JULIA NOORDEGRAAF, COSETTA G. SABA,
BARBARA LE MAÎTRE, VINZENZ HEDIGER (EDS.)
PRESERVING AND
EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
Challenges and Perspectives
FRAMING
FILM
AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS
EYE FILM INSTITUTE
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FRAMING
FILM
FRAMING FILM
is a book series dedicated to
theoretical and analytical studies in restoration,
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and EYE aim to support the academic research
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and restoration. Please see www.aup.nl for more
information.
Julia Noordegraaf, Cosetta g. saba,
barbara le Maître, aNd ViNzeNz Hediger (eds.)
PRESERVING AND
EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
Challenges and Perspectives
A M S T E R DA M U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication
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Cover illustration: Section of the exhibition Andy Warhol. Other Voices, Other Rooms, Stedelijk
Museum CS Amsterdam, 12 October 2007 - 14 January 2008. Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij. © The
Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2012
Cover design and lay-out: Magenta Ontwerpers, Bussum
ISBN
978 90 8964 291 2
e-ISBN
978 90 4851 383 3
NUR
670
© J. Noordegraaf, C.G. Saba, B. Le Maître, V. Hediger / Amsterdam University Press,
Amsterdam 2013
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table of CoNteNts
Acknowledgements
8
| 5
Introduction 11
j u l i a n o o r d eg r a a f
PA RT I
H I S TO RY , A RC H A EO LO GY , A E S T H E T I C S , A RC H I V E : T H EO R E T I C A L PAT H S
Introduction
23
vinzenz hediger
1
Between Art History and Media History: A Brief Introduction to
Media Art 25
c h r i s wa h l
2
Media Archaeology: Where Film History, Media Art, and New Media
(Can) Meet 59
wa n da s t r au v e n
3
Media Aesthetics
81
da r i o m a rc h i o r i
4
Media Art and the Digital Archive
cos e t ta g . sa b a
101
PA RT I I
A N A LYS I S , D O C U M E N TAT I O N , A RC H I V I N G
Introduction 123
j u l i a n o o r d eg r a a f
5
The Analysis of the Artwork
127
da r i o m a rc h i o r i
6
Methodologies of Multimedial Documentation and Archiving 149
6.1
Enjoying the Gap: Comparing Contemporary
Documentation Strategies 149
annet dekker
6.2
Case Study: No Ghost Just a Shell by Pierre Huyghe, Philippe
Parreno, and Many Others 170
6.3
The Artist’s Interview as a Tool for Documenting and Recreating
a Complex Installation: The Example of Mbube, an AudioInstallation by Roberto Cuoghi in the Museo Del Novecento,
Milan 176
6.4
MAXXI Pilot Tests Regarding the Documentation of Installation
Art 181
6 |
v i v i a n va n sa a z e
i o l a n da r at t i
a l e s sa n d r a b a r b u to a n d l au r a b a r r ec a
PA RT I I I
T EC H N O LO G I C A L P L AT F O R M S , P R E S E RVAT I O N , A N D R E S TO R AT I O N
Introduction 197
cos e t ta g . sa b a
7
Technological Platforms 201
Introduction 201
simone venturini
7.1
The History and Technological Characteristics of
Cinematographic Production and Reception Devices
203
s i m o n e v e n t u r i n i a n d m i rco sa n t i
7.2
The History and Technological Characteristics of Video
Production and Reception Devices 217
a l e s sa n d ro b o r d i n a
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
7.3
Computers and Digital Reception Devices: History and
Technological Characteristics 227
7.4
Obsolete Equipment: Ethics and Practices of Media Art
Conservation 235
ta b e a lu r k a n d j ü rg e n e n g e
g a by w i j e r s
8
Theories, Techniques, Decision-making Models: The European Context 253
8.1
Operational Practices for a Film and Video Preservation and
Restoration Protocol 253
a l e s sa n d ro b o r d i n a a n d s i m o n e v e n t u r i n i
8.2
Operational Practices for a Digital Preservation and Restoration
Protocol 270
j ü rg e n e n g e a n d ta b e a lu r k
8.3
Case Study: The Conservation of Media Art at Tate 282
a n i n t e rv i e w w i t h p i p l au r e n so n
(head
of time-based media
co n s e rvat i o n at tat e ) by j u l i a n o o r d eg r a a f
PA RT I V
ACC E S S , R E U S E , A N D E X H I B I T I O N
Introduction
305
barbara le maître
9
Exhibition Strategies 309
Introduction 309
b a r b a r a l e m a î t r e a n d s e n ta s i e w e rt
9.1
9.1.1
From Cinema to the Museum: A State of Affairs
A “Cinema Effect” in Contemporary Art 311
311
p h i l i p p e du b o i s
9.2
9.2.1
Exhibiting Images in Movement 326
Exhibiting/Editing: Dominique Païni and Programming at the
Cinémathèque française at the Turn of the Centenary 326
9.2.2
The Expanded Archive: The MindFrames exhibition 331
s t é p h a n i e - e m m a n u e l l e lo u i s
c l au d i a d ’ a lo n zo
9.2.3
Exhibiting Film and Reinventing the Painting 335
9.3
The Image Traveling across Territories: Cinema, Video, TV,
Museum, the Web, and beyond 342
On Passages Between Art and Cinema 342
barbara le maître
9.3.1
a r i a n e n o ë l d e t i l ly
TA B l E o F Co N T E N T S
| 7
9.3.2
Across the Territories: Exhibiting Music Video
346
9.3.3
Developing, Presenting, and Documenting Unstable Media
at V2_ 352
9.4
9.4.1
New Dispositifs, New Modes of Reception 362
Video Installations as Experiences in Montage 362
9.4.2
From the Film to the Map: Patrick Keiller and The City of the
Future 366
s e n ta s i e w e rt
a r i e a lt e n a
t é r é sa fau co n
t e r e sa c a s t ro
9.4.3
Site-specific Exhibition and Reexhibition Strategies: Max
Neuhaus’s Times Square 370
elena biserna
8 |
9.4.4
From Archival Model to Exhibition Platform? Video Art As a Web
Resource and the imai Online Catalogue 376
r e n at e b u sc h m a n n
10 On Curating New Media Art 379
sa r a h co o k
Epilogue
407
j u l i a n o o r d eg r a a f a n d a r i a n e n o ë l d e t i l ly
List of contributors
Index 419
415
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
aCkNowledgeMeNts
This book has its origins in a three-year collaboration (2007-2010) between the
Università degli studi di Udine, the University of Amsterdam, the Université
Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3, and the Ruhr-Universität Bochum that was sponsored by a grant from the Erasmus Lifelong Learning program. With its 36
contributions by 30 authors from 6 European countries, the book provides a
truly international perspective on the challenges of preserving and exhibiting
time-based media art.
For the sake of clarity, the contributions by different authors on the same
topic are grouped in single chapters, with the endnotes and references at the
end of each chapter. Because of its exceptional length, chapter 9 has been
divided into four thematically grouped subsections, with endnotes and references at the end of each section. Chapter 9.1.1, written by Philippe Dubois,
was published previously in French in the Fall 2006 edition of Cinema & Cie.
International Film Studies Journal. We are grateful to the publisher for allowing
us to reprint the English translation of his text in the present book.
Catherine Davis translated chapters 1, 7.3, 8.2, and 9.4.4 from the German. Franck LeGac translated chapters 9.1.1., 9.2.1, 9.2.3, 9.4.1, and 9.4.2
from the French, as well as sections of chapter 5 and the introductions to part
IV and chapter 9. Paul Gummerson translated chapters 4, 7.1, 7.2, 8.1, and the
introduction to part III from the Italian. Alice Colombi translated chapter 6.3
from the Italian. Reto Kramer and Gianandrea Sasso provided feedback on the
technical issues in chapters 7.1, 7.2 and 8.1.
The editors would like to thank Ariane Noël de Tilly, Senta Siewert, and
Alessandro Bordina for their editorial assistance. Caylin Smith has been very
helpful in retrieving the images for the book. We thank Steph Harmon for her
meticulous and graceful editing of the entire manuscript. At Amsterdam University Press we thank Jeroen Sondervan and Chantal Nicolaes for their support and assistance in the production of the book.
| 9
Introduction
Julia Noordegraaf
Since their emergence, time-based media such as film, video, and digital
media have been used by artists who experimented with the potential of these
media. In the 1920s, visual artists like Marcel Duchamp and Fernand Léger
tested the aesthetic possibilities of film – a practice that continues into the
21st century in the oeuvre of artists such as Tacita Dean and Stan Douglas. The
introduction of the first portable video recording system in the 1960s inspired
artists like Nam June Paik and Andy Warhol to explore its application in sculptures, projection-based works, and multimedia events, initiating a wave in
video art that continues to the present day. At the same time at Bell Labs in
New Jersey, artists and engineers collaborated on the first experiments with
the artistic affordances of computer technology, providing a foundation for
the new field of digital art. The resulting artworks, with their basis in rapidly
developing technologies that cross over into other domains of culture such as
broadcasting and social media, have greatly challenged the traditional infrastructures for exhibiting, describing, collecting, and preserving art.
In this book, we take up the challenges of preserving and exhibiting
media art and provide perspectives on how to meet those challenges both
in theory and institutional practice. Time-based artworks that rely on media
technologies for their creation and exhibition such as slide-based installations, film-, video-, and computer-based artworks, and net art, are prone to
rapid obsolescence and thus cause problems for long-term preservation and
display. Besides, these works often explore, expose, and explode the conventional use of the medium in question (in mainstream cinema, broadcasting,
Web browsing, or social media), complicating their interpretation once the
social and cultural practices to which they refer have disappeared. At the same
time, the artistic use of new or obsolete technologies and the social and cultural practices related to them can also show us the benefits and shortcom-
| 11
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ings of time-based media and thus provides a critical perspective on the highly
media-saturated world in which we live. Because of their position at the crossroads between art, technology, and popular culture, media artworks serve as
barometers, or signs of the times, and as such they deserve to be collected,
interpreted, and preserved in ways that do justice to their identity and ensure
their long-term accessibility.
Over the past decade, a number of studies were published that focus on
the consequences of the introduction of time-based media in the exhibition
space, in particular discussing the ways in which these works challenge the
existing practices and models of curating (including Bellour, 2000; Beil, 2001;
Iles, 2001; Arrhenius, Malm, and Ricupero, 2003; Joselit, 2004; Païni, 2004; Krysa, 2006; Paul, 2008; Graham and Cook, 2010). Additionally, a number of practicing curators and preservationists have studied the challenges of collecting,
documenting, preserving, and restoring media artworks – notable examples
are heritage institution-based projects such as the International Network for
the Conservation of Contemporary Art (INCCA), the Variable Media Network,
and the project Documentation and Conservation of the Media Arts Heritage
(DOCAM). Notwithstanding the various models for documenting media art
and the various publications that discuss the preservation problems via case
studies from practice (such as Laurenson 2001 and 2004; Depocas, Jones,
and Ippolito, 2003; Altshuler, 2005; Scholte and Wharton, 2011), a more theoretically informed overview and analysis of this practice is still lacking. This
book aims to provide such an overview of the state of the art in preserving and
exhibiting media art. It does not aim to be exhaustive but focuses on the most
important challenges of and possible solutions for preserving and exhibiting
time-based arts and provides clear theoretical perspectives on that practice.
Regarding the substantial literature on exhibiting media art, this book
focuses mostly on its collection, analysis, documentation, preservation, and
restoration. At the same time, the institutional processing of media art cannot be discussed without reference to exhibition issues. The specific nature
of media art – as based on experiments with new technologies, often resulting from collaborations with multiple partners, variable and process-based in
nature – poses problems for locating the identity of a work. Often the inaugural
exhibition is a key moment in defining the work and an important reference
point for collection or preservation issues (see Noël de Tilly, 2011). In addition
to this, many choices made in the description, documentation, and restoration
of media artworks determine their possible later reuse in exhibitions or other
access projects. For example, the multi-authored, long-term project No Ghost
Just a Shell (1999-2002) by artists Pierre Huyghe and Philippe Parreno discussed
in chapter 6 was acquired by the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, as an exhibition, rather than as a collection of individual works. The
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
inaugural exhibition of this project was the first time all contributions were
shown together and also signaled the moment this project was identifiable as a
work/exhibition that could be collected. It also is the most important reference
point for future presentations of the project (see also Van Saaze 2009).
The preservation and exhibition of media art requires an interdisciplinary
approach, combining ideas from art history, museum studies, conservation
theory, and media and cultural studies. There is increasing consensus on
studying media art as part of art history in general, focusing on the similarities of media art with more established fields of art such as minimalism, conceptual art, installation art, and performance art and using the differences to
rethink these more established art practices (see Grau, 2007; Shanken, 2009;
Graham and Cook, 2010). Most publications discussing the challenges media
art poses for existing practices of preservation and exhibition build upon
ideas from museum studies and other heritage domains such as archiving or
the performing arts (see Laurenson 2006). We build upon these insights with
knowledge from the fields of media and cultural studies. As Beryl Graham
and Sarah Cook recently argued, besides art history and museum studies,
insights from media studies are crucial for understanding the specific nature
of media-based artworks (2010: 111). Media artworks often play on the wider
cultural role of media, such as the formats of television broadcasting or the
sociocultural and economic uses of software and online social media. Understanding the role and function of media in art thus requires knowledge about
the nature of time-based media (technical features, narrative, aesthetics, dispositifs, and specific sociocultural and economic contexts of production and
distribution) and of the relationship between work and viewer (spectatorship,
use, participation) as developed in media and cultural studies. By extension,
we also generally prefer to use the term preservation rather than conservation
to denote the activities of both keeping (passive preservation) and restoring
media artworks; preservation is the accepted term in the field of audiovisual
archiving and restoration (see Fossati, 2009), while the term conservation is
used mainly in conservation theory (see Muñoz Viñas, 2005: 14-25).
This book focuses on the preservation and exhibition of all forms of timebased art, from film- and video-based works and slide-based installations to
works based on computer technology and the Internet, such as software art
and net art. While the characteristics and preservation challenges of film- and
video-based art have been studied intensively, resulting in various models
and protocols, capturing and (re-)exhibiting born-digital art has only recently
become an object of concern (Dekker, 2010; Graham and Cook, 2010; Daniels
and Reisinger, 2010; Bosma, 2011). Therefore, this book uses a detailed overview and analysis of established methods for preserving and documenting
film- and video-based works as a basis for exploring new roads for capturing
INTRoDUCTIoN
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the variable and fugitive forms of multi-authored, interactive, and event-oriented computer-based art.
The structure of the book roughly reflects the process of collecting, valuing, documenting, preserving, restoring, and exhibiting media art. Because
of its multifaceted and interdisciplinary nature, capturing media artworks
requires a theoretical framework that helps to describe the identity of the work
and to contextualize it in a way that does justice to its concept, appearance,
and experience. Part I provides various historical and theoretical pathways
for approaching and contextualizing the book’s principal object: media art.
It equips the reader with tools for approaching and defining media artworks
– a first step when it comes to curating and preserving this type of art. Since
media art is a multi-disciplinary field, we focus on those approaches and topics that are most relevant for the preservation and exhibition of these works.
The contributions to part I provide the historical, conceptual, and contextual
framework needed to describe and capture works of media art.
In the opening chapter, Chris Wahl sketches the history of media art, providing readers with the means to contextualize individual artworks in the history of the field. It combines a discussion of the history of actual works with
a reflection on their interrelation with the history of media technologies and
practices. In line with contemporary approaches to media art, the chapter
focuses on the relation of media art with, on the one hand, art history in general and, on the other, the history of media outside the field of art.
Chapter 2 builds upon chapter 1 in that it extends the chronological history of media art to an archaeological one. Author Wanda Strauven discusses
various forms of historiography, from chronological to genealogical and
archaeological, and shows how an archaeological approach can include those
dimensions of media history – technological fantasies or science fictions,
failed inventions, the similarity of certain media features to earlier examples – that are lost in a more technologically determinist history. The chapter
builds upon Michel Foucault’s conception of genealogy and archaeology and
discusses the various contemporary approaches or “schools” of media archaeology. It also includes examples of how media artists engage a media archaeological perspective, demonstrating how this type of historiography may be
particularly relevant for studying the history of media art as situated between
art, technology, and popular culture.
Dario Marchiori provides a reflection on media aesthetics in chapter 3,
equipping readers with the theoretical context needed for describing media
artworks in a way that does justice to their concept, formal aesthetic appearance, and the viewer’s experience. The chapter discusses the history of aesthetics as a philosophical discipline and explains how the emergence of
media art has complicated the debates in this field. Attention is paid to the
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
double meaning of the term media, as the plural of medium – indicating the
tools for transmission and expression – and as a new signifying whole – such
as journalism, radio and television broadcasting, social media, etc. As outlined above, the double nature of this term is a key feature for understanding
many media artworks. The chapter ends with a reflection on how media seem
to reconcile the opposition between sensation and thought characteristic of
traditional aesthetics in a new whole.
In the final chapter of part I, chapter 4, Cosetta Saba discusses the impact
of digitization, particularly focusing on the role of the digital archive in the
preservation and re-exhibition of media artworks. Many artists rework archival
material (such as Fiona Tan’s reuse of colonial footage, or Péter Forgács’ reuse
of amateur film), or use the archive as a metaphor in their work (for instance
by creating new archives, like Douglas Gordon of his own work in his video
installation Pretty much every film and video work from about 1992 until now. To
be seen on monitors, some with headphones, others run silently, and all simultaneously, 1992-present). Additionally, the chapter introduces the crucial notion of
documentation, both of the artwork’s concept and material-technical components as well as the cultural context in which it was conceived and first experienced. Digital archives might provide a solution for capturing the complexity
and variability of media artworks as well as their cultural preservation. Yet, as
Saba argues, the specific nature of the digital archive, which turns complex
objects into a collection of source codes and where the boundaries between
objects, metadata, and archival infrastructure become blurred, poses specific
challenges to its future reuse: certain aspects of the original appearance and
functionality of the work are lost in the process. Therefore, this chapter investigates the epistemological implications of the digital archiving of media art.
The second part of the book focuses on various strategies and practices of
actually analyzing, describing, collecting, documenting, and archiving media
artworks. In this and subsequent parts of the book, specific approaches, strategies and models are discussed, analyzed, and elucidated with the help of specific case studies. In part II, the focus lies on the analysis, documentation and
archiving of media art.
The second part opens with a reflection on methodologies for describing
and analyzing media art, aiming to provide the reader with tools for capturing
the identity of time-based artworks. Because of their dependency on technologies that face rapid obsolescence, preserving, exhibiting, and re-exhibiting
media artworks raises the fundamental question of where exactly to locate
a work’s identity. In chapter 5, Dario Marchiori provides a critical reflection
on the nature of describing and analyzing media art. In addition, he provides
readers with a specific, four-step method for describing, analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating media artworks. The application of this method is demon-
INTRoDUCTIoN
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strated with the help of Harun Farocki’s video installation Workers Leaving the
Factory in 11 Decades (2006).
After that, chapter 6 focuses on one of the key strategies for preserving and
re-exhibiting media artworks: documentation. Without thorough documentation of their creation, exhibition history, and experience, time-based artworks
cannot be collected, archived, or re-exhibited. Annet Dekker describes and
compares the main documentation models developed for media artworks,
analyzing their values and their limits, and, finally, shows how crucial documentation is to capture the ephemeral and variable nature of media artworks.
A discussion of a case study, Blast Theory’s mixed reality game Uncle Roy All
Around You (2003), serves to show how the definition and implementation of
documentation strategies needs to be adapted to do justice to the works at
hand. A discussion of four other cases, the complex project No Ghost Just a
Shell (Pierre Huyghe, Philippe Parreno, and many others, 1999/2002) by Vivian van Saaze, the audio installation Mbube (Roberto Cuoghi, 2005) by Iolanda
Ratti, Alfredo Jaar’s installation Infinite Cell (2004), and the degradable, sitespecific installation e così sia… (Bruna Esposito, 2000) by Alessandra Barbuto
and Laura Barecca, serve to further illustrate and complicate the documentation issues outlined in the first part of the chapter.
Part III focuses on the theory and practice of the preservation and restoration of media art. Chapter 7 discusses the history and specific nature of the
technologies used by media artists and outlines the problems these technologies cause for preservation and later reuse. The chapter provides an overview
of the artistic use of film (in particular the small gauges mostly used by artists,
such as 8mm, 9.5mm and 16mm, discussed by Simone Venturini and Mirco
Santi), video (½-inch and ¾-inch tape, discussed by Alessandro Bordina), and
computer technology (discussed by Tabea Lurk and Jürgen Enge). Attention
is paid to the history of these technologies, their diffusion and use in artistic
production, and the underlying system characteristics such as signal supports,
playback and recording equipment, hardware and software components and
exhibition requirements. In her contribution to this chapter, Gaby Wijers pays
specific attention to the obsolescence of playback equipment, a problem that
severely complicates the preservation and re-exhibition of media-based art.
This reflection on technological platforms is followed by a chapter that
outlines possible solutions to the aforementioned problems. Summarizing
and analyzing the various decision-making models, strategies, and protocols
developed by European and North American laboratories and institutions
devoted to the preservation and exhibition of media art, chapter 8 describes
techniques and methodological steps related to the preservation and restoration of film-, video-, and computer-based artworks. In the first section,
Alessandro Bordina and Simone Venturini focus on the preservation and
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
restoration of film- and video-based artworks. They provide a description of
the phases and the practices related to the physical, chemical and mechanical treatments of these types of carriers. A technical perspective on these
problems is complemented by a reflection on the ethical implications of the
strategies, models, and methods discussed here. In the second section of this
chapter, Jürgen Enge and Tabea Lurk focus on preservation and restoration
procedures for digital components of media artworks. Emulation and virtualization strategies are discussed and analyzed as possible solutions for the
preservation of this type of art. Chapter 8 ends with a case study: Julia Noordegraaf interviews Pip Laurenson about the methods and protocols used for preserving and restoring time-based artworks at Tate, one of the world’s leading
institutes researching, collecting, preserving, and exhibiting time-based arts.
The last part of the book focuses on accessing and reusing media artworks; in it, two chapters discuss various exhibition strategies ranging from
exhibitions in museum galleries to festivals and online events. The contributors to chapter 9 discuss different exhibition formats for time-based media
and the specific modes of spectatorship related to them. As indicated above,
the exhibition of media art has been widely discussed in a number of different publications and exhibitions. Therefore, rather than presenting an overview of the literature, this chapter starts from one particular problem – what
remains of cinema and its “black box” model of spectatorship when it enters
the “white cube” of the museum (Philippe Dubois, Stéphanie-Emmanuelle
Louis, Barbara Le Maître) – and enriches this debate by adding various “lines
of flight” that extend these concerns into the realms of video art (Ariane Noël
de Tilly, Térésa Faucon), installation art (Teresa Castro, Elena Biserna), new
media art (Claudia d’Alonzo, Arie Altena), popular culture (Senta Siewert), and
the Internet (Renate Buschmann).
In chapter 10, Sarah Cook zooms in on the challenges posed by curating
computer- and Internet-based media artworks, also known as “new media
art.” These works are often created by multiple authors, are highly interactive,
and are variable in space and time. Besides, their Web-based and interactive
nature often makes them unfit for display in traditional exhibition spaces.
Cook points out that the debate on how to curate new media art has largely
taken place in the field of museology, with a focus on the problems these
works cause for traditional museum practice. She asks why extra-institutional
freelance curators of contemporary art – who generally have more flexibility
and thus could possibly be better suited for exhibiting new media art – have
so far largely ignored this newest art form. In line with the often collaborative and participatory nature of these works, and the fact that their production
space often coincides with their means of distribution, this chapter takes the
form of an edited discussion on curating new media art from the CRUMB web-
INTRoDUCTIoN
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site.1 Therewith it also functions as a platform for showcasing the ideas from
various leading curators of new media art.
The book ends with an epilogue in which Julia Noordegraaf and Ariane
Noël de Tilly discuss the exhibition Andy Warhol. Other Voices, Other Rooms,
held at the Stedelijk Museum CS in Amsterdam (2007-2008). The discussion of
this exhibition serves to summarize the preservation and exhibition challenges outlined in this book and analyzes these challenges from the various theoretical perspectives also provided here. The Warhol exhibition is a relevant
case because it brings together many of the different problems and strategies
outlined before, demonstrating how these challenges are met in practice.
In the end, the fact that media artworks challenge existing theories and
practices also presents new opportunities: it calls for a fresh perspective on
institutionally grown ideas and practices, and invites creative solutions and
extra-institutional and cross-disciplinary collaborations. The contributions to
this book aim to provide current and future theorists, preservationists, and
curators of media art with the baggage to embark on this journey and seize the
opportunities that come along.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
NOTES
1.
CRUMB stands for “curatorial resource for upstart media bliss” and is an online
platform founded by Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook in 2000. CRUMB’s activities cover a range of practices, but are predominantly based around research,
networking, and professional development for curators of new media art. Http://
www.crumbweb.org. Last access: 23 July 2012.
REFERENCES
Altshuler, Bruce (ed.). Collecting the New. Museums and Contemporary Art. Princeton,
NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005.
Arrhenius, Sara, Magdalena Malm, and Cristina Ricupero (eds.). Black Box Illumi-
| 19
nated. Lund: Propexus, 2003.
Beil, Ralf (ed.). Black Box. Der Schwarzraum in der Kunst. Catalogue of the eponymous
exhibition, Kunstmuseum Bern, 15 June-9 September 2001. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje
Cantz, 2001.
Bellour, Raymond. “D’un autre cinema.” Trafic 34 (2000): 5-21.
Bosma, Josephine. Nettitudes. Let’s Talk Net Art. Rotterdam/Amsterdam: NAi Publishers/Institute of Network Cultures, 2011.
Daniels, Dieter, and Gunther Reisinger (eds.). Netpioneers 1.0. Contextualizing Early
Net-based Art. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2010.
Dekker, Annet (ed.). Archive 2020. Sustainable Archiving of Born-Digital Cultural Content. Amsterdam: Virtueel Platform, 2010. Available online – http://issuu.com/
virtueelplatform/docs/archive2020_def_single_page. Last access: 23 July 2012.
Depocas, Alain, Jon Ippolito, and Caitlin Jones (eds.). Permanence Through Change. The
Variable Media Approach. Montreal/New York: Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art,
Science, and Technology/Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2003.
Fossati, Giovanna. From Grain to Pixel. The Archiving Life of Film in Transition. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009.
Graham, Beryl, and Sarah Cook. Rethinking Curating. Art After New Media. Cambridge,
MA and London: MIT, 2010.
Grau, Oliver (ed.). Media Art Histories. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2007.
Iles, Chrissy. Into the Light. The Projected Image in American Art, 1964-1977. Catalogue
of the eponymous exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 18
October 2001-6 January 2002. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2001.
Joselit, David. “Inside the Light Cube.” Artforum 42 (2004) Fall: 154-159.
Krysa, Joasia (ed.). Curating Immateriality. The Work of the Curator in the Age of Network
Systems. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 2006.
INTRoDUCTIoN
Laurenson, Pip. “Authenticity, Change and Loss in the Conservation of Time-based
Media Installations.” Tate Papers. Tate’s Online Research Journal (Autumn 2006).
Http://www.tate.org.uk/download/file/fid/7401. Last access: 23 July 2012.
—. “The Management of Display Equipment in Time-based Media Installations.” In
Modern Art, New Museums. Contributions to the Bilbao Congress 13-17 September
2004, edited by Ashok Roy and Perry Smith: 49-53. London: The International
Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, 2004.
—. “Developing Strategies for the Conservation of Installations Incorporating TimeBased Media With Reference to Gary Hill’s Between Cinema and a Hard Place.”
Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 40 (2001) 3: 259-266.
Muñoz vinas, Salvador. Contemporary Theory of Conservation. Oxford: ButterworthHeinemann, 2005.
Noël de Tilly, Ariane. Scripting Artworks. Studying the Socialization of Editioned Video
and Film Installations. Ph.D. diss., University of Amsterdam, 2011.
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Païni, Dominique. “Should We Put an End to Projection?” October 110 (Fall 2004):
23-48.
Paul, Christiane (ed.). New Media in the White Cube and Beyond. Curatorial Models for
Digital Art. Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press, 2008.
Scholte, Tatja, and Glenn Wharton (eds.). Inside Installations. Theory and Practice in the
Care of Complex Artworks. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2011.
Shanken, Edward A. Art and Electronic Media. London: Phaidon Press, 2009.
Van Saaze, Vivian. “Doing Artworks. An Ethnographic Account of the Acquisition and
Conservation of No Ghost Just a Shell.” Krisis. Journal of Contemporary Philosophy 1
(2009): 20-33.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
PART I
History, arCHaeology,
aestHetiCs, arCHiVe:
tHeoretiCal patHs
INTRODUCTION
Vinzenz Hediger
What is media art? Providing a working definition of its object is critical to
any emerging new field of study, but particularly to the field of media art. The
product of practices that often involve rapidly changing technologies and
ephemeral performance elements, media art is difficult for critics, curators,
and archivists to pin down in terms of the established taxonomies of art history or film and media studies. Laying the groundwork for the following parts
of the book, this part offers four different approaches to the methodological,
theoretical, and practical challenges involved in developing a taxonomy of
media art that is both historically sound and practically useful.
As Chris Wahl shows in his contribution, the term “media art” first
appeared about two decades ago and is closely related to the emergence of
the Internet. Since then “media art” has been widely used as an umbrella term
that covers video art, installation art, and other artistic practices involving
film, digital (moving) images, and recorded sound. Offering a brief genealogy,
Wahl traces the history of video, installations, and performance art since the
1960s, with a focus on Nam June Paik and the Fluxus movement. He highlights the importance of television and video technology and their impact in
the 1960s and 1970s. Wahl maps the field of media art through three main
types of artistic practice: “performance and interaction,” “installations and
projections,” and “dispositif and deconstruction.” He also outlines three sets
of thematic constants: “body and voice, language and writing,” “ego identity
and sexuality,” and “surveillance/control.”
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Acknowledging the methodological challenges posed by the hybrid timebased practices of media art, Wanda Strauven highlights the virtues of media
archaeology, an approach that reframes film history and art history to comprehensively account for the intertwined histories of media art, new media, and
film. In a series of close readings Strauven shows how media archaeology, as
proposed by Siegfried Zielinski, Erkki Huhtamo, Wolfgang Ernst, and Thomas
Elsaesser, variously draws on Foucault’s conceptual framework of a history
of the present to locate current and historical media practices in a network
of technologies and discourses. Abandoning film theory’s classical question
“What is film?” for an inquiry into the “where” and “when” of media practices,
media archaeology comes in four varieties focusing, respectively, on the old
in the new, the new in the old, recurring topoi, and ruptures and discontinuities. Highlighting the value of the first three approaches, Strauven endorses
the fourth as particularly apposite for the rapidly changing field of media art.
Gauging the impact of media art on another established field of inquiry,
philosophical aesthetics, Dario Marchiori outlines the contours and pitfalls
of what has come to be known as media aesthetics. Differentiating between
the concepts of medium – a set of techniques of (artistic) expression – and
media – a network of technologies of communication – Marchiori shows how
the emergence of media art tests the limits of the classical conception of
the aesthetic as a reflexive experience as first described in the 18th century
by Baumgarten, Burke, and Kant. Taking stock of the varied nature of media
art, Marchiori abandons an object-specific approach for a more flexible and
inclusive understanding of media aesthetics as a set of reflexive practices that
account for both the material and experiential complexities of our current
media environment.
In her final contribution to part I, Cosetta G. Saba addresses the problem of
defining media art from the vantage point of digital preservation and storage.
Drawing on some of the key texts from archive theory and media archaeology,
Saba discusses the difficulties involved in storing and retrieving time-based
media artifacts and artistic practices. Developing the concept of transcodification, Saba uses a number of examples to discuss the challenge involved in
documenting media artworks that can only be transferred to a digital storage
format at the price of a loss of the ephemeral and experiential dimensions
of the work. By outlining the difficulties of making non-storable elements of
media artworks retrievable after all, Saba contributes another key element to a
working definition of media art for the subsequent parts of the book.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
CHapter 1
Between Art History and
Media History: A Brief
Introduction to Media Art
Chris Wahl
When the first commercial browser was released by Netscape in 1994, it
immediately became clear that the Internet was no longer merely an exchange
platform geared towards the needs of scientists and software engineers, but
that it had evolved into a genuinely popular medium (Tribe and Jana, 2006: 6).
The development of the graphical user interface (GUI) that now marked the
intersection between man and machine was especially important in convincing even the last remaining sceptic that the computer was not just a simple
calculator, but rather a complex medium of communication and for the remediation of, among other things, newspapers, film, and radio (Bolter and Grusin, 2000). It was in this context that terms such as “new media” and “media
art” first appeared and were retrospectively applied to just about every new
movement that had emerged in the arts since the 1960s (Daniels, 2011: 61-62).
At the same time, exploring the computer’s potential as a medium helped further the idea that every kind of art had always been media art, inasmuch as the
term “media” can also refer to all sorts of tools, appliances, machines, artificial extensions of the body etc. However, the precise nature of these concepts
as well as the differences between them are hardly clear cut. It is nevertheless
possible to define “new media art” as a general term for every kind of art that is
created with the help of a computer. Furthermore, there are several synonyms
and subdivisions: Occasionally, one hears terms such as “multimedia art,”
“digital art,” “computer art,” or “interactive art”; then there is also “net art,”
which is found on the Internet and can be accessed from any personal computer; and finally there is “installation art” that is characterized by its specific
location and concrete materiality.
Within this genealogy, “video art” plays a paramount role. This is due on
the one hand to its technological basis, namely the transformation of sounds
and images into electronic signals, which constitutes something of a thresh-
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old that divides the analogue from the digital. It is hardly surprising, then, that
some of the pioneers in video art were also pioneers in using the computer for
artistic ends. On the other hand, beginning in the late 1960s, the new medium of video became attractive for artists from different realms of expression
(music, dance, performance, political agitation, experimental film, etc.), all of
which had recently experienced a transformative phase. Against this technical
and thematic backdrop, video art ushered in a first stage in the remediation
of established media forms, a process that digitization later compounded.
But the most significant change wrought by video art lay in the way it challenged and ultimately redefined the traditional concept of art. The fact that
galleries and museums nowadays exhibit not just paintings, photographs,
and classical sculptures but also electronic and digital installations, speaks
to video art’s enduring legacy. Thus Boris Groys has rightly observed that the
presence of video art in museums marks the beginning of a new era. While
previously one could spend as much time as one liked contemplating a painting, the new visual works with their moving images and accompanying sounds
unambiguously dictate the amount of time a visitor has to invest to experience
the artwork in its entirety (Groys, 2006: 50-57).1 “Time-based art” has accordingly now become the term of choice for this genre. Of course, everyone is free
to resist the dictates of duration. The practice of displaying video art in socalled “loops” is designed to achieve precisely this; people may come and go as
they please and begin, interrupt, and resume the viewing anytime they want.2
Some artists, such as Rodney Graham in Vexation Island (1997), develop a playful approach to the established form of the loop by constructing the narrative
so that it resembles a never-ending cycle. In this respect, the display of video
art in museums ties in with exhibition practices that were previously associated mainly with Early Cinema or with erotic movie theatres whose demise
was, ironically, triggered by the mass availability of videotapes. In cases where
audiovisual artworks transcended the possibilities of the traditional gallery
space, the “black box” had for a long time been the solution of choice (Paul,
2008: 53,75) and in that context, the work on display indeed assumed an air of
the secret and forbidden, or even encouraged a retreat to the safety of childhood.
The emergence of new media art in the 1990s triggered a renewed interest
in video art, which is evinced by a host of new publications in which the two
phenomena are treated separately (sometimes even by the same authors), even
though they are in fact closely related. At universities, the time-honoured discipline of art history responded to this renewed interest, and scholars began
studying other forms of images, mainly moving ones, as well as types of image
production that differed from the classical artist-centred context. As a result
there are now new academic disciplines such as “Visual Studies” or “Bildwis-
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
senschaften.” But film and media studies, too, can hardly avoid engaging with
audiovisual art. Many film historians still insist on a clearly defined boundary between the cinema and the museum, in spite of the fact that video art
has long rendered this distinction obsolete. In this introduction, I will focus
mainly on the history of video art with the aim of highlighting some basic elements that are specific to media art as a whole.
Just as the Internet in its early years mainly served as a platform for sharing
images and photographs with a larger audience (Baumgärtel, 1999: 14), the
video camera was initially often used for documenting performances. What
quickly emerged in both cases, however, was a focus that subsequently came
to dominate (new) media art and perhaps even constitutes a specific characteristic that sets it apart from traditional art, namely the dispositif. Media art is
highly self-reflexive in that it frequently displays the conditions of its own production and reflects on the “apparatus” in which its production and reception
are inextricably tied together. Moreover, it consistently addresses the viewer,
and it sees the relationships between artwork, environment, and man, and
between the product and its user as its foremost concerns.3 In this respect,
one could, following Nam June Paik, describe media art as a kind of “practical media theory” (Daniels, 2011: 65). Paik is the pivotal figure in any history
of media art. It seems as if he experimented with, or at least thought about,
practically everything done in the field through to the present day. Baumgärtel
(10), for example, sees him as a pioneer of net art because of his “electronic
superhighway” project, which he conceived in 1974 for the Rockefeller Foundation, even though it was never actually realized. Legend would have it that
the Korean-born Paik was the first artist to purchase one of the lightweight
video recorders that had just been introduced by Sony (the TCV-2020) in New
York on 4 October 1965, that he made recordings of Pope Paul VI, who was
visiting the city, and that he showed them to the public on the same evening in
the “Cafe au Go Go” in Greenwich Village.4 “Lightweight” in this case means
34.7 kilograms which represented something of a quantum leap compared to
the huge machines that were then still being used by television stations. Paik
had not even opted for the most practical recorder but had instead chosen one
with an inbuilt television screen. The Sony CV-2100 would have weighed only
25 kilograms, which, in addition to the fact that the footage has been lost, is
why his account has often been questioned. Be that as it may, the legendary
nature of this story is what makes it an especially fitting myth of the origin, the
zero hour of video art. Françoise Parfait emphasizes that video proved to be an
ideal medium for the women’s movement insofar as it was new and not mired
in tradition, and could thus be an agent in overcoming patriarchal structures
in, for example, the film industry (2001: 260).5 Shigeko Kubota, who was married to Nam June Paik for almost 30 years, is said to have proclaimed: “Video
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is Vengeance of Vagina. Video is Victory of Vagina” (Meigh-Andrews, 2006: 8).
The video recorder’s compactness, its relatively cheap price, and the fact that
recordings could be viewed straight away and did not require a complicated
development process (like film) meant that it was ideally suited to the purpose of documenting things with great immediacy, similar to what had just
emerged in film under the name of “Direct Cinema” or “Cinema Vérité,” and
to being screened on television, the number one mass medium.
While the political and social upheavals of the 1960s are usually associated with student protests, the peace movement, environmentalism, sexual
revolution, feminism, Black Panthers, and the gay and lesbian movement, the
sphere of art produced its own Zeitgeist-evoking terms, among them Conceptual Art, Minimal Art, Anti-Art, Land Art, Body Art, Pop Art, and Fluxus. What
these labels have in common is that they imply a change in the concept of the
artwork, emphasizing its procedural, immaterial or simply everyday character. It is no coincidence that the Fluxus artist Dick Higgins coined the term
“Intermedia” in 1996 in order to designate and propagate the increasingly
fluid nature of traditional genre distinctions. Fluxus was founded in 1962 in
New York by George Maciunas who, like his friend Jonas Mekas, was also born
in Lithuania. Mekas himself was an important figure in the experimental film
scene, not least because he had founded the magazine Film Culture (1954), the
Filmmaker’s Cooperative (in 1962 together with Emile de Antonio), and the
Filmmaker’s Cinematheque (1964) from which the Anthology Film Archive
emerged in 1970; to this day, it houses the world’s largest collection of avantgarde film art. Paik and Maciunas had met in 1961 and Paik subsequently
became one of the most important exponents of Fluxus, a multimedia movement aiming to reconcile art and life that can be traced back to both Dadaist concepts and to the teachings of Zen Buddhism. On 11 March 1963, Paik,
who had come to Germany as a music student in 1956, opened his exhibition
“Exposition of Music – Electronic Television” in the Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal. Displaying the influence of Paik’s mentor John Cage, the exhibition
included modified pianos and other objects such as twelve television sets, the
screens of which Paik modulated with the help of a technique that had been
developed over months by electrical engineers. But Paik was not the first artist to engage in this practice of manipulating television images. On 14 September 1963, also at the Galerie Parnass, another Fluxus artist, Wolf Vostell,
presented Sun in Your Head, a six-minute-long “dé-coll/age”; this newly coined
term denoted an aggressive act that consisted of tearing down, smudging, and
interrupting established visual structures.
Although this work is now unanimously classified as video art, the artist
actually had to use a 16-mm camera to record the lines he had changed as
they appeared on the television screen. The first known use of videotape, on
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
1.1
Wolf Vostell, Sun in Your Head
(1963). Courtesy EYE Film
Institute, the Netherlands.
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the other hand, must be attributed to an artist whose oeuvre is widely seen
as representative for mixing art with the world of consumption, and for the
transgression of traditional media boundaries: It was Andy Warhol who, in
1965, used video camera equipment (made by an American manufacturer) to
shoot footage of Edie Sedgwick, his Factory Girl, in profile. He then placed her,
face-front, next to a huge monitor on which the previously recorded images
were playing, and recorded this with a 16-mm camera. The result, which Warhol called Outer and Inner Space, made it look as though Edie was talking to
herself. Warhol was thus the first artist to mix film and video techniques, and
he may have even presented his video footage in public before Paik did (Rush,
2007: 52). But this, again, belongs to the realm of legend. In 1968, videotape
finally made its first appearance in the art world. An exhibition at the Museum
of Modern Art in New York entitled “The Machine as Seen at the End of the
Mechanical Age” featured a primitive video installation by Paik that consisted
of footage he had shot of New York’s Mayor Lindsay in 1965. In 1969, also in
New York, a group exhibition took place entitled “TV as a Creative Medium,”
which was the first of its kind exclusively devoted to video art (see Fig. 1.2 in
color section). It featured, along with Paik, works by other pioneers including
Frank Gillette and Ira Schneider.
The first really portable ½-inch devices (the most prominent being Sony’s
DV-2400, also known as “Portapak”) were introduced in 1967 and immediately
triggered a real video boom. At first, they could merely record images but not
replay them and, obviously, used open reels; however, they quickly became
more powerful and user-friendly. The Japan Standard I, agreed upon in 1969,
was intended to guarantee mutual interchangeability between the different
brands. When thinking about early video art, it is certainly worth bearing in
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mind that most of it was produced for low-contrast black-and-white televisions, because color recordings were still quite expensive. The fact that different systems, many of which have by now disappeared, were competing with
one another for many years presents archivists and restorers of video art with
the difficulty of having to find and preserve the appropriate hardware.
Also of fundamental importance is the connection between video technology and television technology. The projector and the screen are combined
within a closed dispositif, as it were, namely the television/monitor (Parfait,
2001: 155). The video image, unlike the film image, consists of two sets of 25
half images that are written continuously in lines, from left to right and from
top to bottom. This image can then be immediately controlled, thereby allowing the creation of “closed circuits” and thus an interactive participation in
the artwork; another possibility is working with “feedback,” that is with an
infinite mise-en-abyme.6 The fact that audio terms appear in this context is
certainly no coincidence, given the medium’s “fundamental audiovisuality”
that Yvonne Spielmann has emphasized: “audio signals govern the way the
video looks, and, vice versa, the information contained in the video signals
can be broadcast visually and audibly at the same time” (2008: 1) – hence the
term “video noise,” or “snow,” its colloquial equivalent – which refers to the
visualization of electronic and electromagnetic noise. Video pioneers Steina
and Woody Vasulka famously explored this phenomenon in their work, such
as in Woody’s C-Trend (1975) where one simultaneously sees an image and its
sound in the shape of a moving graphic noise (Parfait, 2001: 118). In Steina’s
Violin Power performances (1970-1978), she used the sound she had recorded
of her playing the violin to manipulate the visual recording of the performance
(Spielmann, 2005: 201). Improvisation, occasionally provocation, and almost
scientific experimental designs are recurring themes in media art, as will be
discussed in the following section.
