze a time-based work in one form. Musical notation provides a widely-understood analogy for this type of documentation (though a recipe would do equally well) that is future-oriented, aiding in the re-making (or re-imagining) of the work as opposed to recordings that document a past state of the work - but of course it's just an analogy, not a map.
In the end, I am very much intrigued by your last question about whether there might be an approach that does not attempt to re-program or revive the work, but re-imagines it! This feels right to me, but my intuition is countered by my super-ego that forces me to ask - if we take this approach to its logical ends, then whither history, historic accuracy and integrity? How can we / should we attempt to balance the two? Am I seeing another binary here where there should be a continuum?
Richard Rinehart
---------------------
Director
Samek Art Museum
Bucknell University
---------------------
Lewisburg, PA, 17837
570-577-3213
http://galleries.blogs.bucknell.edu
On Jul 29, 2014, at 12:59 PM, roger malina wrote:
> yasminers
>
> we have received a long and thoughtful essay by Johannes Goebel
> on the conservation and restoration of new media art, informed by
> his work at ZKM and EMPAC
> the esssay is too long to post here in its entirety so we have
> deposited the whole text in thoughtmesh
> http://thoughtmesh.net/
> if you are not familiar with thoughtmesh i recommend you take
> a look-its an interesting text networking system that Jon Ippolito
> started
> ThoughtMesh generates tags to connect scholarly essays published on
> different Web sites.
>
>
> the whole text by Johannes Goebel is available at
>
> http://thoughtmesh.net/publish/437.php
>
> and we encourage you to post responses on YASMIN or on thoughtmesh
>
> roger malina
>
>
> --
>
> Dear all,
> (from Johannes Goebel)
>
>
> Having written my previous contribution regarding media
> art/time-based art/performing arts in a kind of a fit, I would like to comment
> and modify and maybe extend a little, also evoked by what Jon and Richard
> wrote.
>
> I certainly did not want to pose that performing arts
> institutions are better fit to present or preserve the art at the center of
> this discussion. From my experience they are not at all a better fit. They have
> an equally limited focus, which does not encompass "all time-based
> arts". They are focused on works, which have a
> "well-defined" beginning and an equally defined end. Their institutional,
> production and infrastructural framework does not support for instance
> installations. And they are not focused on documenting either. The moment of
> the performance, of the shared time between beginning and end and artists and
> audience is at the heart of their program.
>
> I should not have written that time-based arts fall under
> performing arts. That is kind of stupid and was meant in a provocative way. On
> the contrary: I think that performing arts may be seen as a sub-set of
> time-based arts.
>
> We have taken this perspective for our curatorial
> perspective, commissioning and programing here at EMPAC "" we have a
> full infrastructure (spaces, venues,
> technology, team members), which may serve traditional performing arts "" but in
> addition we have an infrastructure, expertise and perspective that supports
> media/variable-media/installation/interactive/performance/performing arts .
>
> ==Footnote
> From an institutional
> perspective we have difficulties with the format of longer-term exhibitions
> like a museum "" not so much because we cannot deal with it, but because of our
> location and context. We do not have much foot-traffic, where people come by
> like at a gallery or in part of the city with quite a few galleries in one
> sector. We are not at the heart of a campus that has an emphasis on humanities
> and arts. We are not a museum with many exhibitions or exhibited art works
> where one can stroll through and if one piece is of no interest one moves on to
> another. We have public spaces we can and do use for more exhibition-like works
> "" but dedicating one or more of the large studios to exhibitions over an
> extended period of time is not of very much value, since the most people come
> to the opening and maybe the following weekend "" and then again no foot-traffic
> after that "
> this text is continued at:
>
> http://thoughtmesh.net/publish/437.php
>
> _______________________________________________
> Yasmin_discussions mailing list
> Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
> http://estia.media.uoa.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions
>
> Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
>
> SBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to. In the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and password in the fields found further down the page.
> HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: on the info page, scroll all the way down and enter your e-mail address in the last field. Enter password if asked. Click on the unsubscribe button on the page that will appear ("options page").
> TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page, find the "Set Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or off.
> If you prefer to read the posts on a blog go to http://yasminlist.blogspot.com/
_______________________________________________
Yasmin_discussions mailing list
Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
http://estia.media.uoa.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions
Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
SBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to. In the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and password in the fields found further down the page.
HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: on the info page, scroll all the way down and enter your e-mail address in the last field. Enter password if asked. Click on the unsubscribe button on the page that will appear ("options page").
TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page, find the "Set Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or off.
If you prefer to read the posts on a blog go to http://yasminlist.blogspot.com/
I read Johannes Goebel's text with interest and have a few responses that I hope are relevant and will further the current discussion.
First though; I had to chuckle, Johannes, when I read that, in the EMPAC venue as a time-based arts venue, you tend not to leave exhibitions up for a long time in part because of the nature of much of the work and in part because everyone comes to the opening night and then maybe the weekend after and thereafter is little foot traffic. But of course, this last part is also true of many standard museums, especially smaller ones, despite our best intentions in adhering to the museum default of a 2.5 month long exhibition (which, I suspect, has less to do with a theoretical notion of how much time is needed to activate these objects, and more to do with how much work a director can drive their staff to do over the course of a year :)
Your thoughts on time-based media/arts were especially interesting because upon these theoretical points hinge real tractable decisions about how to preserve new media artworks. I'm reminded of a comment Jon received (Jon, correct me if I'm wrong) when he was at the Guggenheim initiating the Variable Media Initiative and their Conservator Carol Stringari said to him something to the effect that no artworks are actually static; that all artworks are time-based - in how they are created, how they are perceived, and how they change (even when in a vault) that it's only a difference in the quantities of time. But at the other end of this continuum is another truth - that quantitative differences among classes of works (ie time-based) necessitate qualitative shifts in thinking about preservation. Seeing these two views on a continuum rather than as a binary led Jon and I to frame the topic of our book (http://re-collection.net) as having new media at the center (where the most urgency and newest challenges lay) but having other time-based arts and even traditional art forms at the edges because the enclosed strategies may apply to them too.
Johannes; regarding your thoughts on notation as it relates to preservation documentation; yes, yes, and yes. I think you'll find much concord in our book. You mention that musical notation requires context and interpretation whereas computer code is executed in a less ambiguous process....yes! And this distinction between prescription and description is exactly why we/I use musical notation and not code as the analogy for the type of preservation documentation needed for media art. The Media Art Notation System, as proposed, does not attempt to function as the code that may have been used in a specific work, nor to represent the code, but to represent the work at another level - a human language recipe, not a machine-language executable. We need a form of documentation that exhibits this level of abstraction, (and here I feel that I'm merely paraphrasing you) that through repeated interpretive acts, remains fluid and avoids attempting to freeze a time-based work in one form. Musical notation provides a widely-understood analogy for this type of documentation (though a recipe would do equally well) that is future-oriented, aiding in the re-making (or re-imagining) of the work as opposed to recordings that document a past state of the work - but of course it's just an analogy, not a map.
In the end, I am very much intrigued by your last question about whether there might be an approach that does not attempt to re-program or revive the work, but re-imagines it! This feels right to me, but my intuition is countered by my super-ego that forces me to ask - if we take this approach to its logical ends, then whither history, historic accuracy and integrity? How can we / should we attempt to balance the two? Am I seeing another binary here where there should be a continuum?
Richard Rinehart
---------------------
Director
Samek Art Museum
Bucknell University
---------------------
Lewisburg, PA, 17837
570-577-3213
http://galleries.blogs.bucknell.edu
On Jul 29, 2014, at 12:59 PM, roger malina wrote:
> yasminers
>
> we have received a long and thoughtful essay by Johannes Goebel
> on the conservation and restoration of new media art, informed by
> his work at ZKM and EMPAC
> the esssay is too long to post here in its entirety so we have
> deposited the whole text in thoughtmesh
> http://thoughtmesh.net/
> if you are not familiar with thoughtmesh i recommend you take
> a look-its an interesting text networking system that Jon Ippolito
> started
> ThoughtMesh generates tags to connect scholarly essays published on
> different Web sites.
>
>
> the whole text by Johannes Goebel is available at
>
> http://thoughtmesh.net/publish/437.php
>
> and we encourage you to post responses on YASMIN or on thoughtmesh
>
> roger malina
>
>
> --
>
> Dear all,
> (from Johannes Goebel)
>
>
> Having written my previous contribution regarding media
> art/time-based art/performing arts in a kind of a fit, I would like to comment
> and modify and maybe extend a little, also evoked by what Jon and Richard
> wrote.
