Dear All,
I am re-diving into the discussion.
I just received the book yesterday (noops ... I did not read
it during the night ;-)
The technicians can be approached in a different way : that
is treating those working with artist as important as the
artist when considering prevervation. That is : their
documents, archives, knowledge, etc. is as important to
preserve (but may be I am "forcing an open door" here as we
say in French).
The "wizard" who worked with Dumb Type is currently
re-working and documenting his own technical and computer
work that he and the group did and that was not at all
described. I think this is really interesting and crucial.
Best
Annick
Le 23/07/14 03:03, Jon Ippolito a écrit :
> Kathelin,
>
> This is an excellent point! Having worked with some great technicians, it probably seems shocking that Rick and I left them out of the "twelve-step program" that concludes Re-collection. Certainly we wouldn't have Nam June Paik without Shuya Abe or Gary Hill without Dave Jones.
>
> Once I thought a little more deeply about your suggestion, however, I remembered that our twelve stakeholders represent professions that desperately need to change if variable media culture is to persevere. And given that intent, I'm led to wonder...do technicians really need to be doing anything differently?
>
> We could of course plead with artists' assistants to use best practices when engineering works for long-term sustainability. But I'm not sure this is a realistic expectation. Video synthesizers didn't really exist when Abe and Paik pieced one together, so there was no standard to turn to; and at the time Jones hacked together custom black boxes, synchronizing videos across a cluster of naked CRTs was hardly standard practice either. Artists like to work on the edge, and in my experience that's one reason inventive technicians are drawn to them.
>
> Of course, museums and other collecting institutions absolutely need expert technicians to maintain old equipment in the short term. I love the look of vacuum tubes and the feel of Bakelite, and am grateful to the dedicated media archeologists who store them on shelves. But actually running the old electronics may not be a viable option in the long term, as bulbs blow, voltage requirements change, and vintage components eventually disappear from eBay.
>
> This inconvenient truth came out in comments by Al Kossow of the Silicon Valley Computer History Museum at the 2013 Preserving.exe conference at the Library of Congress. When Bill LeFurgy and others called for libraries to collect hardware along with software, Al said "I'd like to offer a contrarian point of view," and went on to explain how painful it was to keep frankensteining dead computers back into operation. The exchange led the Library's repository chief at the time, Leslie Johnston, to conclude, "We cannot all become museums of computer hardware."
>
> http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2013/05/what-are-we-going-to-do-about-hardware
>
> Does that mean collecting institutions can do without technical experts? Not on your life! Even if we embrace less media-dependent strategies like emulation, migration, and reinterpretation, we still desperately need technical ingenuity. The difference is that we will rely on engineers less for expertise in outdated technologies than in adapting old ideas to new hardware environments.
>
> I've been extraordinarily fortunate to work with technical savants like Paul Kuranko, who could migrate video and re-solder circuits with the best of them, yet also had the creativity necessary to refashion a work for a new space or technology without losing its spirit in the process. It's hard for me to imagine having mounted any of my media-oriented shows at the Guggenheim without Paul's insights.
>
> So I'd say yes, seek out and reward technicians--but for their ability to look forward as well as backward. I'd be curious about the experiences of others on this list.
>
> jon
> ________________
> Re-Collection: Art, New Media, and Social Memory
> http://re-collection.net
> "Read it if you want to prevail"--Bruce Sterling
>
> On Jul 21, 2014, at 5:10 PM, Kathelin Gray <kathelin@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Engineer/technicians important to find, maintain and service
>> old equipment--
>>
>> Kathelin Gray
>> Santa Fe, New Mexico
>> +1 505 471 8428 landline
>> skype: kathelin
>>
>> On 21 Jul 2014, at 12:43, Jon Ippolito wrote:
>>
>>> At the suggestion of some folks on this list, I've created a website that lists the recommendations for new media preservation offered in the concluding chapter of Re-collection:
>>>
>>> http://re-collection.net/recommendations.html
>>>
>>> Our "twelve-step program" to rescue digital culture is broken down by profession:
>>>
>>> Curators
>>> Conservators
>>> Archivists
>>> Collection Managers
>>> Institutions
>>> Programmers
>>> Lawyers
>>> Creators
>>> Dealers
>>> Sponsors
>>> Academics
>>> Historians
>>>
>>> Rick and I hope these guidelines may answer some of the questions asked on this list and spur additional strategies for safeguarding our heritage in the decades to come.
>>>
>>> jon
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>
>
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> Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
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> 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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> .
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