PERFORMANCE AND INTERACTION
Many performance artists, such as Robert Rauschenberg in the United States
and Günter Brus and Otto Mühl in Austria, began their careers as painters.
Brus and Muehl were exponents of what was called the “Wiener Aktionismus”
that involved acts of almost masochistic self-mutilation, as documented by
the experimental filmmaker Kurt Kren. Two important video artists were to
emerge from this movement, VALIE EXPORT and Peter Weibel. While Weibel,
in his television performances, attempted to expand the performance space
to another medium (see Belting and Weibel, 2005),7 EXPORT, with whom Weibel frequently collaborated, sought to distance herself from the Actionists by
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
developing a provocatively feminist style. Happenings, with their hybrid and
collage-like nature, relied on a whole array of different media and arts, and
sought to actively involve the audience by means of improvisation, as pioneered by Allan Kaprow and Dick Higgins. In Europe, more precisely in Paris,
it was apparently Wolf Vostell who organized the first “happening” (Eamon,
2009: 72). Vostell was known not only for covering or burying televisions in
concrete, but also for occasionally destroying a TV screen with a rifle (Malsch,
1996: 23).
These beginnings gave way to four basic kinds of video practice: the use
of video on stage; the live manipulation of video images by the video jockey;
the documentation of performances/spectacles/events; and, the video performance in which the dispositif plays a crucial role. Today, using video on stage
is a standard theater practice. It is possible to distinguish between two different forms: the live recording, and the screening of pre-produced material
(the latter can be traced back to Erwin Piscator in the 1920s, though he used
film material (Kaenel, 2007: 93)). Actors on stage may interact with such preproduced images in fascinating ways, as was demonstrated by Pina Bausch in
Danzon (1995). One of the pioneers of using live recording on stage was Wolf
Vostell who in 1978 staged a Hamlet production where actors where given video cameras that could be controlled on 20 screens (Parfait, 2001: 172). Other
artists/collectives working in this tradition include the Canadian Robert Lepage, Frank Castorf at the Berlin Volksbühne, and the Wooster Group in New
York. Besides interacting with images, this tradition explores the possibilities of transmitting images from “spaces not visible to the audience” (Kaenel,
2007: 94), and of supplementing the total view of the audience with close-ups.
The British director Katie Mitchell has gone furthest in using video on stage.
For her production of Virginia Woolf’s The Waves at the National Theatre in
London in 2007, Mitchell, together with video artist Leo Warner, for the first
time had an entire film produced live on stage.8 At any point during the play
the audience can choose to either watch the film on the screen above or follow what is happening on stage where actors, musicians, noise makers, and
photographers, with the help of several props and working from lots arranged
in parallel and consecutive rows, generate shots that are then edited live at a
control desk. The technically inferior live recordings are not archived or used
again once the performance is over.
Stage events such as Andy Warhol’s road show Exploding. Plastic. Inevitable, on which he collaborated with Paul Morissey, his right hand, and with the
band The Velvet Underground and the singer Nico in 1966-1967, quite consciously translated the performance idea into an audiovisual spectacle of light
effects, projections, music/noise and dance (see Fig. 1.3 in color section). Warhol made live recordings of the performance. The real breakthrough, however,
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came with the rise of electronic music towards the end of the 1970s, and especially of house music in the 1980s. The term video jockey was initially reserved
for the presenters of video clips on MTV; soon, however, it was applied to
the “directors” of video installations (some VJs like to think of themselves as
filmmakers) whose live performances drew on found film and television footage as well as on pre-produced (occasionally also animated) material, while
also interacting with the music and the feedback provided by the audience
(Faulkner and D-Fuse, 2006).
The foremost action artist of the 1960s and 1970s in Germany was surely
Joseph Beuys, who taught at the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie and whose performances were inspired by an encounter with Paik and Maciunas in 1962. As far
as video is concerned, however, it proved to be a particularly popular medium
with women artists who used it to showcase and explore public (clichéd) body
images as well as their very personal ones. Carolee Schneemann was probably
the most well-known American performance artist; on video, the most memorable work, however, was done by Joan Jonas during the 1970s, blending performance, dance and a playful engagement with the camera and its observing
function (Spielmann, 2005: 146) in a way that made sense both as a live performance and as a subsequent installation and videotape (London, 1995: 16).
One of the great performance artists of all time is surely Marina Abramovic,
who for some years now has been engaged in an intense exploration of issues
such as “reperformance” (2005, Seven Easy Pieces at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York) and the documentation of her own performances.
Some of her famous early work, which she created together with her long-time
partner Ulay, was also partially documented on video, as in Imponderabilia
(1977), where visitors to an exhibition were welcomed by the two artists in the
nude and forced to pass the entrance by squeezing in between their naked bodies. Chris Burden used video to document a more extreme experience when he
had an assistant shoot him in the arm in Shoot (1971) and Dennis Oppenheim
recorded a somewhat less brutal case of self-harming in Arm Scratch (1970).
While these artists pursued a more or less documentary approach, there
are others, especially in the 1970s, that display a more intense consciousness
of the video dispositif’s specific potential, such as the possibility of controlling
the recording in real time, of continuing the performance in the camera or
during postproduction, and relying on close-ups as the ideal camera distance
for contemporary screens. As far as women artists go (if one wishes to maintain
this classification along gender lines), one may think of the above-mentioned
Joan Jonas and her Vertical Roll (1972), or of Raumsehen und Raumhören (Seeing
Space and Hearing Space) (1974) by VALIE EXPORT, who in this video seems to
occupy different positions in space, accompanied by synthetic sounds of varying intensity, although it is actually a closed-circuit piece that was produced
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
during the performance. The impression of movement was created with the
help of “four video cameras, six monitors and one vision mixer,” while the
artist in fact occupied the same position throughout the entire performance
(Stoschek, 2006: 142). Then there is Ulrike Rosenbach, a master class student
under Joseph Beuys, in whose most famous piece Glauben Sie nicht, daß ich
eine Amazone bin (Don’t Believe I Am an Amazon) (1975) the late-medieval portrait of Madonna of the Rose Bower and a video image of the artist posing as
a female warrior shooting arrows at the painting are superimposed on each
other, thus juxtaposing two anachronistic clichés of women.9 One of the most
productive male performance artists and a pioneer of the genre is Bruce Nauman. In Lip Sync (1969), a typical Nauman video, one sees a close-up of the artist repeating again and again, for an entire hour, the expression quoted in the
title. The dryness of his mouth, the fatigue and tension of his facial muscles,
induced by the near endless repetition of the same movement, are palpable,
and its almost desperate materiality is further emphasized by the gradually
shifting sound track.10 Another prominent video performer of this period was
Vito Acconci who, in his monologues and implicit dialogues, addresses the
screen and the imaginary viewer behind it as if interacting with a mirror, while
the camera remains perfectly still, as in Centers (1971), Theme Song (1973), or
Turn-On (1974). His works thus simultaneously become a staged self-reflection
and a critique of television.
The stage and the performative act are also relevant factors in video installations, as can be seen in the works by Tony Oursler, who combines video
projections with theatrical props and decors (Rush, 2007: 121, and Haustein,
2003: 96). But even more fundamental to the history of video installation than
the theatrical quality of its objects and their presentation is the behavior of the
viewer which, in many cases, became inscribed in the art work’s functionality and, going by the label of “interactivity,” extends into the worlds of cyber
space and contemporary game culture. Les Levine in Toronto and Martial
Raysse in Paris were among the first to experiment with viewer participation,
in 1966 and 1967 respectively (Parfait, 2001: 130). At an epoch-making exhibition in 1969 entitled TV as a Creative Medium, Gillette and Schneider, in Wipe
Cycle, displayed several television sets on which slightly delayed live images of
the gallery visitors were shown, occasionally interrupted by TV commercials
(London, 1995: 14). For Peter Weibel’s Publikum als Exponat (Audience as an
Exhibit) (1969) at the Viennese exhibition Multi Media 1, visitors
were interviewed and filmed with a video camera. These interviews were
shown live on televisions in other parts of the gallery. Visitors could also
ask to repeat the most recent tape or other tapes on another television so
that a visitor could watch himself repeatedly.11
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1.4
Frank Gilette and Ira
Schneider, Wipe Cycle (1969).
Courtesy Electronic Arts
Intermix (EAI), New York.
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In Germany, Der magische Spiegel (The Magic Mirror) (1970) by Telewissen –
Herbert Schumacher was the first performance in which the subject of reception was also the object of presentation; in this case, pedestrians in the city of
Darmstadt suddenly and inexplicably saw themselves on a refashioned television set.12 The 1970s saw further developments in this field when Peter Campus constructed 15 closed-circuit-installations (Rush, 2007: 85), among them
Double Vision (1971) and Interface (1972). In the latter installation, the visitor
stands in front of a wall of transparent glass; on it he sees, simultaneously, two
images of himself: one is his inverted mirror image, the other is recorded by a
camera behind the wall and screened onto it by a projector in front of the wall
(Kacunko, 2004: 96). By the end of the 1960s, VALIE EXPORT was also working
on what she explicitly termed “video installations” (Rush, 2007: 95) such as
Autohypnosis (1969/1973).13 The video installation’s interactive aspect, which
is crucial to all these works, neatly captures the fact that they are, to use Nelson
Goodman’s concept, allographic versions of an idea or of a concept that can
never be exactly repeated and thus never be copied (Parfait, 2001: 137). Finally,
it is important to distinguish between footage that is screened on a monitor
and footage that is projected into a space or onto a carrier surface. It is also
often the case that real and slightly delayed live material is blended with stock
footage.
INSTALLATIONS AND PROJECTIONS
According to Dieter Daniels, Marcel Odenbach must be called a “pioneer of
the new format of the single-channel-video installation that has now become
common,” where only one image source becomes visible (Daniels, 2011: 43).
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
Dachau (1974) by Beryl Korot on the other hand was, according to Margaret
Morse (1991: 163), the first installation to experiment with displaying multichannel video material on different monitors (four in this case).14 The simultaneous coexistence of images in video installations can be used dynamically,
as in Win, Place, or Show (1998) by Stan Douglas: two projection surfaces, tilted
against each other, each show one half of a six-minute scene involving two
people. The scene is screened as a loop but with varying combinations of the
2x10 camera positions so that it takes two years for a particular combination
to repeat itself.15 Eija-Liisa Ahtila also likes working with several projection
surfaces on which different parts of a story are performed. This approach
derives, of course, from a filmic device, the split-screen, and may be traced
back to the film Napoléon (1927) by Abel Gance, which was designed as a triptych. On Ahtila’s If 6 was 9 (1995), Spielmann writes:
The video work does not remove the splintering of the various perceptions of reality at all; on the contrary, subjective realities become consequently more complex, as processes are shown on the level of visual
presentations, which display from very little to nothing in common with
the auditively narrated “content” (Spielmann, 2008: 221).
As Mathilde Roman (2008) rightly observes, this type of installation not
only defines the amount of time a viewer must spend on the artwork, it also
requires him or her to actively engage the surrounding space, as is the case
with sculpture.
Although video projectors only started appearing on the market around
1980, the first explorations into the creative possibilities of film projections
in the form of overlapping images on several screens were carried out in the
1920s by the animation film pioneer Oskar Fischinger. In the 1960s, the name
“expanded cinema” was coined to designate such shows, some of which
involved further light and musical effects, while other variants were rather
more ascetic and austere; the name can be traced back to Stan Vanderbeek
and his Movie-Drome, a theater for multiple projections that was built in
1963.16 Other important precursors included Malcolm Le Grice of the London
Film Maker’s Cooperative (LFMC), founded in 1966, as well as Robert Whitman who did much to modernize theater in New York by incorporating projections in his pieces (Eamon, 2009: 70; Parfait, 2001: 71). Edgar Reitz presented
his experiment VariaVision at the International Transport Fair in Munich in
1965 (see Fig. 7.5) and described it thus:
A large, dark, rectangular room. A total of 16 screens float above the viewers’ heads, arranged in rows of four, so that every row includes two Cine-
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mascope images and two normal-sized colour images. 16 corresponding
film projectors sit on a structure of pipes and bridges in the ceiling. (…)
A system of 24 groups of loudspeakers projects electronic music from
beneath the ceiling. The performance has neither beginning nor end
(Reitz, 1983: 33).
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By contrast, Michael Snow’s Two Sides to Every Story (1974) presents a more
austere variant: images of a woman are projected on two sides of an aluminium screen hanging from the ceiling; the images were recorded from different
angles so that the viewer must walk in circles to understand what is happening
(Rush, 2007: 79). This two-sided projection is now also common in video art,
as can be seen, for example, in Rocking Chair (2003) by David Claerbout. Here,
too, a woman is depicted: viewed from the front, one sees her rocking in her
chair on the veranda; walking around the image, one now observes her from
behind as she pauses and turns, as if she had heard something (Newman,
2009: 97). This kind of arrangement can, in its basic form, be traced back to
pre-cinematographic times when the diorama contained daytime and nighttime views in a single image that were made visible by turning the lighting on
or off; similarly, the panorama displayed historical events (such as battles) in
a closed circuit combining both paintings and objects.
This general interest in the possibilities of spatial arrangements often
imperceptibly gives way to a concrete enthusiasm for architectural questions.
Aernout Mik (see Hruska, 2009) is a case in point, as is Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle
who, for Le Baiser / The Kiss (1999), traveled to Mies van der Rohe’s Fransworth
House in Plano, Illinois, to “paint” on its glass façade (Rush, 2007: 225, 178).
Judith Barry likewise uses unusual materials such as glass windows and places
such as the cupola of the Financial World Center in New York as projection
surfaces for her installations. In some cases, capitalism even creates its own
artworks: Times Square is a multimedia installation of which Antonio Muntadas only had to avail himself to make This is Not an Advertisement (1985). Since
the year 2000, a 60-second-long video work is screened there once every hour
as part of The 59th Minute project.17 It was produced with the support of “Creative Time,” a non-profit arts organization founded in 1974, which was also
responsible for Doug Aitken’s outdoor installation Sleepwalkers (2007) in
which eight different image channels were projected around the Museum of
Modern Art every night during one winter month.18 For the opening ceremony
of the 2006 World Cup in Frankfurt, Germany, Atiken’s colleague Marie-Jo
Lafontaine choreographed significantly larger amounts of light, visual, and
audio material (I Love the World, Skyarena (2006)).
Such productions ultimately involve two extremes: the monumental/
material, or the emphasis on form and the dispositif on the one hand, and, on
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
the other, the dissolution of every kind of audiovisual art into its ungraspable
elements light and noise. It is certainly no coincidence that Lafontaine also
created huge sculptures from monitors, using 27 for Les larmes d’acier (1987).
Paik had only used 12 for his 1963 exhibition Exposition of Music – Electronic
Television; these were arranged individually, while Gillette and Schneider did
the exact opposite for what was perhaps the first “video wall” which they called
Wipe Cycle (1971). In the 1970s, David Hall created works such as 7 TV Pieces
(1971) or – together with Tony Sinden – 101 TV Sets (1972-1975). But the most
famous sculpture in video art was, once again, created by Paik: “His TV-Buddha [1974] became so popular that he used this theme again and again in new
compositions, rearranging, changing and reinterpreting it” (Haustein, 2003:
99-100). The early video sculptures in particular exuded an air of the “readymade,” as if they had been moved from the living room straight into the gallery space where they represented nothing but themselves. This impression
is due, of course, to the central and variable role that television occupied for
a long time as an “animated” piece of furniture (Acconci, 1991: 128). This is
reflected in a contemporary installation, Küba (2004) by Kutlug Ataman, where
40 old-fashioned television sets are scattered through a room, and the visitor
wanders from one to the next and listens, one at a time, to the stories people
tell of their life in the Istanbul shantytown slum of the same name.
In contrast, other artists experimented with the basic elements of cinema,
above all Anthony McCall whose Line Describing a Cone (1973) has become legendary: A ray of light suddenly enters a dark room filled with mist; within this
dispositif, it is capable of feigning three-dimensional shapes of every kind, of
simulating their emergence and dissolution (see Fig. 1.5 in color section).19
The special allure of this “ur-form” of every type of projection art derives from
the way the audience is invited to participate. The virtual bodies of light and
the real bodies of human flesh mutually fertilize and destroy one another. This
kind of interaction is physical and confrontational in a way that is difficult to
achieve in the ostensibly interactive media constellations of the digital age.
These ideas were taken on and continued by Mary Lucier and Lis Rhodes. In
Paris Dawn Burn (1977), Lucier exposed the light-sensitive parts of her video
camera directly to the sun, while Rhodes, in Light Reading (1979), used light
to “write” on a filmstrip. Finally, Al Robbins, in Realities 1 to 10 in Electronic
Prismings (1984) designed simple feedback experiments such that the original
recording vanished and only pure light remained (London, 1995: 17).
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DISPOSITIF AND DECONSTRUCTION
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Just as Paik’s installation TV Candle (1975), where a burning candle was placed
into the shell of a television set (Parfait, 2001: 141), had reduced these popular devices to their outer form and exposed them, as it were, as hollow boxes
functioning as lanterns, the installation Ming (1999) by James Turrell aptly
reflects a common concern of contemporary television reception, namely
that it encourages a thoroughly passive mode of reception, while simultaneously exploring another, that of the “window to the world”. The installation
consists of a TV chair in which the viewer is invited to sit, as well as of a wall
into which a rectangle is inserted, evoking the shape of a television image that
exudes a moving, changing light without broadcasting an actual program (Parfait, 2001: 16). In its critique of television culture, the installation is similar
to Images from the Present Tense 1 (1971) by Douglas Davis who simply turned
a television around so that it faced the wall (Parfait, 2001: 19). The ideology
of television and its manipulative power were, during the first 20 years of the
medium’s existence, one of the main motivations behind video art, almost its
raison d’être. Artists developed different strategies to combat this powerful ideology that assumed the role of both a model and a negative stereotype, such as
interrupting and distorting the technical signals, promoting formal and institutional change from the inside, appropriating a broadcast’s contents, as well
as restaging and rewriting the medium’s functions. Some examples of signal
distortions were already mentioned above – Vostell’s video decollages and the
audiovisual experiments and performances by the Vasulkas. Nam June Paik’s
video work also belongs in this context in that it involved techniques such as
distorting the television image by redirecting the flow of electrons with large
magnets (Ross, 1986: 170).
In the United States, the late 1960s saw the formation of several groups,
both on the East and West Coast, with names such as Videofreex, TVTV (Top
Value Television), T.R. Uthco, Video Free America, Optic Nerve, People’s Video
Theater or Global Village, who availed themselves of the new portable video
equipment to produce an alternative television that was itself media critical.
They aimed to lift the barrier between sender and viewer, while not completely
tearing it down (Boyle, 1991). Like so many initially dynamic counter-cultural
movements, this was also absorbed by the establishment; its protagonists
either changed fronts or their contents and methods were widely taken on
and adapted. To some extent, they can be seen as predecessors of today’s
Internet pirates; like them, these groups had a penchant for martial rhetoric
as evidenced by their war manual Guerilla Television, which was published in
New York in 1971. Its author, Michael Shamberg, had founded the “Raindance
Foundation” in 1969 together with Gilette and Schneider, a sort of counter-
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
cultural think tank that published one of the first video-art readers (Schneider,
1976). Then there was “Ant Farm,” a group of visionary architects who, as concept artists, had bought their first Sony Portapak early on, in 1970, and in 1975
realized the video performance Media Burn, a mockumentary in the vein of a
television report that broadcasted from a live event in which two men in a car
tear through a wall of television sets (Mellencamp, 1988: 200).
Wolf Vostell’s Sun in Your Head (1963) not only contained deliberately
distorted television broadcasts, it also anticipated, by means of montage,
the practice that was later to become known as “zapping” (Parfait, 2001: 23);
furthermore, by recording this performance, he paved the way for a creative
appropriation of television footage. David Hall’s TV Fighter (Cam Era Plane)
(1977) similarly anticipated a phenomenon that was only to develop several
years later. Rather than distorting the television image, he superimposes a
target on the footage he is filming which is clearly reminiscent of the first-person-shooter games that are popular today. Klaus vom Bruch is also relevant
in this context, as “one of the few artist of the 1980s to devote himself exclusively and explicitly to the different formats of video art” (Schmidt, 2006: 167).
In 1975 he founded, together with Marcel Odenbach and Ulrike Rosenbach,
the Cologne-based Alternativ Television (ATV), where visitors were invited to
watch performances and from where illegal broadcasts were transmitted into
the neighborhood. In Das Schleyer-Band I/II (1977/1978), Vom Bruch created a
collage of television material that critically reflected on the news coverage of
the kidnapping and murder of Hanns Martin Schleyer, president of the German Federation of Employers, by the terrorist group The Red Army Fraction
(RAF). In Das Duracellband (1980), Vom Bruch explored television’s commercial logic as well as the relationship between weapons and optical instruments
and mass media in a way that anticipated related arguments later made by
Paul Virilio (1984). Dara Birnbaum, by contrast, dealt critically with the onedimensional image of women in television, such as in Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1976) or Kiss the Girls: Make Them Cry (1979). In the
early 1980s George Barber became a leading figure of “Scratch,”20 a movement
of video artists that similarly pilfered material from the audiovisual jungle
to re-edit it into three- to five-minute-long pieces that were set to the rhythm
of a hip-hop sound track. With the publication of The Greatest Hits of Scratch
Video in 1985,21 Barber’s considerable impact soon extended to the sphere of
music video production and television advertising (Hayward: 1990, 134). The
omnipresence of advertising was also highlighted in Daniel Pflumm’s Logos
auf Schwarz (1996), a sample of company emblems shown on television. Gabrielle Leidloff’s Moving Visual Object (1997) by contrast explored what was the
perhaps greatest media spectacle of the 20th century since the coronation of
Elizabeth II (1953): Princess Diana’s funeral.
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The enlarged and blurred projection of the small television image renders the live broadcast of this cultural event strange and unfamiliar. By
selectively choosing only a few digitized images, Leidloff puts the propagandistic and mythical language of mass media into critical perspective
and shows that it has neither an objective nor a representative (Haustein,
2003: 105).
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Alexander Lorenz similarly ridicules the informative value of the routine television flow in Ich lehre euch (I Teach You) (2008) by filtering individual words
from the mouths of news anchors, guests in talk shows, game shows, and elsewhere, and rearranging them to produce the prologue of Friedrich Nietzsche’s
Thus Spoke Zarathustra.22 Christoph Draeger’s Feel Lucky, Punk??! (1998) on the
other hand is something of a hybrid: the artist combines extracts from wellknown films such as Taxi Driver (1976, Martin Scorsese) or Pulp Fiction (1994,
Quentin Tarantino) as they were shown on television with imitations of the
same sequences, this time performed by lay actors and set against the original
soundtrack (Parfait, 2001: 300). “Reenactment” is a useful strategy to revitalize images whose popularity has reduced them to a merely ritual significance
and whose original meaning has consequently been lost. The assassination
of John F. Kennedy was perhaps the first media event where people could still
remember years later exactly when and where they had first seen the television images. It seems safe to assume that every American had watched the
Zapruder-film, the amateur footage of the events in the presidential car, at
least once – or more likely several times – during the 1970s. This inspired two
guerilla groups, Ant Farm and T.R. Uthco in The Eternal Frame (1975), to stage
a haunting Cinéma-Vérité-style reenactment of the images that had become
part of the national memory (Mellencamp, 1988: 214). A more recent example
of such large-scale media events, of course, is 9/11. Herman Helle from the
Dutch artist collective Hotel Modern produced a four-minute video about the
attacks. With juice cartons functioning as skyscrapers and clay dolls as people,
the video not only evokes the familiar television footage but also depicts what
happened inside the building. The result, entitled History of the World, Part 11
(2004), works equally well as a video clip because it is set to David Bowie’s song
Heroes.23
In Confess All On Video. Don’t Worry, You Will Be in Disguise. Intrigued? Call
Gillian (1994), the artist Gillian Wearing reenacted “TV confessions” made by
guests in talk shows, having searched for and found suitable candidates by
putting the advertisement quoted in the title in Time Out. In Electronic Diary
(1984-1996), Lynn Hershman simultaneously satisfies and undermines television culture’s superficial interest in people’s private lives (see Spielmann,
2005: 212) by blending invented and real, relevant and trivial information in a
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
monologue and confiding it to the camera. Rather than reenacting recognizable television events or formats, an artist may also use the “language” of television. Thus Stan Douglas designed several TV Spots (1987) that relied on the
typical devices of TV commercials and were later actually broadcast in such a
context, yet they contained some deliberate mistakes (Parfait, 2001: 265). Then
there are those tapes that focus not on content but on the way viewers behave,
as in Richard Serra’s Television Delivers People (1973), a compilation of catchy
phrases conveying unpleasant truths about the popular mass-medium, or in
William Wegman’s work, who in the 1970s made videos of his Weimaraner
dog to show how modes of reception are shaped by conditioning. Reverse Television (1984) by Bill Viola, where the viewer observes people watching television, also belongs in this context. The idea of showing not action but reaction
goes back to Hitchcock’s Lifeboat (1944) and has been a part of the canon of
filmic language ever since. An explicit focus on the viewer of a performance,
however, is also not entirely new; it can be found in Par desmit minutem vecaks
/ 10 minutes older (1978, Herz Frank) as well as in more recent works of video
and film art such as Teatro Amazonas (1999) by Sharon Lockhart and Shirin
(2008) by Abbas Kiarostami.
In March 1969, the Boston television station WGBH broadcast a program
titled The Medium is the Medium. It was the first television show to have been cocreated by artists, including, in this case, people such as Nam June Paik, Allan
Kaprow, and Peter Campus. In Germany, Gerry Schum developed a similar idea
in the late 1960s and founded the “Television Gallery” whose first program
“Land Art” was broadcast in April 1969 by ARD, one of Germany’s two public
broadcasting stations. Other programs included Jan Dibbets’ TV as a Fireplace;
it was here that the idea of marking the end of transmission not with the station logo but instead with the picture of a fireplace or of railroad tracks (in reference to the “phantom rides” of Early Cinema) first took shape (see Fig.1.6 in
color section). From 1970 onwards, Schum shifted his efforts towards building a video gallery in which he offered unlimited editions of tapes for sale, a
somewhat daring endeavor, since at that time not only “the cultured people
working in television did not regard the electronic medium as an independent
and artistically self-contained medium worthy of promotion” (Herzogenrath,
2006: 25). One of the tapes produced prior to Schum’s suicide in 1973 was Imi
Knoebel’s Projektion X (1972) in which the artist projected an x-shaped light ray
onto houses he drove past during a nocturnal car ride through the city of Darmstadt. In 1971, David Hall’s ten TV Interruptions were broadcast unannounced
on Scottish television, thereby deliberately interrupting the usual program
(Rees, 2009: 60), while the Belgian television station RTBF broadcast a program
titled Vidéographie in 1975 (Parfait, 2001: 37). In France, there was Jean-Christoph Averty, an experimental television director responsible for transforming
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French television into a true electronic laboratory during the 1960s and 1970s
(Parfait, 2001: 33-34), allowing people such as Jean-Luc Godard (together with
Anne-Marie Miéville) to explore the creative potential of television. This context was “a specifically French [one], (…) marked by the support of a national
institution and the development of new technologies in an experimental direction” (Spielmann, 2008: 173ff). One must also mention institutions such as the
Institut National de L’Audiovisuel (INA) where Robert Cahen produced some
of his video works. While the broadcasting of art videos on television initially
provided these artists with the rare opportunity to get paid for their products
(see Daniels, 2011: 44, footnote 10), Chris Burden in 1973 began buying short
slots of a few seconds each from a commercial broadcasting station to enable
him to exhibit parts of his performance.
The introduction of videotapes in the 1970s paved the way for the creation
of a plethora of private film archives; it also meant that viewers could interrupt and repeat screenings of films when watching them in their own homes.
In the academic study of both film and art, structuralist-narrative analyses
consequently became increasingly popular: the idea for his installation 24
Hour Psycho (1993), a slowed-down 24-hour version of Hitchcock’s film classic
Psycho (1963), only occurred to the artist, Douglas Gordon, because his home
VCR included a slow-motion function. Artists now had a more individualized
access to audiovisual media which in turn improved their knowledge of film
history and their willingness to use already-existing material in new contexts.
According to Christa Blümlinger it was no coincidence that “Appropriation
Art became pivotal to art theory in the 1980s” (2009: 15) and that video, according to Frederic Jameson, became the medium of postmodern capitalism
(Jameson, 1991). What is specific to this genre is not simply re-employing old
material (the found-footage film as something that is “ready-made” is, after
all, as old as film history itself) but its creative repurposing by the artist. It is
generally held that one of the key films in this context is Rose Hobart (1936) by
Joseph Cornell. As far as video art is concerned, Peter Roehr’s Filmmontagen
I-III (1965), compiled from American feature films and commercials, is similarly relevant. They begin with the phrase “I change material by repeating it
without changing it. The message is: the material’s behavior in relation to the
number of repetitions,” because here, for maybe the first time, the idea of the
loop is central to the creative idea. Since then, the video art world has seen an
explosion of found-footage works whose material was excised from television
programs (as described above) but also from feature films and documentaries. For Hitchcock Trilogy: Vertigo, Psycho, Torn Curtain (1987), the artist Rea
Tajiri used standard photographs, newsreels and television shows and set
them against scores by Bernard Hermann, thus in some sense anticipating
the predilection for Alfred Hitchcock’s films among artists in the 1990s (Rush,
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
2007: 173). These included not only the above-mentioned Douglas Gordon but
also Christoph Girardet and Matthias Müller who in their Phoenix Tapes (1999)
presented six thematically arranged sequences from 40 Hitchcock films which
they edited from VHS carrier material (Blümlinger, 2009: 108). Raphaël Montañez Ortiz (The Kiss, 1984) and Martin Arnold (Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy,
1998) relied on black-and-white Hollywood films from the 1940s, using a
scratching process [that] manipulates reversibility and variability in the
forward and rewind speeds of the visual movement (by which the film’s
sound also seems scratched) and becomes a dissecting process revealing
sexuality and structures of violence in apparently harmless film scenes
(Spielmann, 2008: 181).
Marco Brambilla, by contrast, used explicit porno films for his three-channel
installation Sync (2005) in which standardized sex shots are thrust onto the
viewer in breathtakingly quick succession, thereby raising questions of overexposure to a certain type of image and of the possibility of stimulation transmitted by audiovisual media (Rush, 2007: 238). Rearranging material from a
single film, like in Rose Hobart, or from a single filmmaker such as Hitchcock,
or, alternatively, collecting similar motifs from several different sources, represent two basic trends of the found-footage film. For Title Withheld (Shoot)
(1999), the artist Kendell Geers visited video clubs to collect sequences from
American films of people shooting (Parfait, 2001: 226), while Christian Marclay in Telephone (1995) focused on one particular object (Parfait, 2001: 304).
Pierre Huyghe in Remake (1995) once again revisited Hitchcock, and specifically his film Rear Window (1954), albeit not by reusing it but opting instead
for a strategy of imitation.
THEMATIC CONSTANTS
1.
Body and Voice, language and writing
In Buster Keaton’s films inanimate objects and actors were always treated the
same. On the one hand this was due to the fact that one could generally not
hear the actors speak and that Buster in particular always performed with a
still, “objectified” face. On the other hand this promoted an intuitive physical
empathy, whereby the outlandish events on screen were directly injected into
the viewers’ nerve cords. When Steve McQueen in his installation Deadpan
reenacts a famous gag sequence from Keaton’s film Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928,
Charles Reisner), in which the wall of a house topples over and falls onto him in
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a way that he is spared because the only (window) gap in the wall neatly encloses his body, the artist translates this underlying idea of an immediate physical
empathy into the medium of video installation, a medium that, because of its
strongly integrative dispositif, is especially well suited for addressing all bodily
senses through purely audiovisual means. Since the 1990s, extreme time loops
have been a remarkably common device of large installations and projections,
for example in the works of Bill Viola or Douglas Gordon. This trend in video
art can be traced back to the aims underlying the performances of the 1970s,
and one could even say that many actors in silent films as well as stuntmen are
ultimately nothing other than performance artists. Like the above-mentioned
Bruce Nauman and Chris Burdon, Bas Jan Ader was also interested in recording extreme bodily experiences – from falling off a roof to crossing the Atlantic
in a 13-foot pocket cruiser which resulted in the artist’s premature death – and
in communicating intense physical experiences by audiovisual means. The
fact that Georgina Starr in her video Crying (1993) produced a female remake
of Ader’s I’m Too Sad to Tell You (1970) testifies to his lasting influence on a
later generation of artists (Newman, 2009: 104).24
The human voice is, on the one hand, an important tool that allows
humans to communicate with each other; it is also, by virtue of its specific
roughness or graininess (Barthes, 1981), something that endows every human
being with an individual and recognizable feature. In this sense, the voice
is a body (of sound) in itself,25 whose effect is often completely at odds with
the outward visual impression of a person. This phenomenon is especially
obvious in dubbed feature films and forms the subject of Pierre Huyghe’s
videographical exploration Dubbing (1996). But video art’s main interest is
in the scream as the most extreme way of using one’s voice. While screaming
on the one hand amounts to a loss of the individual features of a voice, the
organ’s material power is simultaneously enhanced, thereby turning it into
a weapon. For the screaming person, on the other hand, this implies a great
deal of physical exertion; it thus provides relief while simultaneously leading
to exhaustion. One of the first tapes to explore this motif was aptly titled Rufen
bis zur Erschöpfung (Shouting to the Point of Exhaustion) (Jochen Gerz, 1972).
Wojciech Bruszewski, a graduate of the National Film Academy in Lodz and
cofounder of the “Workshop of the Film Form,” where he experimented with
video, in 1975 created the video work Yyaa by assembling material from different takes to create a continuous scream on 35 mm. Marina Abramovic,
by contrast, screamed continuously and to the point of exhaustion, first by
herself in Freeing the Voice (1976) and then together with, or against, Ulay, in
AAA-AAA (1978). Nauman (Sozio-Anthro, 1992) and EXPORT (2008, The Voice as
Performance, Act and Body) in their later work also explored the human voice
as a bodily event. According to Haustein (2003: 131), Nauman’s video reminds
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
one, “in its extreme, even invasive presence, of the kind of ritual recitations
that can be observed in different ‘primeval’ cultures from antiquity to the present.” Here, Shirin Neshat’s Turbulent (1998) instantly comes to mind, where a
veiled woman, sings not words but vocalizations (according to Newman (2009:
111)), while her body begins to oscillate and seems to enter an archaic state of
being. Moreover, Haustein argues (2003: 81) that Shigeko Kubota was one of
the first video artists to use “the camera for a serious exploration of the body”
in her cycle Duchampiana (1972-1978). But the most famous artist to engage
with this thematic is certainly Gary Hill who, along with Bill Viola and Tony
Oursler as well as Dara Birnbaum and Dan Graham, is among the most influential American video installation artists (Eamon, 2009: 85; Rush, 2007: 118).
In his biblical crucifix works Crux (1983-1987) or Crossbow (1999), the camera
becomes a metaphor for the nails on the cross, and the monitors a burden to
be borne by modern man. The method employed here of fastening cameras to
different parts of the body and thus achieving a splintered mode of perception
that pretends that man can see not only with his eyes, had already been tried
by EXPORT in Adjust Dislocations (1973). Hill also experimented with loops of
images of different body parts which he presented on monitors adjusted to
their respective size (Inasmuch As It Is Always Already Taking Place, 1990). In
his “switch piece” Suspension of Disbelief (for Marine) (1992) “the sequences of
the images of a recumbent male body and a recumbent female one are ‘written’ both to the right and to the left, one after the other, shifted in time and
merged” (Spielmann, 2008: 196). For Hill, the primary medium of reference
is indeed
language, against which he measures the processual possibilities of
electronic writing, of combining and transforming elements, and of transcribing of imagery into text and voice (Spielmann, 2008: 192).
This interest in the relationship between language, writing and perception is
manifest in works such as Happenstance (Part One of Many Parts) (1982-1983)
and Primarily Speaking (1983), Ura Aru (1986) or Remarks on Color (1994). The
latter is a recording of his daughter reading Wittgenstein aloud; occasionally she makes mistakes because she does not understand the text. The noncomprehension of a foreign language (rather than the non-comprehension of
a complex and semantically challenging text) and its resulting transformation
into either music or noise are the subject of Anri Sala’s Làkkat (1994). The title
signifies “one whose native tongue is different from the language of the place
where he is” in Wolof, one of the official languages in Senegal (Newman, 2009:
115). The video is reminiscent of Gespräch mit Sarkis / Talking (1971) by Jochen
Gerz who recorded a conversation with Zabunyan Sarkis in which Sarkis spoke
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Turkish while Gerz spoke German, so that neither understood what the other
was saying. Anticipating Peter Greenaway’s film Pillow Book (1996), Mona
Hatoum, in Measures of Distance (1988), relates naked skin (as parchment) to
the handwritten text. The artist is seen taking a shower in her London apartment, onto which letters from her mother in Lebanon are superimposed and
translated in turn into a voice-over spoken by Hatoum.
2.
46 |
Ego-Identity and Sexuality
Examining videos from the 1970s, such as those by Vito Acconci in which the
artist interacts with the camera as he would with a mirror, Rosalind Krauss, in
an influential essay, concluded that video art was imbued with an aesthetics
of narcissism (Krauss, 1987). Commenting on Lynda Benglis’ tape Now (1973)
where the artist stages a confrontation with herself in the form of recordings
that were made at different times, Parfait (2001: 187) describes it as an expression of the “auto-eroticism of the dispositif.” It is hardly surprising, then, that
according to Raymond Bellour (1988), self-portraits as a genre are much more
likely to be realized on video than film. Even Jonas Mekas, the godfather of the
lifelong diary film and a decades-long media purist who, on his arrival in New
York, began his oeuvre in 1949 with a Bolex, has long made the switch from
film to video. In the early 1970s, such different artists as Otto Mühl (Parfait,
2001: 79) or Shigeko Kubota (Rush, 2007: 61) documented their life on video.
Jean-Luc Godard portrayed himself in JLG par JLG – autoportrait de décembre
(1995) and then re-used this footage in Histoire(s) du cinéma (1998) together
with famous scenes from the history of film and other material from social
and cultural history, a concept that resembled that of Chris Marker’s Immemory (1997). While Sadie Benning in Girl Power (1992) introduced a teenage
perspective that was less complex but more YouTube-compatible, Rebecca
Bournigault in Missed (1999), where she filmed herself at the airport at six
o’clock in the morning, compared her own presence to an empty space which
is marked by the absence of the Other.
Even though Martial Raysse was the first preeminent artist to explore
questions of identity with the help of his camera in his installation Identité,
maintenant vous êtes un Martial Raysse (1967), it was primarily women who
took up this theme during the following decade, using their bodies as creative
objects to explore the difference between their sense of self and their perception by others, and thus constructing a new assertiveness as female artists
but also very generally as human beings. As early as 1969 the club performer
Katharina Sieverding, in her tape Life-Death, confronted the camera with a
“provocative physicality” in a “performance of ambivalent sexuality” (Frieling,
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
1.7
VALIE EXPORT, Ping Pong, Ein
Film zum Spielen (1969).
Top: © Generali Foundation,
© VBK, Photo: Werner
Kaligofsky.
Bottom: © Generali
Foundation, © VBK, Photo:
Werner Mraz.
| 47
2006: 110). Two years later, Lynn Hershman invented Roberta Breitmore, the
“first wholly artificial character” (Haustein, 2003: 84). The real female body, by
contrast, is the central subject of Friederike Pezold’s work. In Die neue leibhaftige Zeichensprache (1973-1977) (The New Incarnate Sign Language) Pezold, aka
Pezoldo, uses close-ups to display her body’s sexual characteristics, thus wholly robbing them of their erotic function. In contrast to this dissection of her
own body, her installation Madame Cucumatz (1975) is a reconstruction of a
female body from five monitors that the artist arranges on top of one another.
The mirror as a narcissist object of self-contemplation but also of a distorted
self-perception is just as present in Joan Jonas’ work as the stylistic device of
reflection. In Disturbances (1974), for example, the image of naked female
divers in a lake becomes blurred and merges with the reflecting light on the
water’s surface. VALIE EXPORT’s explorations were more haptic and drastic:
In her famous Tapp und Tastkino (1968), the Expanded Cinema project
Ping Pong, Ein Film zum Spielen (1968), the first interactive video instal-
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lation Autohypnose (1973) or in the volume Stille Sprache (1973), Export
indirectly questioned issues of of gender and sexuality, going so far as to
put her own body on display. In Wann ist der Mensch eine Frau? [(When Is
Man a Woman?) 1976, missing] she offers the viewer unlimited use of her
body (Haustein, 2003: 82).
48 |
While EXPORT always challenged the medium’s passive voyeurism by confronting it with an active exploration of the concrete body, the artist Hannah
Wilke attempted an internal critique of the televisual image of women. In
Gestures (1974), Wilke imitates the language of a commercial while simultaneously undermining it by repeating the same movements of her hand in an
increasingly violent manner, culminating in an attempt to extinguish her own
face (Rush, 2007: 111). Judith Barry in Kaleidoscope (1979) or Dara Birnbaum
in P.M. Magazine (1982) attacked the female stereotypes perpetuated by the
mass media, while Joan Braderman, in Joan Does Dynasty (1986), drew on the
technique of Ulrike Rosenbach’s Glauben Sie nicht, daß ich eine Amazone bin
(1975) and superimposed her own image onto sequences from the popular
series. Rosenbach, by contrast, introduced a further form of expression:
Tanz für eine Frau [(Dance for a Woman), 1974] is clearly a piece on the
issues of self-reflection, mirroring and narcissism, issues which not only
video was initially identified with but which were also iconographically
associated with a specifically female aesthetic. Not only interrupting
but also reinterpreting narcissism can be considered a form of “creative
feminism” – and thus it is not surprising that Ulrike Rosenbach founded
precisely this “school of creative feminism” in the mid 1970s (Frieling,
2006: 148).
“Creative feminism” also aptly describes the somewhat humorous manner in
which Martha Rosler, in Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975), presents, and operates
within, a dispositif that must be described as having a specifically female connotation, at least from the traditional patriarchal perspective that is relevant
here: For every letter of the alphabet, she presents a kitchen tool, first appearing humble and subdued, then assuming an aggressive and provocative manner. It seems reasonable to assume that Rosemarie Trockel’s Out of the Kitchen
into the Fire (1993) alludes to the title of Rosler’s video. A woman is seen giving
birth to an egg in slow motion; the egg is filled with black ink and bursts on
the floor. The artist, who uses video as one form of expression among several
others
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
impartially examines the clichéd images of pregnancy, birth, nursing
or motherliness. By freeing these subjects from their “dark” negative
connotations, she retrieves their legitimate sovereignty that cannot be
reduced to emotions or kitsch (Haustein, 2003: 78).
Many tapes by Pipilotti Rist such as Pickel Porno (Pimple Porno) (1992) not only
work as unconventional video clips but also as somewhat satirical variations
on stylized sex clips that merge male and female desire. Another parody of
the (male) pornographic gaze is Pierrick Sorin’s C’est mignon tout ça (1993).