>
> I certainly did not want to pose that performing arts
> institutions are better fit to present or preserve the art at the center of
> this discussion. From my experience they are not at all a better fit. They have
> an equally limited focus, which does not encompass "all time-based
> arts". They are focused on works, which have a
> "well-defined" beginning and an equally defined end. Their institutional,
> production and infrastructural framework does not support for instance
> installations. And they are not focused on documenting either. The moment of
> the performance, of the shared time between beginning and end and artists and
> audience is at the heart of their program.
>
> I should not have written that time-based arts fall under
> performing arts. That is kind of stupid and was meant in a provocative way. On
> the contrary: I think that performing arts may be seen as a sub-set of
> time-based arts.
>
> We have taken this perspective for our curatorial
> perspective, commissioning and programing here at EMPAC "" we have a
> full infrastructure (spaces, venues,
> technology, team members), which may serve traditional performing arts "" but in
> addition we have an infrastructure, expertise and perspective that supports
> media/variable-media/installation/interactive/performance/performing arts .
>
> ==Footnote
> From an institutional
> perspective we have difficulties with the format of longer-term exhibitions
> like a museum "" not so much because we cannot deal with it, but because of our
> location and context. We do not have much foot-traffic, where people come by
> like at a gallery or in part of the city with quite a few galleries in one
> sector. We are not at the heart of a campus that has an emphasis on humanities
> and arts. We are not a museum with many exhibitions or exhibited art works
> where one can stroll through and if one piece is of no interest one moves on to
> another. We have public spaces we can and do use for more exhibition-like works
> "" but dedicating one or more of the large studios to exhibitions over an
> extended period of time is not of very much value, since the most people come
> to the opening and maybe the following weekend "" and then again no foot-traffic
> after that "
> this text is continued at:
>
> http://thoughtmesh.net/publish/437.php
>
> _______________________________________________
> Yasmin_discussions mailing list
> Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
> http://estia.media.uoa.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions
>
> Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
>
> SBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to. In the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and password in the fields found further down the page.
> HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: on the info page, scroll all the way down and enter your e-mail address in the last field. Enter password if asked. Click on the unsubscribe button on the page that will appear ("options page").
> TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page, find the "Set Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or off.
> If you prefer to read the posts on a blog go to http://yasminlist.blogspot.com/
_______________________________________________
Yasmin_discussions mailing list
Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
http://estia.media.uoa.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions
Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
SBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to. In the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and password in the fields found further down the page.
HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: on the info page, scroll all the way down and enter your e-mail address in the last field. Enter password if asked. Click on the unsubscribe button on the page that will appear ("options page").
TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page, find the "Set Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or off.
If you prefer to read the posts on a blog go to http://yasminlist.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
[Yasmin_discussions] re-collection continued
yasminers
we have received a long and thoughtful essay by Johannes Goebel
on the conservation and restoration of new media art, informed by
his work at ZKM and EMPAC
the esssay is too long to post here in its entirety so we have
deposited the whole text in thoughtmesh
http://thoughtmesh.net/
if you are not familiar with thoughtmesh i recommend you take
a look-its an interesting text networking system that Jon Ippolito
started
ThoughtMesh generates tags to connect scholarly essays published on
different Web sites.
the whole text by Johannes Goebel is available at
http://thoughtmesh.net/publish/437.php
and we encourage you to post responses on YASMIN or on thoughtmesh
roger malina
--
Dear all,
(from Johannes Goebel)
Having written my previous contribution regarding media
art/time-based art/performing arts in a kind of a fit, I would like to comment
and modify and maybe extend a little, also evoked by what Jon and Richard
wrote.
I certainly did not want to pose that performing arts
institutions are better fit to present or preserve the art at the center of
this discussion. From my experience they are not at all a better fit. They have
an equally limited focus, which does not encompass "all time-based
arts". They are focused on works, which have a
"well-defined" beginning and an equally defined end. Their institutional,
production and infrastructural framework does not support for instance
installations. And they are not focused on documenting either. The moment of
the performance, of the shared time between beginning and end and artists and
audience is at the heart of their program.
I should not have written that time-based arts fall under
performing arts. That is kind of stupid and was meant in a provocative way. On
the contrary: I think that performing arts may be seen as a sub-set of
time-based arts.
We have taken this perspective for our curatorial
perspective, commissioning and programing here at EMPAC "" we have a
full infrastructure (spaces, venues,
technology, team members), which may serve traditional performing arts "" but in
addition we have an infrastructure, expertise and perspective that supports
media/variable-media/installation/interactive/performance/performing arts .