Marcel Odenbach, on the other hand, asked the beauty queens of Caracas to
impress a kiss on the camera lens:
In his installation Zu Schön um wahr zu sein [Too Beautiful to Be True] he
[then] enlarges the imprint made by their lipsticks, thus separating it
from the body. By displaying the mouth in a brutal close-up, he destroys
the illusion of perfect beauty. What remains is an image reminiscent of
raw human flesh (Haustein, 2003: 88).
A consciousness of the growing familiarity with pornographic images of body
parts and especially genitals and how these become detached from their context informs Zoe Leonard’s Ohne Titel (Untitled) (1992). On display at documenta 9, it “show[ed] large close-ups of female genitals between high-ranking
works of art history” (Haustein, 2003: 91). A tension between pornography
and medical imagery not only informs practically every film used in sex education, but it also constitutes a subject of the feminist critique of science (see
Cartwright, 1995). It thus seems apt that Mona Hatoum used the endoscopic
camera to make Corps Étranger (1994) and Deep Throat (1996) (an allusion to
the eponymous porn classic (1972, Gerard Damiano)) to juxtapose images of
her outside with images of her inside. In Pipilotti Rist’s Mutaflor (1996), a circular movement epitomizes the way bodily orifices that perform functions of
food intake and excretion are re-designated for sexual practices, moving, in
one continuous action, into the artist’s mouth and out of her anus. Finally,
while the voyeurism underlying every porn film was still conceptualized as
uniquely male in Lorna Simpson’s installation 31 (2002), where 31 monitors
display the daily routine of a woman from getting up in the morning to going
to bed at night (Rush, 2007: 149), this gaze is now being supplemented by a
female one, perhaps indicating the self-confidence of a new generation. Thus
in Tracey Moffatt’s Heaven (1997) as well as in Katarzyna Kozyra’s Men’s Bathhouse (1999) men have replaced women as the object of secret observation.
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3.
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Surveillance/Control
This introduces an additional aspect into our discussion of body images in
video art. According to Harun Farocki, one of the first shots of film history, La
sortie des usines Lumière (1895), is a predecessor of the images produced by
contemporary surveillance cameras (Elsaesser, 2004: 238). Since then a number of films have explored the topics of surveillance and voyeurism, among
them such prominent films as Rear Window (1954) by Alfred Hitchcock, Peeping Tom (1960) by Michael Powell, and Krótki film o milosci / A Short Film About
Love (1988) by Krzysztof Kieslowski, with the telephoto lens of a camera, a film
camera, and a pair of binoculars respectively functioning as instruments of
surveillance. The dispositif at the center of Fritz Lang’s Die 1000 Augen des Doktor Mabuse (1960), by contrast, is more complex and already marked by television’s growing influence; while its depiction in Peter Weir’s The Truman Show
(1998) and in the television show Big Brother (since 1999) is the most forceful
to date. In Michael Haneke’s feature film Caché (2005), shot on HD, the technical setup is less complex, though its effect is just as threatening. In a manner
reminiscent of David Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997), a family receives VHS tapes
from an anonymous source; these contain material that was recorded in the
public by a hidden camera. The film thus alludes to a form of legal surveillance that residents of cities such as London are indeed subject to on a daily
basis, and to which Google Earth has recently added a new dimension.26 In a
way, this development presents the ugly counterpart to the incorporation of
art into life that was preached during the 1960s.
Nauman’s exploration of this issue in Live-Taped Video Corridor (1970)
remains unsurpassed to this day. Since then, it seems, no artist has been able
to match how his installation brilliantly captured the complex relationship
between the surveillance machine and its object. Nauman constructed a long
corridor and placed a monitor at the far end and a camera at the entrance. The
former displays the images recorded by the camera so that the viewer inevitably fails to catch more than the merest glimpse of himself. The closer he draws
to the monitor, the smaller his image becomes. Nauman’s Going around the
Corner Piece (1970) was similar in its design. Here, Nauman installed a camera in one corner and a corresponding monitor in the other so that the viewer
can never definitively see him or herself on screen. Peter Weibel, taking up
this theme in Beobachtung der Beobachtung: Unbestimmtheit (Observation of
the Observation: Indeterminateness) (1973), arranged three cameras and three
monitors in a circle so that a person standing in the circle could only see him
or herself from behind. The power of the gaze, the impotence of its object as
well as the arguable veracity of instant video images were issues that the artist
Dan Graham explored in great depth during the 1970s (Eamon, 2009: 83), such
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
1.8
Bruce Nauman, Live-Taped Video Corridor (1970).
Wallboard, video camera, two video monitors, videotape
player, and videotape, dimensions variable, approximately:
(ceiling height) x 384 x 20 inches ([ceiling height] x 975.4
x 50.8 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York,
Panza Collection, Gift. © 2012 Bruce Nauman / Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York.
| 51
as in his piece Opposing Mirrors and Video Monitors with Time Delay (1974). In
the 1980s the critique of the dispositif was continued in installations such as
Dieter Froese’s Not a Model for Big Brother’s Spy-Cycle (1987) and Julia Scher’s
Security by Julia (1989-1990), but also expanded on through an exploration of
concrete surveillance images. Following in the footsteps of Robert Adrian,
who in his short tape Surveillance Karlsplatz U-Bahn Station (1979) exhibited
the surveillance of a station by the Viennese police, the artist Michael Klier in
Der Riese (1983) edited automatically recorded material from public and private spaces in several German cities to produce a feature-length “dystopia of
a totalitarian surveillance state” (Kaschadt: 2006, 198). In the 1990s, the prospect of such a dystopia seemed closer than it had before; this led Beat Streuli,
in Allen Street, New York, 24th, 5 (1994) to opt for something ready-made and
show 45 minutes of the neighborhood mentioned in the title, while Renaud
August-Dormeuil, in Surveillance du voisin d’en dessous (1996) exposed the
disappointing and unspectacular nature of images produced in this context
(Parfait, 2001: 277 and 283 respectively). Pipilotti Rist, by contrast, highlights
the degrading effect surveillance can have. In Closed Circuit (2000), she placed
cameras in, and monitors in front of, lavatories in a New York gallery so that
visitors were forced to take notice of what they left behind. Disgusting as this
may seem, online pornography platforms contain a host of such amateur video material, recorded clandestinely in changing rooms or public showers but
also in public restrooms, exactly as exhibited by Rist. Compared to this, videos such as Zoom by Marcus Kreiss or Empire 24/7 by Wolfgang Staehle (both
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1999) seem rather more innocuous in the way they quote classics of film history. Kreiss zoomed from the terrace of the MoMA in Manhattan onto offices
on the other side, in an allusion to Hitchcock’s Rear Window, while Staehle
adapted the concept of Andy Warhol’s seven-hour Empire (1964). This presence of tradition is also evident in Bruce Nauman’s late work, especially in
his installation Mapping the Studio II with color shift, flip flop, & flip/flop (Fat
Chance John Cage) (2001) where the viewer beholds, on several screens, the
artist’s nocturnal absence in his studio and is instead made aware, especially
on the level of sound, of the presence of moths, mice, and his cat (Newman,
2009: 98). Hannes Rickli, in his project Aggregat Chemnitz: Die Überwachung
der Überwachung (The Surveillance of Surveillance, 2008), is interested neither
in the general dispositif nor in concrete images of surveillance; rather, he had
certain surveillance cameras observe each other over a prolonged period of
time (Hediger and Rickli, 2008).
52 |
Video art, according to contemporary historiographical accounts, emblematically combines all fundamental elements of media art. This hypothesis,
formulated at the outset of this essay, informs its preceding sections, which
argue that an interest in the conditions governing the artwork’s production
and existence is a pivotal and thus unifying feature of this very heterogeneous genre. This interest implies a challenge to art’s traditional functions,
and, if carried to the extreme, it may even lead to their self-dissolution. Thus,
for example, Paik – inevitably a protagonist in this context – scrutinized the
cinematic dispositif in Zen for Film (1962-1964) where he ran unexposed film
through a projector while performing minimal movements in its light beam.
This piece – whether consciously or not – was inspired by Guy Debord’s Hurlements en faveur de Sade (1952) (Eamon, 2009: 73) and thus inserts itself into a
tradition of exploring the limits of representation where, in the audiovisual
media, sound tends to survive the end of the image; for this reason Walter Ruttmann’s audio film Weekend (1930) may also be included in this lineage. Derek
Jarman, suffering from AIDS and slowly losing his eyesight, expressed his
changing attitude to life with Blue (1993), an audio drama with a blue screen,
while João César Monteiro staged the fairy tale of Snow White against the
background of a black screen in Branca de Neve (2000). In Die Distanz zwischen
mir und meinen Verlusten (The Distance between Myself and My Losses) (1983),
the video artist Marcel Odenbach covered only a part (albeit a large one) of the
material he appropriated with a black plane, thus showing that even a small
portion of the original visual information can be sufficient to trigger the recognition of, for example, pornographic contents (Rush, 2007: 137; Parfait, 2001:
257). Mark Wallinger in Via Dolorosa (2002) pursued a similar approach when
he placed a black square into the center of Franco Zefirelli’s TV-mini-series
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
Jesus of Nazareth (1977) so that the actual images assumed the function of a
frame enclosing everything that was not shown (Newman, 2009: 101). In this
sense, the objects of media art can function like experimental designs that
reduce and contextualize in unexpected ways, thereby deconstructing either
themselves or their remediated contents.
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NOTES
1
The audio element presents curators with a significant challenge: they can either
decide to provide headphones or else live with the interferences produced by the
display of several different objects in the same space.
2
This type of display existed even before the advent of video art, of course. The first
apparatus to be invented for the purpose of viewing films, the Kinetoscope, used
an infinite loop, and even some pre-cinematographic instruments relied on a
circular arrangement of images.
3
Bolter and Gromala (2003: 24) have observed this to be the case in “digital art.”
4
Paik also symbolizes a desideratum: historiographies of film and video art to this
day focus on Europe and North America, where they were first developed, and
only include artists from other continents if they worked in “the West.”
5
54 |
Parfait also wonders why it did not become a medium of the civil rights movement (2001).
6
For all these reasons, according to Raymond Bellour, Alexandre Astruc’s term
caméra stylo actually applies to video more than film (Bellour, 1991: 421). In 1973,
Douglas Davis compared the video camera to a pen with which he wanted to draw
(Meigh-Andrews, 2006: 225).
7
Weibel currently serves as director of the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe
(ZKM).
8
“It was like looking at the shoot in a film studio and the final edit simultaneously”
(Mitchell, 2008: 90).
9
We also find this technique of blending works of the old masters with contemporary images of the artist in Peter Weibel’s Das Theorem der Identität: Trinität
(1974), in Hermine Freed’s Art Herstory (1974) as well as in VALIE EXPORT’s
feature film Unsichtbare Gegner (1977). The image of the arrow-shooting woman
reappears in Fiona Tan’s Saint Sebastian (2001).
10 Wojciech Bruszewsksi similarly plays with the (a)synchronicity of image and
sound in his Matchbox (1975). Cf. Bordwell/Thompson (1994: 679).
11 http://www.peter-weibel.at/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=95&
catid=5&Itemid=43&lang=de.
12 See http://www02.zkm.de/you/index.php?option=com_
content&view=article&id=79%3Ader-magischespiegel&catid=35%3Awerke&lang=en.
13 In the art scene, the term only became common towards the end of the 1970s
(Rebentisch, 2003: 7).
14 The work can be viewed online: http://www.pbs.org/auschwitz/dachau/#.
15 See http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/win-place-or-show/.
16 Cf. the legendary book by Gene Youngblood (1970).
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
17 See also Elena Biserna’s discussion of Max Neuhaus’ sound installation Times
Square (1977) in chapter 9 of this volume.
18 See http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2007/aitken/.
19 See also Ariane Noël de Tilly’s contribution to chapter 9 of this volume.
20 The term “scratch video” was coined by Pat Sweeney in 1985, inspired by a comparison with New York’s hip hop scene (Barber, 1990: 116).
21 See http://luxonline.org.uk/artists/george_barber/the_greatest_hits_of_scratch_
video.html.
22 See http://www.intervideo-nachwuchspreis.de/index.php/2009-08-26-14-09-48/36animation-grafik/63-ich-lehre-euch-alexander-lorenz.html.
23 See http://www.hotelmodern.nl/flash_en/x_cinema/cinema.html.
24 I’m Too Sad to Tell You can be watched at http://www.basjanader.com/.
25 Garry Hill attempted to visualize it in Soundings (1979) and also in Meditations
(1986).
26 Dietmar Kammerer (2008) brilliantly studies surveillance images in general, making special reference to the extreme example of London.
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Hruska, Libby (ed.). Aernout Mik. Catalogue of the eponymous exhibition, Museum
of Modern Art, New York, 6 May-27 July 2009. New York: Museum of Modern Art,
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Verso, 1991.
Kacunko, Slavko. Closed Circuit Videoinstallationen. Ein Leitfaden zur Geschichte und
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Kaenel, Silvie von. “Was vermag Video auf dem Theater? Stefan Pucher – Matthias
Hartmann – Frank Castorf.” In Theater im Kasten, edited by Andreas Kotte, 91-160.
Zurich: Chronos, 2007.
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Krauss, Rosalind. “Video. The Aesthetics of Narcissism.” In Video Culture, edited by
John Hanradt. Rochester, NY: Gibbs Smith, 1987.
London, Barbara. Video Spaces. Eight Installations. New York: The Museum of Modern
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Malsch, Friedemann. “Video und Kunst – ein historischer Abriß.” In Künstler-Videos.
Entwickung und Bedeutung. Die Sammlung der Videobänder des Kunsthauses Zürich,
edited by Ursula Perucchi-Petri, 17-42. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 1996.
Meigh-Andrews, Chris. A History of Video Art. The Development of Form and Function.
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Cynthia Schneider and Brian Wallis, 199-223. New York/Cambridge, MA: Wedge
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Schmidt, Sabine Maria. “Das Schleyer-Band I/II.” In 40jahrevideokunst.de. Digitales
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1984.
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CHapter 2
Media Archaeology: Where
Film History, Media Art, and
New Media (Can) Meet 1
Wanda Strauven
INTRODUCTION: MADMAN OR BUSINESSMAN?
For a long time, talking to oneself on the street or in any other public place
was considered abnormal, deviant from the expected social norm. Singing on
your own was okay, but talking on your own, without having any interlocutor,
was simply weird. When taken unawares by a fellow citizen in such an odd
situation, a possible and often-spontaneous reaction (which I have indeed
caught myself in several times) was to quickly shift from talking to singing, as
if to imply: don’t worry, I was not talking to myself, I was just singing. Today
people talk, or even shout, to themselves all the time on the street – while walking, cycling, or driving their car – often making great gestures to accompany
their words. It has become an accepted social behavior because of the existence (and our knowledge of the existence) of the hands-free mobile phone.
We know that these people who seem to be talking or shouting to themselves
might have an (invisible, distant) interlocutor.
In a memorial piece on 9/11 written a year after the tragic attacks on the
WTC Towers in Manhattan, Thomas Elsaesser narrates how this specific
change in (acceptance of) human behavior blurs the distinction between a
crazy vagabond and a busy entrepreneur. When he encounters two such men
on Rembrandt Square in Amsterdam – both gesturing and talking to themselves, the former out of despair, the latter in the midst of a conference call
– Elsaesser comes to the conclusion that the businessman’s phone with its
hands-free device has made the behavior of the homeless man normal. In
other words, new media do have an impact on our notion of (social) “normality” (2003: 120).
This striking – and, in Elsaesser’s own words, “comical and even heartless” – comparison made me think, in a somewhat twisted way, of Michel Fou-
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cault’s archaeology of knowledge as first explored in his PhD dissertation on
the history of madness, Madness and Civilization. A History of Insanity in the Age
of Reason (1965, originally published in French in 1961). Instead of asking who
is normal/abnormal as in the “comical” scene above, Foucault tries to capture
madness as an object of knowledge through time, or rather how madness, as
an object of knowledge, is constituted differently in different times, in order
to understand the conditions of (and reasons for) exclusion of mad people.
If mad people were sent away with the ship of fools in the Middle Ages,
it was because they were regarded as dangerous for society; madness was
believed to be contagious, comparable to leprosy. During the Renaissance,
however, the fools were accepted again in society because they were seen as
privileged beings in that they were (too) close to God. The 17th century is the
period of the “Great Confinement,” when the insane were considered unreasonable and were locked away and institutionalized. In the 18th century, fools
were, because of their lack of reason, considered to be animals and were therefore treated as such. With the rise of Romanticism, the fascination for mad
people returned, this time not because of their proximity to God, but because
of their closeness to nature and their rebellion against society and civilization;
the fool was regarded as a hero. Finally, in the 19th century, society considered
fools to be mentally ill people who needed to be cured, which led to the modern (and still reigning) episteme.
As José Barchilon observes in the introduction to Madness and Civilization: “Rather than to review historically the concept of madness, [Foucault]
has chosen to recreate, mostly from original documents, mental illness, folly, and unreason as they must have existed in their time, place, and proper
social perspective. In a sense, he has tried to re-create the negative part of the
concept, that which has disappeared under the retroactive influence of present-day ideas and the passage of time” (Foucault, 1988: v). In other words,
in order to constitute “madness” as an object of knowledge, one should not
only ask the question “what is madness?” but also “when is madness?”; that
is, study “madness” in its historical context, in its radically different discursive
formations that succeed one another through time. This is the beginning of
Foucault’s intellectual excavation of the human sciences, which he explores
further in The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1970, originally published in French in 1961), followed by The Archaeology of Knowledge
(1972, originally published in French in 1969).
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NEw FILM HISTORy’S TRIPLE AGENDA
Like “madness” as an object of knowledge changes over time, so do the media.
Exemplary in this respect is the history of cinema. During the 20th century,
each decennium seems to have “produced” its own form or definition of cinema. As we know, the cinema around 1900 differed radically from the cinema in
the 1950s or the cinema of today, not only on a textual level (what kind of films
are we watching), but also on the levels of the basic apparatus (different cameras used to produce the films) and the dispositif or viewing situation (from the
fairground to the drive-in, from the multiplexes to our mobile phone). Thus,
in order to define the cinema, we should not only ask the Bazinian question
(“what is cinema?”), but also the temporal/historical one (“when is cinema?”).
As Elsaesser observes, we should try to “identify the conditions of possibility
of cinema … alongside its ontology,” since the cinema is still to be invented, or
rather: it is reinvented all the time (2004: 103).
Recently, Malte Hagener has added the locative question (“where is cinema?”), pointing out the apparent impossibility to grasp the cinema of today
as an object of knowledge and therefore to locate it, not only metaphorically
but also very physically. Cinema has become too instable, too fluid, and too
malleable. Its locations are multiple: Internet, DVDs, WiFi, mobile phone, gallery spaces, museums, arcades, YouTube, etc. Hagener observes: “Cinema is
in fact ubiquitous, it is everywhere and nowhere at the same time” (2008: 16).
Cinema’s ubiquity is linked by Hagener to the Deleuzian concept of immanence, to the idea that our perception and our thinking have become cinematic, that the cinema is part of us. Elsaesser, who is not quoted by Hagener in
this respect, conceives of this cinematic ubiquity as a return to ontology, or
ontologization of the cinema, a project that aims to define cinema no longer
in its medium specificity, but as an experience, as a “particular way of beingin-the-world” (Unpublished paper). Ideally, this should lead to the combination of the what, the when, and the where.
Already in the 1980s these three questions were addressed, albeit separately, by the Early Cinema movement set in motion by the 1978 FIAF conference,
which took place in Brighton, UK.2 Part of this legendary conference was the
symposium “Cinema 1900-1906” which was prepared by an archival project
known as the Brighton Project, which consisted in looking afresh at all surviving examples of pre-1906 cinema (preserved in some fifteen FIAF archives and
surpassing the amount of 550 films). This screening, which literally opened
the eyes of a new generation of film scholars (among whom Tom Gunning,
Charles Musser, and André Gaudreault), signaled the beginning of the New
Film History. Whereas this moment is often defined as the “historical turn” of
cinema studies, I would like to highlight the triple agenda of these early cin-
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ema scholars that, to a certain extent, reflects the three questions discussed
above and that has become essential for the emergence of media archaeology:
attention for the otherness of the early cinema (“what”), discovery of the multiple origins of early cinema (“when”), and the study of its contextual material
(“where”).
The Brighton Project led to the discovery of early cinema as an “other” cinema, that is, not as an immature form of narrative cinema, or as a preparation
of classical cinema, but as a cinema with its own intrinsic values or tropes,
such as frontality, acknowledgement of the camera’s presence, overlapping
editing or repetition of the key action, etc. From the desire (or necessity) to
mark the distinction between early cinema and narrative cinema, a terminological debate emerged with, for instance, Noël Burch opposing the “primitive
mode of representation” to the “institutional mode of representation” and
André Gaudreault and Tom Gunning proposing the opposition between the
“system of monstrative attractions” and the “system of narrative integration”
(Burch, 1984; Gaudreault and Gunning, 1989).
Important to stress here is that the ontological agenda of early cinema
scholars implies a rupture (or epistemic break) between early cinema and
narrative cinema. At the same time this means a questioning of the rupture
between “pre-cinema” (pre-1895) and “cinema” (post-1895) as canonized by
traditional film history, since for many reasons early cinema belongs to what
is called pre-cinema rather than to cinema. In other words, the “what” question inevitably has consequences for the “when” question: when does early
cinema start and when does it end? Along with issues of periodization, there
is also the “historical doubt about the origins of cinema” (Hagener, 2008: 16)
and the discovery of so many forgotten pioneers which led to the dismantlement of the myth of the “firsts.” The 19th century proved to be very fertile for
film historians and film archaeologists alike.3 More recently, as we will see
below, this search into time or academic time traveling has been pushed into
“deep time” by someone like Siegfried Zielinski.
With the Brighton Project kicking off New Film History, the otherness of
early cinema was initially studied from a formal or aesthetical point of view.
Very rapidly, however, this early cinema movement shifted from textual analysis to a (quantitative) non-text approach. As Ian Christie observed: “… crucially,
what began as a movement to study these [pre-1906] films empirically – to look
at them as archaeological objects – soon became an exploration of their context – of production, circulation and reception – and thus necessarily a study
of what no longer existed – namely the vast bulk of these film texts and their
places and modes of screening” (2006: 66). This contextual strand of New Film
History should be seen in relation to the movement of New Historicism, which
developed in the 1980s in the field of literary studies and which was grounded
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
in contextual analysis and the study of non-literary texts. Likewise, the aim of
New Film History became the study of non-filmic texts, of contextual material,
of socio-economical data, etc. (Allen and Gomery, 1985; Maltby, 2006). A new
discipline emerged: cinema history, that is, the history of cinema as institution, as exhibition practice, as social space (as opposed to film history, which
is, generally speaking, a history of masters and masterpieces).
Even if originally not limited to early cinema studies, New Film History
soon became more or less synonymous with it (Elsaesser, 1986). Today it is
still a valuable and applicable model not only for the study of early cinema
but also for other periods in film history and not only for film but also for
other forms of media (see Strauven 2006). Furthermore, it inspired (early) film
scholars to question the dominance of the visual in film studies, and explore
untouched or underexplored domains, such as the sound(s) of early cinema
(see among others: Altman, 2004; Lastra, 2000; Wedel, 2004) and the sense of
touch in relation to early and pre-cinematic screen practices (see among others: Strauven, 2011; Wedel. 2009). New Film History’s relevance lies precisely
in its (pioneering) media-archaeological approaches, which range from questioning what is taken for granted or accepted as “truth” to digging up forgotten pioneers, unimportant films and other neglected material or dimensions.
Most significant, undoubtedly, has been New Film History’s contribution to
historical methodology, by challenging or even severely criticizing the methods of traditional historiography such as chronology, genealogy, and especially teleology. Or, more generally, it profoundly changed the attitude of the
(media) historian, who should always study the past with genuine wonder: this
is the principle of media archaeology as a “hermeneutics of astonishment,” as
Elsaesser, paraphrasing Gunning, has phrased it (2004: 113).
MEDIA ARCHAEOLOGIES, OR THE THREE BRANCHES OF MEDIA ARCHAEOLOGy
The main question remains, however, whether media archaeology is indeed
(merely) a methodology. Interestingly enough, the various practitioners of the
field – those who call themselves media archaeologists – do not agree upon
what to call media archaeology: is it an approach, a model, a project, an exercise, a perspective, or a discipline? Is media archaeology a subdiscipline in
media studies (to be distinguished from media archaeology as subdiscipline
in archaeology) or is it rather a “nomadic enterprise,” as Jussi Parikka has
defined it, and therefore a “traveling concept” (following Mieke Bal), which
crosses various disciplines (Hertz and Parikka, 2010: 5)? According to Parikka,
media archaeology should be seen as a hybrid discipline, which results in
interdisciplinary work. Can media archaeology then still be defined as a school
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with its proper set of tools, methods, etc.? As we will see below, there are different methodological schools. But even beyond (or next to) the methodological issue there is the very basic tension between practice and theory: whereas
some media archaeologists like Siegfried Zielinski consider it as a very practical activity (comparable with the fieldwork of “real” archaeologists), for others
like Thomas Elsaesser, it is rather a metaphor or a conceptual model.
Before discussing these various differences in methodology, it is important to point out that media archaeology made its way into at least three distinct fields (within the larger field of media studies), which I propose here to
call the three “branches” of media archaeology: 1) film history/media history,
2) media art, and 3) new media theory. These three branches are historically grown layers, successive phases that continue to coexist over time.4 For a
proper “archaeology” of media archaeology, one could evoke several attempts
of alternative historiographies undertaken in the first half of the 20th century
(for instance by Walter Benjamin in his unfinished Arcades Project and by Dolf
Sternberger in his Panorama of the Nineteenth Century) (Huhtamo and Parikka,
2011: 6-7). My overview aims at mapping the nascent field and will therefore be
limited to the last three decades, since the emergence of media archaeology
until its (still ongoing) development as a self-proclaimed discipline, with its
own set of problems, body of methods, etc.
In the 1980s, media archaeology emerged, as already sketched above, as
part of cinema studies, more specifically early cinema studies. Even if, in those
years, the early cinema movement did not consciously embrace (or promote)
a media-archaeological approach, it is worthy to remember that Thomas
Elsaesser, who also coined the term “New Film History,” used the term “Media
Archaeology” in the title of his introduction to Early Cinema: Space Frame Narrative. This volume, published in 1990, wanted to reflect on the legacy of the
1978 FIAF conference and stressed the importance of a “systematic account of
early cinema” as precondition for a “cultural archaeology of the new medium”
(Elsaesser, 1990: 1). Other pioneering publications to be mentioned here are
Jacques Perriault’s Mémoires de l’ombre et du son: Une archéologie de l’audiovisuel (1981) and Laurent Mannoni’s Le grand art de la lumière et de l’ombre:
Archéologie du cinéma (1994).5
Since the 1990s, the first branch of media archaeology developed in broader terms as media history. On the one hand, this development led to excavations
of hidden, forgotten, and imaginary media, as for instance in Bruce Sterling’s
Dead Media Project founded in 1996 and the symposium “An Archaeology of
Imaginary Media” organized by Eric Kluitenberg at De Balie, Amsterdam, in
February 2004. On the other hand, media archaeology became synonymous
with (historical) reading against the grain, a tendency that is most obvious
in Zielinski’s anarchic form of archaeology or “anarchaeology” which wants
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
“to escape monopolisation by the predominant media discourse” (1999: 9).
Such an enterprise, still somewhat implicit in Zielinski’s Audiovisions: Cinema
and Television as Entr’actes in History (1999, originally published in German
in 1989), resulted in the extraordinary time-traveling Deep Time of the Media.
Towards an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means (2006, originally published in German in 2002), wherein he discovers the unknown or
little studied work of other against-the-grain media thinkers, such as Empedocles (6th-5th centuries BC), Giovan Battista della Porta (16th century), Athanasius Kircher (17th century), Johann Wilhelm Ritter (late 18th century), Cesare
Lombroso (19th century), and Aleksej Kapitanovich Gatev (20th century), to
name just some key figures of Deep Time.
Zielinski’s work permits one to make a bridge between the first and the
second branch of media archaeology in that his historical quest seems to
be driven by his admiration for radical contemporary media artists, “those
among the avant-garde of electronics in whose heads and hands the new techniques do not become independent ends in themselves, but are constantly
irritated and reflected upon: artists like Valie Export, David Larcher, Nam
June Paik, Steina and Woody Vasulka, or Peter Weibel” (1999: 22). Yet it has
been especially the Finnish scholar Erkki Huhtamo who put on the map the
second branch of media archaeology, turning his attention to a slightly different group of media artists. In his essay “Resurrecting the Technological Past.
An Introduction to the Archeology of Media Art,” Huhtamo discusses the artworks of Paul De Marinis, Ken Feingold, Lynn Hershman, Perry Hoberman,
Michael Naimark, Catherine Richards, and Jill Scott, among others, as examples of a media-archaeological practice consisting in “incorporat[ing] explicit
references to old analogue and mechanical machines” (1995). According to
Huhtamo this media-archaeological tendency in the arts world has become
manifest since the 1990s, but it was already announced during the 1980s by
the work of media artists such as Jeffrey Shaw and Toshio Iwai. There are various ways in which media-archaeologically inclined artists (or “artist-archaeologists”) engage with the technological past, ranging from explicit remakes
of old apparatuses to more subtle displacements or hybrid constructions of
past and present. As example of the latter, Huhtamo cites, for instance, Paul
DeMarinis’s The Edison Effect (1989-1993) that brings together three different
ages of sound technologies (mechanical, electronic, and digital), combining an Edison phonograph with vinyl discs and laser beams. To illustrate the
more straightforward strategy of the remake, Huhtamo mentions Catherine
Richards’s interactive installation The Virtual Body (1993) which can be classified as a “peep-show machine” (Huhtamo, 1995). Another nice example of an
explicit remake that comes to mind in this context is Julien Maire’s high-tech
update of the old-fashioned (and obsolete) slide projector, which he construct-
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ed for the installation Demi-Pas (Half Step, 2002). Typical of Maire’s work is the
creation of highly original (and technically complex) prototypes by which he
engages not only with technology’s past but also with its future(s). This artistic time traveling often takes the form of a performance that partly reveals,
partly mystifies the operation of the prototypes to an audience of “astonished”
museum visitors – a new art form that Edwin Carels has proposed to call “cinema of contraptions” (2012).
If artist-archaeologists seem to share the common goal of “resurrecting the technological past” (which is also, at least partly, shared by scholars
who are media-archaeologically inclined), this does not necessarily mean,
as Huhtamo points out, that their work explicitly evokes the “old tech,” but
instead it might use “a contemporary technology as both the terrain and the
tool for media archaeological excavation” (Huhtamo, 1995). Such a strategy
of (historical) displacement becomes even clearer – as Garnet Hertz and Jussi
Parikka discuss in their CTheory interview on the “archaeologies of media
art” – in the more recent strand of media-archaeological art that “relates to
hardware hacking, circuit bending and literally opening up media technologies to reveal the complex wirings through which the time-critical processes
of contemporary culture function” (2010: 8). Especially interesting in this
respect is the electronic do-it-yourself (DIY) practice of circuit bending, which
consists in dismantling, unwiring, and rewiring electronic devices (from
battery-powered children’s toys to MP3 players) in order to create new (musical) instruments. Such a DIY movement not only relates to historical practices
of reuse, in particular the Cubist collage and the Dadaist ready-made, but
also and especially counters the high-tech industry of Silicon Valley (with its
planned obsolescence) (Hertz and Parikka, 2012). Furthermore, it points to a
fundamental difference between scholarly and artistic work, which Hertz and
Parikka discuss in terms of layers: while the textual medium is still rather limited to linearity (and therefore narrativity), the artistic (DIY) approach allows
more directly for an excavation into multiple layers, turning media archaeology into a real activity, something that “needs to be executed, not constructed
as a narrative” (2010: 8).
The idea of media archaeology as a concrete activity, as a material engagement with (technological) devices or apparatuses, is key to understanding
how this originally historical enterprise has become attractive to new media
studies. Since the beginning of the 21st century, we see that several scholars
have started to adopt media archaeology as a method for a (literal, physical)
excavation into contemporary media. What is at stake in these projects is not
only the questioning of the newness of new media, but also and especially
the “exploration of the potentialities of media,” or more generally the “disand replacement of the concept of media” (Hertz and Parikka, 2010: 6). This
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third branch of media archaeology is expanding itself in different new fields
of analysis, such as software studies (Fuller, 2008), (digital) media ecology,
which includes studies on issues such as “materialist energies” (Fuller, 2005),
digital waste (Sterne, 207), and computer viruses (Parikka, 2007); and – last
but not least – Wolfgang Ernst’s take on media archaeology called “operative
diagrammatics,” which promotes a non-representational approach, using the
(Peircian) diagram as its epistemological tool. By opposing the notion of mapping to the “media-archaeological idea of the diagram,” Ernst clearly favors
the latter as it is “conceptual rather than visual, topological rather than geographical, non-narrative (data-based) rather than narrative, connective rather
than spatial, concerned with code (software) rather than images, numbers
rather than sensual perception”; and, therefore, he proposes to “redeem the
notion of ‘mapping’ from the cartographic metaphor and instead remathematize it” (2005: 6).
In an interview with Geert Lovink, Ernst explains the mathematical
dimension of media archaeology in relation to the archival numerability:
“Media archaeology describes the non-discursive practices specified in the
elements of the techno-cultural archive. Media archaeology is confronted
with Cartesian objects, which are mathematizable things, and let us not forget that Alan Turing conceived the computer in 1937 basically as a machine
paper (the most classical archival carrier)” (Lovink, 2003). Ernst’s approach
is a good example of material(ist) media archaeology, which focuses on the
operative level of the media, that is, the processuality. Rather than a historical
project, “operative diagrammatics” is about “creating such situations where
you get into contact with media in [their] radical operability and temporality”
(Parikka, 2009). According to Parikka, such a take on media archaeology is
“a-historical, even unhistorical perhaps” (2009). However, in a previous phase
of his career, Ernst carried out a truly Foucauldian project, “an archaeology of
the technological conditions of the sayable and thinkable in culture,” which
did not exclude excavation into ancient Greece and its rhetorical techniques
(Lovink, 2003; Ernst, 2000). As we will see below, Ernst can be counted among
the most Foucauldian media archaeologists.
RETHINkING TEMPORALITIES
As diverse as these three branches of media archaeology might seem, their
agendas share at least four important aspects. Firstly, there is the crucial relation between history and theory. The historical dimension is also present in
the third branch, most explicitly when the newness of new media is questioned
and more subtly when their potentialities are at stake. In media archaeological
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terms, history is the study not only of the past, but also of the (potential) present and the possible futures. A second common ground of the three branches
is the vital connection between research and art, between researchers and artists. While this interrelation is most obvious in the second branch, it should
be remembered that at the very origins of New Film History there was the (re)
discovery of early cinema by avant-garde filmmakers such as Ken Jacobs, Stan
Brakhage, and Noël Burch, and documentary film editor Dai Vaughan. For
the new media branch, media archaeology seems to have become essential
to methods of design, which is the area par excellence where research and art
meet. Here we should mention again Garnet Hertz, who is a faculty member
of the Media Design Program at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena,
California and who is developing a theory of DIY. A third aspect I would like
to briefly underline is the central role played by the archive, ranging from the
FIAF film archives (Brighton project) to the archives as “cybernetic entities” in
the digital age, as defined by Wolfgang Ernst (Lovink, 2003).6 Lastly, and most
importantly, what the three branches of media archaeology have in common
is a rethinking of temporalities. This brings me back, finally, to the methodological issue upon which I touched in the first part of this chapter. Since the
way these temporalities are rethought differs, often to a great extent, from
school to school.
Indeed, media archaeology, rather than being one school, consists of
various schools, not only in terms of (trans)national borders,7 but also and
especially in terms of methodology. To simplify the rather complex picture
of a discipline that is still in formation, I identify four dominant approaches
for the media-archaeological project of rethinking temporalities; it concerns
four different, sometimes opposite approaches adopted by key figures of the
field, which consist in seeking: 1) the old in the new; 2) the new in the old; 3)
recurring topoi; or 4) ruptures and discontinuities. In the remainder of this
chapter, I will briefly discuss these four approaches, by highlighting, where
possible and relevant, the connection with Foucault’s work, in particular his
“archaeology of knowledge.” As we know, Foucault himself did not include the
(audiovisual) media in his archaeological approach. One could say that media
archaeology starts where Foucault’s analyses end. But then, as Friedrich Kittler reminds us, “writing itself, before it ends up in the libraries, is a communication medium, the technology of which the archaeologist simply forgot”
(1999: 5). Therefore, Kittler’s technologically determined media history could
be considered anti-Foucauldian, even if Kittler is also often seen as the spiritual father of media archaeology, precisely for this very same reason. Kittler’s
influence can especially be felt in media-archaeological studies that stress the
materiality of the media, and somehow crosses the four approaches that I will
now discuss separately.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
1.
The old in the New: from obsolescence
to Remediation
The first approach of seeking the old in the new is directly inherited from
Marshall McLuhan and his law of obsolescence, according to which old media
become the content of newer media and, thus, lose their initial novelty and
effectiveness, without being eliminated, however. As famously formulated in
Understanding Media: “the ‘content’ of any medium is always another medium. The content of writing is speech, just as the written word is the content of
print, and print is the content of the telegraph” (McLuhan, 1964: 23-24). This
quote also appears in Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin’s study on remediation that, not accidentally, carries the subtitle Understanding New Media (2000:
45). Although not overtly promoted as a media-archaeological concept, the
principle of remediation is often taken for granted in recent media historical
research and therefore needs to be addressed here. According to Bolter and
Grusin’s own definition, the notion refers to the “formal logic by which new
media refashion prior media forms” (2000: 273) – television remediated film
that remediated photography that remediated painting, and so on.
In their opening chapter, Bolter and Grusin proclaim being indebted to
Foucault, more particularly for their notion of genealogy, as they are “looking for historical affiliations or resonances and not for origins” (2000: 21, note
1). Foucault’s genealogy is a Nietzschean genealogy, which should be clearly
distinguished from the traditional genealogy or study of family trees, generally adopted by (classical) historiographers who are in search of the origin of
things.8 Foucault’s genealogy is not concerned with the pure origin, but with
multiple origins and contingencies. It is complimentary to his archaeological project in that it tries to understand or grasp the contingencies that made
happen the shift from one way of thinking to another, from one episteme to
the next.9
Despite their openly acknowledged Foucauldian inspiration, one might
have reservations about Bolter and Grusin’s method, as it inevitably implies
a historical linearity, resulting in an equally inevitable media convergence.
According to Zielinski, this is indeed not the appropriate way to do media history: “In [this] perspective, history is the promise of continuity and a celebration of the continual march of progress in the name of humankind. Everything
has already been around, only in a less elaborate form; one needs only to look”
(2006: 3). Zielinski does not explicitly refer to Bolter and Grusin’s work, but he
makes his point clear by stating that Michelangelo’s ceiling paintings in the
Sistine Chapel have nothing to do with today’s VR applications and CAVEs.
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The New in the old: Anarchaeology or Variantology
To the approach of seeking the old in the new, Zielinski opposes his “anarchic”
form of media archaeology which he provocatively (or ironically?) calls anarchaeology. Zielinksi seeks (or rather hits upon) the new (“something new”) in
the old. (2006: 3) He literally digs into the “deep time” of media, going all the
way back, as seen above, to the 6th and 5th centuries BC to the life and work of
Empedocles. The notion of “deep time,” borrowed from the vulcanist James
Hutton, refers to geological time and its measurement by analyzing strata of
different rock formations. What is crucial for Zielinski’s conception of media
archaeology is that these strata do not form perfect horizontal layers one on
top of the other, but instead present intrusions, changes of direction, etc.10
Zielinski’s media-archaeological approach is inspired by the science of
paleontology, which teaches us that the “notion of continuous progress from
lower to higher, from simple to complex, must be abandoned, together with all
the images, metaphors and iconography that have been – and still are – used to
describe progress” (2006: 5). The study of our geological past tells us that there
were moments when “a considerable reduction of diversity occurred” (2006:
5-6; italics added); thus, instead of a continuous increasing of complexity, the
evolution of nature (including humankind) sometimes takes a step back. This
is also true for our media history: according to Zielinski, the “history of media
is not the product of a predictable and necessary advance from primitive to
complex apparatus,” which means that the “current state of the art does not
necessarily represent the best possible state” (2006: 7).
The anarchic approach adopted by Zielinski does not only consist in
reversing the McLuhanian thinking but also, more generally, in countering
the “monopolisation by the predominant media discourse” (cf. supra). In his
essay “Media Archaeology,” published ten years earlier in CTheory, Zielinski
already emphasized that he did not try to “homogenize or universalize the historic development of the media” but instead to think and write it “hetero-logically” (1996). In the same essay, Zielinski also stated that media archaeology
needs to be seen as a “form of activity”, in the Wittgensteinian sense of Tätigkeit (“philosophy is not a doctrine it is an activity”). This confirms the abovequoted remark that media archaeology “needs to be executed, not constructed
as a narrative.” Here it is interesting to note that Zielinski is not only reading
old original manuscripts, but also going to the sites (as a true archaeologist),
following the footsteps of his heroes (2006: 37-38) .
Zielinski’s history can best be described as a study of singularities, which
tries to capture the event “in the exact specificity of its occurrence,” as Foucault
prescribes it in his Archaeology of Knowledge: “we must grasp the statement
[l’énoncé] in the exact specificity of its occurrence; determine its conditions of
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
existence, fix at least its limits, establish its correlations with other statements
that may be connected with it, and show what other forms of statement it
excludes” (2007: 30-31). Zielinski’s ultimate goal is to collect or put together a
large “body of individual anarchaeological studies” which would constitute a
“variantology of the media,” a media history as a labyrinth consisting of innumerable individual variations (2006: 7).
3.
Recurring Topoi: The Eternal cycle of the Déjà Vu
The third dominant approach of media archaeology is the cyclical view proposed and practiced by Erkki Huhtamo. This method is inspired by the work
of the literary scholar Ernst Robert Curtius, who in his Europäische Literatur
und lateinische Mittelalter (1948) tried to explain the internal life of literary
traditions by means of the concept topos. Deriving from the Greek word for
place, a topos is a (literary) convention or commonplace. Media archaeology,
then, becomes in Huhtamo’s words the “way of studying the typical and commonplace in media history – the phenomena that (re)appear and disappear
and reappear over and over again and somehow transcend specific historical
context” (1996: 300). The result of such an approach is media history as a succession (or eternal return) of media clichés or commonplace views concerning
(new) media, technology and their uses. Unlike Curtius who explains the (re)
appearance of certain topoi by having recourse to Jungian archetypes, Huhtamo stresses that these commonplaces are “always cultural, and thus ideological, constructs.” And he adds: “In the era of commercial and industrial media
culture it is increasingly important to note that topoi can be consciously activated, and ideologically and commercially exploited” (1996: 301). In other
words, the (media) industry with its advertisement strategies and other means
of communication also plays an important role in this cyclical mechanism,
insofar as it can bring to the surface old dreams of annulling time and space
as well as old anxieties about the (supernatural) power of media technologies.
This return of both optimistic and pessimistic commonplaces is at the
core of Huhtamo’s media-archaeological project, which looks back into the
past from the perspective of the present and wants to explain what Tom Gunning described some years earlier as “an uncanny sense of déjà vu” (1991: 185).
Approaching the end of the 20th century, Gunning registers a same kind of mixture of anxiety and optimism around new technologies as Freud observed at
the end of the previous century, when the telephone was bridging the distance
between family members or friends who were separated from one another by
other technologies of modernity, such as the railway or ocean liners. Besides
this ambivalent effect of technology, the idea of returning topos can also be
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applied to more aesthetical or stylistic issues. Here we can think of Gunning’s
own concept of cinema of attractions, which was dominant in the early days
of cinema and then went underground to reappear in a mitigated form in the
“Spielberg-Lucas-Coppola cinema of effects” (Gunning, 1990: 61).
Typical media motifs that can be examined following Huhtamo’s approach
are, for instance, the visceral impact of special effects (from the phantasmagoria to digital 3D), the family as unit for media consumption (from the stereoscope to the television), the courting and therefore distracted spectator
(from the kaleidoscope to the cinématographe), and so on. While investigating
recurring topoi, Huhtamo excavates not only neglected and forgotten media,
but also, in a somehow Foucauldian vein, the discourses in which these media
emerge. Yet Huhtamo is not aiming at a Foucauldian study of discursive formations. His concept of “discursive objects” is closer to the notion of imaginary media, that is, media that did not really exist but were fantasized about
in (written or drawn) discourses. A good example of such a discursive object
is the observiscope, a fantasy device of the 1910s based on the technologies of
the magic lantern, the phonograph, and the telephone, among other things,
and destined to return as topos at the end of the century in the form of the
webcam, video chatting and conferencing, etc.11
In Huhtamo’s own words, his media-archaeological approach “emphasizes cyclical rather than chronological development, recurrence rather than
unique innovation” (1996: 303). However, even if not chronological, such
a cyclical view inevitably leads to a linear reconstitution of (media) history,
implying not only returns but also “obscure continuities,” in a similar fashion
as does the history of ideas to which Foucault precisely opposes his “archaeology of knowledge” (Foucault, 2007: 154). By the way, Huhtamo is fully aware of
his anti-Foucauldian penchant when he states that his approach is “actually
closer to the field characterized by Foucault somewhat contemptuously as the
history of ideas” (1996: 302; emphasis added).
4.
Ruptures and Discontinuities: Foucault’s legacy
In his (new) film history as media archaeology, Elsaesser has been quite sceptical about the cyclical view, more specifically about the return of the “cinema
of attractions”. He warns us against making “too easy an analogy between ‘early’ and ‘postclassical’ cinema” since it might “sacrifice historical distinctions
in favor of polemical intent”; for instance, by overemphasizing the attraction
principle of contemporary feature films in terms of a return to the origins,
one might forget about the important role played by television’s commercial
breaks in the development of (post-classical) narrative cinema (2004: 101).
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
A media-archaeological approach means, according to Elsaesser, that we constantly revise our “historiographic premises, by taking in the discontinuities,
the so-called dead-ends, and by taking seriously the possibility of the astonishing otherness of the past” (2005: 20). This is the general idea behind a “hermeneutics of astonishment” discussed above; a way of interpreting the past
while being astonished by its otherness, instead of looking at it with some
preformed present-day ideas. Furthermore, the past does not exist; it is always
a construction, a selection among many pasts that actually existed or might
have existed. Or, as Elsaesser puts it: “History as archaeology … knows and
acknowledges that only a presumption of discontinuity (in Foucault’s terms,
the positing of epistemic breaks) and of fragmentation (the rhetorical figure
of the synecdoche or the pars pro toto) can give the present access to the past,
which is always no more than a past (among many actual or possible ones)”
(2004: 103). Likewise, Ernst refers to Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge and
his notion of rupture or epistemic break: “The archaeology of knowledge, as
we have learned from Foucault, deals with discontinuities, gaps and absences,
silence and ruptures, in opposition to historical discourse, which privileges
the notion of continuity in order to re-affirm the possibility of subjectivity”
(Lovink, 2003).
Whereas Elsaesser’s media archaeology can be considered a very general
critique of film history as linear development, “either in form of a chronological-organic model (e.g. childhood-maturity-decline and renewal), a chronological-teleological model (the move to ‘greater and greater realism’), or the
alternating swings of the pendulum between (outdoor) realism and (studioproduced) fantasy” (2004: 80), Ernst sees media archaeology as “a critique
of media history in the narrative mode” (Lovink, 2003). According to Ernst,
media historians should stop telling (media) stories – but he immediately confesses that he, himself, sometimes slips back into it. Possible alternatives to
this narrativization of (media) history could be databases, collages, websites
(such as Thomas Weynants’s Early Visual Media), or image libraries (such as
Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne). Maybe, after all, the artist-archaeologists are the
(only) ones who can really dismantle the linear and narrative modes of media
history?
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE MEDIA ARTIST…
Not only does the artistic approach facilitate a multilayered excavation into
time and space more easily than scholarly writing; generally speaking, the
media artist also operates in direct, physical contact with the medium or,
even better, with its materiality. Therefore, the media artist can dig into the
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technological past as well as in the potentialities of old and new media more
straightforwardly than a (traditional) media historian. The media artist then
becomes an example that the new media historian, or media archaeologist,
might wish to follow, even if his/her academic toolbox and framework do not
“allow” him/her to do so.
In a certain sense, media artists are (already) free enough to “describe the
interplay of relations within [the Foucauldian statement] and outside it” as a
proper archaeology of knowledge requires (Foucault, 2007: 32). They are free
from academic boundaries, disciplinary conventions, and methodological
restrictions. The various media-archaeological approaches discussed above
in opposition to one another (seeking the old in the new vs. finding the new in
the old, studying recurring topoi vs. emphasizing discontinuities) can freely be
combined in one and the same artwork, or body of artworks.
Media artists, finally, operate more easily (or more spontaneously) in the
“real” world to make their fellow citizens aware or even critical about media
uses in daily life. A nice example to conclude with is Daniel Jolliffe’s mobile
sculpture One Free Minute, which consists of a huge yellow scone on wheels
with a red phonograph horn mounted on top of it. The sculpture contains
a cell phone to which people can make calls that are broadcast from the
horn: calls are limited to one minute, one free minute of “anonymous public speech.”12 As a popular counterpart, we might think of the UK comedian
Dom Joly who in the 1990s disrupted various public places (restaurants, libraries, silent train compartments, art galleries, etc.) by making loud calls with
his ridiculously giant mobile phone, a sketch that bluntly “underscor[ed] the
incongruity of the private conversation publicly performed” (Hemment, 2005:
33). What both “performances” have in common is that they make very visible
the mobile phone or its apparatus, which according to my opening anecdote
tends to disappear from our visual field. But, like my opening anecdote, it is all
about questioning the impact of new media technologies on our social behavior by recreating such situations in which this impact can be amplified and
therefore criticized. It is media history in practice.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
NOTES
1
I would like to thank Thomas Elsaesser for his constructive feedback on an early
version of this text.
2
FIAF stands for Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film (International Federation of Film Archives).
3
Film archaeologists should be distinguished from media archaeologists in that
they are mostly interested in devices classifiable as “pre-cinematic” and may
be less driven by a Foucauldian notion of archaeology. A good example of a film
archaeologist is Laurent Mannoni who, in the early 1990s, published an “archaeology of cinema” based on extensive archival research (cf. infra). One can also
think of the collector Werner Nekes and his archaeological film series Media
Magica (1986-1996).
4
In his blog Cartographies of Media Archaeology, Jussi Parikka quite similarly
identifies the existence of various historical layers. However, he adds a first layer
consisting of the work of Walter Benjamin and more generally early 20th century
German media theory. Thereafter he lists three layers since the 1980s which differ slightly from my three branches: 1) new historicism and cinema studies; 2)
imaginary media research, variantology, and excavations of hidden and forgotten
media; and 3) media theory (2010).
5
In their introduction to Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications, Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka also refer to C.W. Ceram’s Archaeology of
the Cinema (1965) which they consider as a counter-example: despite the title of
his book, Ceram adopts a rather traditional historical approach which is positivistic in scope (2011: 4).
6
See also chapter 4 in this book.
7
Besides the Finnish scholars Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka (both working outside Finland, in the US and the UK, respectively), there is a strong presence of German scholars who can very schematically be divided between the “Berlin School
of Media Studies” and the “Amsterdam School of Media Archaeology” (founded
by Thomas Elsaesser and adhered to by scholars of various nationalities, among
whom myself). With the risk of generalizing, the Berlin School is marked by a
Kittlerian legacy of materialist media studies, whereas the Amsterdam School is
driven by early cinema studies. For the Dutch context, one should also add the
Imaginary Media project undertaken outside the strict academic institution by
Eric Kluitenberg. In the US, media archaeology is also being practiced and taught
at various universities by new media scholars such as Alexander Galloway (NYU)
and Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (Brown University).
8
A good example of this old-school practice is the genealogy of cinema, where different 19th-century families such as persistence of vision, photography and projection,
are brought together to “give birth” to the first Lumière show of moving images.
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9
It is beyond the scope of this chapter to give a full account of Foucault’s genealogical period, which started with Discipline and Punish (1975, translated in 1977)
and continued with The History of Sexuality (1976, translated in 1977). Since the
1970s, Foucault focused his work on the position of the subject and the complex
power relations at work in society. However, archaeology and genealogy should
not be seen as two separate and incompatible methods; they are rather two sides
of the same coin. Or, as Foucault put it: “Genealogy defined the target and aim of
the work. Archaeology indicates the field in order to do genealogy” (1983).
10
From the perspective of art history, Georges Didi-Huberman (2000) comes to
similar conclusions by considering the image an anachronism, a (temporal)
instance where past and present are intermingled. In such an anachronistic,
non-linear conception of time, the notion of montage is fundamental – as DidiHuberman further develops in his more recent writings and his reading of, for
instance, Harun Farocki’s work (2010).
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11
For more details on the observiscope, see Huhtamo’s caption of the 1911 Life
illustration “We’ll All Be Happy Then” (1996: 296).
12
I would like to thank Tina Bastajian for pointing out this artwork to me. For more
information about its live and site-specific versions, see http://www.danieljolliffe.
ca/ofm/ofm.htm#.
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—. “Professor Ernst’s Take on Media Archaeology.” Blogpost on Cartographies of Media
Archaeology. Jussi Parikka’s Media Archaeology Focused Ideas, Notes and Short Draft
Writings, 22 November 2009. Http://mediacartographies.blogspot.com/2009/11/
professor-ernsts-take-on-media.html. Last access: 25 September 2012.
—. Digital Contagions. A Media Archaeology of Computer Viruses. New York: Peter Lang,
2007.
Sterne, Jonathan. “Out with the Trash. On the Future of New Media.” In Residual
Media, edited by Charles R. Acland, 16-31. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2007.
Strauven, Wanda. “The Observer’s Dilemma. To Touch or Not to Touch.” In Media
Archaeology. Approaches, Applications, and Implications, edited by Erkki Huhtamo
and Jussi Parikka, 148-163. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.
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— (ed.). The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University
Press, 2006.
Wedel, Michael. “Towards an Archaeology of the Early German Music Film.” In Le son
en perspective. Nouvelles recherches / New Perspectives in Sound Studies, edited by
Dominique Nasta and Didier Huvelle, 115-133. Brussels: P.I.E.- Peter Lang, 2004.
—. “Sculpting With Light. Early Film Style, Stereoscopic Vision and the Idea of a
‘Plastic Art in Motion’.” In Film 1900. Technology, Perception, Culture, edited by
Annemone Ligensa and Klaus Kreimeier, 201-223. London: John Libbey, 2009.
Zielinski, Siegfried. Deep Time of the Media. Towards an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2006.
—. Audiovisions. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1999.
—. “Media Archaeology.” CTheory (1996) – http://www.ctheory.net/articles.
aspx?id=42.
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M E D I A A R C H A E o l o G y: w H E R E F I l M H I S T o R y, M E D I A A R T, A N D N E w M E D I A ( c A N ) M E E T
CHapter 3
Media Aesthetics
Dario Marchiori
AN INTRODUCTION TO AESTHETICS: THINkING THROUGH SENSATIONS
Aesthetics as a philosophical discipline arose in the middle of the 18th century, when art came to be defined as an autonomous field of rules, social
practices, and institutions (like museums). For that historical reason, aesthetics is not just “art theory,” as it articulates both more general and more
particular issues, for instance: perception through the senses, the definition
of beauty, judgment of taste, the truth content of an artwork and its relationship to (physical, psychological, economic etc.) reality, the questions of originality and newness; eventually, the definition and the very possibility of “art”
itself, which becomes a serious matter in the course of the 20th century. Such
different perspectives involve changing considerations about the very role of
aesthetics itself, until its apparent diffraction in many art theories. Here, I will
consider aesthetics as a reflexive activity more than a closed “discipline,” and
I will follow the particular path of its encounter with the contemporary questioning of the “media.” Media aesthetics is the activity of thinking about our
experience of contemporary art, questioning the borders between the notion
of “medium” (a means for expression) and “media” (a means for communication), and between art techniques and cultural means.
Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, a German philosopher in the age of
Enlightenment, was the first to use the Latin word Æsthetica to indicate a new
philosophical discipline to which he dedicated a fundamental, yet unfinished,
work (1735 and 1750). He considered aesthetics a sort of “sister” of traditional
(originally Aristotelian) logic that, to him, was unable to approach knowledge
through the senses. He gave a complex, three-fold definition of aesthetics: generally speaking, “the science of knowledge through sensations” (scientia cognitionis sensitivæ); in a more specific way, “the theory of arts” (theoria liberalium
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artium); and, finally, “the capacity to think beautifully” (ars pulchre cogitandi).
Perception, the arts, and beauty were to Baumgarten the main concerns for
aesthetic studies, while afterwards – apart from Kant – sensations were to be
less considered: in the 19th century, aesthetics became to be considered as
philosophy of art, that is, a branch of philosophy considering art as its content
of thought and beauty as its capital issue. While Kant’s aesthetics followed
Baumgarten’s primacy of sensation, Schlegel and Schiller would prefer to
speak of Kunstlehre (“art doctrine”), rather than of “aesthetics”; also Hegel,
the foremost author of modern aesthetics, would try to displace the idea of
aesthetics and to give it a more speculative dimension. But Hegel would also
admit that the word aesthetics “indicates the science of sensations” (1975).
Aesthetics contains sensation in its very etymology, going back to the
ancient Greek aisthànesthai, “to perceive.” Reinventing the classic cataloging
of arts according to the senses – in particular sight vs. hearing – Baumgarten
built up a bridge linking philosophical thought to the senses, trying to find
an answer to the traditional philosophical dualism between thought (rationalism) and sensation (empiricism). Here, I will understand aesthetics as a theoretical inquiry into sensations and thoughts that arise within art experience, be
they linked to art forms and contents, or to a larger context: anthropologic,
psychological, socio-economic, and so on. Coming back to aisthesis’s perceptive dimension,1 aesthetic thought responds to strong emotional stimuli, trying to rationalize them and to make generalizations about their issues.
At the core of our reflection upon media aesthetics I will place the study of
the dialectical links between art theories and human perception, intended as a
historical, changing whole. This way, aesthetics becomes a tool to understand
dialectically the connection between the particular and the general, between
the individual and the society, between the art field and the world; in a similar
way, the aesthetic discourse, when applied to media, starts from considering
the very relation between singular artistic “mediums” and social media as a
whole. “Media aesthetics” as such, as an unmediated link, conveys the ideological drive to abolish any difference between mediums (old, as well as new
ones); on the other side, media aesthetics still remains a particular application of aesthetical thought to mediums and to media, not the only horizon of
contemporary aesthetics.
AESTHETICS’ MODERNITy
Aesthetics has no original essence, only its history defines its concept, which
is deeply connected to the origins of modern art and to the secularization of
religious production of images, sounds, objects, and environments. Historical
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awareness, need for auto-determination, and rupture within its autonomous
tradition are at stake in modern art, whose emergence was linked to aesthetics as a mean to define a new field of practices. Trying to define modern art’s
independence from classical art, historicism is complementary to aesthetics’
research for the common aspects of artistic experience. On the other side,
complementary to the modern notion of history, aesthetics is also linked to
the question of expressing a judgment (of taste, of value, of truth). Kant established that horizon through his conception of aesthetics as judgment of taste.
Influenced by Edmund Burke’s stress on sensitive perception as vehicle for
a shared apprehension of beauty, Kant concludes with the contemplative
nature of the judgment of taste: aesthetic pleasure is famously a “disinterested” one, which is both subjective and universal (Kant, 1911). Aesthetics does
not necessarily judge about particular artworks, but it thinks about and fixes
up the criteria for judgment – that is aesthetics’ normative dimension, which is
neither aprioristic or disciplinary, but a necessary complement to the modern
stress upon historicity.
The question of judgment also informs a scission between two complementary approaches to art reflection: aesthetics and modern criticism.
Whereas aesthetics reflects upon more general questions, like perception,
experience and art itself, criticism is concerned with particular works of art, or
artists. Unlike criticism, the main concern of aesthetics is not judgment and
promotion of works of art; but, because of that link between aesthetics and
criticism, we cannot conceive a completely non-evaluative aesthetics, which
may be simply “nonsense.”2 In postmodern times, while a dismissal of both
“aesthetics” and “art” as hermeneutic categories has brought into a crisis the
definition of criteria for judgment, nothing demonstrates the necessity to give
up the very idea of judgment. Responsive to contemporary dismissal of judgment, Godard’s video installation Vrai/Faux Passeport,3 is mainly an anachronistic affirmation of the necessity of critical choice, structured as it is upon
an oppositional compilation of film excerpts judged as bonus or malus. Literalizing the commercial terminology associated with the DVD, which equates
the Latin term “bonus” with merchandising and economic “good,” Godard
again provides these words with their reflexive connotations. He opposes the
postmodern ideology of the disappearance of criticism; meanwhile, the very
absence of assumed criteria for judgment within the piece seems to signal to
the viewer the necessity to rethink them in a subjective way.
As modern philosophical thought in general, modern aesthetics has
developed another major concern, which is reflexivity, or the drive to reflect
upon itself.4 Aesthetics tries to perceive and debate its own process of thought,
and to comment on it: it may conclude with the impossibility of this attempt,
like in Husserl’s phenomenology, nevertheless it wonders about it. In art’s
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practice, modernism has placed speculative and historical awareness at the
very heart of the artwork, so that the artists themselves reflexively inscribe
aesthetic concerns into the artwork and within its margins (manifestos, critical writings etc.). Romanticism, then modernism worked through aesthetics,
criticism and historicism to introduce reflexivity in art practice. According to
Jacques Rancière, we should even replace the very category of modernity with
his notion of the “aesthetic organization of arts” (régime esthétique des arts):
in a Foucauldian perspective, it is the constellation of principles informing
the field of experiences and practices that makes history (see Foucault, 2002).
Throughout the 20th century, aesthetics focused on the question of art, to
define what art could or should be. Avant-garde solutions aimed to answer in a
militant way, trying to displace the frontiers of art, or to make them “explode”
into real life (see Poggioli, 1986, and Bürger, 1984): American post-WWII neoavant-gardism has tried, according to Harold Rosenberg, to prolong and reinvent that practice, beginning with Action Painting (1972). On the other side,
the theory of modernism, elaborated by Clement Greenberg and both institutionalized and criticized by the “postmodernist” journal October, defined
it as a formalist attempt to preserve art’s borders, through questioning the
specificity of the medium.5 In the 1950s, these two paths of modernity – avantgarde and modernism – established a new frame of reference, one that posited
the interaction between arts and the displacement of art itself. “Neo-avantgardes” are a paradoxical reactivation of radical modern thought, in which
newness depends from looking back to “historical” avant-gardes, ideologically displacing them in a new context, North America, as the new center of
artistic elaboration (see Guilbaut, 1983).
Postmodernism, while conceptualizing modernist theories, tried to introduce an avant-garde dismissal of modernism, covering its own ideological
purposes through anti-ideological, anti-avant-garde statements. Rejecting
modernist and avant-garde radical issues, the postmodern age is the period of
canonization of modernity as an all-embracing (“totalitarian”) socio-political
theory. While modernism is a historical theorization of an artistic reflexive
tendency, postmodernism is mostly cultural and theoretical,6 it is a social theory of art. Both concur to canonize modern art and to unconsciously prepare
something different, a more “neutral,” descriptive, purely immanent category
in art history that will be called contemporary art, which works like a sort of
“present continuous” situated at the same time within and without history,
and going beyond, or denying judgment. Abolishing the distance between art
and society, and the autonomy of aesthetic sphere, in this approach, aesthetics goes back to Baumgarten’s or Kant’s science of sensations. Media determinates art and society, so that it seems to be paradoxical to speak about
authors, genres, movements anymore: literal postmodernism should recog-
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nize contemporary “de-defined” art in Mr. Nobody’s street art, that amazes
the kids in the streets, not within the white cube of a museum or even in the
multi-centered net art, that are yet submitted to traditional artistic institutions, public and authorship. If art dissolves in everyday life, it becomes totally
immanent, changing aesthetic reflection into cultural studies: that question
of the “death of art” accompanies the developing of modern aesthetics, since
Hegel to Adorno, while developing in aggressive conflagrations between art
and society as in avant-garde thought or in Kracauer’s (1995) and Benjamin’s
(1979) reflections upon the “aestheticization” of everyday life, and the decline
of art experience in mass practices, like movies. From this point of view, contemporary technology-driven art practices realize the long path of reification
in modern art and thought.
Questioning medium specificity on the one hand and intermedial conflagration of the field of art on the other are the two poles of modernism. That
apparent paradox is at stake, for instance, in Michael Snow’s all-encompassing
work: attentive to the specificity of every medium he uses, he is able to make
ideas circulate from one medium to another, creating fluxes of thought which
are among the most accurate, intelligent and ironic contemporary practices.
The postmodernist version of media art, as opposed to the supposed modernist “enclosure” within the medium, selects and restores one of those modernist poles in order to create its own tradition, the history of media aesthetics as
an anti-modernist technological convergence of arts. So, modernist dialectical heterogeneity between “mediums” is rejected to celebrate the integrative
path of “media” to join a sort of neo-classical homogeneity. At the same time,
postmodernism reshapes the contemporary art field: the very hypothesis of an
aesthetics of media is born from a discursive field that opposes modernist and
postmodernist arguments, the exploration of a single medium’s properties
and the hybridizing reinvention of different media in a new whole. The reflection on – and celebration of – technology was to be the core of this change,
from Marshall McLuhan onwards.7 The conditions for the possibility of thinking about “media” had to be linked to a new faith in the “extension” of human
body and senses: as McLuhan would put it, a new “global village” is born, one
in which media strongly determine the subject’s conditions of existence as
much as they constitute liberating processes.
“MEDIUMS” VERSUS MEDIA
Before analyzing the interactions between aesthetic tradition and the reflection upon media, we ought to introduce the very question of “medium” itself.
A medium is an intermediary, a tool for transmission and expression. In the
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artistic tradition, it identifies the material or technique used by the artist (oil,
pastel, marble, lithography, video, etc.), which can also structure the main
genres or singular arts (painting, sculpture, film, music, etc.). The term media
indicates the collusion of different communication and information tools in a
new signifying whole. At first, it was intended that media were devoted to widespread fruition: they were mass media like journalism, cinema, radio, and
television. Mainly thanks to McLuhan’s propositions, “media” came to define
the whole system of intermediation tools artificially constructed by men. At
present, the term knows both a multimedia extension and a technology-driven
restriction: in dominant discourse, it identifies the integrated circulation of
data between different technologies, as the computer does when we consider
it as a multi-media “platform.” Media are deeply linked to modern technologies of mass communication, like radio, television, and the Internet.8 In modern times, the search for rapid means of transportation after the Industrial
Revolution has radically changed our perception of the world (Schivelbusch,
1979); art itself participates in a reinvention of life structured around the need
for mediation and circulation of people, merchandise and data (see Kern,
1983, and Crary, 1990). Journalism and information tools (newspapers, TV,
the Internet) as mass media are ways of mediating and transmitting contents
between people, and they belong to modern circulation processes. Modernity has promoted the transparency of the medium (for different purposes:
economic circulation, quick communication of messages), while modernism
has tried to make the public aware of the artistic medium, through the artist’s
reflection on the materiality of his/her expressive work.
The first and foremost theoretician of “media” has been Marshall McLuhan. Starting with The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), McLuhan considered electronic media as the major modern revolution. In his view the contemporary world
is structured as a “global village”: technological tools are a whole that informs
the entire society and even the psychology of the individual, through a “visual
homogenizing of experience.” To McLuhan, the introduction of movable type
was the great transformation from a composed sensorial experience to the
dominance of vision. More generally, McLuhan will consider that the human
body and mind are both “amputated” and “extended” by media (1964). Media
shape our environment and our perception, becoming more important than
the content they convey, which may also be another, older medium: that is the
meaning of McLuhan’s famous formula “the medium is the message.”
An operative distinction will be maintained here between “mediums”
as the plural anglicized form of “medium,” and “media” as a new signifying
whole (also employed as a singular noun).9 The dialectics between mediums and media in contemporary aesthetics realizes the “double character”
of art according to Adorno, that is, the “immanence” of its participation in
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modern, capitalist, bourgeois society on one hand, and the “autarchy” of the
artwork (1999: 310), its monad-like self-closeness as a separate field, on the
other. At the same time, while the unmediated affirmation of media aesthetics as a homogeneous field of practices is establishing a new art paradigm,
it simultaneously abolishes internal differences, and simply skips the dialectics between art and technology. Also, we encounter another founding split in
the very definition of media aesthetics: we can consider it as a way of thinking
about media art, or we can question the sensations linked to contemporary
media and multimedia as technologies (TV, computer, mobile, the Internet,
GPS navigator, iPod, etc.), as well as the place for subjective perception within
the structural effects of media-integrated systems. This way, we again encounter the opposition between art and the world, between artistic devices and
socio-economic reality, which has been fundamental throughout the modern
age. This very opposition is one of the main issues for media art aesthetics.
On the other hand, we can also wonder about the possibility of reconciliation between art and the world, a sort of return back, in contemporary age, to
a pre-modern idea of art as technical skill organized like a “craft.” Among the
modern mediums there were some that already operated following industrial
methods, such as photography, film, and television. Their inclusion in the
art field influenced and reconfigured art itself, eventually shaping new media
technology’s domination of traditional art forms and replicating media’s hold
on everyday life. For the most part, contemporary artists are more concerned
with the articulation and shifting between different mediums than with the
expression through single mediums. Media become their primary tools: media
is the medium. Media art manages transformations, passages, compositions,
and blurs between mediums as its materials, and it encourages us to wonder
about the status and effects of these new significant and sensitive circulations
through media. Circulations can be dialectical, polarized, crashing, mystical,
fluid, and so on: the processes at stake within the artwork and between it and
the art world, or the society, will be the main vehicle for expression, meaning
and interpretation, and the real issue at stake in the artist’s work.
The split between artistic mediums and media recalls the polarity within
aesthetics itself between social and artistic “truth”: media aesthetics reconsiders this opposition in a new, more conciliated way, which tends to reactivate
reflections upon technique as an ontological (neo-Heideggerian) or anthropologic (as in Bernard Stiegler’s studies about the permanent link between
mankind and techniques) horizon. That may be media aesthetics’ main
ideological danger, too: in order to be true aesthetics, media aesthetics has
to reflect upon the various forms of interactions between singular mediums
and to define new media configurations as such; at the same time, media
aesthetics has to reflect critically upon its own ideological implications, as
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the reflexive dimension remains consubstantial to aesthetics. Up until now,
despite many attempts, media studies and aesthetics still remain two separate
fields, communicating along ideological, predetermined paths (this seems
to be slightly different in North American thought, where synthesis is more
advanced, although the consequences are scarcely investigated). The challenge for contemporary media aesthetics is to make those two different traditions converge, while testing its own legitimacy.
During the debates in the 1960s and 1970s on the liberating potential of
video and television, the utopian challenge was one of appropriating technology as a tool for sharing. Media were to be intermediaries that should enable
more intensive communication. That was one of those possible convergences of media and aesthetics, reactivated in the 1990s by the Internet’s social
impact on our contemporary world. Media as extended interaction among
people, communication as the creation of local/global/“glocal” communities:
this avant-garde utopia put the autonomy of the art world in crisis, trying to
dissolve it in a revolutionary everyday practice. But, as happened to every artistic avant-garde movement, another possible issue was there, under the social
utopia: the simple transformation of the art world, of its concept and its economic structures. In the contemporary age of media, the modern tradition of
art is exposed to the risk of being determined by technological progress and to
lose its relative autonomy from social and economic totality while dismissing
the very idea of utopia as an old-fashioned modern issue. Media art is the very
place for this paradox: reification of the artwork and demand for artistic status
are both contained in its very label.
According to postmodern aesthetics, the media-driven world becomes
more and more virtual, mainly through digital media: true or not, this statement brings new ideological issues. But we all know the material and economic dimension of digital data storage, when we lose or break a DVD, a hard disk,
or a laptop. New media are not virtual ones, they are material tools embedded in our contemporary, late-capitalist economy: fragile, more and more
difficult to repair or to modify, subject to technological (economic) rules, etc.
They are intended to make reality virtual, to make the support fragile by pushing it toward an aesthetics of immateriality. It is an old story: media support
tends to efface itself, favoring its functions: pragmatic, economic, fictional,
aesthetic. Media transparence and the immediacy of communication are economic and ideological drives of the modern age, but even in the contemporary “flexible” media world, reality itself still opposes its materiality. Abstract
control systems, video surveillance, or long-distance video-directed bombs
are media that seem to replace reality with simulacra. However, despite Jean
Baudrillard’s theorizations, simulacra cannot abolish reality, as we ought to
admit when “facing the extreme,” such as contemporary wars and their physi-
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
cal consequences – human and environmental victims; they may only seek to
alter our perception of it through virtualization of the information, through
the “anesthetic aesthetic” of the virtual. Critical media art often reworks and/
or deconstructs the very idea of an immediacy of pure simulacra, embedding
geopolitical data in their material configurations and in their perceptive and
sensorial effects.
To summarize, McLuhan studied the converging, superimposing and
hybridizing transformations that make mediums interact in a media-driven
progress: mass media became simply “the media.” Adorno and Horkheimer
(2002), while considering mass media too unilaterally, as a totalitarian whole,
were right in recognizing the new Kulturindustrie power: cultural industry,
while changing its characters and its power, still defines our very horizon, and
art itself as a relatively autonomous field of practice has been integrated in
the large “global village” of media and in the extended and integrated “society
of the spectacle” (Debord, 2004). Will aesthetics itself, as a discrete field of
thought, still be possible in a world that has changed, reducing artworks to
other objects, abolishing every separateness of the art field, just exploiting the
exotic appeal of its uniqueness or exceptionality to make money out of it: in
a word, the reification of art? Is aesthetics without art still possible? Studying aesthetics’ perceptual issues from the perspective of immanence in the
media world may be the only way to find art’s relevance and urgency within
the contemporary world. Or, we may rather discover the importance of its inactuality. The importance of phenomenological aesthetics in our times,10 often
linked to a socio-political reading of the artwork, seems to be symptomatic of
a renewal of an aesthetic discourse centering on audience perception.
DEFINING MEDIA ART
The monolithic notion of “media” has to be revised in a more complex articulation between different mediums and a critical study of new media configurations. Due to its hybrid nature, media aesthetics should not be considered a
coherent field. As long as the question of understanding artistic phenomena
is at stake, the terminology we use or invent can help to positively describe new
configurations. Inventing terms for media aesthetics applied to contemporary
art allows for an immanent perspective on media art, from the very gesture of
describing to more theoretical conclusions. Let us consider some examples
of useful terms to understand media displacements, evolutions, and transformations.
Remediation is the historical process of transposition of one medium’s
contents and forms into another medium, as for instance the reinvention of
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other mediums’ content by digital media, or the television “remediating” film,
theater, literature or radio (see Bolter and Grusin, 2000). Intermediality can
be defined as the dialogue and circulation between mediums, either within
the artwork (in multimedia artworks) or between artworks (like in Mauricio
Kagel’s practice, adapting similar questions and contents to music, theater,
radio, film, and video) (see Higgens, 1967). Intermediality explores the space
and time “in between,” following what Raymond Bellour has defined, in visual
terms, “the in-between-images” (“l’entre-images”) (2002). Inframediality can
be employed to define the invention spreading at the boundary between mediums, or within the folds of the singular medium:11 not the back-and-forth
between mediums (as with intermediality), but the figures and processes
materialized through their collapsing, as with the paradoxical use of theatrical
space in Méliès’s films, which transcend into magic thanks to the film-specific
art of stop motion, or, considering performance’s original drive towards immediacy, by using several mediums and collapsing them in a unique experience,
as in Warhol’s EPI, or Exploding Plastic Inevitable performances (1966-1967).
Video art happened to be particularly able to throw different and heterogeneous layers into a whole, which can be simply a mirror of mixed media
practices, or an attempt to make them collapse in an ecstatic new whole, as
in Aldo Tambellini’s TV performances of the 1960s. As for multimedia, it indicates the synesthetic or reflexive effects of overlapping media, developing the
idea of mixed media practice into a more homogeneous way.12 While mixing
and media hybridization both allow the constitution of a new complex whole,
transmediality identifies the differential drive before and beyond the artwork
rather than focusing on the result. A new configuration can emerge by applying certain elements of a medium’s tradition in new ways; this can reinvent a
medium’s meaning and sometimes even its very name. That can be produced
with or without a qualitative change: extended media defines the latter option
(e.g. the passage from simple video monitor to the very idea of installation),
while expanded media refers to the first one (e.g. the multi-projectors experimental film screening).13
Giving a name to phenomena can lead one to question the very status
of art, its very possibility: since Marcel Duchamp, there is a strong tradition
in contemporary art of artists working in that direction. Nelson Goodman’s
question “When is art?” (1978)14 participates in the displacement of aesthetics’ main concern toward the institutional question (see Dickie, 1974), which
became more and more crucial in what began to be called the “art world”
(Danto, 1964) of the 1960s and 1970s.15 In the 1960s, a decade articulated
between self-referential autonomy and expanded practices of art, the neoavant-gardes tried to reinvent or go beyond the art field. Their art considered
its institutional definition, defying and reworking its borders – for instance,
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raising questions about the “white cube” (O’Doherty, 1999) of museum space.
Avant-garde and neo-avant-garde attempts to go beyond art are followed in
contemporary art by an ulterior movement: to reinvent art practice through
new media, or new interactions between old media. For instance, film projection in most gallery exhibitions transforms itself in digital video projections
within a luminous space: a totally different apparatus and way of reception,
yet maintaining the principle of projection. Actualizing the avant-garde project, Nicolas Bourriaud’s “relational aesthetics” (2002) goes beyond the art
field, analyzing aesthetics from the perspective of social theory and practice.
Nevertheless, most of the time and despite its statements, media art mirrors
the media world while legitimizing itself as a cultural object through the use
of the “art” label, thereby instituting a new, homogeneous environment: while
often denied by theoreticians, media art is still considered art, which allows
the artist to make a living out of it.
The hypothesis of media aesthetics arises when work made within different and relatively separate mediums blurs into unique signifying and perceptional circulation (a process that digital media accelerate). For instance,
when theater goes beyond the fourth-wall rule and invades the spectator’s
space, like in Living Theater’s or Odin Teatret’s practice. Since the 1950s the
happening, then performance and installation radically changed the channels of perception, so that every work of art starts to define its own devices:
the media disposition and organization (the “apparatus” or, in French, dispositif) itself may become the main cue within the artwork. Installations as
a tool for participatory art, opened the art field to contemporary immersive,
interactive, behavior-driven media practice.16 Medium specificity or media
hybridizing become processes that go beyond the exposition of the work on
artwork’s materiality, as well as the fact that they are no longer limited to the
technological interaction of devices. So, reflexivity was displaced in favor of
conceptualizing the organizational and material processes of the artwork, and
the institutional questioning of the limits of an artwork itself.
A new configuration, a pluralist stream of artistic inventions, are at stake
in 1960s modernism, whose field of practices opposes the exacerbated enclosure within medium specificity to the synergetic conflagration of different
mediums (what we called expanded media). In both cases, modernist hypermediality is an attempt to go through and beyond the medium, in order to reach
perceptional overload and to let art explode into life for radical transformation: art faces its own “de-definition.” Within this field of tensions, the drive
for immediacy, to go beyond the very notion of a medium, turns out to be a very
modernist one, complementary to the exploration of medium’s specificities,
and equally reflexive. Postmodernism, as an avant-garde ideology, has appropriated this anti-medial tension in a militant way, creating and dismissing a
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frozen notion of “modernism” as medium-enclosed art. In such a context,
video seems to have been the main actor to define, and interpret, what we call
“media” art. The transfers from one medium to another and the links between
them, as well as its ambiguous relationship to television as a mass medium
and a mass media gave video a very particular place, radicalizing the similar
ambiguity we could have found in cinema. While video allowed the permanence and economic negotiability of ephemeral events such as performances,
it was also very important to sustain what has become the main form of the
contemporary artwork: the installation.
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After Duchamp, almost everything could become an artwork (De Duve, 1989),
a process that could not work without requiring new justifications. Of late,
new rules are in effect: for instance, it is increasingly recommended that an
artwork blur its own boundaries. At the same time, we must also recognize
that blurring genres or techniques is a very old practice in the field of art, not a
privilege of postmodern times; even the avant-garde advocated going beyond
art’s limits and to implicate life. Contemporary art seems capable of integrating every possible element of contemporary life within an artwork or its
process, thereby reconciling the opposition between sensation and thought
in a new aesthetic whole. Moreover, contemporary art tries to go beyond the
very idea of the artwork: participative strategies try to open up the experience
to interaction, seeming to give to the viewer the power to modify the artwork
through his/her attitudes. Media aesthetics can encourage us to wonder about
how the disappearance of the artist and of the artwork may also imply the end
of art as defined by modernity. We may be returning to a reframing of artmaking as a craft.
The contemporary media artist is mostly determined by socio-economic
strategies of transmitting data and goods, but his/her very existence as an artist has survived the postmodern attacks against the art world, and s/he is even
positioned as the main agent of the art industry. As Andy Warhol understood
very quickly, an artist’s name has become a trademark in contemporary art
world: what fills museums is the very name of heroes such as Michelangelo or
Matisse, Picasso or Monet. On one hand, big museums seem to have become
multinational industries that use their media (artworks, networks, interactive
websites, scholarships, and other financial aids, advertisements and merchandising) to create sellable art worlds; on the other, small museums proliferate
or survive, linked to “local” issues, although many are deserted. Exceptions to
this polarized trend are even more noticeable as “resistant” sites, trying to pre-
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
serve and to share traditions, the necessity of which is reinforced by their dismissal in present times. But when we consider general trends, thinking about
big museums themselves as “media” that organize cultural fluctuations, we
see an economic organization that is split between the dense material existence (or passive resistance) of traditional art objects and the lighter materiality of the new technologies employed to circulate them. The museum space
is reinvented and reshaped by these economic tendencies, and tries to derive
some energetic tension and passage from them.
Passages (Krauss, 1977), hybridizing, differentiating practices (as described
in a theoretical way by Deleuze and Guattari’s (2004) notions of “rhizome” and
“deterritorialization”) have become the new rule of contemporary art, rendering
obsolete the ancient terminology even in order to simply describe an artwork.
The very question of how to define an “artwork” has been at stake in a radical
art practice from Duchamp up until conceptual and imaginary artworks; today,
this question seems to be answered by emphasizing the processual nature of
art, or its globally networked character (for instance, net art17). Art consists of
dematerialized flows of information, and is often simultaneously embedded in
social life and linked to the art market and the surviving, relocating “art world.”
But media aesthetics should avoid falling into the trap of defining the artwork
in ways that make it seem “custom-tailored” for academic theory. It is not by
chance that postmodernism is first of all a theoretical approach, as I said earlier in this chapter. Against an abstract, “virtual” characterization of the media
artwork, the notions that we have recalled or introduced here are simply the
new media material tools, reconfiguring art’s discursive field.
Media aesthetics is thus to be understood as a theoretical reflection on
thoughts and sensations linked to the articulations between mediums and to
media as a whole. Such a definition is both a challenge and a promise. Often,
it is also an ideological hypothesis, one that is bounded in technological faith.
The typical overview of media aesthetics generally has to choose between a
historical survey of different media (music, dance, theater, painting, sculpture, film, video, etc.) and a very partial panorama of art history trying to find
precursors of multimedia practices, starting with Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk
and culminating in happenings, Fluxus, performance, installation, and the
like. Media hybridization and interactivity that create “open” artworks18 are
the main ideological values needed in order to draw up a progressive story,
something that should be understood as a new discipline’s attempt to discover its own tradition and to embed itself in the history of aesthetics.
When taken in as a real theoretical proposition, the “contemporary” paradigm, in opposition to the “modern,” conveys the idea of a “co-presence of
heterogeneous temporalities”19 in a new configuration, as already expressed
by Ernst Bloch’s definition: “Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen” (the “con-
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temporaneity of the non-contemporaneous,” which referred to the – dangerous and violent – coexistence of civilization and barbaric tensions in 1930s
Germany). Every technological practice seems to be redoubled by an attempt
to use it artistically, and/or to enlarge its uses to make people participate more
freely in it. If contemporary art is no longer concerned with subordination,
signification, and composition, but rather with “differentiation and coordination,”20 media art, as a possible object of media aesthetics, seems to present
a new constellation in which heterogeneous media are functioning together
smoothly. Net art, determined as it is by the technological use of digital technologies and the Internet, seems to achieve exactly this sort of synthesis. It
allows interaction between different media, while at the same time it reduces
all of them to a homogenous digital matter: the computer platform and the
World Wide Web. On the other hand, contemporary art may also propose
new forms and configurations rather than new apparatuses, working through
the medium to achieve new (and sometimes very old) configurations: think,
for instance, of Mark Lewis’ latest video explorations that rediscover simple
Lumière-like “views” and multilayered “magic” works inspired by Méliès. Just
as with many other contemporary artists, his work is somewhat split between
medium-specific art and multimedia installations.21 As if film, the least “artistic” medium in modernity (as perceived within the field of art, at least), were
still a specific apparatus, one that resists definitive appropriation within the
museum’s spatiality and temporality. Removed from the black box and placed
within the white cube, it becomes something different, something subject to
another circulation of time and space, like in home multimedia platforms
(see Philippe Dubois’ contribution to chapter 9 in this book). Media aesthetics must consider different degrees of specificity between artworks and mediums/media in order to understand the artworks’ logic.
The main task for an aesthetics of media should be to consider and study
medium, media, multimedia, intermedia, and the like as primary elements
in artistic practice and/or in the contemporary perception of our cultural
environment (media culture, a re-elaboration of the notion of “visual culture”
(Mirzoeff, 2002)). It should encourage us to think, raise questions and try to
respond to the (utopian or desperate? happy or terrifying?) hypothesis about
the collusion between art and media, or between media and the world. Media
aesthetics is a paradoxical conjunction of heterogeneous fields that the contemporary age tries to explore and understand. How could the double bind
between aesthetics and art survive the presumed, newly proclaimed “death
of art” in the media world? Art is probably not dead, but aesthetics seems
to return to its origins, to “sensations” and a more general “perceptional”
wondering, linked to sociological, scientific, and technological studies. This
situation has to be explored, understood, and critically reinvented by contem-
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
porary media aesthetics, starting from immanent analysis but articulating it
with aesthetic and art tradition.
Contemporary media art shapes heterogeneous co-presence. But why
should we consider contemporary artists who are “still” working within singular mediums as not “current”? Our art field is split between media-driven
immanence and anachronistic work within singular mediums. Some great
artists articulate both aspects, enclosing more general, social concerns about
our media-driven world in medium specificity. But the very idea of “contemporary” art permits one to put forward the idea of a pluralist (a dimension
which was already polemically present in postmodernism) as well as differential/oppositional way of thinking about the art field. Painters or sculptors
still exist, and they may be also good ones. Contemporary aesthetics cannot
limit itself to new technologies only; it has to maintain its freedom to think
about all art objects, non-art, and perhaps even the disappearance of art,
which was at stake from the very beginning in Hegel’s aesthetics. Aesthetics
remains above all a speculative activity, which is initially separate from praxis
and marked by this very separation. As Adorno would have put it, the “proper”
art field should be separated from society, but this very separation is haunted
by the nostalgia of reconciliation within a new, utopian world. Art’s survival as
an autonomous field of practices is deeply linked to that fundamental critical
position in relation to reality (which is not simply the exhibition of a political
idea that the artist assumes to be shared by his/her audience). As the historical process of “modern interpenetration” (moderne Verfransung) invested the
arts22, contemporary media aesthetics should reconsider that process in a
context in which media circulation has become the main material for artistic
work, creating new perceptional and artistic qualities. On that basis, aesthetic
thinking is always questioning contemporary media, be they artistic or not;
eventually, the reconsideration of the ancient question of aisthesis establishes
a new starting point for media art aesthetics as a diffracted set of practices.