==Footnote
From an institutional
perspective we have difficulties with the format of longer-term exhibitions
like a museum "" not so much because we cannot deal with it, but because of our
location and context. We do not have much foot-traffic, where people come by
like at a gallery or in part of the city with quite a few galleries in one
sector. We are not at the heart of a campus that has an emphasis on humanities
and arts. We are not a museum with many exhibitions or exhibited art works
where one can stroll through and if one piece is of no interest one moves on to
another. We have public spaces we can and do use for more exhibition-like works
"" but dedicating one or more of the large studios to exhibitions over an
extended period of time is not of very much value, since the most people come
to the opening and maybe the following weekend "" and then again no foot-traffic
after that "
this text is continued at:
http://thoughtmesh.net/publish/437.php
_______________________________________________
Yasmin_discussions mailing list
Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
http://estia.media.uoa.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions
Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
SBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to. In the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and password in the fields found further down the page.
HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: on the info page, scroll all the way down and enter your e-mail address in the last field. Enter password if asked. Click on the unsubscribe button on the page that will appear ("options page").
TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page, find the "Set Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or off.
If you prefer to read the posts on a blog go to http://yasminlist.blogspot.com/
Saturday, July 26, 2014
[Yasmin_discussions] re-collecting
-- De: Clarisse Bardiot <clarisse_bardiot@me.com>
Dear All
I'm new to the list but I would like to inform you about a software
I'm currently developing. It's name is Rekall. It's open source and
free. I join below a short description of the project. I was part of
the docam initiative and Rekall is inspired by the variable media
approach. At first it was designed for digital performances but I hope
it could be used more generally for time based artworks. Some artists
want to use it not to document their work but to design it. There is a
very first betaversion available on the website : www.rekall.fr Go to
« telechargement » . The website is for the moment in french but the
soft is in english. We have to add video demos and a user guide but I
hope it's possible to test it right now (I'm at the Avignon festival…
all the documentation will be published in september…). I really need
feedback so don't hesitate to contact me via email.
best
Clarisse Bardiot
Rekall is a response to the documentation and conservation issues that
arise when dealing with technology-rich art forms, as well as issues
faced by artists when they wish to restage performance works that
involve technology that is now obsolete. During the development phase,
Rekall speeds up the process of tracking the technical and artistic
choices made by artists as they move from one residency to the next.
Rekall is designed for:
Stage managers: it enables rapid note-taking during rehearsals, plot
memorization (for sound, lighting, video, and other technologies
deployed using plots), and storage/retrieval of technical data
Artists: it keeps the artistic and technological components of the
show on file to ensure that it can be restaged, taking into account
the built-in obsolescence of technological components and the
intentions of the artists
Historians: it keeps artworks on file, recording and storing
information on the design process and different variants of each work,
and supporting a whole range of document types
Teachers and publishers: helps with the production of quality
documentary material
Rekall allows you to document a show at several key points during its
development:
rehearsals: provides valuable support for stage managers and technicians
performance: helps artists restage existing shows
post-performance: helps historians and publishers produce quality
documentary material
Rekall relies on elements that are used to describe or transcribe
performance artworks (video recordings, musical scores, patches,
written texts, sound recordings, or simply production notes). These
elements are presented along a timeline that corresponds to the period
during which the work is produced and staged.
Other documents (notes, photographs, videos, written texts, e-mails,
comments, etc.) that relate to the performance or that are simply
useful for understanding it, gravitate around this central timeline.
Presented in an ingenious way, they provide different insights into
the artwork and offer information relating to its unique features.
It is possible to sort the documents using a number of filters: date,
document type, author, etc. Live links between the documents allow you
to map results and perform multiple searches.
All the people involved in the project work together within the same
workspace: the lighting technician, the director, the stage manager,
the video operator and the set designer share a single work platform.
_______________________________________________
Yasmin_discussions mailing list
Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
http://estia.media.uoa.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions
Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
SBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to. In the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and password in the fields found further down the page.
HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: on the info page, scroll all the way down and enter your e-mail address in the last field. Enter password if asked. Click on the unsubscribe button on the page that will appear ("options page").
TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page, find the "Set Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or off.
If you prefer to read the posts on a blog go to http://yasminlist.blogspot.com/
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