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NOTES
1
A symptom of the actuality of this issue is Jacques Rancière’s recent book (2011).
2
Theodor Adorno: “The idea of a value-free aesthetics is nonsense” (1999: 262).
3
Made for his 2006 exhibition Voyage(s) en utopie at the Pompidou Center in Paris.
4
According to Jürgen Habermas (1987), it was Hegel who introduced philosophical
reflexivity, so founding modern thought.
5
See Clement Greenberg’s possibly most famous essay, “Modernist Painting”
(1995; originally written in 1960).
6
The very structure of Fredric Jameson’s Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of
Late Capitalism (1991) seems to be symptomatic of that issue: the first and the
second chapters, which are the more general ones, are devoted respectively to
culture and theory, while the study of each particular art form’s postmodern condition comes logically later.
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7
In doing so, the North American debate on media joins the European cultural
reflection on technique from the first half of the 20th century; see, for instance,
Maldonado (1979). However, while European thought has to be understood
within a debate where nature and culture, and mankind and technology, opposed
each other, in the 1960s, a new technological faith came together with a more
pragmatist account of technological transformations.
8
For Lev Manovich, whom I will not follow here, such a change leads to the replacement of the very notion of “medium” with a more recent word: “software” (2001).
9
It is the choice made by, among others, Rosalind Krauss (2000).
10 See the decisive little book by Daniel Birnbaum (2005).
11 For this notion, it is useful to rethink Bellour’s medium-centered notion of “infraimage” (2002), originating through the unfolding of the images, for instance in
Thierry Kuntzel’s videos.
12 Bob Goldstein seems to have invented the notion to promote an artistic event in
Southampton (1966).
13 A seminal work on media aesthetics is Youngblood (1970). One should remember
that Youngblood introduced the important notion of “expanded cinema” not
only to speak about multiple projections but to reflect upon the human condition
in the new technological environment described by McLuhan, starting from the
“metamorphosis in human perception” introduced by the movies, and following
its multiple expansions and the changes of human perception.
14 While Goodman answers with a theory of artwork as an object that “functions
symbolically,” I assume his reflection is a symptomatic one, questioning art’s
borders to refute the institutional solution.
15 Danto distanced himself from Dickie’s arguments, arguing his own intention was
to understand the conditions of possibility of an artwork, while Dickie searched
for reasons for its actuality.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
16 For an account of this approach in contemporary digital art, see Aziosmanoff
(2010).
17 See the presentation made by Vuk Cosic at the conference Net Art Per Se (Trieste,
21-22 May 1996). According to Cosic, this particular art practice ended in 1998
(conference at the Banff Centre for the Arts). See also Weibel and Gerbel (1995).
18 The paradigm of the “open artwork” was established by Umberto Eco (1989). See
also Klotz (1960).
19 Rancière (2000: 37), while speaking about the modern “esthetic régime of arts,” a
label that I consider even more adapted to contemporary situation of arts.
20 As proposed by Vancheri (2009).
21 http://www.marklewisstudio.com/.
22 See the 1967 essay “The Art and The Arts” in Adorno (2003).
REFERENCES
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Adorno, Theodor. Can One Live after Auschwitz? A Philosophical Reader. Edited by Rolf
Tiedemann. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003.
—. Aesthetic Theory. Edited by Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann. London and New
York: Continuum, 1999.
—, and Max Horkheimer. “The Culture Industry. Enlightenment as Mass Deception.”
In Dialectic of Enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002.
Aziosmanoff, Florent. Living Art. L’art numérique. Paris: CNRS, 2010.
Baumgarten, Alfred Gottlieb. Meditationes philosophicæ de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus, 1735.
—. Æsthetica, 1750.
Bellour, Raymond. L’Entre-Images. Photo. Cinéma. Vidéo. Paris: La Différence, 2002.
—. L’Entre-Images 2. Mots, Images. Paris: P.O.L., 1999.
Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Film
Theory and Criticism, edited by Gerald Mast and Marshall Cohen, 848-870. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1979.
Birnbaum, Daniel. Chronology. New York: Lukas & Sternberg, 2005.
Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation. Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000.
Bourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics. Dijon: les presses du réel, 2002.
Bürger, Peter. Theory of the Avant-Garde. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1984.
Crary, Jonathan. Techniques of the Observer. On Vision and Modernity in the 19th century.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990.
Danto, Arthur C. “The Art World.” The Journal of Philosophy 61 (1964) 19: 571-584.
Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. London: Rebel Press, 2004.
MEDIA AESTHETICS
De Duve, Thierry. Au nom de l’art. pour une archéologie de la modernité. Paris: Minuit,
1989.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. The Anti-Oedypus. London and New York: Continuum, 2004.
Dickie, George. Art and the Aesthetic. An Institutional Analysis. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974.
Eco, Umberto. The Open Work. Translated from the 4th Italian edition, 1976. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989.
Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. 2nd, revised edition. New York and
London: Routledge, 2002.
Goodman, Nelson. Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978.
Greenberg, Clement. The Collected Essays and Criticism IV. Modernism with a Vengeance
(1957-1969), Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995.
Guilbaut, Serge. How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art. Chicago: University of Chi-
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cago Press, 1983.
Habermas, Jürgen. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Twelve Lectures. Cambridge: Polity, 1987.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Aesthetics. Lectures on Fine Art. Compiled by Heinrich
Gustav Hotho, 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.
Higgins, Dick. “Statement on Intermedia.”. In Dé-coll/age, number 6, edited by Wolf
Vostell. Frankfurt and New York: Typos Verlag and Something Else Press, 1967.
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 1991.
Kant, Immanuel. Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgement. Translated by James Creed
Meredith. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1911.
Kern, Stephen. The Culture of Space and Time. 1880-1918, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1983.
Klotz, Volker. Geschlossene und offene Form im Drama. Munich: Hanser, 1960.
Kracauer, Siegfried. The Mass Ornament. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1995.
Krauss, Rosalind. A Voyage to the North Sea. Art in the Age of Post-Medium Condition.
New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000.
—. Passages in Modern Sculpture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977.
Maldonado, Tomás. Tecnica e cultura. Il dibattito tedesco fra Bismarck e Weimar. Milan:
Feltrinelli, 1979.
Manovich, Lev. “Post-media Aesthetics.” In (Dis)locations, edited by Zentrum für Kunst
und Medientechnologie (ZKM). DVD-Rom. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2001. Also
available at http://www.manovich.net.
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media. The Extensions of Men. New York: McGraw
Hill, 1964.
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—. The Gutenberg Galaxy. The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1962.
—, and Quentin Fiore. The Medium Is the Massage. An Inventory of Effects. London:
Penguin Books, 1967.
Mirzoeff, Nicholas (ed.). The Visual Culture Reader. London and New York: Routledge,
2002.
O’Doherty, Brian. Inside the White Cube. The Ideology of the Gallery Space. Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1999.
Poggioli, Renato. The Theory of the Avant-Garde. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1968.
Rancière, Jacques. Aisthesis. Scènes du régime esthétique des arts. Paris: Galilée, 2011.
—. Le partage du sensible. Paris: La fabrique, 2000.
Rosenberg, Harold. The De-definition of Art. Action Art to Pop to Earthworks. New York:
Horizon Press, 1972.
Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. The Railway Journey. New York: Urizen, 1979.
Vancheri, Luc. Cinémas contemporains. Du film à l’installation. Lyon: Aléas, 2009.
Weibel, Peter, and Karl Gerbel. Welcome in the Net World. Proceedings of @rs electronica 1995 in Linz, Austria. Vienna and New York: Springer Verlag, 1995.
Youngblood, Gene. Expanded Cinema. New York: Dutton, 1970.
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CHapter 4
Media Art and the
Digital Archive1
Cosetta G. Saba
This chapter aims to introduce an epistemological reflection on the concept
of “digital archiving” applied to media art. If the latter appears for many reasons to constitute something “transient and un-archivable” (Ernst, 2004 and
2010), it is because it presents itself ontologically in an exponentially complex
form. In other words, the aim is to underline the problems (theoretical and
methodological) that media art poses to digital archiving. In order to keep
media artworks accessible to contemporary and future users, their inclusion
in digital archives is desirable. Digital archives can support the fundamental
function of the cultural conservation of these works – understood as a process that not only documents and preserves the technological and material
dimensions of these complex works, but also the cultural contexts in which
they emerged and were seen. However, this is by no means a neutral process
– as will become clear, the digital archiving of complex media artworks has
a profound influence on their appearance and interpretation. Therefore, this
chapter carefully investigates the epistemological implications of the digital
archiving of media art.
First it is important to remember that, with respect to media art, the audiovisual component is one of the possible elements but not necessarily always
the most important. Media artworks often take the form of complex installations, combining audiovisual components with sculptures, objects, and
photographic components, amongst others. How is it possible to “archive,”
for example, works such as the complex, sculptural installations Human Being
(2009) by Pascale Marthine Tayou and Experimentet (2009) by Nathalie Djurberg,2 or the “dissipative”3 sculptures of Cetacea (2005; 2010) from the DRAWING RESTRAINT 9 series by Matthew Barney?
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Notwithstanding the complexity of many media artworks it is possible to
establish a hierarchy between the elements that make up complex installations. If the audiovisual dimension is prominent, it can show itself according
to a variety of typological modes such as: (multi)media installation with video,
multichannel video installation, single-channel video installation, projective
video installation, moving image installation, film installation, video sculpture, time-based installation, and interactive installation.4
What should be the procedure for the digital archiving of a film installation such as Disappearance at Sea (Cinemascope), 1996, by Tacita Dean, of the
multichannel installation The Lightning Testimonies (2007) by Amar Kanwar,5
or of the CREMASTER Cycle (2002-2003)6 exhibition by Matthew Barney ? How
can we use the benefits of digital archiving for the future preservation and
accessibility of these works without severely compromising their appearance
and meaning?
Creating a digital archive of media artworks potentially entails a reduction of the works’ complexity. It is necessary to examine the complexity of
media art and understand how the problems that arise in the digital archiving
of such works can be resolved. From the viewpoint of information technology, digital archiving is the development of a “digital library,” an expression
that corresponds to an intrinsically multidisciplinary complex notion,7 which
defines a system of constitution, order, management, and long-term preservation of “rich digital content” according to “specialized functionality” targeted
at “user communities.”
Developing a digital library involves a digital library system (software
architecture concerning the specific functions required by a specific type
of digital library) and a digital library management system (software infrastructure that produces and administrates a digital library system made up
of all the functions considered fundamental for digital libraries and that provides for the integration of additional software in relation to specialized or
advanced functions).8 Here, the definition of digital library will be limited to
the archiving process and aimed at stressing a methodology that, allowing for
the convergence of interdisciplinary skills, is able to reproduce the semantics
of a complex application domain such as that of media art. This starts from
the “conversion” procedures (“translation” and “transformation”) of nondigital artwork into digital objects (or “information objects”). This conversion
can only represent the complexity of the artwork in the form of a documentary
trace.
The method of such an archiving practice is related to the notion of digital library, which is in its own way an “abstract system that consists of both
physical and virtual components.”9 It has to refer to the organization of
contents10 (or, more precisely, the repository of contents, ontologies, classi-
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
fication schemes, and so on), by creating parameters of functional configuration (formats, user profile and document/data model etc.). The contents are
built through the conversion process of physical objects (also in the case of
graphic, photographic, or cinematographic documentary traces of conceptual
artworks) into digital objects that, as mentioned before, transform these analogue originals into documents kept in the archive. The documentary character
induced by the digitalization process must be able to translate the inherent
complexity of media artworks.
wAyS OF ARCHIVING: RELATIONS BETwEEN “ARCHIVE” AND
“CONTEMPORARy ART”
Over the course of the 20th century, visual artworks acquired an ever-increasing formal complexity. From the first decade of the 21st century onwards, this
formal complexity can be seen in the works of a great variety of artists such
as Pierre Huyghe, Philippe Parreno, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Tacita Dean, Nathalie
Djurberg, and Félix Gonzales-Torres. The oeuvre of these artists is characterized by a recurring mode that presents itself as a “path” (Bourriaud, 1998 and
2009; Birnbaum 2005), where the works of art are only points of immanence in
transit, that are also repeated and are subject to variations.
Overall, media art presents a prevalent typology of artworks that require
new and effective documentation, preservation, and dissemination methods
(with the relevant accessibility levels), which are able to make up a system that
can manage the contemporary art scene from the preservation and archiving
viewpoint. This scene must be documented, preserved, maintained, and made
accessible in a digital archive that preserves contemporary materials and actually works as “archaeology of the future” according to Fredric Jameson’s definition (1991), starting from the ability to historicize the concrete examples of
contemporary art.
Media artworks belong to a project (or “chain” of projects) and tend to be
serial and variable instead of unique and stable. From this follows that media
art proves to be “archivable” only from a documentary standpoint, given its
multidimensionality and material, conceptual and progressive complexity
(compare chapter 6.1). However, the present methods of documentation related to the digital archive show structural limitations. Hal Foster pointed out
that, on one hand, interfaces are still screens (“windows”), icons, and texts,
whilst on the other hand in this kind of archiving, it is essential to “transform
a wide range of mediums into various systems of image-texts” (Foster, 2002).
Because technological media are devices of the cultural industry that contain
recording and storing systems, communication systems (with their own ways
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of production and reception or consumption), “languages,” and expressive
techniques, it follows that a proper digital archiving of these media requires
the capturing of the specific form of experience (Casetti, 2008: 29-30) (of the
relationship between the artwork and the audience) related to the medium in
question.
In many ways, the digital archiving of complex media artworks entails
consecutive “translations” and progressive “dispersions” of data, but not only
that. It also involves a complex integrated system of documentation, semantic
indexation, preservation, restoration, and cultural dissemination practices, as
well as an epistemological check of applications and information technology,
which are subject to programmed obsolescence. In fact, information technology itself requires cyclical monitoring programs, constant maintenance and
continuous software upgrading, to ward off the ever-present risk of “everything returning to plastic and silicon again” (Ferraris, 2007).
The processes that take place in media artworks during their translation
into digital archival material (as will become clear, also in relation to the practices related to digital conservation), transform them into peculiar digital contents to safeguard at an ethical and cultural level, not only at a financial and
legal level. Such processes give the action of “archiving” a double meaning.
The first is the construction of information objects, which are digital documents
of the media artworks, the second is their public dissemination and accessibility. In that sense, the digital archive can be an ideal platform for the “cultural
conservation” of media artworks described above as a process that not only
documents and preserves the technological and material dimensions of these
complex works, but also the cultural contexts in which they emerged and were
seen. But this is not a neutral “cultural epistemological” process (Foster, 2002:
71-72). In fact, in both its literal and metaphorical definition, the normative
and selective administrative function of the archive continues to define itself
in the “power” dimension, which is not simply an “operational power” (Foucault, 1972). The archive is a “social place” before being a “physical space”;
it is a historically determined institutional space, responsible for the selection and the construction-conservation of documents (Derrida, 1995; Ricoeur,
2000). In a metaphorical sense, the archive is a “collective memory,” complete
with an institutionalized method for the recording of testimonies designed
for the construction of the documents to archive. It pertains to the selection of
what, within a specific historical context and with regards to historiographic
sources, can be made archivable and what cannot. The modal condition of
the possibility of archiving is thus created by the “discourse” (the operating
system of values and connections between data) underlying the archive, a discourse that, by indicating what is or is not archivable, selects and organizes
the documents – institutionalizes them, as it were. This discourse is carried
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
out “silently” (Ernst 2004) and therefore not directly observable, but nevertheless it actively constructs and records the documents within the archive itself.
In that sense, as Wolfgang Ernst says, this “silence” is “power at work,
unnoticed by narrative discourse.” According to Ernst: “This power is analogous to the power of media, which depends on the fact that media hide and
dissimulate their technological apparatus through their content, which is an
effect of their interface” (Ernst 2004: 48). A “silence” of this kind becomes
traceable in the documentary testimonies of “historiographies,” in their
intent of truth, in the “archived memories” which instead take a form of narrative (Ricoeur, 2000). In this way this silence also becomes traceable in the
digital dimension, in the software infrastructure with regards to the interconnecting system of contents and, if it is web based, in the http protocols. As
Ernst explains “The real ‘archive’ in the Internet (in the sense of arché) is its
system of technological protocols” (Ernst 2010: 87). In such a view, the aggregated Internet database progressively shows the literal and metaphorical
dimensions of the archive.
In the artistic environment, the diffractions of the cultural transformation produced by the application-diffusion of information technology and the
relative “discourse formations” highlight in many different ways, as it were, its
“symbolic form.” (Panofsky, 1927; Cassirer, 1923) Not so much (or, not only)
with respect to artistic practices that conform to the information technology
platform or that are digitally isomorphic (as with net art and software art), but
rather in relation to a way of thinking – a principle of continuous transcoding
that moves materials, technological platforms, expressive systems, and signs
through a network of connections that are revealed by deeply transformative
practices. This results in the final abandonment of the idea of originality in
artistic work, since every digitalization process gradually undermines the
presence of the source. What was already encoded is encoded again, and every
(re-)encoding dissolves the notion of authenticity, that starting with Romanticism was inherited by aesthetics that introduced the idealistic notion of
uniqueness, originality and thus “artistic character” as a quality belonging to
the non-repeatability of the work. With digitalization, every “generation” of
data is only a moment in a chain that has no beginning or end. This seems to
be the operational principle of most contemporary art. As Nicolas Bourriaud
pointed out: “[…] In these works, every element used is valued for its ability to
modify the form of another. One could cite countless examples of these transformat practices, all of which attest to the fact that invention modes of passage
from one regime of expression to another is indeed a major concern of the art
of the 2000s” (Bourriaud, 2009: 135). These transformative practices make use
of “temporary displays” within which, in many remarkable ways, the “notion”
of archive acts (Derrida, 1995).
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In 2004, Hal Foster pointed out the repositioned centrality of the “archive”
in the art of the 1990s, defining it as “an archival impulse,” with particular
attention on the art works by Tacita Dean, Sam Durant, Thomas Hirschhorn
and Pierre Huyghe, Philippe Parreno, Douglas Gordon, Stan Douglas, Liam
Gillick, and Mark Dion (Foster, 2004). It is in fact a trend towards the metaphorical dimension of the archive, that develops its memorial and “immemorable” dimension (Ricoeur’s paradox of oblivion as immemorable resource)
in the context of concrete artworks. This way, on the one hand it is possible to
branch out towards the latent layers of oblivion and the subtle and silent forms
of what Ricoeur calls “archival oblivion, that is archived oblivion” (Ricoeur,
2000, see also Agamben 2007) that inspired Christian Boltanski, Fabio Mauri,
and Péter Forgács in different ways. On the other hand, the focus moves from
the immediate normative-bureaucratic function of the archive deconstructed
in the works of Michael Fehr, Andrea Fraser, Susan Hiller, and Sophie Calle,
to the function that defines the archive as part of a complex enunciative and
creative strategy, as in the projects of the Atlas Group/Waalid Raad, Thomas
Hirschhorn, and Hans Peter Feldmann. In addition, artists such as Fiona
Tan act upon single “archives of images” or “image archives” (see Noordegraaf, 2008 and 2009 and Elsaesser, 2009), in the same way that Ken Jacobs
and Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi previously did. Others, such
as Gustav Deutsch, Matthias Müller, Christoph Girardet, and Martin Arnold
make use of that database of 20th-century images that is cinema, through procedures of re-programming or post-production (see Bourriaud, 2002), as it
already happened with Joseph Cornell (Rose Hobart, 1936-1939), Gianfranco
Baruchello, and Alberto Grifi (La Verifica incerta. Disperse Exclamatory Phase,
1964-1965).
The modes of translation of the matter and the concepts from one form to
another, from one work to another, involve the archive as a “device” (Foucault,
1972) and as a “display.” The complexity of this kind of practices was affected
by the use of technologies, not only by information technology.
TECHNOLOGICAL wORkS AND INSTALLATIONS
The pervasive centrality of technology in contemporary art (in devices, strategies of composition, texture, exhibition modes, and media reception) is evident from a semiotic, social, financial and an aesthetic viewpoint. It has its
peculiar expression in media art practices (from multimedia installations to
live media, from net art to rich media). Since the 1990s, the challenges posed
by media art have become ever more present in museums and international
research projects in complex ways (see Saba, forthcoming). This is also tes-
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tified by the proliferation of terms,11 the multiplicity of definitions, and the
multiplication of research that, in spite of its diversity, nevertheless seems
to understand only the phenomenological aspects of the dynamic intersection between the media components that from time to time characterize the
devices through which media art expresses itself (whose distinctive features
are site, space, time, temporary/variability, and audience interaction).
As previously mentioned, in a wide variety of contexts in terms of environment and theme (Venice Biennale, Kassel documenta, Berlin Biennale für
zeitgenössischen Kunst, Tate Triennial and so on) the format of the installation includes not only devices, different expressive practices and objects,
but disparate disciplines as well. Pierre Huyghe’s project Note d’intention is
exemplary in such a sense, as is that of the architect François Roche on the
“architecture of incompleteness,” that Huyghe also elaborated on, in Casting
(1995) and Les Incivils (1995). Something which is still definable as a “work”
appoints a dynamic set of actions that involve different disciplines (cinema,
music, architecture, but also anthropology, sociology, philosophy, medicine,
etc.) and refers to other works and other texts, objects, concepts, bodies,
events “that pass through different formats” (Bourriaud, 2009; Baker, 2004).
Such disciplinary environments find a semantic amalgam, which transforms
the installation work into an “event” whose constituent character is the “plural immanence” (Parfait, 1997: 36), where, notwithstanding the “allographic”
variability, active “autographic” elements remain (Genette, 1994), and whose
distinctive traits are constructed, as it is said, from site, space, time and the
spectator’s involvement.
The expressive components utilized in the installation develop a mutual
capacity of transformation. Within the installation each expressive component
presents a strong interrelational power and becomes able to modify the form
of another component. In a way, “inter-linguistic” (or rather inter-semiotic)
works exist, without necessarily producing a constituent interfusion (intermediality), since its components belong to an expressive series (photography,
cinema, video, sculpture, etc.) and autonomous and different ‘linguistics’ (distinctive traits of artistic practices in the first decade of the 21st century). So, to
define the work outlined by the installation action (authorial gesture), it is necessary to recognize and map the system of interrelations produced through the
installed system’s assumed configuration. It is to understand which relations
activate themselves through the configuration of heterogeneous material components, conceptual aspects, various medial platforms and which autographic
and allographic characters unfold themselves there. All these elements make
up, in a process, the “text” and the “context” of media artworks together within
a given exhibition circumstance that is often site specific.12 And not just that.
The project as a whole comprises the intrinsic arrangement of contemporary
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artistic practices that end up being inclusive, with respect to the “work” and
its “trans-textual” structure (and therefore also including contextual material
such as interviews, conversations, photographic documents, etc.) (Genette,
1982).
Hence, in order to proceed to the digital archiving of these works it is necessary to prepare a set of documentary practices which, within an information technology dimension, allow for the construction of digital “contents”
through which any given work can be processed. The documentation prefigures itself not only as methodology for the digital archiving of the metadata
and the contents of media artworks (construction of the set of documents
which make up the technological base of the whole work), but can be interpreted as a finalized act in the “physical” preservation even in the function
of restaging and re-enactment practices (often subject to processes of recreation, see chapter 9.4.3). Within digital archiving, the whole work can exist only
through documentation, which enables both conservation and access to the
documentation of a media artwork, in all its components.
THE ENTRy OF ARTwORkS INTO THE “ARCHIVE”: CONSTRUCTING DOCUMENTS
Because of the complexity and the rapid obsolescence of devices, an artwork
based on media technology – be it digital or analogue – risks being lost. Therefore, in the absence of a shared protocol, it has become necessary to define
a model of documentation that structures its descriptions, the cataloguing
criteria, the management of textual variants, the organization of contextual
information, data indexing, and so on, and that encompasses various typological series: video installation (single channel and multichannel), complex
installations with video, live media, sound art, and also live networking, interactive pieces and net art and software art. With respect to complex installation forms, one can distinguish works in which the audiovisual component
is present and at times prevalent (for example, in the multichannel installation Women without Men13 by Shrin Neshat), from those in which it is not (as
in the forementioned sculptural installation Human Being (2009) by Pascale
Marthine Tayou). In the latter case, the digital techniques and preservation
strategies must take into account the fact that the audiovisual component is
only one of the constituent elements. Furthermore, the video component is
present in various formats and not necessarily in line with the evolution of
technology; in fact, it can deliberately be used in obsolete formats. Frequently,
media artworks are systematically produced and installed with obsolete technology, as a response to what Rosalind Krauss has termed the post-media condition (Krauss, 2000; see also Baker 2002). Equally often, works produced with
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
now-obsolete technology are reinstalled with the use of current technological
apparatuses (compare chapter 7.4). Contemporary media art is therefore characterized by the coexistence of numerous different formats and devices.
On one hand in the present historical-cultural context, digital technology finally makes it possible to disseminate the complete contents of libraries
and museums (e.g., the European digital library, Europeana14), on the other
hand, it presents certain difficulties with respect to archiving. First, there is
the problem of “hyper-production,” the proliferation of documents and the
uncertainty that derives from this (it is not clear how the documentary function develops, what a document is, or how the selection and ordering of the
sources develops). Second, there is the issue of the fragility and instability of
the documents due to the obsolescence of devices and formats and the consequent economic sustainability for the care and management of the contents
of digital libraries.
In the field of media art, such criticism seems to bring about a methodological divide between the progressive updates of information technology and
the various subsequent applications in a series of procedural models that are
unrelated to each other. This aspect is translated in the limited interoperability between archival databases, and can influence the future accessibility of
the documents. The important results of international research (carried out
by, amongst others, the PrestoCenter Foundation) do not seem to be able to
adequately respond to the complexity of the practices of archiving and preservation required by media artworks in capacity of their documentary accessibility at any of the following levels:
– the construction of document contents;
– the interoperability of the procedure of the work’s preservation
through documentation practices;
– entry of the works to the archive through their documentary equipment;
– interoperability between various archival databases.
Regarding the documentation of media artworks, despite the recent increase
in international networks between museums and research institutions to test
and share the procedural models mainly concerning video art (Media Matters,
Netherlands Media Art Institute) and the complex multi-media installation
(Inside Installations: Preservation and Presentation of Installation Art, CULTURE
2000 / 2004-2007), the problem remains as to which methodology to adopt for
time-based works and for performance and interactive works, and also for the
complex installations in all their various typologies, not to mention for urban
and architectural works in media art.
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Regarding contemporary art’s modes of existence, what can and must be
archived in a digital library of complex works, according to which criteria, and
in what order, still remains to be defined. How can we archive textual and contextual components in one aggregated complex of data and metadata so as to
take into account the variability of the installations and their “plural immanences”? Which tools and methods do we need? In what way and according to
which methods does the archive make the activity of documentation and conservation interdependent? How can technological assets of media artworks be
recorded and how can their “transmission” be traced? How and according to
which methodologies can the complex documentary aggregate of media artworks be made accessible and immediately usable?
These questions emphasize a dimension that can be seen as a function
of the traditional archive: the transformation of a “work” into a “document.”
However, regarding the “digital library” and “digital preservation,” further
problems come to the fore: in fact, the documentary convergence in a digital
archive of works that come from different media introduces a fundamental
distinction – mainly regarding the work’s audiovisual and interactive dimension – between “static or stable media formats” and “dynamic media formats.”
In the first example, it concerns a typology of files that translates artworks that
are “closed” and “finished” at a display level into documents such as photographs, films, and video or audiovisual components of installations. In the
second example, it concerns works that intrinsically consist of dynamic and
variable “open” forms such as in the case of software art, where the composition process is continuously put in movement.15 From a conceptual point
of view, these “works” translated into “documents” in the archive will respectively function as “static documents” and “dynamic documents.”
A web-based media artwork is itself also already a “digital object” that
already operates on the basis of an archive, temporarily making up fragments
of the archive; it is made from and is indiscernible from the same archive. In
the case of these “born digital” works, their incorporation in the archive coincides with their documentation. Furthermore, the software used will be an
intrinsic part of the data. In that sense, as Ernst describes, “When both data
and procedures are located in one and the same operative field, the classical
documentary difference between data and meta-data (as libraries, where books
and signatures are considered as two different data sets) implodes” (Ernst,
2004: 51). In such cases the notions of “artifact,” “product,” “object,” and
“document” seem to disintegrate and, with them, the traditional concept of
the “archive.” On the one hand, regarding the information technology archiving system, it has become possible to keep the data, metadata, and enriched
data separate – even through the employment of dedicated grid networks in
which distinct layers coexist (one for the transmitting of data, the other for
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
communicating metadata). On the other hand, regarding the archived work,
a documentary difference between data and metadata persists at a system of
relations level (semiotic, philological, etc.) and relates to the cultural definition of the work as a document. The fact that the archiving procedure operates within the same information technology operative field in which data
is placed opens up the possibility to research new modalities of relation (for
example, regarding the visual component, or the research on the ontology of
the images in movement, etc.)
In fact, the relational complexity of the media artwork has two major
effects. First, these artworks cannot be digitally managed through the application of the traditional cataloguing device of the archive – that is, standard
classifiers for homogenous typologies – without causing considerable loss of
information. They cannot be digitally archived according to a simple typological distinction (such as video performance/performance art, installation art;
net art; etc.) without this causing, at a historical and cultural level, a loss of the
relational “meaning” or, rather, their interdisciplinary nature, within the field
of contemporary art. Second, these works cannot be documented and digitally
conserved when generic practices and procedures are applied – such as documentation, preservation, restoration, migration, and emulation – without this
causing a reduction in complexity, or rather a loss of meaning.
The necessity to redefine the concept of “archiving” is clear when it comes
to ensuring the continued accessibility of media art, as well as its conservation. As argued above, the digital archiving of media art will have a clear impact
on cultural institutions and the art system as a whole. This is because in the
environment of museums and exhibition centers, as Foster explains: “More
and more the mnemonic function of the museum is given over to the electronic archive, which might be accessed anywhere, while the visual experience
is given over not only to the exhibition – that is, as an image to be circulated in
the media in the service of brand equity and cultural capital. This image may
be the primary form of art today” (Foster 2002: 95).
The documentation and dissemination of our media-based artistic heritage requires a clear methodology. As with physical conservation, the work’s
complex installation configuration requires, at an archiving level, that the
technological platform must be documented too. It follows that at a management level, it is the information technology that documents and preserves,
“protects,” and opens on to the interpretation of the documentary traces of
the complex work. Hence, there is both a practical and theoretical necessity
of settling some basic issues that concern the “dematerialization” of media
artworks caused by digital technology.
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THE “PROTOCOL” DEFINITION: THE CASE OF VIDEO ART
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The digital archiving of media artworks requires finding a model that is able to
manage the dematerialization process in the right way (in an ethical, philological, semiotic, and technological sense). However, the dematerialization produced by information technology does not have to be interpreted as “negation
of materiality,” but may be rethought as a new form of “relational materiality,”
not stabilized in a device (paper, film, etc.) but active in the flow of information
(always becoming) which manifests itself (on the surface) according to transitory occurrences. In digital archiving practices the audiovisual component, be
it analogue or digital, goes through a transformation, or transcodification. As a
document, the audiovisual component cannot be revealed in its own medium
(this is at least Wolfgang Ernst’s argument, see 2004: 51).
Inasmuch as the practices of documentation and preservation refer to the
origins of video art, the large migration of video artists’ entire collections in the
last decade16 and the research relating to the processes of digitization (specifically highlighted in the FP7-ICT program 2007-2010 ) have made it clear that
the digitization process produces a real transformation for at least two reasons.
First, the conversion algorithms (and eventually the restoring algorithms), not
to mention the compression algorithms, modify the digitized analogue audiovisual artwork according to the system and digital environment of the destination without establishing a correlation with the analogical environment that
was the starting point. The latter can only be produced by the method, indexing, and construction of the documentary apparatus used in preservation (see
chapter 6 of this book). Second, the receptive modality produces a strong transformation of the digitized work. This happens because, beyond the interface,
it is based on complex database architecture. Furthermore, the works or the
constituents of the analogical video work must be able to be “visualized” in the
right way on displays that are variable both in dimensional and medial terms,
as well as in terms of visual quality and expressive style.
Given such conditions, it follows that, in the absence of an internationally
shared protocol, and in the presence of a high rate of obsolescence of digital technology, it would be an error to proceed in digitization by simply copying or migrating files into new formats. The evolution of the devices together
with the immediate access to information and its “miniaturization” involve
some codification standards, and all codification is a type of structuring that
excludes the characteristics that are not “performable” in and by means of
that model – it results in a progressive incapacity to transfer the information
technology contents. In addition to the loss of data that might be caused by
the types of compression, the same remediation system is involved in the loss
of information. It is possible to minimize such losses by storing all contextual
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
information and metadata of the original documents.
Besides, if the history of a document’s transmission is not maintained
with respect to the various “traditions,” it only takes one migration to produce a loss of information. After the digital transcodification in the following
migration, route information can be lost at various moments in time, and this
puts the integrity of the data at risk. At the very least, the information on what
is corrupted from the original device is lost. For example, chemical analysis of
the magnetic playback device is rarely carried out, which is compensated for
by the procedure of photographic documentation. Therefore, the mold that
might have attacked the device is no longer recognizable after digitization. As
a consequence, the character of some of the deteriorations present in the digitized signal might no longer be detectable.
The original materials must definitely be preserved; the preserved digital
copies, as far as possible, cannot be left out of consideration in the lifecycle of
the original analogical work, especially since in the future it will be possible
to extract “hidden” information that in the current state of information technology is not yet recognizable. And that is in relation to the double strategy
involved in working for preservation purposes: on the one hand, it is necessary
to maintain the work’s documentary integrity; on the other hand, it’s needed
to act in the interests of its permanence using currently available technology,
but it is desirable to proceed even in view of the technology that will exist in the
future (see chapters 8.1 and 8.3).
The absence of shared protocols presents two types of risk, the one technological and the other cultural. From a technical viewpoint, the absence
of shared standards creates problems in accessing documents (a historical
example of such technological obsolescence are digital archives recorded on
digital audio tape, DAT). More generally, it is not taken into account that the
“migration” procedures require the transferring and copying onto new formats and devices, whilst the digital instruments necessary for reading are still
supported. From a cultural point of view, the history of the transmission of the
“document” can get lost. It is therefore necessary to adopt defined and shared
criteria for the preservation of contextual information (to be understood as
information “external” to the signal) and the metadata (to be understood as
information that can be automatically extracted from the signal).
But this is not all. Also regarding the born-digital work, there is a problem
of the method of archiving (“representation”) and “preservation” (“codification”). It is, in fact, defined by the contents, the device and the format on which
it was recorded. The trinomial of “data,” “device,” and “format,” becomes
inseparable in the work, and in its visual manifestation, giving these works a
specific type of “scriptural” materiality that should be preserved.
The strategies of preservation, established and tested in some major
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research projects (such as Inside Installations, DOCAM, Media Matters, and
Aktive Archive), adopt the criterion of “variability” without testing and evaluating the procedures (both concerning migration and emulation practices). This
criterion is governed by a re-interpretive logic that aims at the reproduction of
the work’s conceptual dimensions, regardless of “material” circumstances,
using new “materials,” new devices and new forms of visualization.
The “variability” criteria is intrinsically derived from digital-born media
art. This can be deduced from two American influential theoretical guidelines, amongst others, which were defined in the research project Capturing
Unstable Media (2003) and the important conference Preserving the Immaterial: A Conference on Variable Media (1998). “Instability” and “variability,”
although not corresponding ideas, are based upon the same concept: the
immaterial “separation” that is produced between the depth of data and the
surface (interface) that emerges when the work is being displayed.
As argued before, it is necessary to begin a reflection around the process
of “dematerialization” informed by information technology: instead of theorizing a supposed “negation of materiality” it should focus on understanding
what opens up “new forms of materiality” (Jiménez, 2002) or rather to begin a
“rethinking of the multiplicity inherent in the material.” The media artwork’s
translation and transfer into a digital form for documentary purposes, especially when it concerns audiovisual components, does not produce something
immaterial, but assumes another type of materiality with different properties,
rewritten from information technology codes (a “materiality” that occupies a
physical space in the memory of the hard disk).
This alternative reflection allows for the double problem to be properly
managed; the problem which arises when preservation work is being done. On
one hand it is necessary to maintain the work’s documentary integrity; on the
other it is necessary to work towards its digital permanence (through checking, refreshing, and migration) utilizing currently available technology (see
chapter 8.1). It follows that first, the criteria implied by the definitions of “variable media” (Depocas, Ippolito, and Jones, 2003) and “intermediate formats”
(Bourriaud, 2009) do not seem in any way to resolve the problem of treatment
(philological, historic documentary, aesthetic, see Brandi, 2005 [1963]) of
inscription (recording) and “writing” of the work both at an ontological level
(physical, chemical, electronic, and information technology inscription) and a
functional (or socio-semiotic) level. Second, the concept of “original” defines
a quality referred to as being “compatible,” and “not equivalent,” to the “original” version; also with respect to the media origin, this is concerned with the
“integrity” of the work and with the conservation of the artist’s intention, as
well as the aesthetic and cultural history, which requires keeping the “history”
of the transmission of the work to be documented.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
All these aspects concern the redefinition of the new material, and not just
documentary, status of the works themselves – or rather of their digital “translation” or “metamorphosis” for archiving preservation purposes. It is known
that the system of “remediation” implied by the activity of archiving and digital conservation, or rather the current practices of migration and emulation,
involves the risk of losing the textual aesthetic quality that can be minimized
by way of the memorization of all the contextual data and metadata of the
work or original document.
In particular regarding the audiovisual components of media art (or by
extension any audiovisual work), the task of the protocols is to make the work’s
diasystem layers (Segre, 1979)17 evident and sharable to guarantee cultural
history, migration and emulation practices, as well as technical standards. In
that sense, the presently widespread paradigm that removes the concept of
the “unique original” must be rethought with a greater philological sensibility
(even in a digital environment where, from a technical point of view, the distinction between “original” and “copy” has lost its meaning), just as one of the
functions of the archive is to preserve the documentary integrity of the work. It
must be taken into account the fact that remediation, variability, and migration are strategies able to guarantee not only the documentary but also the
factual “permanence” of the complex work. In fact, as previously mentioned,
the documentation – the constructive action of the media artwork’s archiving
– even has an effect on museum preservation and presentation. According to
this line of thinking, the digital archive not only relates to the construction
of the documentary dimension of media artworks, but also predetermines its
strategy for preservation.
CONCLUSION: TRANSCODIFICATION
All the forms of media art subject to digital transcodification can maintain
meaningful signs and the experiential glow of the original production context. For audiovisual works, such signs can and must be preserved by means
of migration and/or emulation processes that adopt philological criteria, so
that the work’s material traces, expressive strategies, linguistic modalities,
and perceptive modes can be restored in the form of digital documents or,
more precisely, by means of an integrated set of digital documents. For all the
typological cases in which contemporary media art presents itself, at a level
of documentary archiving, the work (“ergon”) must be preserved through digital remediation and also what surrounds and culturally “frames” it (its “parergon”) or, rather, the interpretive and interactive modes, the strategies of use
and the perceptive forms.
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Regarding the present “preservation scenarios,” in facing the risks associated
with the different modes of failure and loss of information at a procedural
and/or technological level, it is necessary to take into account, in a consistent,
modular and interrelated way, the digitization process that puts the different
formats of the works together as a whole workflow, with their parerga to document, preserve and archive. The preservation of the memory of the artwork’s
media origin, and therewith of the linguistic-expressive specificity of these
media, concerns the concepts of digital archiving at different, but interrelated,
levels. These are located at the moments of creating an integrated documentation and of conservation (such as migration and emulation). They are crucial
functions of the digital archive, inasmuch as they relate to the construction of
the document and must account for the verifiability of the sources, the authenticity of the data and the validation of metadata. It is necessary to know how
to act in a preemptive way, prefiguring future developments in information
technology with the aim of guaranteeing the integrity of data and metadata
for the longest possible period. One must be aware of the totality or wholeness
of the work, of its integrity and “material coextensivity” in order to be able to
recreate the expressive complexity of media art on the basis of the documents
that make up the digital archive.
From this point of view, in the context of the contemporary art system,
where there is a progressive transformation of the digital library concept and
continuous updating of the actions of digital preservation, it becomes more
urgent than ever to develop a method and an ethic of the convergence of media
artworks on information technology platforms, also for the purposes of an
effective interoperability within the archive (and between different archives).
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
NOTES
1
Thanks to Sergio Canazza for his critical comments and suggestions regarding
the area of information technology.
2
Both shown at the 53rd International Art Exhibition Venice Biennale, directed by
Daniel Birnbaum.
3
See Prigogine and Stengers (1979).
4
See http://glossary.inside-installations.org. Last access: 11 May 2010.
5
Presented at documenta 12, at the Neue Galerie: http://amarkanwar.com/. Last
access: 11 May 2010.
6
After the first exhibition at Ludwig Museum in Cologne (6 June 2002-1 September
2002), the second followed at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (10
October 2002-January 2003), and the third exhibition followed at the Solomon R.
Gugghenheim Museum, New York (21 February 2003-4 June 2003). See Dusi and
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Saba (2012).
7
“Digital libraries represent the meeting point of many disciplines and fields,
including data management, information retrieval, library sciences, document
management, information systems, the web, image processing, artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, and digital curation. This multidisciplinary
nature has led to a variety of definitions as to what a digital library is, each one
influenced by the perspective of the primary discipline of their proposer(s)” –
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march07/castelli/03castelli.html. Last access: 11 May
2010.
8
DELOS Network of Excellence on Digital Libraries website http://www.delos.
info; the digital library Reference Model website http://www.delos.info/Reference
Model. Last access: 11 May 2010.
9
Ibid., see note 7.
10 “The content concept encompasses the data and information that the digital
Library handles and makes available to its users. It is composed of a set of information objects organized in collections. Content is an umbrella concept used to
aggregate all forms of information objects that a digital library collects, manages,
and delivers, and includes primary objects, annotations, and metadata. For example, metadata have a central role in the handling and use of information objects,
as they provide information critical to its syntactic, semantic, and contextual
interpretation” http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march07/castelli/03castelli.html. Last
accessed: 11 May 2010.
11 See DOCAM Terminology http://archives.docam.ca/en/?cat=15. Last access: 11 May
2010.
12 These are the key components of installation works that must be described
according to their relational, textual, and contextual devices – that is, according to
a certain and determined communicative situation – and they must be recorded
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not only with traditional photo and video documentation practices, but also with
methods that consistently complement each specific technique (for example,
documentation of space, video, sound, light, interaction with visitors/interactors,
etc.) using specific devices such as 3D relief, laser scan for the systemic “mold”
of data relevant to space, or virtual reality photography. See Inside Installations:
Preservation and Presentation of Installation Art, CULTURE 2000/2004-2007.
13 The multichannel video installation Women without Men (exhibited in the Room
of Caryatids at the Royal Palace of Milan in 2011) is structured through “episodes”
(single-channel video installations): Mahdokht (2004), Zarin (2005), Munis (2008),
Faezeh (2008), and Farokh Legha (2008). The artwork has a film version, the 2009
feature film Women without Men, based on the novel with the same title (of 1989),
by the Iranian writer Shahrnush Parsipur.
14 http://www.europeana.eu.
15 See the NESTOR Network of Expertise in Long-term STOrage of Digital Resources
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– A Digital Preservation Initiative for Germany, http://www.langzeitarchivierung.
de/Subsites/nestor/DE/Home/home_node.html. Last access: 20 July 2012.
16 See the projects art/tapes/22 Collezione ASAC La Biennale di Venezia, University of
Udine, 2004-2007; 40yearsvideoart.de, Video Art in Germany from 1963 to the Present, K21 Kunstsammlung, Dusseldorf 2005; Rewind Artists’ Video in the 70s & 80s,
University of Dundee and the Scottish Screen Archive, 2005.
17 See also the chapter “Testo,” in Enciclopedia, vol. 14, 280. Turin: Einaudi, 1981.
REFERENCES
AA.VV. Universal Archive. The Condition of the Document and the Modern Photographic
Utopia. Barcelona: MACBA, 2008.
Agamben, Giorgio. In quel che resta di Auschwitz. L’archivio e il testimone. Turin: Bollati
Boringhieri, 2007.
Baker, George. “An Interview with Pierre Huyghe.” October 110 (2004): 80-106.
Birnbaum, Daniel. Chronology. Berlin and New York: Sternberg Press, 2005.
Bolter, Jay David, and Richarch Grusin. Remediation. Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999.
Bourriaud, Nicolas. The Radicant. New York: Lucas & Sternberg, 2009.
—. Post Production. La culture comme scènario. Comment l’art reprogramme le monde
contemporain. Dijon: Les presses du réel, 2002.
—. Esthétique relationelle. Dijon: Les presses du réel, 1998.
Brandi, Cesare. Theory of Restoration. Translated by Cynthia Rockwell. Florence: Nardini Editore, 2005.
Canazza, Sergio. “I dintorni delle memorie sonore: un modello ipermediale per il trattamento dell’informazione documentale delle opere di musica elettroacustica.”
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
In Ri-mediazione dei documenti sonori, edited by Sergio Canazza and Mauro Casadei Turroni Monti, 95-123. Udine: Forum, 2006.
Casetti, Francesco. “Esperienza filmica e ri-locazione del cinema.” Fata Morgana 4
(2008): 23-40.
Cassirer, Ernst Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, I, Die Sprache, Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1923.
Connatry, Jane, and Josephine Canyon. Ghosting. The Role of the Archive within Contemporary Artist’s Film and Video. Bristol: Picture This, 2006.
De Baere, Bart. “Potentiality and Public Space. Archives as a metaphor and example
for a political culture.” In Interarchive. Archivarische Praktiken und Handlungsräume im Zeitgenössischen Kunstfeld/Archival Practices and Sites in the Contemporary Art Field, edited by Beatrice von Bismarck, Hans Peter Feldmann, and Hans
Ulrich Obrist, 105-112. Lüneburg and Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther
König, 2002.
De Certeau, Michel. L’Écriture de l’histoire. Paris: Gallimard, 1975.
Deleuze, Gilles. Qu’est-ce qu’un dispositif? Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1989.
Depocas Alain, Jon Ippolito, and Caitlin Jones. Permanence Through Change. The
Variable Media Approach/La permanence par le changement. L’approche des médias
variable. New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications / Montreal: The Daniel
Langois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology, 2003. Available online – a
http://variablemedia.net/e/preserving/html/var_pub_index.html. Last access: 20
July 2012.
Derrida, Jacques. Archive Fever. A Freudian Impression. Translated by Eric Prenowitz.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Didi-Huberman, Georges. Quand les images prennent position. L’oeil de l’histoire, 1,
Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 2009.
Dusi, Nicola and Cosetta G. Saba (eds.) Matthew Barney. Polimorfismo, multimodalità,
neobarocco. Milan: Silvana Editoriale, Cinisello Balsamo, 2012.
Elsaesser, Thomas. “Fiona Tan: place after place.” In Fiona Tan – Disorient. Dutch Pavilion, La Biennale di Venezia, edited by S. Bos, 2.20-2.33. Heidelberg: Kehrer, 2009.
Ernst, Wolfgang. “Underway to the Dual System. Classical Archives and/or Digital
Memory.” In Netpioneers 1.0. Contextualizing Early Net-based Art, edited by Dieter
Daniels and Gunther Reisinger, 81-99. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2010.
—. “The Archive as Metaphor. From Archival Space to Archival Time.” In Open 7. (No)
Memory. Storing and recalling in contemporary art and culture, edited by Jorinde
Seijdel and Liesbeth Melis, 46-52. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2004.
Ferraris, Maurizio. Sans Papier. Ontologia dell’attualità. Rome: Castelvecchi, 2007.
—. Documentalità. Perché è necessario lasciar tracce. Bari: Laterza, 2009.
Foster, Hal. “An Archival Impulse.” October 110 (2004): 3-22.
—. “Archives of Modern Art.” October 99 (2002): 81-95.
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Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. Translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972.
Genette, Gérard. L’Œuvre de l’art. Immanence et trascendance. Paris: Éditions Seuil,
1994.
—. Palimpsestes. La litérature du second degré. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1982.
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 1991.
Jiménez, José. Teoría del Arte. Madrid: Editorial Tecnos, 2002.
Krauss, Rosalind. A Voyage on the North Sea. Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition.
London: Thames & Hudson, 2000.
Merewether, Charles, ed. The Archive, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006.
Noordegraaf, Julia. “Displacing the Colonial Archive. How Fiona Tan Shows Us
‘Things We Don’t Know We Know’.” In Mind the Screen. Media Concepts According
to Thomas Elsaesser, edited by Jaap Kooijman, Patricia Pisters, and Wanda Strau-
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ven, 322-333. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008.
—. “Facing Forward with Found Footage: Displacing Colonial Footage in Mother Dao
and the Work of Fiona Tan.” In Technologies of Memory in the Arts, edited by Liedeke Plate and Anneke Smelik, 172-187. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2009:
172-187.
Panofsky, Erwin. “Die Perspektive als symbolische Form.” Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg 1924-1925. Leipzig and Berlin: Teubner, 1927.
Parfait, Françoise. “L’installation en collection.” In Collection Nouveaux médias –
Installations. La collection du Centre Pompidou, edited by Collectif Centre Pompidou, 33-36. Paris: Éditions du Centre Pompidou, 2006.
Prigogine, Ilya, and Isabelle Stengers. La Nouvelle alliance. Métamorphose de la science.
Paris: Gallimard, 1979.
Ricoeur, Paul. Das Rätsel der Vergangenheit. Erinnern – Vergessen – Verzeichen. Göttingen: Wallstein, 1998.
—. La Mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli. Paris: Éditions de Seuil, 2000.
Saba, Cosetta G. (ed.). On Media Art. A Rewarding Anthology. Triest: Errata Corrige,
2012.
Segre, Cesare. Semiotica filologica. Testo e modelli culturali. Turin: Einaudi, 1979.
Spieker, Sven. The Big Archive – Art form Bureaucracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
PART II
aNalysis, doCuMeNtatioN,
arCHiViNg
INTRODUCTION
Julia Noordegraaf
After having discussed various historical and theoretical approaches to understanding the complexities of media art in part one, the second part of this
book focuses in more detail on analyzing, documenting, and archiving media
art. Before being able to identify appropriate strategies for preserving and
restoring film-, video-, or computer-based artworks – the topic of part three
– or determining suitable exhibition modes – discussed in part four – it is necessary to first capture the exact nature and appearance of the original work.
Whereas the conservation, restoration, and exhibition of classical artworks like painting and sculpture generally primarily raises material problems (investigating the types of materials used, determining the best lighting
conditions, etc.), the preservation and exhibition of contemporary time-based
media artworks also raises the more fundamental question of exactly where
to locate the work. For example, if an artist uses television consoles from
the 1970s in an installation, like Miquel-Ángel Cárdenas in 25 Caramboles
(1979/80), can one replace them with contemporary flat screen monitors in a
contemporary exhibition (see Van Saaze/NIMK, 2003)? In other words, before
being able to decide on preservation and exhibition strategies, a conservator
or curator needs to reflect on which material or conceptual components are
most relevant for doing justice to the work.
Chapter 5 provides a reflection on the process of describing and analyzing
media art, and aims to provide the reader with concrete tools for capturing the
identity of media artworks. The analysis of media artworks is aimed at develop-
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ing a rational argument which tries to reflect upon the works’ configurations
and sharable meanings. This is crucial in the practices of conservation and
exhibition, both highly dialogical processes involving conservators, curators,
the artist(s), and specialists (such as programmers, technicians, laboratory
staff, etc.). The analysis of artworks is aimed at describing and interpreting
the coherence between their material organization and conceptual layers, as
well as linking them to the larger cultural and social contexts in which they
appear. This chapter provides a clear road map for analyzing media artworks
by distinguishing four moments of analysis: description, analysis, interpretation, and judgment. This four-step analysis is demonstrated with the help of
an analysis of Harun Farocki’s video installation Workers Leaving the Factory in
11 Decades (2006).
Chapter 6 focuses on one of the key elements in the preservation and
reexhibition of media artworks: documentation. Because of their reliance
on technologies that are subject to rapid obsolescence, as well as their often
process-based, performative, and/or interactive nature, media artworks rely
for their survival on documentation of their creation, exhibition, appearance, functionality, and experience. As argued in the first section of chapter
6, performative works like Uncle Roy All Around You (2003) by Blast Theory can
only be recreated when the documentation created by the artists is taken into
consideration. The artist interview, demonstrated in section three with reference to the audio-installation Mbube (2005) by Roberto Cuoghi, is a strategy
for obtaining information on the creation process where documentation is
lacking. Sometimes documentation is the only thing that is left of a work, as
in the case of the ephemeral work e così sia… (2000) by Bruna Esposito discussed in section four, where the video documentation comes to stand in for
the lost original. Finally, Van Saaze’s ethnographic study of the acquisition by
the Van Abbemuseum of No Ghost Just a Shell (1999/2002) by Pierre Huyghe
and Philippe Parreno in section two of this chapter shows how the specific
limitations of a museum’s content management system can impact the way
an artwork is defined, demonstrating the need to consider documentation in
the wider, institutional context of describing, analyzing, and archiving media
artworks.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
REFERENCE
Van Saaze, Vivian, and Netherlands Media Art Institute, Montevideo/TBA. “Reader
– Of Reinstallation and Preservation of 25 Caramboles and Variations: Birthday
Present for a 25-Year Old (1979/80), Miguel-Ángel Cárdenas, Collection Stedelijk
Museum Amsterdam.” Report on this case study in the research project 404
Object Not Found: What remains of Media Art? and the exhibition Thirty Years Dutch
Video Art, 11 January-8 March 2003. Amsterdam: Netherlands Media Art Institute
and Montevideo/TBA. Available online – http://nimk.nl/_files/Files/cardenas_rapport_nimk_en.pdf. Last access: 12 July 2012.
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A N A ly S I S , D o C U M E N TAT I o N , A R C H I V I N G
CHapter 5
The Analysis of the Artwork
Dario Marchiori
While the Greek etymology of analysis means “dis-solution,” analysis as a
thinking practice (which has been theorized since the ancient times, initially
in the realm of geometry1) involves the related idea of a “breaking up”2: the
first experience of it may be considered that of a child breaking a toy to understand its internal structure, and the way it works. Modern thought has reinforced this “decompositional” conception of analysis, which “found its classic
statement in the work of Kant at the end of the eighteenth century” and “set
the methodological agenda for philosophical approaches and debates in the
(late) modern period (nineteenth and twentieth centuries).” (Beaney, 2012)3
Hegel asserted the importance of analysis within the movement of thinking
itself:
Analysis of an idea, as it used to be carried out, did anyhow consist in nothing else than doing away with its character of familiarity. To break up an
idea into its ultimate elements means returning upon its moments, which
at least do not have the form of the idea as picked up, but are the immediate property of the self. Doubtless this analysis only arrives at thoughts
which are themselves known elements, fixed inert determinations. But
what is thus broken up into parts, this unreal entity, is itself an essential
moment; for just because the concrete fact is self-divided, and turns into
unreality, it is something self-moving, self-active (Hegel, 1910: 30).
As Hegel does here, philosophy often links analysis to synthesis (mainly by
opposing them, see Hügli and Lübke, 2005): deconstructive and reconstructive
processes are two moments within the process of thinking, as René Descartes’
Discourse on the Method (1637) clearly stated. But art is not philosophy, and the
analysis of the artwork has to reject philosophical drives to abstractness (as
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stated by Descartes: “analysis shows the true way by means of which the thing
in question was discovered methodically and as it where a priori” (in Cottingham, Stoothof, and Murdoch, 1985: 110)). Contemporary artwork’s analysis
has a more particular aim: to understand the way the artwork works, which
in its broader sense implicates also the specific way of thinking it is able to
create. It is important to notice, together with Hegel, the importance for analysis to move from (aufheben) what we already know (Bekanntsein); but also the
need to recognize the dynamic dimension proper to every “idea” or, we will
say, of every artwork.4
The understanding of the artwork is a multifolded process, starting from
the direct experiencing of it, and its relationship to our sociocultural “horizon
of expectations” (Hans-Robert Jauss, 1982). The artwork’s configurations and
structures will last within memory, both nourishing new experiences in life
and informing the reception of other artworks. Being processes, psychological
perception and mental cognition develop in time, so that memorial structures
(formal memory), their displacements or shifts (migrating memory), as well as
dialogue and intellectual debate are at stake during the whole comprehension
of the artwork. While all contemporary art may be understood in relation to
the “media world,” analyzing media art is a practice intended to understand
a specific kind of artwork, the media artwork, that is, the most common form
of art of our times. Media artworks will here be understood as works of art
involving links, overlaps, and transformations between and beyond different
mediums, giving particular attention to the most recent ones.
Analysis tries to reach a better understanding of the artwork through a
rational (explicative and falsifiable) argumentation,5 which tries to reflect
upon its general configuration and its shared or sharable meanings. Experience and memory become now a less important element, while the attempt
to embrace the entire work through methodic instruments becomes the main
issue. Although the field of art is not considered a “scientific” domain, analysis bets the artwork to be a rational process, which organizes its form and content, solving some problems and bringing about new ones. Analysis finds out
the artwork’s material organization and its internal work, be it a conscious
or an unconscious process. Analysis restricts the part of the institutional producer and that of the singular receptor, and focalizes onto the work itself as a
disposition and interaction between different (homogeneous or heterogeneous) material elements that link them to a larger cultural and social context to
be interpreted.
Ideally, analysis gives the same importance to every element of the artwork while trying to find an interpretative path. At the same time, the reading
of the artwork cannot be independent from the interpretation we give to it,
and the questioning of that relation is the motive behind analysis. The first
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
step in analyzing an artwork is an adherence to the artwork: being close to it
justifies the necessity of a respectful descriptive basis, while the interpretative
act is concerned with the matter of the artwork. On the other side, analysis
cannot be a pure objectivist explanation. It inevitably contains what Martin
Heidegger defined as a “violent” moment: the effort, through interpretation,
to grab an unsaid secret from the artwork (Heidegger, 1962).
We may also consider, more generally, that the analyst has to trace its own
path within the artwork, inscribing the unavoidable necessity of a subjective
drive, and of the analyst’s desire (as Jacques Lacan proposed in his reinvention
of psychoanalysis, see his 1964 article “Du ‘Trieb’ de Freud et du désir du psychanalyste” (in Lacan, 1966)) and pleasure/bliss (as Roland Barthes did in his
post-semiotic activity6). Nevertheless, everything in analysis is geared towards
an objective consideration of the artwork: to discover shared questions and to
link together internal (to the particular artwork) and external contents. Proceeding from a scientific drive, the analysis of the artwork participates in an
ideal of shareable rationality, belonging to the long tradition of the Enlightenment project and to immanent, inductive methods in post-Galilean science;
along this path, the place of the observer, his/her desire, and subjectivity have
assumed an increasingly important place in the analytical process, sometimes
shaking analysis’ basis and legitimacy. That is the contemporary tension
between objective and subjective drives within an analytical process.
As we will see throughout this chapter, the analysis of an artwork develops through four distinct, although interconnected, moments: description,
analysis, interpretation, and judgment. All of them are consubstantial to the
analytical process, even if to different extents. Their order is going from the
more objective to the more subjective, so that interpretation and judgment
are more debatable steps in the analytical process. We could simplify the main
questions advanced within analytical moments as follows: what? (description), how? (analysis), why? (interpretation), what for? (judgment). The first
three steps may be somewhat compared to the three levels of signification
within an artwork, as proposed by Erwin Panofsky (1972):
1. Primary, or natural subject matter: it corresponds to simple denotation, factual recognition of elements, like figures and motifs in painting (pre-iconological level);
2. Secondary, or conventional subject matter: linked to cultural codes,
it allows the viewer to recognize connotative meanings such as, for
instance, symbols or allegories (iconography);
3. Tertiary, or intrinsic meaning: giving a whole interpretation, it
explains the way an artwork is made according to its social and historical context (iconology).
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Within the analytical process, we may consider the simple level of recognizing
figures and forms as developing through description; then we try to understand the structure and functions within the artwork, reorganizing its matter
according to some great axes, already opening to interpretation (the conventional subject matter already implicates an interpretative act in Panofsky’s
system); finally, we consider cultural significations according the particular
forms and processes of the artwork (corresponding, in a way, to Panofsky’s
“tertiary” meaning).7 Panofsky’s iconology is adapted to understand a particular moment in the history of painting and to link it to cultural history, while
media aesthetics has to follow its own characteristics and to wonder about
its contemporaneousness to the artworks it is trying to understand. Nevertheless, both models share the search for precise, rational criteria and for indepth discursive explorations of the artwork. To Panofsky, the three levels of
meaning are meant to be autonomous from the artist’s expressive intentions,
transcribing non-subjective issues and aiming for “objective” explanations.
Analysis, too, tries to reach an objective status through logical (inductive/
deductive/abductive) arguments, but it is more and more open to the analyst’s
subjectivity and to interpretative pluralism. As we will see, my proposition
about “judgment” as a necessary foundational moment within analysis will
try to synthesize those issues.
Let us now begin our path through artwork’s analysis. Each section will be
followed by examples of description, analysis, interpretation, and judgment,
respectively, conducted by “le Silo,” a group of French scholars studying the
interactions between arts; they chose to study Harun Farocki’s video installation Workers Leaving the Factory in 11 Decades (2006) (see Fig. 5.1 in color section).8
1.
DESCRIPTION
Describing is a process of translation,9 mainly into verbal mediums: it involves
the passage from media artwork’s own semiotic characteristics into words,
that is, from “secondary modeling systems” into the primary one, natural language (Lotman, 1977).10 Description combines meaningful concentration and
faithfulness, in order to give a simple and homogeneous recollection (mental image) of an object, person, event, activity, or process (or parts of them).
Within our discourse, its function is to prepare the analytic gesture, without
considering other possible aims like preserving, cataloguing or archiving the
artwork. Ideally, description does not explicate, it is a simple account: that
means to represent the artwork’s form and content to a public interested in
understanding it better and more deeply through analysis. But description
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
maintains a relative “opacity” to interpretation: while inevitably selective, it
aims to be “meaningless” and, like Panofsky said elsewhere, it shall be considered something like a “stupid” operation. But “stupid” comes from the Latin
word stupor: description is a constant oscillation between trying to fully transcribe the artwork, to reveal its details and internal links, and to respond to the
initial astonishment it may (or may not) have given to us. Description itself has
a heuristic value, for instance, when trying to discover aspects of the artwork
that a first contact could have left unobserved, or that seem to be unconscious
(which could be used for “symptomatic readings,” as we will see). Description
means both a representation of the artwork and a patient spread of its details,
to which the same attention and relevance are owed. The result is a first step
towards going beyond what Hegel called Bekanntsein.
Description is a process of mediation, because it translates from one
medium to another and from one language (or type of language) to another.
Moreover, description is both reduction and addition, if compared to the
media artwork. It reduces, because it transfers several elements, heterogeneous languages and mediums into one, generally written and homogeneous
discourse; moreover, it gives often more relief to the artwork’s topic, proposing a sort of summary of it. On the other side, it adds to the text a detailed
attention to its elements, similarities, and configurations, in order to support
the paradoxical “discovery of what is there,” which is proper to analytical work.
Describing may also be, in that sense, a much more “extended” operation than
the original artwork: for instance, the detailed description of every element of
a movie could take several weeks, and fill several thousands of pages.
Description involves closeness to the artwork, ideally, as if we were describing each particular element of it. Usually, according to speech organization
and writing’s characteristics, analysis develops itself in a linear way, following
the temporal order of the artwork’s reception, be it promoted by the medium
(like in movies, dramas, symphonies), by the artwork’s internal structure (e.g.,
historical paintings, old multimedia apparatuses like religious temples),
or by our own “reading” of it (when analyzing multimedia apparatuses, like
installations, interactive artworks, and even exhibition spaces like museums).
Schemas may help to give some structural precision and fast visualizations,
but they are already linked to a further step in analysis, the explicative reorganization of the matter revealing its structure, functions, and (per-)formative
principles.
An artwork may be described as organized matter (even in conceptual and
imaginary art, some materiality always remains) presented as a piece of art
and organizing different elements, ideas, formal characters, and functions.
In contemporary art, the contextual elements have become more and more
important, reaching a sort of constitutive character “within” the artwork.
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Questioning the active involvement and the role of the artist (or, more generally, the artwork’s production), the status of the public (visitors, spectators,
listeners, and so on), and introducing into the artwork process what Gérard
Genette (1997) defined as “paratexts” (like manifestos, statements, social
events around the artwork), contemporary art reinvents the status and borders of the artwork and redefines the rules of analysis. Description involves
compromising between all these different actors and to consider also, beyond
the “plot” and the formal structure, their intermediations, circulations and
interactions. Media artwork proceeds from a specific aesthetical approach
that needs specific language to be described. Its very apperception is often
processional, and the description we make is linked, but not limited, to our
experience of it (one which may also modify the artwork itself, like in interactive art).
The main criteria for the description of media artwork may be summarized as follows:
a. immanence and adherence to the object (literalness);
b. language adequacy (pertinence of translation);
c. dynamic adequacy (pertinence of variation);
d. meaningful concentration and extension (summarizing, skipping,
condensation; attention to details, intensification of perception,
precision);
e. recognition of unsaid, implicit and repressed elements (retracing
traces).
An Example of Description by “le Silo”
On the floor, twelve monitors of the same size show moving images. They are
lined up and form a barrier of light emerging from the obscurity in which the
installation is most often bathed. Across a distance of a few meters, a bench
is available for those who want to sit to watch the images. A film sequence has
been assigned to each monitor. For the sound sequences (six in all), headsets
allow visitors to listen to the soundtrack.
From left to right, monitors display film sequences that cover the history
of moving images from their inception to the contemporary period.11 The first
two monitors, devoted to the first decade of cinema, show two early films, one
by the Lumière brothers (1895), the other by Gabriel Veyre (1899). Each monitor then singles out a different decade, represented by a selected sequence.
This temporal journey has specific formal implications: it makes it possible
to perceive evolutions, transformations, constants. The passage from black
and white to color, the gradual arrival of sound, the diversity in the types of
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
images, documentary or fictional, or even coming from advertising – Farocki’s
sampling from this huge ensemble of images offered by cinema includes both
minor images (commercial, or banal images) and more canonical ones.
What do these images show? A commonplace setting more or less easily
identifiable: the gates of the factory, their immediate surroundings, crossed
by the workers differently depending on the period and the type of images.
A fixed set, a common stage which crowds come to cross and qualify: fleeing
bodies (the Lumière brothers), enslaved bodies (Fritz Lang), imprisoned bodies (Slatan Dudow), fighting bodies (D.W. Griffith); or singular faces piercing
through a logic of masses, that of Chaplin in Modern Times, that of Monica
Vitti as the “witness” of Red Desert, that of the female worker at the Wonder
factory refusing to go back to work after the strike. “Leaving the factory” is the
motif these images endlessly replay in the formal brilliance of the sequence, a
kind of crystalline unity for the history of cinema – from both the standpoints
of meaning and form, as we will see. Short, long, condensed, figurative, literal,
documentary, fictional, heavily edited, or lightly edited, these sequences literally show the critical power of cutting.
2.
ANALySIS
The second phase is that of “analysis,” strictly speaking. The analyst tries to
understand the structure of the artwork, to make explicit the functions of its
components, to explain its operational processes. Coming from the scientific
field, the notion of “analysis” also implicates following a method, ensuring
internal coherence. Analysis’s methodical principles may be discussed, corrected and reinvented through an analyst’s argumentation, but s/he has to be
aware of its methodical assumptions, and to avow them as far as possible. You
may also try to question the very basis of the analysis, discussing its criteria,
but the operational moment – applying principles following a coherent strategy – has to be maintained. To be sure, a media art analyst should be attentive,
sensible, and responsive to the interactions between different mediums, to
the constitutional differences in terminology, and the way different elements
interact (or not) in the whole structure and experience of the media artwork.
Such an activity demands many different capabilities, both specific to single
mediums and articulating in interplay.
The following schema gives an overview of some methods that may inform
the analysis of the artwork:
a. methodical analysis (following a specific analytical method: iconological,12 structuralist,13 formalist,14 Marxist (Marx and Engels,
2006), sociological,15 semiotic,16 psychoanalytic,17 etc.);
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b. homothetic analysis (to follow the method that seems the most pertinent to analyze a specific artwork: for instance, Marxist analysis for
Marxist artworks, non-psychoanalytic methods for Classical Greek
tragedy);
c. combined, crossing, dialectical analysis (practicing two or more
methods);
d. immanent analysis (to refuse or deny any existing methods in order
to stay close to the artwork’s material to find internal analytical
truths).
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Since Descartes, analysis is linked to the drive for simplification, for reduction. The Latin translation18 for the Greek word analysis was resolutio, which
stresses the importance of “solution”, actualized by the cognitivist “problem-solving” model.19 While description tries to “break up” each particular
element and to ignore teleological and interpretative a priori, the properly
analytical moment introduces a drive for classification, aimed to understand
the structure, principles, and rules of the way an artwork “works.” That means
according to the specific way the artwork displays itself, linking its preparation to its reception: this way, analysis tries to represent the media artwork
according to its apparatus and to the process it involves, not only dealing with
it as a physical object.
William Kentridge’s recent exhibition in Paris20 was a major example of
media dialectical integration, which aims to establish a form of consistency
between different mediums while preserving a deep knowledge of each of
them. Kentridge’s work, beginning with painting and theater went on connecting together drawing, animation, film, and video in a particular environment experienced in time. Within that exhibition, each room set a particular
environment and way of reception in time and space: in the first room, three
artworks were reshaped in three contiguous spaces, articulating video projection, music and mechanical puppet theater in a theater-like setting with a
seated audience: a fragmented, dialectical “total artwork” to achieve a Trauerarbeit for the bloody 20th century; the second room linked eight projections
on the four walls (3+1+3+1 “screens”) of the piece’s perambulatory space,
generating various possible positions, for example, consecutive lecture, sideby-side analysis of two or three projections, and mirrorlike study of oppositesided projections; the third room offered a simpler apparatus using a rotating
zoetrope-like anamorphic display of turning projection. To Kentridge, art
expresses the “impermanence and improvisionality of the world”: in a similar
way, such aesthetics create impermanent apparatuses, varying the relational
connections for the visitor, and offering him/her different mediums linked to
different epochs (from drawing to opera, from eighteenth-century visual toys
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
to digital projections, and so on), that interact in a “contemporary” cultural
reshaping. Analysis has to find out regularities and irregularities within the
perceptive whole, and to give an order to its going back and forth between different scales of understanding it. Media artwork creates a circulation between
homogeneous or heterogeneous elements.
An Example of Analysis by “le Silo”
For Workers Leaving the Factory in 11 Decades, Harun Farocki did some research
for one year. He thoroughly tracked down the cinematographic theme of workers leaving the factory. His project involved three decisive moments: inquiry,
cutting/sampling, and montage. His montage work includes, on the one
hand, the analogical association of individual figures through excerpts and,
on the other hand, the material assembly [montage in French, translator’s
note] of the installation in the exhibition room. Through which process does
the analysis of twelve preexisting moving images compose a synthesis with its
own logic and syntax, conveying a meta-sense both new and implicit in each of
the constituent parts? The question determines one of the possible angles in
the analysis of the work.
Each moment in the production of the work refers to a distinct gesture.
The first step in its production was the moment of documentation and historical inquiry. Through the history of cinema and moving images, Farocki set out
to look for formal, stylistic, or ideological traces of one of the founding motifs
of cinema. The second moment was that of the selection of excerpts and their
sampling. This purely analytical gesture allowed him to distinguish between
the similarities and the differences in the various excerpts. Finally, editing the
excerpts within a new entity constituted the third moment in the work. Farocki
put in place a demonstrative system at once paradigmatic and syntagmatic:
paradigmatic because of the expressive variety of a single figure; syntagmatic
due to the logic of chronological progression and technical improvement
accomplished by cinema and perceptible in the succession of excerpts. On the
one hand, the installation thus compresses time thanks to the narrative of a
few episodes in the history of a specific cinematographic figure; on the other
hand it infinitely stretches and prolongs the time of the repetition of the same
figure. In short, Farocki proposes a new temporality, that of anachronistic
viewing, both microscopic and macroscopic, between (the contents of) each
individual image and (those of) the totality of images featured in the installation. The different durations of the excerpts make each screen vibrate with its
own rhythm, adding to this double temporality and reinforcing the irregularity of the rhythm of the whole.
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The core of Farocki’s work is located at the very place of this articulation, at
the intersection of a reflection on history and story, the local and the general,
analysis and synthesis, the production of new meanings and the reproduction
of old ones. The focal point in his process is the camera. From the Lumière
camera to contemporary surveillance cameras, Farocki emphasizes a type
of look deprived of subjectivity and consciousness. Behind the figure of the
workers leaving the factory, the artist makes an inventory of the cameras filming them. Full-face, from behind, or in their midst, cameras confront workers
in movement, let them move away or follow them. They fix them from afar or
cling to their movements. Cameras then pass before or behind the boundary
separating the factory from the street, placed at this intermediate space of
the gates. They occupy the borderline, a virtual dividing line which points to a
qualitative shift, the passage from one scale of values to another, rather than
it separating two entities of a similar nature. The camera thus plays the part of
a transformer. Situated in the space “between,” it negotiates the change from
the time of production to the time of leisure, and from the body of the anonymous crowd to characters.
3.
INTERPRETATION
Having understood the structure and functioning of the artwork, the question of its interpretation comes to the foreground. For sure, interpretation is
at work since the very beginning of the analytic path, and informs the single
words and concepts we use, and the order of discourse itself. The very idea
of understanding the artwork as an organized whole involves a complex play
of evidence, assumptions and codifications: no “pure” description or analysis
can be done, because that process simply cannot exist without our presuppositions, our desires, even our alienation, hidden behind technical, “objective” language. But description and analysis, as we have defined them, are also
efforts to stay beyond interpretation, to resist to the temptation of imposing
a meaning, to suspend the explanatory drive. The analytical process is a backand-forth process linking distinct moments of the comprehension of the artwork in a coherent whole.
Interpretation is a very ancient practice we find in ancient Greece, one
which finds in Hermeneutics its own discipline: the Greek god Hermes was
the “messenger,” the go-between different worlds, mostly divine and human
ones. But he also was the god of commerce and trickery: interpretation has to
do with truth and falsity, with communicative ambiguities and making sense
out of them. Hermeneutical theory is historically linked to the public organization of meaning, that is, to power and ideology, mostly related to sacred
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texts, like in Jewish and Christian biblical exegesis. A great separation informs
two main interpretative strategies, searching for – if we use medieval categories – literal or spiritual (e.g., metaphorical, allegorical, unspoken) meanings:
such an opposition was represented since the beginnings of Christianity by
the Antiochene and Alexandrine schools, the latter centered on the recognition of allegories, the former not willing to transcend literal meanings. Medieval theology has formalized the interpretation of the Scriptures according to
these two main senses,21 unfolding the spiritual one in a “threefold division.”
This gives four levels of meaning in the text: literal (or historical) sense on
one hand, and allegorical, tropological (moral), and anagogical senses on the
other hand.22
Let us consider, for instance, Aldo Tambellini’s black-and-white piece
Black using 1,000 slides, 16mm film, TV managers, and 30 children. This is
his contribution to the early “video art” TV broadcasting produced by David
Oppenheim, The Medium Is the Medium (1969). In order to reflect upon the
“social concept” of Blackness and to show (Black) power, he made a series of
works both using different mediums and mixed media, as in this case. Our
interpretation of the broadcasted piece may be literal, close to the formal
matter, to the interplay between and beyond mediums, to the articulation of
figuration and abstraction, and of stillness and movement; but we may also
be making meaning out of its philosophical and ideological implications, the
research of Black’s beauty as a means to express Black people’s issues; the
use of negative images of the children to make a sort of Hegelian “negation of
negation,” to move beyond representation but also against the idea of Black
people as the opposite of “civilization”; the insistence on circular motifs as a
mean to express the reference to the vision (the eye), and to link cosmic images
to almost documentary ones; the use of visual pulsation as an energetic drive
mixing video and film potentialities; the use of mixed voices of Black children
to express the pluralistic openness and dynamism of an emerging subject in
history, fighting for freedom and self-determination.
Modern hermeneutics as a study of interpretation deployed itself as the
attempt to explain an artwork’s hidden significations.23 Laicization of hermeneutical practices extended religious exegesis into philology, trying to find out
the original text from different versions of it (i.e. its “tradition”). In occidental
traditions, the written text remains the main object of interpretation, but it
progressively enlarged into a larger “semiotic” frame, involving every possible
search for meaning within communicative contexts. A new polarization arose
in modern hermeneutics between “objectivist” and “subjectivist” interpretations, the former considering the autonomous existence of a text according
to the author’s intentions, the latter involving the reader as the main actor of
interpretation. This opposition between drive for “meaning” and drive for “sig-
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nificance” was formalized, for instance by Eric Donald Hirsch, Jr., defending
the second option against the dominant formalism of New Criticism’s “close
reading” of the text. Such an opposition seems to reproduce that between two
different fields, involving specialized jobs: critics, and academic research.
The contemporary cultural field partially blurs such a separation: artworks
themselves often propose their own explanations, and interpretative practices articulate increasingly subjective and objective drives. Interpretation is
no longer seen as an intellectual, abstract operation, while senses, especially
in the case of media environments, play a more important role; they just shall
root themselves in objective configurations and develop through argumentative discourse to remain within analysis’s expanded frame. In a period of modernist “freezing” of modernity as an historical ideology, Susan Sontag (1966)
stressed such a need for sensual lectures of art (an “erotics of art”). While acting like a reaction against dogmatic and univocal theories, this criticism goes
beyond the need for restoring the subjective dimension of critical writing,
but it is also important for analytical purposes. In our “postmodern” times
we have the opposite problem: a sort of dictatorship of the emotional, a new
Superego dogma created by contemporary capitalism that Slavoj Žižek repeatedly formalized as the “injunction to enjoy.”
Philosophers like Wilhelm Dilthey, Martin Heidegger, and Hans-Georg
Gadamer mostly represent contemporary hermeneutics as an enlarged practice
of interpretation. They established the notion of the “Hermeneutic circle” as a
back-and-forth process between explicit and implicit meaning, linked by Heidegger to the personal experience of the interpreter. So, hermeneutics shapes a
new place for the visitor, spectator, and analyst him-/herself: Gadamer’s idea of
art as a “representation for” someone opens the way to contemporary forms of
“relationality” (Bourriaud, 2002). The social and political impact of a media artwork tends to go beyond the limits of the art field and to involve “real” life, often
while using “virtual” technologies such as digital platforms to achieve it. Such
a theory of media involvement in everyday life as an “extension” of the human
field finds its origins in Marshall McLuhan’s “communicative” – more than simply “communicational” – utopia, intended to abolish the distinction between
artistic mediums and socio-political media: technologies become the main
operators to create “communities.” Having involved into the media artwork,
the process of interpretation displaces itself from simply decoding and making
sense from a formal configuration, and wonders about the social implications,
relational questions, and temporal (Birnbaum, 2007) evolutions of the artwork.
As I mentioned, the artwork itself may contain interpretative drives,
inscribed in its form: self-referent criticism and statements about art, all that
which is generally called “reflexivity,” a main modernist exigency. A radicalized form of this analysis within the media artwork is the reconsideration of
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artworks within the same medium or through appropriation and recoding
(Foster, 1985), such as in “visual studies” – a way of thinking about cinema
using cinema’s own means and material as is done in the film Visual Essays:
Origins of Film (Al Razutis, 1973-1984), or through video, as in the video project
Histoire(s) du cinema (Jean-Luc Godard, 1988-1998) (see Brenez, 1998: 313-335).
Or we may consider Piero Bargellini’s 16mm film Trasferimento di modulazione (1969) as another example of reinventing the transfer within the medium.
Bargellini shoots the 16mm projection of a pornographic film, reworking the
image during development, to let the image show the “latent image” hidden
within representation, in the matter of the support. An author may also come
back to his own work, as Michael Snow did in the digital “condensation” of his
own seminal 16mm film Wavelength (1967), which for him has to be seen only
as a film screening (see Fig. 5.2 in color section). He took his own film and fragmented it in three parts of the same length, superimposing the three pictures
and soundtracks and obtaining a digital work lasting one-third of the original
one: the result, the DVD WVLNT: Wavelength For Those Who Haven’t The Time
(2003), is also a theoretical statement about digital video, by a multimedia artist whose work articulates the specificities of particular mediums (painting,
drawing, collage, sculpture, installation, music, photography, film, video…).
To conclude, we can summarize the methods for the interpretation of the
artwork into the following typology:
a. holistic methods: interpreting the entire artwork in the most exhaustive way;
b. fetishistic methods: to concentrate on details that dazzle the analyst
or her/his desire, and considering them as revelators for the whole
and/or the only relevant ones to give an interpretation;
c. dialectic methods: to articulate the particular and the general reflecting upon the meaning of different levels of interpretation, in order to
find and go beyond interpretative contradictions.
On the other side, as for the relation between the artwork and its contextual
elements:
a. circular paradigm: interpretation as a practice centered on the reciprocal, sometimes tautological, relationships between the artwork
and its context, (for instance, the Hermeneutic circle, or the “mirror
theories” in Marxist hermeneutics);
b. symptomatic paradigm: to concentrate on details as traces of the
artwork’s “truth,” of the artist’s subconscious or unconscious, of a
collective Kunstwollen. This is a mainly negative and fragmentary
paradigm that tries to find out a general meaning from the inverted
reading of particular aspects of it;
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c.
deconstructive paradigm: considering the artwork as having no exteriority (“there is no outside to the text” (Derrida, 1976)): the opposition text/context itself becomes no more pertinent to the analyst.
An Example of Interpretation by “le Silo”
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Less than a minute elapses between the opening and the closing of the doors,
which is enough time to see about a hundred workers pass by, in the first film
screened in front of a paying audience at a demonstration of the Lumière cinematograph in December 1895. The motif of exiting from the factory and this
inaugural shot by the Lumière brothers first appeared in Farocki’s work in a
documentary essay (Arbeiter verlassen die Fabrik, 1995), which was released in
the context of the commemoration of the centenary of cinema. The undertaking was interpreted as announcing the movement triggered by the third Industrial Revolution, with factories gradually emptied of their workers,24 as well as
a genealogy of video surveillance in the workplace. The installation materialized eleven years later in the exhibition Kino wie noch nie presented in Vienna
and curated by Farocki and Antje Ehmann. The film and the installation share
a number of images, but understanding the latter as a mere transposition of
the film into an exhibition space would be a mistake. First of all because in
1995 Farocki subjected the excerpts to slow motion, freeze frames, and repetitions, whereas in 2006 he simply exhibited them side by side, at a regular
speed (due to the different durations of the excerpts, random montages are
presented to the visitors). Besides, the director’s commentary disappeared in
the installation and the experience of images changed as a consequence.
The alignment of the twelve monitors makes similarities and differences
between excerpts visible, inviting one to observe a permanence of forms worthy of Warburg’s plates. The recurrence of images of metal gates, walls, and
doors reinforces the parallel between the factory and the prison.25 From a formal standpoint, the barrier of monitors reproduces the line of workers and
stands in the way of the visitor’s movement. One has to walk around it, just
as the Lumières’ workers exited the factory and the frame through the sides.
The exhibition starts with their anonymous bodies in 1895, in a factory where
photographic equipment was produced. By contrast, the work ends with the
image of two stars playing the parts of workers, one an icon of modern cinema
(Deneuve), the other an icon of the contemporary pop scene (Björk). In Dancer
in the Dark, the character played by Björk gradually loses her sight, possibly the
allegory of a working class gone blind and of a crisis of cinema.
The installation becomes a reflection on cinema and its history. The progression over decades allows one to observe the evolution of technique, from
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
black and white to color, from film to digital, from silent to sound, one turning
point being Griffith’s editing in shot/reverse shot (in fact Griffith did appear
in another installation by Farocki, presented in the same 2006 exhibition in
Vienna). While the gesture of laying out the monitors on the floor evokes Jackson Pollock, their assembly is reminiscent of Douglas Gordon’s and Nam June
Paik’s piles of television sets. Lower than the spectator and freed of any commentary, the film sequences may not suggest the end of cinema, but rather its
exit from a conventional habitat, the theater and its darkness, in order to move
into art spaces.
4.
JUDGMENT
At first sight, the act of judgment may seem to be an external one, when we
think of analysis as an objective and shareable practice.26 Analysis as a “scientific” practice is founded on the repression of personal judgment of value or
taste, as well as any form of normative a priori. But such a denial should not be
taken for granted, for four reasons at least. First, an artwork always takes position within a context: its interpretation leads one to wonder about its signification, situation, and qualities. Second, as a boundary moment of analysis,
judgment defines an internal path linking the artwork’s statements and the
analyst’s point of view, involving her/his drives and desires. The artwork faces
the world (or turns against, or away from it) in its own time and space, while
the analyst judges from another context and following criteria that may be
similar (and even homological), or not. Third, evaluative criteria – as beauty,
necessity, newness, truth, relevance, etc. – orient the very choice of the object
of analysis, and inform its own deployment. For instance, “masterpieces”
are often considered the most creative, thoughtful, intense configurations,
and also the most productive for analytical activity. Finally, the interpretative
moment in analysis cannot help to open analytical process to judgment. As
Adorno wrote: “understanding and criticism are one” (1997: 262).
Judgment informs the very presuppositions of the analysis: the simple
alternative between analyzing and judging is a false one, or better an ideological one, because methodical choices are far from neutral. For instance, limiting its means to words, and to a specific, reduced language, analysis tries to
make us discover something more regarding the artwork’s work, but reveals
also its own partiality, as a practice separate from the proper movement of art.
An artwork always posits itself and intervenes in a social, cultural, historical,
political frame. The analyst’s judgment arises from the encounter between
the positions expressed within the artwork and the fundamental desire of the
analyst, and the site of his/her pleasure. The most immanent analysis, the
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most objectivist one, cannot escape the question of judgment: while trying to
evacuate it, the “scientific” posture can only repress, not eliminate it. On the
other side, analysis differentiates itself from a simple “everything’s subjective” post-modernist posture, assuming the necessity for searching objective
validation in the artwork’s matter.
There are also historical reasons for the repression of judgment in analytical activity. In modern times, judgment has been hypostatized as a partial
activity, a “job”: criticism. Nowadays, we observe criticism’s crisis (also on economic grounds), which is a sort of etymological paradox, because the “criticism” involves the act of putting in crisis something in order to judge it. Such
a remark makes us understand the analysis of the artwork from a sociological
basis: it develops itself as a specialized activity within academic institutions,
and is mainly reserved for paid professionals of analysis, and to university
students. More generally, when academic disciplines try to wonder about
the objects they study, they often pretend to evade the question of judgment.
Analysis, like scientific research, has to create a fracture from moral, religious,
or aesthetic rules, which could give a predetermined dimension to its proper
activity. Analysis’s autonomy inscribes the price of its separateness, but its
solitude is full of memories: among them, critical judgment may become the
most important one, that which gives the direction to go through the “postmodern” desert.
The paradigms of judgment may be resumed in the following way:
a. internal coherence between means and ends (Aristotelian);
b. normative adequacy (for instance, “necessity”);
c. aesthetic comprehension;
d. judgment of taste;
e. denial of judgment;
f. dialectical judgment.
All of these approaches to judgment may unfold in a key moment of analysis,
for instance at the beginning or at the end, to explain the choice of an artwork
or a particular way of analyzing it. That is the moment where analysis shows it
is aware of its limits, but also of its necessary grounding in something external
to the analytical process. Judgment represents the border and the place for
conciliation between aesthetics and analysis, between the necessity of theorizing art and the everyday practice of understanding artworks.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
An Example of Judgment by “le Silo”
“Leaving the factory” looks in many ways like cinema’s own attempted departure for the rooms of museums, as it turns its back on the historical arrangement of the theater after a century of existence. The trajectory outlined by
Farocki’s installation does not ignore this departure, nor does it omit a detour
through video (and television). Still, and notwithstanding the many qualities
we acknowledge in the work, the concern for questioning this recent “museal
condition” of cinematographic images distinguishes Farocki’s output from
countless others, interested in this change of scene only for the new formal
possibilities it promises. Farocki’s work, under few illusions as to the “ruses of
museal reason,” does not fail to engage in a genuine dialogue with the forms
of discourse privileged by the institution. Workers Leaving the Factory in 11
Decades therefore presents the advantage of proposing a reflection which is
more than necessary on the pillars of the regime of meaning conveyed by the
museum: the collection, the exhibition, the transfer of knowledge, notably,
and, more particularly, the heuristic value of analogy (the system of resemblances) predominantly orienting museal practices (incidentally, the sphere
of influence of analogical thought largely exceeds this field). Indeed, the proximity of Farocki’s rhetoric with this form of thought is real – compiling (Der
Ausdruck der Hände / The Expression of the Hands [1997]), comparing (Verleigh
über ein Drittes / Comparison via a Third [2007]), assembling (Deep Play [2007]),
taking apart and putting back together – but it clearly appears as a subtle
shield against the rapture of “correspondences” even as it refers to Baudelaire,
Malraux, Warburg… Farocki does not mix up means and ends: the horizon of
his work is not the revelation of resemblances (an operation he leaves for the
images he calls “operative images,” subject to the intelligence of machines,
that is, essentially, solely to their capacity for recognition). On the contrary,
this horizon is the production of differences. What is striking in Workers Leaving the Factory in 11 Decades (as in a Vertov interval) are discontinuities: formal
discontinuities (chromatic ones, for instance), generic discontinuities (fiction
vs. documentary), and above all historical discontinuities (those which mark
the history of work, of public space, of women, etc.). While we have never been
as much in need of experiencing the distance between images, Farocki’s gaze
may be one which, going against the grain of museal reason, contributes to
sharpening differences with the monomaniac mind and the discourses of the
“same” that tend to set themselves up as a method.
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NOTES
1
Its main adaptation to philosophical thought is to be found in Aristotle’s logic,
and in particular in the Analytics’ theory of the syllogism.
2
“The process of breaking up a concept, proposition, linguistic complex, or fact
into its simple or ultimate constituents.” (from “Analysis” in Audi, 1999).
3
Coming from an analytical philosopher, such a statement should be deflated, but
it interests us to underline the particular dominance of “decomposition” within
modern analysis.
4
A more subtle link between Hegel’s quote and our concerns about art may be
traced: Hegel writes on the analysis of a “Vorstellung” (from vor-stellen, “to put
forward, in front of”), which also means “(re)presentation,” “mental picture,”
“imagination.”
5
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“Rational” has to be understood as a coherent argumentation, which follows
the drive for clarification affirmed by modern culture of the Enlightenment (the
“Age of Reason”). In Kantian terms, it should be assumed that what is at stake in
an analysis of artwork is “theoretical,” not “practical,” analysis (thus, always in
Kantian terms, the analyst seems to represent within his/her gesture the main
character of art, its “disinterestedness”).
6
Starting from his very passionate interpretation of Japanese culture in Empire of
Signs (1983), and the pluralistic explosion of interpretative possibilities represented by S/Z. An Essay (1975a). See also Barthes (1975b).
7
It should be evident that the comparison with Panofsky is meant to facilitate the
understanding of possibilities more than to define an exact parallelism. Some
noticeably great differences involve the second step, and the whole project is a
synchronic coexistence of significations, in Panofsky’s system, while our path
develops in time through different moments, even if every moment may question
its relationship to the other ones.
8
Harun Farocki, Workers Leaving the Factory in 11 Decades (2006). Video installation
for twelve monitors, black and white/color, sound, 36’, loop.
9
“The transposition or the translation of values and structures from one expressive
sphere to another” (Pächt, 1999).
10 To be completed by this particular remark by Jacques Aumont: “The words are
much less numerous than visual experiences, that are almost infinitely variable”
(Aumont, 1996: 202).
11 In order of appearance, the following films may be seen: Auguste and Louis
Lumière, La Sortie de l’usine Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory),
France, 1895, 42 s; Gabriel Veyre, Sortie de la briqueterie Meffre et Bourgoin à Hanoi,
France, 1899, 42 s; director unknown, excerpt probably shot in Moscow, 1912,
58 s; D.W. Griffith, Intolerance, USA, 1916, 2 min 30 s; Fritz Lang, Metropolis, Germany, 1926, 1 min 40 s; Charles S. Chaplin, Modern Times, USA, 1936, 42 s; Slatan
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Dudow, Frauenschicksale, Germany, 1952, 33 s; Michelangelo Antonioni, Deserto
Rosso (Red Desert), Italy, 1964, 4 min 45 s; Jacques Willemont, La reprise du travail
aux usines Wonder, France, 1968, 9 min 33 s; Jean-Marie Straub, Danielle Huillet,
Trop tôt, trop tard, France/Germany, 1981, 10 min 15 s; Durchfahrtssperren DSP®,
commisioned elkostar®, Germany, 1987, 1 min 11 s; Lars von Trier, Dancer in the
Dark, USA, 2000, 1 min 47 s.
12 The seminal work by Cesare Ripa, Iconologia (1603), established the distinction
between the simple description through written texts (iconography) and the interpretation of art images (iconology). At the beginning of the 20th century, Aby Warburg extended this approach to all sorts of cultural images, followed by Panofsky
(1972).
13 Founded by linguistic methods like Saussure’s, and the Prague or Moscow
schools, structuralism was reinvented through Claude Lévi-Strauss’ approach to
anthropology. The structural method supposes the existence of a coherent struc-
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ture to be discovered (for me: within the artwork).
14 Going back to Russian Formalism of the 1910s (see Steiner, 1984).
15 Linked to Marxist “de-sublimating” tradition, sociology of art has an influential
landmark in György Lukacs’s pre-Marxist Theory of the Novel (1974), originally
published in 1916. See Tanner (2003); for the analysis of the sociological art
“field” see Bourdieu (1996 and 1993).
16 After the seminal work of Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles S. Peirce, see Barthes (1967). See also (Nöth, 1997).
17 Sigmund Freud in 1910 himself started this approach to artworks with his book
on Leonardo da Vinci (1990), in which he claims to find a latent homosexuality
through biographical statements and formal analysis.
18 Noticeably, by Thomas Aquinas, see Sweeney (1994).
19 See D’zurilla and Goldfried (1971); Newell and Simon (1972). No need to repeat it
again: the scientific drive for analysis is linked to the history of its concept, but it
has to be questioned, as the aesthetic is not a scientific field.
20 William Kentridge, Five Themes. Curated by Mark Rosenthal in collaboration with
W. Kentridge. Museum Jeu de Paume, Paris, 29 June – 5 September 2010.
21 Its most famous systematization is Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (12651274).
22 According to Hugh of St. Victor’s (c.1096-1141) De scripturis et scriptoribus sacris,
allegorical and anagogical levels express – respectively – visible and invisible
facts.
23 Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) considerably helped the art of interpretation to become fully applicable to non-sacred texts.
24 This idea appeared in Klaus Gronenborn’s review of the 1995 film, published in
the Hildesheimer Allgemeine Zeitung on 21 November 1995, and reproduced on
Farocki’s website (farocki-film.de, last access: 30 April 2012). It echoes a recurring
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gesture in Farocki’s cinema, that of analyzing images of the past in the light of
later advances in knowledge.
25 The comparison becomes unavoidable with the seventh monitor: in the excerpt
from Frauenschicksale (Slatan Dudow, 1952), leaving the prison leads to the factory (work being a path to redemption). Already, on the previous screen, the tramp
was shown leaving the factory, only to board a police car (Modern Times, 1936).
26 Analysis would be “not evaluative nor normative” (Odin, 1977). This statement
has to be corrected as a “relative autonomy” of analysis from judgment.
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Adorno, Theodor. Aesthetical Theory. London and New York: Continuum, 1997.
Audi, Robert (ed.). The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. Cambridge University
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Press, 1999 (2nd ed.).
Aumont, Jacques. A quoi pensent les films? Paris: Séguier, 1996.
Barthes, Roland. Empire of Signs. New York: Hill & Wang, 1983.
—. S/Z: An Essay. New York: Hill & Wang, 1975a.
—. The Pleasure of the Text. New York: Hill & Wang, 1975b.
—. Elements of Semiology. London: Jonathan Cape, 1967.
Beaney, Michael. “Analysis.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2012
Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2012/
entries/analysis/. Last access: 10 September 2012.
Birnbaum, Daniel. Chronologie. Dijon: les presses du réel, 2007.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Rules of Art. Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.
—. The Field of Cultural Production. Essays on Art and Leisure. New York: Columbia
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Brenez, Nicole. De la figure en general et du corps en particulier. Paris and Brussels: De
Boeck, 1998.
Cottingham, John, Robert Stoothof, and Dugald Murdoch (eds.). The Philosophical
Writings of Descartes, vol. II, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
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D’Zurilla, Thomas J., and Marvin R. Goldfried. “Problem Solving and Behavior Modification.” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 78 (1971) 1: 107-126.
Foster, Hal. Recodings. Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics. Seattle: Bay Press, 1985.
Freud, Sigmund. Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood. Translated by Alan
Tyson, edited by James Strachey. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1990.
Genette, G. Paratexts. Thresholds of Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997.
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Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. The Phenomenology of Mind. Translated by James
Black Baillie. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1910.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1962.
Hügli, Anton, and Poul Lübcke. “Analysis.” In Philosophielexikon. Personen und Begriffe
der abendländischen Philosphie von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Reinbek: Rowohlt,
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Press, 1982.
Lacan, Jacques. Écrits. Paris, Le Seuil, 1966.
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Lukacs, György. The Theory of the Novel. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1974.
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and Communications Press, 2006 (rev. ed.).
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Prentice-Hall, 1972.
Nöth, Winfried (ed.). Semiotics of the Media. State of Art, Projects, and Perspectives. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997.
Odin, Roger. Dix années d’analyses textuelles de films. Bibliographie analytique. Lyon:
Centre de recherches linguistiques et semiologiques de Lyon, 1977.
Pächt, Otto. The Practice of Art History. Reflections on Method. New York: Harvey Miller,
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Panofsky, Erwin. Studies in Iconology. Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance.
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Ripa, Cesare. Iconologia. Rome: Lepide Faeij, 1603.
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T H E A N A ly S I S o F T H E A R T w o R k
CHapter 6
Methodologies of Multimedial
Documentation and Archiving
6.1
ENJOyING THE GAP:
COMPARING CONTEMPORARy DOCUMENTATION STRATEGIES1
Annet Dekker
Documentation is the process of gathering and organizing information about
a work, including its condition, its content, its context, and the actions taken
to preserve it. For the writing of art history one used to be able to rely on the
art objects. When artworks become prone to obsolescence or are only meant
to exist for a short period, documentation is the only thing people can fall
back on. The traditional documentation strategy for the conservation of art is
focused on describing the object, in the best objective way possible. But conservation as a practice is not as fixed as one might assume, and hence documentation strategies tend to vary a lot. Needless to say, like any other form
of representation, documentation will always be arbitrary and incomplete in
relation to the artwork. By analyzing the documentation practice of the performance group Blast Theory, I will argue in the first part of this chapter that documents (such as texts, videos, still images, instructions, etc.) can sometimes
communicate more about a work and how it is experienced than its physical
manifestation can.
In the second part of this chapter I will focus on documentation as a tool
in conservation. Despite the recognized fact that media art will not survive or
endure over time due to its often ephemeral and obsolescent nature, many
conservators attempt to fix the processual and fluid nature of these works. I
will compare various documentation strategies that are used in traditional
museum structures and those developed by other organizations dealing with
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conservation. The analyses will be compared to Blast Theory’s project Uncle
Roy All Around You (2003). Instead of working towards an object-oriented
approach of fixation, by referring to current artists’ practices, in this case Blast
Theory, I propose to focus on preserving and documenting the process and
experience of a work: that is, keeping the memory alive but accepting a loss
in history. Furthermore, I argue that documenting media art requires a new
understanding of conservation theory, which will have an influence on current
documentation methodologies in conservation.
In order to analyze what documentation consists of, I will first briefly trace
the meaning of “document.” The term document is used in various contexts,
often referring to different things. I will concentrate on the development of
the meaning of “document”.’ in as far as it connects and is relevant to the practice of conservation of multimedia artworks.2
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From Document to Documentation in Conservation
The word “document” derives from the Latin verb docere, which means to
learn, show, and inform, as well as documentum that signifies instruction
and/or teaching.3 Although we have lost this sense of documentum, meaning
something that teaches or informs, the root of the word shows that the original Latin meaning was not just an object, but rather a testimony, an example, an instructive demonstration of some principle or idea (Windfeld Lund,
2003). From the 17th century onwards, it was the emergence of the European
state bureaucracy which became an essential part of the creation of a public
bureaucracy across and independent of local customs, that added two other
meanings to the word document. Firstly, a document was constituted as a
written object that states and provides transactions, agreements, and decisions that are made by citizens. This in turn implicated the second notion, the
document as proof – turning the authenticity of the document into a subject of
investigation (Windfeld Lund, 2003). However, it was not until the 1900s that
a new professional was born: the documentalist.4 Notable in this respect are
the writings by Paul Otlet, Traité de documentation (1934), and Suzanne Briet,
Qu’est-ce que la documentation (1951). Both argued for an expanded notion
of the document that would include artifacts, natural objects, and works of
arts; documents were regarded as examples or groupings of things that derive
meaning from their context.
Although the term is used differently in museology, conservation, art
history, and the art trade (Fluegel, 2001), documentation in the field of art is
generally understood as the process of gathering and organizing information
about a work, including its condition, its content, its context and the actions
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
taken to preserve it. At present, several types of documentation can be distinguished: first, documentation produced for publicity and presentation;
second, for purposes of reconstruction or preservation; third, for describing
processual changes in the appearance of a work; fourth, for developing an
aesthetical and/or a historical “framework” or reference; fifth, for educational
purposes; sixth, for capturing audience experiences; and seventh, for capturing the creative or working process of the artist(s). In conservation practices,
documentation is primarily used for reconstruction and preservation. The
traditional documentation strategy for the conservation of art is focused on
describing the artwork in the best objective way possible. In some cases, intuitive knowledge (information about the artists’ intent and aesthetic and historical considerations) is taken into account, but most methodologies rely on
material measurements, emphasizing a way of structuring, a use of systems
and logic that is reminiscent of scientific research.5 With the arrival of more
and more live, ephemeral, networked, processual, and obsolete works of art,
documentation – as the physical remaining trace of a work – became the center of conservation strategies, and new ways of thinking about documentation
practice emerged.6 Moreover, the instable character of media art often grants
documentation the status of the only remaining trace of the work (Depocas,
2001). At the same time, the notion that documentation is a subjective process
where selection criteria are of great importance is more widely acknowledged.7
What happens with documentation after it has been produced? As said
before, in most museum practices the core of documentation strategies is
focused on the preservation of a work. Other documentation, for example, flyers or video that are produced for publicity and presentation, is also kept but is
often regarded as being of secondary importance and stored in the “documentation archive” instead of the “collection archive.” As such, for a long time the
documentation was not considered of great relevance for the recreation of a
work. By focusing on artists’ documentation strategies, I will show that material in a documentation archive can actually be very helpful when recreating or
presenting a work.
Blast Theory: An Individual Case
Blast Theory is renowned internationally as one of the most adventurous artists’ groups using interactive media, creating groundbreaking new forms of
performance and interactive art that mixes audiences across the Internet, live
performance, and digital broadcasting. The UK-based artists group is led by
Matt Adams, Ju Row Farr, and Nick Tandavanitj. From the early 1990s, they
have explored and questioned the social, cultural, and political facets and
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influences of technology. Blast Theory confronts a media-saturated world in
which popular culture rules, using performance, installation, video, mobile,
and online technologies to ask questions about the ideologies present in the
information that envelops us. Their art- and research-focused interactive projects have been created for gallery, street, and television spaces. Their most
recent work centers on conceiving new uses for location-aware technologies
(such as navigational instruments) in public spaces, creating non-commercial
content by means of already-present technologies. Blast Theory’s interest and
use of technology, and the innovative possibilities that arise from this, stems
from an interest in communication.8 They approach technology as an ideology, a constraint, a cultural space, a communication medium, or platform and
not only as a mere device.
A survey of their works offers a number of different case study possibilities for examining documentation strategies. For the purpose of this research
I selected their work Uncle Roy All Around You that premiered in London at the
Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 2003. Being part of a large funding
program, Uncle Roy All Around You required extensive documentation. Because
they had to work and communicate with different collaborators from various
fields on different levels, the documentation strategies were also diverse. This
made the project into an interesting case because the different angles demonstrate the various aspects of documentation problems that occur in relation to
media artworks. What this case will show above all is how documentation functions in the work of artists: in the conceptual and production phases as well as
in the presentation, archival, and possible future preservation phases. As such,
the case could serve to complicate the issue of documentation in preservation
further, necessitating an expansion of the term into different types, and the different phases in which documentation of these different types occurs.
Uncle Roy All Around You is a mixed reality game played by players in the
street of a city, and online by players in a virtual city. The city space of the online
environment is an exact replica of the actual city space. Finding Uncle Roy is
the mission of the game, where online players and players in the street work
together to find him. Using handheld computers, the street players are sent on
a quest around the city, being offered directions by Uncle Roy via the devices
(see Fig. 6.1 in color section). When the street players start they state their location using the handheld computer, where an avatar of them is revealed in the
virtual world as a direct correlation to their physical location (see Fig. 6.2 in
color section). Here, online players can select street players, enabling them to
send private messages to them including assistance in finding Uncle Roy, and
street players can choose whether or not to send audio messages back. At the
end of the game after street players have been led to various locations through
messages by Uncle Roy, online players and street players are asked a series of
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
questions regarding trusting strangers and whether or not they would make
a commitment to someone they don’t know. Online and street players who
agree to make a commitment to the unfamiliar person are then matched up
and offered the opportunity to meet face-to-face.9
The Value and Meaning of Documentation in Artists’ Practice:
Blast Theory10
Blast Theory has a rather extensive and meticulous documentation process
during both the period of creating the work and presenting it. As one of its
founding members, Matt Adams, states, “those bits of documentation have
to do multiple jobs for us – they are marketing things, explanatory tools, and
appendices to the research, they act as records.” As such, documentation
exists beyond the time of the work and testifies to the company’s creative process and practice. Considering documentation as both testimony and a tool
for making decisions about the nature of the work, I am following the assumption that what is documented and how this is documented reveal the framework within which artists understand, conceive, and develop their work.
Part of Blast Theory’s practice and creative working process is to be constantly inventive and flexible in terms of techniques and strategies. They sometimes start from a thematic or narrative perspective and other times from a set
of questions or issues that they would like to tackle, or a particular kind of
experience they would like to explore. In the conceptualization and development of their projects, Blast Theory employs a number of methods and strategies. While they have stated a number of times that they would not say they
have any coherent or continuous methodology – that working methods are
contingent on the project at hand – a common thread is the methods they do
use (although varied) work within a process that attempts to maintain the creative fluidity of a project’s development. I discerned three different phases in
which documentation played an important role. I define these, often parallel,
stages as follows: documentation as process, in which documentation is seen
as a tool in decision-making processes during the development of the work;
documentation as presentation, or, the creation of audiovisual material about
the work; and, documentation for recreation in the future.
D O C U M E N TAT I O N A S P RO C E S S
Documentation as process refers to the notion of documentation as a tool for
making decisions about the nature of the work. Blast Theory places the malle-
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ability of a work’s development as key to their creative process: any “method”
that appears too static – that would possibly hinder the expansion and growth
of ideas in any direction – is a territory hardly ventured into by the group. Even
up until the very moment of presentation, Blast Theory is highly reliant on oral
communication as a creative medium, using conversation as a way to develop
and flesh out ideas with one another. As Adams outlined, oral storytelling is
used as a way to find the core elements of a project they are working on. Referring to the conceptual development process of scriptwriter Paul Schrader,
Adams states that never writing anything down and just telling people the
story allows a space for things that are extraneous, or “superfluous” to a story,
to naturally be removed or “fall away” over time, leaving the core elements.
Furthermore, by abstaining from writing too much down they all gained equal
access to the work. In Adams’ words: “It means that the project stays mobile.”
While the creative flexibility afforded by development through conversation is integral to Blast Theory’s way of working, they do often find a necessity to textually communicate complex ideas and relations to one another,
particularly when they are dealing with a project like Uncle Roy All Around You
that involves both online players and players in the physical world. They have
increasingly turned to using whiteboards for this purpose. The whiteboard
allows them to write down ideas and issues they are working with that day,
photograph it for documentation, then wipe it clean for the next session and
start again from scratch. They have also employed private notebooks, allowing
each member to individually jot down ideas, and then type them up and share
those they feel are important.
In the development process Blast Theory employs a number of creative
strategies to develop their works including creating questionnaires, interviews,
role playing exercises for each other, paper tests, and trails through the city. For
example, during a residency at Banff New Media Institute just over a year before
the release of Uncle Roy, the three core members of the group each designed
different questionnaires, interviews, and exercises for each other. For example,
Ju Row Farr designed a questionnaire and interview for the other Blast Theory
members exploring their relationship to the city, with questions like: Where
do you walk? How close to the building do you walk? Where do you put your
arms when you’re walking? Do you look at other people? How do you feel on city
streets? Through these “role-playing exercises” they realized they shared a similar sense of detachment in the spaces they often frequent. These exercises thus
lead to further conceptualization of the piece. Besides, they also conduct interviews with people external to the project in order to develop different aspects of
the project. These exercises and the group’s reflection on them enable the group
to try and consider what people in the game play would and would not do, whilst
aiming to create a process that is not too difficult and mentally stimulating.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
Testing is another documentation method in the process and development of
the technological aspects of their projects. Blast Theory test the characteristics
and possibilities of mobile devices by creating a series of interface prototypes
and devices to test whether or not they correspond to the concept of the specific project, and whether they feel these technologies are accessible to a broad
public in understanding their use. Members of Blast Theory are often the first
testers and at varying stages in the development participants from outside are
brought in to test the setup devices. Sometimes they invite testers with a deep
knowledge of the technology to get precise and descriptive feedback.
It is interesting to see that the emphasis on oral communication is reflected in their internal working process. Their ambivalence towards written documents, which according to them often leads to a hierarchical structure with
the person in charge of the writing having more power and control over the
process, shows the importance of having an equal collaboration of decisionmaking and conceptual and design development within the group. This working process of creating a non-hierarchical and decentralized internal structure
is thus informed by a desire for openness and fluidity within the conceptual
development of a work.
D O C U M E N TAT I O N A S P R E S E N TAT I O N
By referring to “documentation as presentation” I am focusing on the material that is made by Blast Theory to explain and communicate their work.
Such documentation can be a manifestation of a registered or captured event
and can take on many forms: notation, mapping, written description, photography, film, or video.11 Audiovisual recordings provide us with a unique
perspective on the history of art, a perspective that moves beyond the image
in a book, words on paper, or abstract notations. They provide us with a fuller
sense of what it was like to be there and then. Needless to say, with media art
consisting of multiple objects, interactive components, or uses of multiple
spaces (real and virtual), the use of video documentation can be extremely
valuable, especially when trying to capture the working of a piece or show the
experience it evokes with the audience. Nevertheless, as Adams remarked,
it is not something that is easy to do. Referring to the video documentation
that was produced for their interactive virtual reality-based piece Desert Rain
he explains: “The problem here was to register the non-linear character of
the piece. Therefore, the crucial question was how to bring together examples of different types of footage (and not so much which “bits” to use) so
that the non-linear character of the piece would be sufficiently “represented”
(Lycouris, 2000).
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Nor is video documentation uncontested. Especially in case of live performance art and dance, video documentation (or even other forms of documentation) is seen as betraying the vivacity of the art form. The prospect of
experiencing a mediated performance, even in written words, has disturbed
many performance art scholars.12 Obviously any form of documentation will
be a substitute for the original, but perhaps there are other ways of thinking
about documentation. For example, can or should documentation evoke its
absent object or event, or would it be enough to provide an impression or
translate the atmosphere? Is it possible to think of an expanded understanding of documentation as presentation?
When it comes to capturing or documenting the final result, the live event,
Blast Theory try as best as possible to show people the atmosphere of the experience, as Adams states: “It’s about getting that atmosphere correct where
you can imaginatively engage with what it must have felt like to do that or be
there.” The audiovisual documentation is partly directed, taking the point of
view of one player and following that person while s/he is playing the game – at
times asking the player to repeat a movement, but at the same time trying to
be as unobtrusive as possible. Becky Edmunds, a “specialist dance videographer” for among others Blast Theory, tries “to enjoy the gap” between the live
and the recorded by “providing small pieces of information through which
a viewer might be able to actively reconstruct an imagined version, myth, or
memory of what the event might have been.”13 Edmunds is not interested in
providing the viewer with an “authentic” recording, and by showing restricted
views of the body or small glimpses of the action, she even draws attention to
the gaps that documentation creates. Moreover, she is not trying to assess how
the artist wants her to document the work; Edmunds engages with the work
as being inside and part of the work, instead of being a neutral outsider. This
approach reveals a new way of thinking about documentation that reflects the
process of the event while at the same time informing the work and serving as
a way to preserve “tacit” knowledge.14 Documentation is thus regarded as an
important aspect of the process, which can be as creative and as challenging
as the live event.15 In this way documentation can be thought of as a form of
dialogue, reflection, and response which can be used both as a tool in the creative process and as a document containing tacit knowledge.
This way of looking at video documentation is also taken up by Fiona
Wilkie. She proposed that watching video documentation can disclose alternative dimensions of the work (2004). She considered the meaning of the video
documentation of Blast Theory’s performance installation Desert Rain and
compared it to participating in the installation. By looking at the video documentation from a framework of site specificity she treats the work through a
discourse of spatial engagement, in which the work operates between differ-
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
ent spaces and contexts – in the case of Desert Rain, real (the physical installation) and virtual space (the online participants as well as the context of the
Gulf War on which the work reflects). More importantly, video documentation
when viewed in a new context will evoke different connotations, which as
Wilkie suggests, could add other layers to the work.16 As such, it implies that
Blast Theory’s video documentation adds new layers of meaning to their performances, which could potentially deepen the conceptual idea in new – and
perhaps unforeseen – ways.
Documentation of media art leads to a situation where diverse practices
respond to a variety of needs and ideas around artistic work. This potentially
allows documentation to develop as a critical space in its own right where the
issues and concerns of the work are addressed through appropriate forms
without necessarily becoming reproduction (Lycouris, 2000). From this perspective documentation is understood as a mode of production as well as a
mode of critical interpretation, which helps to overcome the fragmented view
inherent in documentation.
D O C U M E N TAT I O N F O R R EC R E AT I O N
Next to their intense documentation strategies, both during the process of
creating the work and in presenting the work, Blast Theory is also putting a
large emphasis on archiving the gathered materials.17 As a performance group
working and communicating directly with the audience, they consider the
voice of the audience as a central element in their archival practice. One goal
for keeping an archive is to preserve the potential and importance of live art,
which is often marginalized due to the ephemeral nature of the work and, in
the case of Blast Theory, technically complex, collaborative, and conceptually
heterogeneous. Besides, making documentation and building an archive for
them is a means to show that artistic creativity is open to everyone.
By using documentation as process and making specific documentation
that reflects the intention, concept, and atmosphere of the live performance,
documentation as presentation, and combining these in an archive, at first sight
Blast Theory seems to be focused on future recreation. But what are the chances that such a technically complex work consisting of obsolete equipment
could be recreated? When asking them if it would be possible to recreate the
work, they replied that it would probably take a few weeks but would certainly
be possible. But digging a bit deeper and asking if it would also be possible
by someone else in 50 years, it became more problematic. Not only because
of the obvious obsolescence of technical hardware or network dependencies,
but foremost because changes in software configurations, notation, or com-
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menting on version updates happened at irregular intervals, making it hard
to decipher all the code and decisions involved. Similarly, one needs to know
the historical context of the technology because it could have (un)willingly
influenced the aesthetic and the functioning of the work. A lot of the technical issues around recreation also come down to the availability and rights-free
use of the information. In the case of Blast Theory, because they work with the
Mixed Reality Lab (MRL) of the University of Nottingham on the development
of code, this could present future problems. Although a lot is written down in
academic papers about the code and programming, this does not necessarily
mean it is also freely available.
Moreover, next to the technical difficulty there is of course the performativity of the work that needs to be recreated, as Nick Tandavanitj remarks: “There
is all sorts of specific learning about how you manage people in a specific situation. The front-of-house is probably well documented. But the scenography
– the managing of getting people into a car without them noticing it, the way
you give directions to people, the minutiae of dealing with people in those
experiences – is probably not documented very well.” It is interesting to make
a short detour to other disciplines like gaming or contemporary dance and
music that struggle with similar problems, where a score, notation, or rules
are easy to preserve but the interpretation of these becomes more difficult. In
gaming, rules of the game can be kept and the game play can be recorded to a
certain extent. Furthermore, because of its digital nature it is easy to capture
all kinds of data about the game. But what do these recordings and saved data
reveal about the types of experiences the players had? With the aid of information technology like sensors we can save more data about performances than
we could previously, but not the performance itself. Similarly, a contemporary
dance performance is a living system that continues developing, and because
it is passed on through body movements it is always in a state of development.
Sometimes strategies from the field of oral history or ethnographic “in-game”
research (following developer’s processes or participant behaviors in games)
are used to capture the participants’ experience or to shed light on the development process, the design choices that underlie the work, or the relationship
between design decisions and the experience players had while interacting
with the work. The idea is that this will shed light on the process and hence
involve transference of knowledge about the design, process, and experience,
which will help to sustain or recreate the work.18
Although Blast Theory thinks it would be possible to recreate the work,
not everything is written down, annotated or documented in a way that it is
easily traceable. A documentation model might help to document the work in
a systematic way in order to recreate it at any future day. Of course the question of desirability should be addressed, but more importantly the question
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
whether and in what way such a strategy will change the work is important to
take into reconsideration.
From object Dependencies to Behaviors
Because of their complex, variable, and interactive nature, it comes as no
surprise that most museums and institutes have not taken up the challenge
to collect and consequently start to think of ways and methods to document
interactive projects like Uncle Roy All Around You. But in the past decennia,
some attempts have been made to see the documentation of these variable
works in another light. The best known is the work by Forging the Future
(FtF), formerly known as the Variable Media Network (VMN).19 With an interest in the preservation of contemporary artwork, the strategy of the VMN is
very much focused on methods of documentation. The VMN proposed a strategy where artists are encouraged to define their work independently from
medium so that the work can be translated once its current medium becomes
obsolete. The approach is centered on the content of the work rather than its
medium or physical manifestation. In addition, what they seek to concentrate on is less on the individual technical components that an artwork comprises, but rather on what one of its founders, Jon Ippolito, has coined as the
“medium-independent behaviors” of the work (Depocas, Ippolito, and Jones,
2003: 48). By using the performative term “behaviors” the VMN tried to come
up with a methodology that would work across mediums and therefore could
still be recognized in the far future – where we might not understand the term
“U-matic” (a videocassette format used in the 1970-1980s) but will still recognize the meaning of the term “installed.” Whereas traditional methods for
describing an artwork consist of object dependent terminology – name of the
artist(s), date of the work, medium used, the dimensions (height, width, and
depth), and the collection – shifting the focus to a work’s behavior tells something about the presentation and perception of the work, such as that works
can be installed, performed, reproduced, duplicated, interactive, encoded,
networked, or contained. In order to distil the most desirable way for future
presentations the VMN developed a questionnaire, the Variable Media Questionnaire (VMQ), to get at the core or, as Ippolito calls it, the kernel of the work
(Depocas, Ippolito, and Jones, 2003: 47).
The questionnaire prompts questions for each inherent artwork behavior
that requires preservation. However, it is not intended to be exhaustive. The
VMQ is foremost a vehicle to incite questions that should be answered in order
to capture artists’ desires about how to translate their work into new mediums
after expiration of the work’s original medium. By bringing perspectives from
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conservators and curators together with artists and if possible their technicians, programmers, and engineers the VMN approach tries to establish a better understanding of how the work should evolve and be handled over time
in order to preserve its ephemeral character: “A questionnaire [stimulates]
responses that will help to understand the artists’ intent. The questionnaire is
not a sociological survey, but an instrument for determining how artists would
like their work to be re-created in the future – if at all. […] The results of the
questionnaire, the variable media kernel, enter a multi-institutional database
that enables collecting institutions to share and compare data across artworks
and genres” (Depocas, Ippolito, and Jones, 2003: 47). The VMQ is an invaluable guide for conducting artist interviews, as the medium-independent line
of questioning often elicits highly descriptive responses to questions about a
work’s past and future incarnations.20
The VMQ is very valuable as a tool for interview practices because it takes
into account both the concept of the work and the context in which it evolves. It
confirms the necessity to let go of traditional preservation methods that focus
on the recreation of the work as it originally appeared and instead try to think
of new ways to document and reinstall obsolete artworks. The VMN approach
was highly praised and welcomed by both practitioners and scholars in contemporary art conservation science. Whereas the VMQ certainly enticed new
ways of thinking about the preservation of variable artworks, many questions
remain: Is an answered questionnaire based on artist interviews sufficient in
order to understand the working of the artwork? Does it give sufficient insight
into the creative and working process? Does it reflect the interaction and experience the artwork invokes, both in relation to and between the participants
and the context in which it is enacted? These and other questions were taken
up and further developed in new models and methods by other organizations
that share the concern for the documentation practice of obsolete artworks. In
order to discuss the advantages and limits of the different models I will elaborate on three different approaches that have received high acclaim over the
past years mostly because of their unconventional approach and as such have
been adapted and used by other organizations in various ways.
V 2_: C A P T U R I N G U N S TA B L E M E D I A CO N C E P T UA L M O D E L
One of the first new approaches came from V2_Organisation, Institute for
the Unstable Media in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The Capturing Unstable
Media Conceptual Model (CMCM) was developed in 2003 as a conceptual
model for documenting and describing newly created electronic art installations, rather than recreating or preserving existing works.21 Notwithstanding,
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it provides multiple potential applications for documenting every aspect of
a design process, which could potentially influence preservation. V2_ distinguishes three phases in the development of a work that all require different
documentation strategies: 1. The research phase, in which the draft of the
concept for a project, the researching of required know-how, the design, and
the first conceptual developments of the project take place; 2. the development phase, in which the actual hardware and software development takes
place and its outcomes are tested and put together in a specific configuration
or setup, and 3. the implementation phase, in which the results of research
and development are implemented in a specific environment. Each of these
phases is associated with different types of documentation.
More than any of the other documentation models, V2_’s perspective
balances the intersections of art, science, and technology. Their strategy is to
document the environment in which electronic art functions. This notion of
“capturing” details about a work is considered complementary to the traditional preservation methods. V2_ reused the set of attributes, components,
and behaviors of variable media, as distinguished in the VMQ. They complemented the VMQ with missing components and essential aspects that they
identified as: definition of concepts; focus on several manifestations in a line
of work, rather than on the reconstruction and display of a finalized artwork;
all possible components of these manifestations and the interplay of these
components.
N E W A RT T R U S T , M O M A , S F M O M A , TAT E : M AT T E R S I N M E D I A A RT
Matters in Media Art (MMA) is a multiphase project designed to provide guidelines for taking care of time-based media works of art (e.g., video, film, audio,
and computer-based installations).22 The project was created in 2003 by a consortium of curators, conservators, registrars, and media technical managers
from New Art Trust, MoMA, SFMOMA, and Tate. The consortium launched
its first phase, on loaning time-based media works, in 2004, and its second
phase, on acquiring time-based media works, in 2007. The aim is to blend traditional museum practice with new modes of operating that derive from and
respond to the complex nature of media art installations.
MMA provides a practical response to the need for internationally agreedupon standards for the handling, installation, and care of time-based media
artworks. The research resulted in a template that can be used in the acquisition process of a work, which is divided in three overlapping phases: pre-acquisition, accessioning, and post-acquisition. As such it is a basic framework to
prepare the artwork for long-term preservation and future installation. At the
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moment MMA has entered its third phase, and is looking specifically at challenges around Internet-based art (SFMOMA with Bay Area Video Coalition,
BAVC) and computer-based arts (Tate). Many organizations have used and
adjusted their best practices guidelines to their specific needs.
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The Media Art Notation System (MANS, 2005) is the result of research by Richard Rinehart in which he proposes a new approach to conceptualizing digital
and media art forms.23 His research is an outgrowth and continuation of two
earlier projects: Archiving the Avant Garde and the Variable Media Network.
Rinehart intends to inform a better understanding of media art forms and
to provide a descriptive practice for preservation. MANS has three levels of
implementation progressing from simple to more complex. The layers consist of the conceptual model of documentation, the preferred expression format (vocabulary) for the model (the interpretation of DIDL XML), and, its top
layer, the score, which serves as a record of the work that is database-processable (Rinehart, 2004). The core concepts form a “broad strokes” description
of the work. This broad description could be used by the artist or museum at
the time the work is created or collected. Further details, alternate accounts,
and audience annotations can be filled in later in the life of the work. MANS
provides a framework for reflection on the logical arrangement of collected
elements, which can be distributed and archived through a website simply by
broad type or general categories (for example, interviews, installation views,
technical details and hardware, exhibition context, other installations, and
audience interviews). This way any structure can be applied to it and connections can be made through tags, keywords, or other visualization tools.
The theoretical approach was explored through issues raised in the process of creating a formal “declarative model” (alternately known as a metadata
framework, notation system, or ontology) for digital and media art. Rinehart
used the metaphor of the musical score because media art follows a similar
composition in which the essential concept or score is more important than
the instruments or hardware that are used to perform or install a piece: “As
long as the essential score performed is the same, the musical work itself will
be recognizable and retain its integrity” (2004: 2). The MANS score represents
a media-independent logical backbone for the work that relies on the original
files to provide detailed functionality and appearance. By taking the musical
score as a metaphor and method, the model has “a flexible yet robust structure and incorporates the passage of time and the possibility of change” (MacDonald, 2009: 63). The conceptual idea of a score, as a fixed form yet variable
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in its execution, is interesting. Using the musical score as an example is, on
the other hand, also questionable because nowhere is the difference between
the written score and the performance so contested as in musicology (Cook,
1999). Besides, MANS is presented as a metadata framework. As such it does
not overcome the problem inherent in any text-based representational framework describing non-textual information. In other words, it is extremely difficult to describe and translate an artwork into a formal system, also (or even
more so) for an artist. For example, emotions and symbolism are hard to communicate in a traditional sense and at times an artwork by intention negates
such interpretation (Svenonius, 1994).
Comparing Strategies
The models of MMA and MANS allow for levels of description related to the
work as a whole (in its final presentation phase) as well as more detailed
descriptions of specific iterations/occurrences of a work. This immediately
presents the most urgent problem, which is the emphasis on the final work
– the end product. Whereas in archival literature there is a recognition that
“preservation begins with creation,” these models hold on to traditional ways
of dealing with objects and documents and are resistant to moving towards a
more holistic approach (Waters and Garrett, 1996).24 Important to note in this
respect are observations by people who have conducted case studies that it is
easier to document a work when it is presented. When a work is in storage it is
much harder to talk about specific issues. The installation of a work facilitates
the detection of problems and provides a better view on the specific decisions
taken or methods used in the creation of the work.25 It is for this reason that
some people argue for more presentations to enhance the visibility and understanding of the way art works (Dekker, 2010). It could be argued that presentation leads to preservation. From this point of view the CMCM model is more
interesting as it highlights the creative and production process of the work by
focusing on the interaction between the work and the stakeholders. Next to a
detailed description of the resources it focuses on the relationships between
entities in the construction and the execution of the work. It is unfortunate that
this part of the model is also the least described. For example, the complex elements of interaction are left to “well-chosen documentation.” V2_ acknowledges that more research needs to be done in this field and suggestions are
made to look at appropriate models in the social sciences, where methods or
standards for registering social behavior and intercommunications between
humans and machines are under development. Even though the CMCM model is not intended for preservation, it provides interesting opportunities for a
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form of documentation that moves beyond mere descriptive, comparative, or
mapping exercises. Although attempts are made to expand and elaborate on
the model, these are currently still under development.26
Compared to the other systems, the models of CMCM and MMA prove to
be most relevant to the context of media art because they focus on the process of production and creation (CMCM) and on the artist intentions (MMA).
However, the artists’ intent is not easy to distract, formulate or even comprehended either by the creator or interviewer and as such it can be a difficult
and problematic strategy.27 It is important to realize that an interview is always
a reflection of a specific moment in time. It is never value-free and always
influenced by the specific background, expertise and personality, of the interviewer and artist as well as the interaction between them (Van Saaze, Dekker,
and Wijers, 2010). Nevertheless, a slow movement in this direction can be
seen especially concerning contemporary artworks where the artist’s involvement in conservation practice is regarded as a necessity, and where the artist
becomes the stakeholder in the perpetuation of the work (Van Saaze, 2009:
106-111). A related phenomenon is the concept of group creation, a common
practice in media art but new for many museums, conservators, and curators.
This new form of working in artistic practice manifests itself through people
from multiple disciplines and can lead to unstable, networked, variable, or
different versions of an “end” project (that again can be influenced by the participants), which in turn has implications on collection, documentation and
conservation. The notion of variable or different versions is not new to digital
media, and can even be found with physical and “stable” objects or installations. For museums and galleries it is not uncommon to have exhibition copies of a work that they have acquired (Van Saaze, 2009). In other words, most
media art practices deal with multiple creation practices and contexts that are
uncertain. At the moment this is partly reflected in the models as the ideal
state, the past and the present state, but these different parameters might
not be sufficient to account for the level or need of variation that is inherent
in the work. As Megan Winget suggests, a deeper understanding of the general creation behaviors and methods used by new media artists in general will
augment the discussion regarding the challenges of digital art collection and
preservation (2008).
Notwithstanding the high value of their theoretical underpinnings, one of
the pitfalls of all the models discussed, especially those of VMQ, MANS, and
CMCM, is their highly prescribed structures which, as said before, makes it
difficult to implement a realistic and easily repeatable documentation project
in conservation practice, especially outside the field of installation art. These
findings show that in any documentation process a multilevel approach is
preferred. Such a structure should emphasize the tension between the “ideal”
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notion of the artwork (as a composite, theoretical idea constructed from artist statements, technical schemas, and the accumulation of many iterations)
and the “real” individual experiences of the audience and/or expert members
(curators, archivists, etc.) (Jones, 2007). Most of the models are established
by the conventions of information classification with which they are familiar.
This is not only important to realize from an ideological point of view but, on
a more practical note, it means that once classifications, tags, or expressions
change, so will the usability of these models. Therefore, the recreation of a
work requires a thorough understanding of the context in which the information and organization about the work was made – there is a need to document
the context of documentation creation, as it were. The vocabulary initially
suggested by the VMN is exemplary in this respect. The third-generation VMQ
that was presented at the DOCAM Summit in Montreal (March 2010) looks at
artworks as ensembles of components, instead of behaviors as discussed in
the earlier version, because this would be more intuitive for registrars, conservators, and other arts specialists. As Ippolito explained:
The purpose is to understand the key elements of a work that are critical
to its function, such as source code or media display. Acknowledging
the relational character of much contemporary art, these parts extend
beyond hardware to include environments, user interactions, motivating
ideas, and external references. Structuring the Questionnaire in this way
makes it easier to compare different artworks created with similar parts
(email to the author, February 22, 2010).
The VMN questionnaire remains a valuable tool for discussing the work and
discovering the core intentions, that is, the most important parts of a work.
Even though the VMN approach to documentation and its emphasis on behavioral elements might not prove successful, it certainly enticed new ways of
thinking about the preservation of an artwork. More specifically it confirmed
the necessity to let go of traditional preservation methods that focused on the
recreation of the work regardless of the artists’ intent, and think of new ways
to document obsolete artworks. Nevertheless, questions remain. For example,
is a written questionnaire sufficient in order to understand the experience the
artwork invoked? And in the case of many time-based artworks, and especially
of media art, where the actual experience of the work by its audience is regarded as crucial, can documentation also be a potential for actual experience? A
description and photo of a work can give an understanding of the piece, but
these are still far removed from actually experiencing the work.
Piotr Adamczyk explored the working of the VMQ and CMCM for describing human-computer interaction in new media installations (2008). His analy-
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sis showed that the models work on the level of documentation or accession in
a museum context, but that they often fail when recounting the participatory
context. Where Adamczyk suggests using human computer interaction (HCI)
ethnographic methods, others are more inclined to using strategies from the
field of oral history (Muller, 2010). The two strategies meet in the belief that
accounts from participants’ experiences “would offer rich and varied portraits
of how the artworks existed in experience and would necessarily widen our
understanding of the relationship of media art to its social and cultural context” (Muller, 2010: 6.1). The attention to audience experience and contextual
information is as of yet not provided in any of the models.28
Already it can be concluded that the existing models are not ideal when
dealing with technical specifications that are connected to the experience of
the work, nor do they provide much information about the experience as such.
But are these elements more visible in, or can they be extracted from, artists’
documentation?
Uncle Roy All Around You in a Model
Uncle Roy All Around You is a participatory multiplayer, multilayered (combining virtual and real worlds) game and, as the title suggests, the participants’
surroundings play an important role. The conceptual idea, the technical interface, and the game play and its locations are defined, but they are all susceptible to change. With so many changing parameters it is no surprise that the
participants also experience the working of GPS, WiFi, and the interfaces in
very different ways. As Steve Benford, one of the technical collaborators in Blast
Theory’s projects, noted: “Our study reveals the diverse ways in which online
players experienced the uncertainties inherent in GPS and WiFi, including
being mostly unaware of them, but sometimes seeing them as problems, or
treating them as a designed feature of the game, and even occasionally exploiting them within gameplay” (2006). It is precisely such subtle differences that
are not taken into account in the previously described models, and they are
also hard to pinpoint in an interview.
Moreover, Blast Theory used these circumstances as tactics and elements
in the game as well; anticipating but never knowing for sure when, for example, technical failures would occur and an according action should be taken.
Therefore such (technical) failures were used to enhance the dramatic narrative of the story. This did not mean, however, that the actual occurrences were
planned. Although the game play was extensively and carefully orchestrated,
there were many moments of uncertainty and these were hard to pin down.
Instead of discarding them, the limitations of the technology became inte-
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gral elements in the performativity of the work. In other words, the technical
dependencies of the art form emphasize the meaning and the experience of
the work. This ambiguity and uncertainty in the work do not have a place in
models like CMCM or questionnaires like VMQ. This became apparent when
asking Blast Theory if the GPS interface system could be replaced in the future
by other technology (one of the key questions in the VMQ); the answer was
simply yes. However, the discussions about their working process, their way
of creating documents, and their attitude towards technology showed that the
working of the technology, its current failures, and the inherent uncertainties,
had influenced both the concept and the performativity of the work and, as
such, were integral when experiencing the work. Replacing the technology at
any future time may thus prove to be problematic at the experiential and conceptual levels of the work.
These examples already show that, for some specific but integral information, the models as described do not suffice. One of the main problems is that
the documentation models are often (with the exception of CMCM) extracted
from earlier dominant discourses (paintings, sculpture) and mapped onto
a marginalized one (media art, performance, games), imposing a model
according to which meaning is reproduced through the end result but is not
emerging from the interaction of multiple agencies that create the experience.29 Especially projects like Uncle Roy need a multilayered approach that
takes into account relationships between objects in the construction and the
execution of the work as well as provides insight into participants’ interaction
and experience. In other words: the documentation of such a work requires
insight into the conceptual, creative, and working process from a technical,
relational, and experiential perspective. All these play important roles in what
makes the artwork and are not external to the artwork. In this respect, Jeroen
van Mastrigt (2009) hints at the conservation of “an ecosystem instead of an
object,” and a similar remark was made by Geoffrey Bowker.30 A framework
of a documentation model for media art should therefore address the creative process, reflect the work’s variability, relate to the context, and take into
account the participants’ experience.
looking into the Future: Media Art in a Museum Collection
Suzanne Briet stated: “the forms that documentary work assumes are as
numerous as the needs from which they are born,” and, coming to the end
of this chapter, this statement is as strong as ever (2006: 36). It is important
to know the meaning and value of documents and documentation, but it is
just as important to know their relationship, the context, and, in addition to
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Briet, the process of their creation. Analysis of artists’ documentation methods and comparing these to the information that is given or asked for in traditional museum documentation models showed that specific and inherent
qualities of media artwork are not taken into account in the models up until
now. Closer analysis of Blast Theory’s creative processes indicated that crucial information on details of the project and the experience it yielded, most
importantly the behavior of the technology and the influence this had on the
performativity of the work, might get lost when using standard questionnaires
or applying emulation methods that transfer the game play to new platforms.
It is clear that multimedia artworks are technically complex, not only in their
final presentation but also in their production phase. For a recreation of the
work it is therefore important to understand the technical choices that were
made in the context of the time they were made (see also Lurk and Enge, 2010,
and Winget, 2008). As such, it is important to recognize that meaning is often
constituted through an object and is not solely held within the object (Clavir,
2002). This means that it is also important to allow for media-archaeological
research when recreating a multimedia artwork.
Taking into account what I have termed documentation as process will yield
a better understanding of the inherent qualities of the work. It is important to
be aware of decisions and their consequences that are made in the development of the work and accurately describe or record them. Theoretically, it is
possible to recreate complex media artworks like Uncle Roy All Around You, but
the level of success would increase when artists’ strategies are integrated into
museum practices or by adapting existing models by giving more attention to
the creative process. But would it be possible for Uncle Roy to end up in a museum collection? This is of course a difficult question with multiple entries, but
aside from the issue of money or artistic value, what would be needed of the
museum staff to conserve the work? What are the possible implications for
them to care for and recreate the work at any time in the future? But, even
more importantly: would it be desirable at all? Would not the documentation
that is gathered, made, and collected communicate more about a work, and
how it is experienced, than its physical manifestation? Referring to the documentation videos by Blast Theory I argued for an expanded understanding of
documentation as presentation. This treats video documentation not merely
as a way to capture live events, but also as a form of dialogue, response, and
reflection. Furthermore, when brought into new presentation contexts, documentation has the potential to deepen the conceptual idea in new ways, adding new layers to the work. In other words, documentation becomes a critical
space in its own right, opening the prospect to elaborate on the original work.
It seems an obvious statement: documentation might guide the decisionmaking process in conservation, but the gaps or blind spots will influence the
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work. In order to make the most of these, more emphasis should go to the roles
and responsibilities of curators and conservators. In this article I argued that a
first step would be to recognize the need for an extended conception of documentation, distinguishing different types of documentation, and phasing
their role and function in the dynamic, performative practice of contemporary
media art. Whereas more and more collaborative approaches are undertaken
to develop documentation models, the practical implementation of the work
often remains with individual curators or conservators. A more collaborative
practice of knowledge production and documentation may overcome this situation, including also artists, information scientists, and programmers. This
will also lead to a better understanding of the work and could potentially lead
to opportunities for creating new versions, thus building, elaborating, and
commenting on a previous state. If this approach would be followed it not only
opens new ways of thinking about what conservation means but it can entice
new ways of dealing with the structure and the function of the museum (see
Kraemer, 2007, and Van Mastrigt, 2009). A museum could move from being a
custodian of “dead objects” to a “living space” where presentation, preservation, discussion, and active exploration go hand in hand.
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6.2
CASE STUDy: NO GHOST JUST A SHELL By PIERRE HUyGHE,
PHILIPPE PARRENO, AND MANy OTHERS
Vivian van Saaze
Introduction
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No Ghost Just a Shell, a seminal project initiated by French-based artists Philippe
Parreno and Pierre Huyghe and acquired by the Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven
(NL) in 2002, consists of more than 25 artworks by over a dozen artists and
artist groups, each work evolving around the virtual character of “Annlee.”
The history of No Ghost Just a Shell goes back to 1999 when Philippe Parreno
and Pierre Huyghe decided to buy a virtual Manga character (developed for
the cartoon industry), modeled the image in 3-D, gave it a name (Annlee), a
voice, and started off with making two short real-time animation films on the
character (see Fig. 6.3 in color section). Between 1999 and 2002 they shared
the figure with other artists and artist groups, inviting them to give Annlee a
life by creating artworks using the figure as a point of departure. From 1999
onwards the figure of Annlee appeared in many different places and eventually accumulated into an exhibition in Zurich (entitled No Ghost Just a Shell),
which later traveled to San Francisco and Cambridge.31 There were paintings
(by Henri Barande and Richard Phillips), videos (by, for instance, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, François Curlet, and Melik Ohanian), toys
for Annlee (Angela Bulloch and Imke Wagener), wallpaper and posters (M/M
Paris), music (Anna-Léna Vaney), a magazine (Lily Fleury) and even a coffin for
Annlee by Joe Scanlan.
In order to prevent other artists from using the image, in 2002 Parreno
and Huyghe hired a property lawyer to draw up a contract transferring the
copyrights of Annlee back to her imaginary character. The wish was “to protect Annlee” and “to ensure that the image of Annlee will never appear beyond
the existing representations” (Huyghe and Parreno, 2003: 25). On 4 December 2002 at 9:30 pm, the vanishing of Annlee was celebrated by means of a
staged fireworks display during the inaugural night of Art Basel Miami Beach.
As curator and author Maria Lind notes: “That was the end of this particular
collaboration” (Lind, 2007: 15). By that time, however, the Van Abbenmuseum
was already in the process of acquiring No Ghost Just a Shell for its collection.
Right from the start, No Ghost Just a Shell was depicted as a “special purchase”
and a breakthrough in collection activities; instead of an individual object, an
entire exhibition was being acquired.
This case study description will focus on the issue of collaboration and the
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problem of multiple authors in relation to the process of documentation and
archiving in a museum context.32 Since the preset entry descriptions of many
existing digital collection management systems do not leave much room for
variability, artworks produced by multiple contributors are in danger of being
reduced into fixed categories such as: single date, single artist, and single
dimensions. How then to capture the hybrid character of No Ghost Just a Shell?
Before going into the case study, let us first take a closer look at the increasingly popular phenomena of multiple authorship in art production, also known
as “collaboration art.”
Multiple Authorship
No Ghost Just a Shell is arguably one of the most noted and well-known examples of collective practices in art in recent years. Although cooperation and
collaboration in art production has happened for many years, since the 1990s,
collaboration as a conscious strategy and an intentional mode of production
has become increasingly popular in artistic work.33 The modes of – and reasons for – collaboration are diverse and vary from a pragmatic choice or necessity (for example: the artwork can only be produced by a number of people
because its making requires specific, often technological, know-how) to a
form of activism (for example: challenging the art market and questioning the
common notion of authorship or art as the product of an individual genius)
and simple curiosity (as the outcome of a collaborative effort will always be
unpredictable). The current surge in collaborative art projects is related to
an increased usage of digital media in the arts and can be understood, for
example, as an offspring of the “new media critique” of the 1990s that strongly
argued for new production methods based on sharing, cooperation, common
ownership and open source structures.34 Although the Annlee project consists
of a multitude of art forms (such as video works, paintings, a book, installations, and objects), the story of its inception and how it was set up encompasses many features of digital media and media art: multiple contributors,
decentralization, networking capacities, open source structure, variability,
versioning, and so on.
The initiating and coordinating artists, Huyghe and Parreno, have not
been very outspoken about the specific nature of the collaboration, nor have
they elaborated on the selection criteria for inviting artists and other contributors. Rather than really working closely together on a single product, each
artist produced an independent artwork starting from a shared point of departure: the Annlee figure. Maria Lind describes the process as follows: “The participants shaped episodes which could function as independent art works, but
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which together constructed not only a collaborative art project and exhibition
but also a new order of identity. Into the bargain, a temporary community of
17 persons was created” (Lind, 2007: 15).35
There was never a prefixed list; friends and other artists seemed to be
invited in a more or less haphazard way. In an interview, Huyghe refers to the
book Esthétique relationnelle (1998) by French philosopher and curator Nicolas
Bourriaud as being “instrumental to setting up this group of artists.” Huyghe:
“In a certain way, Nicolas’s book was like the production of a new scenario; in
the manner I discuss this in my own practice. His book and his words provided
a linkage between various artists and people” (2003: 100-110).
Others such as Van der Beek describe the project as creating its own network with connections in different social and artistic spheres (2003: 42). In
a similar fashion, Hal Foster labeled No Ghost Just a Shell as “archival art” in
a special issue of October. He explains: “…much archival art does appear to
ramify like a weed or ‘rhizome’” (Foster, 2004: 6). In interviews, the initiating
artists also refer to this rhizome-like structure that grows organically, appearing and disappearing depending on the connections that it is able to make.
Huyghe: “It is less a question of ‘process,’ which is too linear, but of a vibrating temporality” (Huyghe quoted in Baker, 2004: 88). This way of working can
be said to be exemplary for both Philippe Parreno and Pierre Huyghe. Rather
than being studio bound and creating fixed and finished art objects, their
projects develop in diverse settings and often in close interaction with other
projects and people. It starts with a plan, but the plan, as they say, may change
along the way.
Acquisition, Registration, Documentation
With the acquisition of No Ghost Just a Shell, the Van Abbemuseum has intentionally confronted itself with problems that are typical for many of today’s
collaborative (time-based or media) artworks. The acquisition of an exhibition
undermines the traditional notion of the artwork as a single, autonomous
product of an individual artist. First of all, unlike a more straightforward transaction involving the buying or selling of an art object, this acquisition took the
Van Abbemuseum’s director, the curator of exhibitions, and other museum
staff members at least one year to agree with the artists and their dealers as to
which works could and should be purchased, as well as to sort out the required
legal apparatus of the project.36 The artists Huyghe and Parreno acted as intermediaries between the museum and all individual artists who had contributed to the project. Each Annlee work had to be purchased separately from the
relevant artist or gallery because there was no specifically developed economic
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system within which the works had been produced. However, the curator of
exhibitions stressed the conceptual necessity of considering the acquisition
as an exhibition: as a whole rather than a collection of independent artworks.
Thus, rather than providing all individual objects with an inventory number,
as common practice would have it, he wanted the exhibition to become registered under one inventory number.37
Registration of the acquisition under one single inventory number, however, would cause several administrative problems due to the collection management system used by the museum. The existing protocols stipulate that
when individual artworks are not registered in the museum database system,
they are administratively not visible and simply do not exist in terms of collection management. If, in other words, the exhibition No Ghost Just a Shell would
have received a single inventory number, there is a danger that each individual
Annlee artwork and the contributors would be overlooked or simply be lost
because they are not registered. Moreover, if artworks are not registered, they
might not be insured, for example, and they may end up existing outside all
museum protocols, which are developed for single objects.
On the other hand, it was also problematic if each Annlee work was recorded as an individual entry in the system: how could its relationship to No Ghost
Just a Shell remain visible? The curator of collections was thus confronted with
a problem stemming from the limitations of the museum’s management system, The Museum System (TMS). TMS is a standardized commercial collection management system developed by Gallery Systems and is used by many
museums. The system is mainly developed for more traditional, stable works
such as paintings and sculptures and thus represents the single artist, single
object paradigm. As such, it leaves little room for variability and provides no
possibility to address multiple authors or specific interactions.38
In order for No Ghost Just a Shell to be accounted for as an acquisition, it
needed to be fragmented into single objects or registered under one entry. The
museum was thus left with two choices: No Ghost Just a Shell was either reduced
to being considered as one artwork (with the danger of losing sight of the individual artworks), or all artworks had to be registered separately (running the
risk of the relationships between the individual artworks and their connection
to the exhibition being lost). Either way, crucial relationships would be lost.
In the end, this administrative problem was solved by creating special “work
sets” in TMS that created a link between individual Annlee works while also
allowing the person entering the data to designate one inventory number to
the project as a whole.39
In addition to the information stored in TMS, the museum also houses
an extensive paper archive, and for each individual Annlee work, there is also
a paper documentation file. In these paper files, the connection between the
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individual work and No Ghost Just a Shell is demonstrated by a copy of the
acquisition proposal document stating that the artwork belongs to the No
Ghost Just a Shell project. Due to the complex history and hybrid character of
the project, much time was spent on producing documentation on the project
as a whole and the exhibition history of each individual artwork.40 Moreover,
because installation guidelines for the works were lacking, each individual
artist had to be consulted by the museum so as to reach agreements on how
the individual works and the project could be displayed in the future. The collaborative nature of the project and the lack of overall control after its acquisition did not make things easier for the museum. As the director of the Van
Abbemuseum notes: “There are certain conditions which they have agreed to
but then those conditions change depending on what moment and who you
are talking to.”41
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In Conclusion: Continuous Collaboration
Collaborative art projects like No Ghost Just a Shell challenge the acquisition
of such works for a museum collection in various ways. No Ghost Just a Shell
is both an exhibition and a set of individual artworks. Registering the acquisition into a commonly used collection management system, however, meant
working around the pre-set categories of single artist, single artwork and single date. These and other limitations of standardized collection management
systems and documentation models have been subject to much discussion
in contemporary art museums and have lead to the development of several
alternative models and systems especially designed for those categories of art
that fall outside of more traditional art forms.42 Arguing from the position of
new media, curator and researcher Jon Ippolito advocates a more differentiated and precise tagging system that would capture the variability of artworks
and would allow for captions and wall labels to do so, too. As collaborations
are the rule rather than the exception for new media art, Ippolito (2008) advocates new documentation strategies that are designed to document and even
encourage “expandable” and changing authorship functions.43 In the wake of
the development of these new models, existing systems such as TMS are also
encouraged to adapt to the needs of non-traditional artworks. In terms of collaborative art projects, this would mean acknowledging the various specific
relationships and interactions between artworks and their contributors.
In addition to the problem of registration and documentation, such collaborative projects also ask for a collaborative attitude from their collectors.
Although the particular collaboration between the artists may have ended, the
collaborative aspect of the project was extended to the museum; by acquiring
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No Ghost Just a Shell, the Van Abbemuseum needed to continue collaborating with the individual artists, their galleries, and former exhibition places.
The acquisition of No Ghost Just a Shell transforms the museum’s role: rather
than an “end point,” the museum becomes a collaborator as well. Moreover,
in 2007, private collector Rosa de la Cruz donated another version of No Ghost
Just a Shell to the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in North Miami and
Tate Modern in London. The Van Abbemuseum is now exploring how these
two different versions of No Ghost Just a Shell relate to each other and what collaboration between the different museums could mean. Arguably, to ensure
the perpetuation of No Ghost Just a Shell and its vibrant and hybrid character,
it is precisely this collaborative aspect that the museum will need to endorse.
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6.3
THE ARTIST’S INTERVIEw AS A TOOL FOR DOCUMENTING AND
RECREATING A COMPLEX INSTALLATION: THE EXAMPLE OF MBUBE,
AN AUDIO-INSTALLATION By ROBERTO CUOGHI IN THE MUSEO DEL
NOVECENTO, MILAN
Iolanda Ratti
Introduction
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Milan’s Museo Del Novecento (the Museum of the 20th Century) houses a collection of over 4,000 works that document the development of Italian art from
the historical avant-garde movements to the 1980s. This new museum of contemporary art also features a group of more recent works acquired by the City
of Milan that involve the use of new media.
Having been closed to the public over the past few years has allowed the
museum to dedicate itself to a careful study of its collections. It conducted
several experimental restorations and established a collaboration with the
History of Art Techniques Department of the University of Milan. The aim of
the synergy, by now in its concluding phase, was to support a number of dissertations focused on one or two of the living artists featured in the museum’s
collection, either with a single artwork or with a small set of works. Students
were first expected to conduct general research on the thematics of the chosen
artist and on the techniques and materials used in the scope of his/her production, along with a more detailed study of the work(s) featured in the museum’s
collection. Next, students conducted a technical analysis of the artwork(s),
with the support of the museum curator and of a restorer. The intended objectives of this stage were to gain a precise sense of the methods of production
of the work and of its material and theoretical peculiarities, and to define the
potential conservation problems it might pose, spanning from the inherent
frailness of its materials to the installation criteria to adopt in future exhibits.
In the final stage of their research the Ph.D. students were asked to measure
their analysis of the chosen work against the artist’s own perspective of it, by
means of an interview. The goal was to further define the artist’s aesthetical
and technical approach and to shed light on his or her position regarding the
work’s future and its conservation.
Interviews were carried out following a format developed in collaboration
with Professor Giuseppe Basile of ICR (the Higher Institute of Conservation
and Restoration) and featured two parts. The first part was centered on collecting information about the techniques the artist used in his/her creative
process, his/her thoughts regarding conservation, and his/her stance regard-
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ing the role of the public in the fruition of his/her artwork. The second part
approached the same themes, but through a discussion of the specific work(s)
housed in the museum.
The interview format was applied for the first time in 2006, on occasion of
the publication of Marina Pugliese’s 2006 book Tecnica mista. Materiali e procedimenti dell’arte del XX secolo [Mixed Technique. Materials and Procedures of
Art of the 20th Century]. Specifically, it was used to study two installations featuring audiovisual elements: Mbube (2005), an audio installation by Roberto
Cuoghi, and San Siro (2000), a video projection by Grazia Toderi. I will here
treat the first, briefly describing the work and then presenting an extract of
the interview with the artist, which is particularly interesting since the work
was reinstalled in the 2008 Electronic Lounge exhibit, allowing to test the interview’s effectiveness and define its limits and problem areas.
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Roberto Cuoghi, Mbube (2005), Audio Installation
Roberto Cuoghi (born in Modena in 1973) has made a name for himself as one
of the most interesting young artists on the Italian scene since the mid-1990s,
taking part in important exhibits such as the Venice Biennale and the Berlin
Biennale.
Cuoghi created Mbube, his first sound installation, in 2005, exhibiting it
first at the Rivoli Castle of Turin’s first Triennale and later that year also at
the CAC in Vilnius. That same year, thanks to a generous donation by the collectionist David Halevim, the work then became part of the City of Milan’s
collections. The installation was then exhibited again in 2008 in the scope
of Electronic Lounge in the Exhibair space of Milan’s Malpensa airport. The
installation consists of the playing of the artist’s cover of the song Mbube, a
1939 piece composed by the South African musician Solomon Linda made
famous by the Western re-make entitled “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”
The creative process consisted in stratifying several layers of sound material, using different instruments and recording a separate track for each one
based on the tune of Mbube. The instruments used, none of which require
knowing how to read music in order to be played, included: the lotus flute,
the Budrio ocarina, claves, the jingling Johnny, the vibraslap, the güiro, the
djembe drum, the tambourine, the cuckoo call, the balafon, the cabasa, different other bird calls, nut shells, and various shakers.
Cuoghi first recorded each instrument on a MAC G5 pc using an AKG/
Behringuer UB 802 condenser microphone and then mixed the tracks using
the Cubase SE software. The song was created solely by the artist, who only
sporadically consulted online forums of musicians and IT experts.
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The interview was fundamental for understanding how the artist works and
how he reacts to the materials chosen, but also for determining the aesthetic
value of the installation in view of its future re-exhibition, a necessary operation given the work’s inclusion in a permanent collection (see Fig. 6.4 in color
section). The three exhibits of the installation are quite different. The interview with the artist allowed to define the audio aspect as the only truly “essential” element of the work from a conservation point of view, while allowing to
set specific, though flexible, diffusion criteria for environments that are (and
always will be) necessarily different.
Interview Extract (Milan, 26 May 2006, the Artist’s Studio)
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We here report a very brief extract of the interview, specifically the answers
that define the artist’s approach to conservation and the work under review.
1. What is your take on the conservation of your works? Do you accept
the idea that they will age naturally? When do you think intervention
becomes necessary?
I don’t really know what destiny the things I’m doing will have. Aging
ceases to be acceptable only when the work begins to be objectively compromised. Intervening becomes necessary when the work’s “functioning”
starts to be compromised.
2. What does it mean to speak of conservation referring to new multimedia technologies? What role do you think that video and sound
art, both analogue and digital, will play in relation to the rapid
changes in software and technical support? In your opinion, what are
the most efficient methods to conserve and archive video and audio
material?
It is software that affords the most concrete possibility to recreate a
work’s original conditions at any given time: so I’m not pessimistic about
it. On the other hand, today we can play Pac-Man on a last generation
laptop using a 25-year-old software program, thus reproducing a “condition” in the system that has to run it. There are now software “packages”
that utilize portions of MS-DOS to run obsolete programs.
3. Do you think that emulating a 25-year-old software program in order
to read an original work, instead of translating the work itself into
a more recent format, plays a role in maintaining its quality and
“uniqueness”?
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Not exactly. If a work is digital in nature its quality isn’t compromised
by translation into another format, because it’s just a matter of number
sequences. Besides, I don’t think we can speak of uniqueness in the digital era. Digitizing a video captured on film – now that is a real change of
support. But works that are born-digital simply require an operation of
transcription. I find the signing of CDs already pretty grotesque …
4. Are there preliminary studies of Mbube? Are there other versions of
the work?
There are tests, slightly different versions, without some of the instruments – for instance, there are ones where the shaker plays a lesser role.
They’re not really other versions, they’re trials. The only one that gets
close to being an alternative version is the first trial, put together the year
before, so two years ago. It has more or less the same structure, but is
performed entirely with an electronic keyboard.
5. Are there different copies of your work? And if so, where are they?
How do you protect yourself from the production of replicas and
fakes?
The work was purchased first by the Rivoli Castle and then by the
Halevim Collection (which then donated it to the Museum). There are
officially five copies of it, by which I mean five physically distinct CDs,
each “signed and numbered”: the Rivoli one, the Halevim, and the others
of the De Carlo Gallery.
6. How should this work be exhibited? Do its nature and identity
change, depending on its spatial context?
The work should be exhibited using professional amplifying material
and ensuring a rather sustained reproduction volume, so as not to seem
background sound. My only worry regards the acoustic aspect. The
work’s identity is compromised more by poor volume than by the type of
spatial context it’s in. In Turin, where it was on exhibit, the music played
in loop, but with at least two minutes of pause between one run and the
other. They set up two huge speakers, like the ones used in concerts, in the
corridor of the long side of Rivoli Castle. They played it at high volume in
a space with nothing around – there was nothing in the range of twelve
per seven meters, absolutely empty. Instead when they exhibited at the
CAC in Vilnius they used the Center’s system of loudspeakers. But at the
end this produced a chaotic effect, because of course we’re talking about
a home recording so sound that is not clean at all. This means that when
installing the piece it’s extremely important to bear in mind that this is
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not a CD produced by a record label. Another thing that needs to be kept
under control is the boom effect, for instance through the use of absorbing panels. It really doesn’t make a difference if the amplifying system is
hidden or not. A method I use to see if the volume is high enough is standing in front of the amplifiers and checking if the low-pitched notes boom
in my chest.
7. At what distance from other works should this work be placed?
Given the reproduction volume required, it’s best to invert the question:
at what distance from this work should other works be placed? Ideally
the work should be treated as a solid body, so the song should be allowed
to fill empty space without the fear of it being empty.
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In conclusion, this interview excerpt informs us on the standpoint of the artist on preferred manners to exhibit Mbube and also suggests guidelines for
its preservation. In only a few statements, Roberto Cuoghi has provided, for
instance, information on the creation of the work and on his conscious choice
to make a home recording rather than a professional one. Therefore, it is crucial to document this feature of the work in order to respect its nature and its
peculiarity as a work of art in the first instance and as a sound recording at a
second instance.
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6.4
MAXXI PILOT TESTS REGARDING THE DOCUMENTATION
OF INSTALLATION ART
Alessandra Barbuto and Laura Barreca
Guidelines for the Documentation of the MAXXI Collection
Cesare Brandi’s 1963 definition of “preventative restoration” (Brandi, 1994:
7 and 54) is highly relevant for activities associated with the conservation of
works of contemporary art in museum collections:
[…] preventative restoration is to be understood as any action aimed
at anticipating the necessity of an intervention of restoration, making
preventative restoration no less important than effective restoration. […]
It is clear, at this point, that to no lesser a degree in preventative restoration results, discoveries, and scientific interventions reference fields that
interest the subsistence of the work of art: from research into lighting
and its effects on the choice of light sources, as well as heat, humidity,
vibrations, air conditioning systems, packaging, hanging and disinfestation (33-34).
Because the works in the collection of a museum of contemporary art like
MAXXI Rome belong to different linguistic and technical typologies such as
complex installations, works in progress, performance events, works of net
art, video art, ephemeral or immaterial works, or process art, it is fundamental to operate from the perspective of preventative restoration, with the aim of
anticipating all possible risks resulting from the perishable or variable nature
of these works. This involves processes of constant monitoring, including the
control of the general conditions of exhibition (lighting, the use of barriers or
separations), temperature and humidity conditions, both in exhibition spaces
and storage areas, methods of storing works of art,44 and the proper choices to
be made in the event of works on loan.
During recent years, MAXXI’s research activities have focused on current
international trends, in parallel with a critical investigation of Brandi’s theory
and its possible applications to the specific problems and terminologies of
contemporary art. The practices of documentation consider the radical changes that have affected contemporary aesthetics and the new identity of the work
of art in instances where it is no longer a unique piece created by an artist but
a process of cultural participation involving the public, the work itself, and
the museum. The interpretation of the work of art as an idea, and not only as
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a physical object, is now a trend that is broadly confirmed in contemporary
artistic practices. This condition has manifested itself over the course of the
20th century, with the opposition of two different ideological positions: the
intentionalists and the anti-intentionalists, two attitudes described by Steven
Dykstra (1996) as the primary axes of debate regarding the conservation of
contemporary art.
Dykstra stresses the importance of the artist’s intentions and the method
of interpreting the function of material (or support) in relation to the conservation of the work of art (1996: 204). The artist’s intention is defined as the
control exercised over a specific form, and becomes fundamental not only to
the cultural meaning inherent to the work of art, but also to the correct interpretation of its functions. At present, a number of international museums
consider the artist’s intent as the guiding principle for the documentation of
contemporary artworks (Hummelen, 2005: 24). This is achieved by acquiring
information about the artist and the work such as letters, interviews, notes,
annotated texts, invitations, catalogues, preparatory sketches, as well as any
information relative to materials and techniques of realization, all part of
the identification of those aspects essential to and coherent with the original
aesthetic and historic meaning of the work, without which future presentations of the work risk becoming a discretional act made by the curator or the
museum’s conservator.
The documentation of a complex artwork includes the direct involvement
of the artist and requires information related to the “existential” elements of
the work. Of the most suitable instruments, the video interview represents an
optimum method for tracing the conceptual identity of the work, focusing on
problems of conservation, creating dialogue between the museum, and the
direct testimonial offered by the artist. Since 2002, the International Network
for the Conservation of Contemporary Art (INCCA) has been working on the
creation of a database of documents and information gathered by museums
and institutions around the world.45 Within this methodological framework
of documentation, MAXXI has focused part of its research on the works in its
permanent collection, in particular on methods of re-creating works of art,
analyzing the process of conservation through the relationship between the
museum’s conservator and curator, and the way in which these professional
figures interact with the documentation of the works – whether it be with the
artist or in his or her absence. Another fundamental line of research recently
initiated by the museum focuses on those activities of documentation propaedeutic or parallel to temporary exhibitions, and the analysis of conservation
practices performed on a daily basis by its restorers.
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Methodologies and Tools of Documentation
The aspect that, more than any other, distinguishes the conservation of contemporary art from that of the past is our coexistence with the author. However,
this aspect does not eliminate problems of conservation; in many cases it actually complicates them. The collaboration between the artist and the museum
is the starting point of the process of documentation, but sometimes the conservation choices taken by the museum may not coincide with the expectations
of the artist. In fact, only in ideal cases does the artist, aware of issues of conservation, collaborate by sharing with the museum his/her intentions and indications about how to show, present, conserve, and maintain the work of art.
Notwithstanding that documentation has become widespread practice, many
artists are not available, or appear disinterested in providing fundamental and
coherent information over a longer period of time. Vice versa, it can happen
that the artist (or his/her studio or heirs, above all in the years immediately
following his/her death) is overly present, pretending to act autonomously, or
to rework the work acquired by the museum, as if it were still entirely within
his/her domain.46 Finally, it may also happen that the involvement of the artist
in a conservation problem leads to requests by the artist to make substantial
changes to the work that extend beyond the restorer’s domain into the curatorial one. Working in between these different attitudes, it is always useful for the
restorer to evaluate all available information with a critical spirit, attempting as
much as possible to cross reference all data in the museum’s collections.
The corpus of data, information, and declarations regarding the meaning of the work gathered directly from the artist represents the first nucleus of
documentation for the works of new media art in the MAXXI collection.47 The
methodology of documentation defined by the museum during recent years
(through participation in a pilot project promoted by the MAXXI, in cooperation with other Italian museum institutions, and through the promotion of
interdisciplinary research groups48) includes the compilation of a “general
chart” that brings together a wealth of information about each single work: a
brief introduction to the artist and notes on his/her work; historic dates related
to the work; information, photographs, projects, and publications about each
previous exhibition, even prior to its acquisition as part of the museum’s collection. The chart also archives material data: the numbering and cataloging
of each single part relative to the analysis of the single components of the work
(in the case of complex installations, each of the various parts is listed and
measured) and the typology of packaging and labeling. The technical charts
related to the exhibition of the work, provided at the moment of acquisition
from the gallery or artist, are united with all of the material produced during
the planning of its exhibition in the museum: photographs during installa-
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tion/exhibition, sketches, tests, samples. In some cases, especially for complex
or environmental installations, it is necessary to commission an architectural
survey and 3-D images of the work installed in the museum. When the work is
removed at the end of a show, existing documentation is integrated by a condition report, used to list the detailed conditions of the work, from the moment
of opening its packing crate(s), and its behavior during the period of display.
This approach is particularly suitable for works with variable supports. This
type of chart also contains indications related to improvements to the conditions of the work to be observed during storage and eventual details or measures to be employed in the event of shipping or loans.49
An exceptional case of documentation emerges when the museum commissions a site-specific installation from an artist. In this case it is possible to
follow the creative iteration of the work, recording the ideas that, for various
reasons, were not realized, and possibilities that were not tested. It is clear
that, with respect to the vast and rich documentation that can be collected in
this case, one must make a selection: some of the material gathered, if left
unexplained, may be misleading in the future, precisely because it relates to
working hypotheses that, for one reason or another, were abandoned by the
artist during the development of the work in favor of others that were effectively realized. So here, too, it is fundamental to interview the artist, establishing the specific moment of choices, practices of conservation, and possible
variations that can be made during future presentations of the piece.
Case Study 1: The Documentation of an Environmental
Installation: Alfredo Jaar, Infinite Cell (2004)50
Acquired and exhibited on the occasion of MAXXI’s inaugural exhibition,
Infinite Cell is an architectural space constructed inside the museum. Alfredo
Jaar (Santiago, Chile, 1956), a trained architect, was strongly affected by the
architectural space of the museum and carefully considered the position of
the work inside Zaha Hadid’s building.
The piece is an exact reconstruction of the dimensions of the cell in which
Antonio Gramsci was imprisoned for 20 years. A steel grate, with a single door,
separates an interior from an exterior space. The space inside the cell, illuminated exclusively by a window that emits light, is infinitely multiplied by two
mirror-clad walls on the short sides of the rectangular cell. On a wall near the
cell, five ink drawings on parchment entitled Gramsci represent details of this
intellectual and political thinker’s face, while the silkscreen 20 anni 4 mesi 5
giorni presents the exact number of days Gramsci spent in prison.51
The interview with the artist clarified a number of points regarding the
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choices behind the construction of the cell and indications on how to position
the work in space, together with suggestions related to its conservation during the exhibition and expectations associated with the interaction between
the work and the public. Jaar also declared to have carefully considered and
selected the colors of the exterior walls and the interior ceiling and pavement,
as well as the texture of the material that clads the exterior of the cell; in his
view, these elements must constitute a clear separation from the architectural
finishes inside MAXXI. Furthermore, the artist described his expectations for
a powerful interaction with the public, which is invited to experience the work
by entering the cell through the door, such that the infinite physical reflection
of the body in space alludes simultaneously to Gramsci’s thoughts, rooted in
the past and projected into the future.
This work is the object of a pilot project of interviews involving those
responsible for choices related to its exhibition and maintenance: the director
of the museum, the exhibition curator, the restorer/conservator, and the general public. A comparison of the different answers provided will eventually allow
for the establishment of guidelines for the future presentations of the work.
Additionally, all documentation gathered during the exhibition is currently being archived: plans, sketches, project drawings, the list of wall colors, and
an architectural survey of the space. Given that the interior of the cell contains
no objects, 3-D images were considered superfluous. After being removed, a
number of material elements will be maintained and stored by the museum:
most likely, for reasons related exclusively to the possible reuse of materials in
the event of future presentations of the work, these elements are the mirrors,
prison bars, and the window. The artist does not confer a value of originality
upon the materials utilized; in fact, the work was acquired by the museum in
the form of a project, meaning that once the installation is taken down, the
work exists only as documentation that allows the project to be reconstructed
for future exhibitions.
Case Study 2: The Conservation of a Project in Progress:
Bruna Esposito, e così sia… (2000)52
Ten years after the acquisition of the work e così sia… (2000) by Bruna Esposito
(Rome, 1960), winner of the Premio per la Giovane Arte Italiana in 2000, the
museum once again contacted the artist with the intent of discussing a number of important issues of conservation and documentation that were not
fully verified previously. The work, defined by the artist herself as “non-permanent,” is a mandala, a sort of mosaic of pieces that are not glued together,
but simply placed on the ground, in which legume seeds and grains design the
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form of a swastika (see Fig. 6.5 in color section). At the center of this composition, a Pyrex dish sitting on an electric hot plate contains boiling water and
laurel leaves. The installation is connoted by a strong component of performance: during the setup and disassembly of the exhibition, both the action of
“placing” and that of “removal” are accompanied by music selected by Bruna
Esposito. During the exhibition the public is allowed to take a small bag of
grains and legumes with them; each bag contains a poem by Paola d’Agnese.
The strong performative value, the explicit desire for interaction with the
public, and the ephemeral nature of the work (the perishability of its components, together with the fact that it is not fixed to the floor, but simply sits on
it), are the distinctive characteristics of the piece, beyond its objective materiality. Precisely these qualities complicated the acquisition of the work in
2000, documented in a video authorized by the artist. Bruna Esposito considers this video, whose rights were only recently conceded to the museum by
Mara Chiaretti, and the photographs taken during its installation, as documentary materials and thus in no way a substitution for the work itself. In consideration of this condition, together with the fact that the museum had not
acquired any other elements such as drawings or installation instructions, it
was necessary to contact the artist again about the presentation of this work.
The central question clarified with the artist was whether she considers the
work to be replicable or not, taking into account that after 2000 the work was
presented on three other occasions, with a few variations, related above all to
the aspect of performance, in particular the music.
The result of this dialogue between the museum and artist was an agreement signed a year ago that has allowed the curators and conservators to
define the status of the work, the editions, and the conditions of future exhibitions, especially with regard to preventing the risk of any possible misunderstandings of the use of the swastika.
It was also possible to identify an “other” form, with respect to the material, to ensure the persistence of this work within the collective memory and
conscience: regarding the present and the future of e così sia… in the MAXXI
collection, discussions with the artist focus on the hypothesis of developing
a new form of video presentation, together with the possibility offered to the
public to simply take (as in 2000) or purchase the small bags of legumes, grains,
and poetry. According to the artist, this would actualize the persistence of the
element of the dispersion of the materiality of the work, a memento of one of
the distinctive traits of the work itself. Another possibility being evaluated is
founded on the idea of the impossibility of reproducing a work designed to
be ephemeral and non-repeatable, rendering the piece constantly visible and
accessible on the Internet (not only during an exhibition), and thus offering a
different form of persistence within the collection.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
NOTES
1
This research is made possible with the support of Virtueel Platform and SKOR
| Foundation for Art and Public Domain, both in Amsterdam. Thanks also to the
members of the research group New Strategies in Conservation, in particular
Renée van der Vall and Vivian van Saaze who commented on an earlier version of
this article.
2
For an extensive account on the background and discussions on “document,” see
for example Buckland (1991 and 1997), Day (2001), and Francke (2005).
3
See Oxford Dictionary of Latin.
4
The term “documentation” , and “documentalist” was mostly used in Belgium,
the Netherlands and Germany and, to a lesser extent, in France and Great Britain.
The United States very soon started to adopt the term “information science.” A
full account on the meaning and implication of the different terminologies goes
beyond the scope of this research; instead, I will focus on the use of documentation in as far as it is relevant to conservation. For more information on the history
of the term “documentation” see, among others: Woledge (1983).
5
In the arts there is little research on the notion and implication of artists’ intent.
Conservator Steven W. Dykstra (1996) is one of the few conservators who attempted to develop a clear understanding of the notion of artist’s intention in art conservation.
6
For an elaborate account see among others: Muñoz Viñas (2005); Laurenson
(2006); and the recent anthology by Richmond and Bracker (2009).
7
Choices are inherently subjective, but the consequences of this subjective stance
have only recently been addressed and acknowledged, most noticeably in the
writing of Clavir (2002).
8
Matt Adams. personal interview between Blast Theory, Annet Dekker (Virtueel
Platform), Liesbeth Huybrechts (BAM), and Priscilla Machils (BAM). Brighton,
UK, 5 February 2010.
9
For more information about Uncle Roy All Around You: http://www.blasttheory.
co.uk/bt/work_uncleroy.html.
10 Unless stated otherwise all the information about Blast Theory is taken from
two interview sessions. The first with Matt Adams in Amsterdam (7 December
2009) and the second with the core members Matt Adams, Ju Row Farr, and Nick
Tandavanitj in their studio in Brighton (5 February 2010). These interviews are
conducted by Dekker and Huybrechts (BAM / Media & Design Academy, Genk,
Belgium). For more information about Blast Theory see: http://www.blasttheory.
co.uk.
11 The word “capture”’ means that something has been seized or taken control of.
However, when applied to video, nothing really gets “captured” or seized. “Video
merely makes marks on a magnetic tape – marks which offer no guarantee of
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knowledge of the object that it is representing.” Becky Edmunds. “A Work of
Art from A Work of Art.” (2007). http://beckyedmunds.com/#/on-documentation/4531976852. Last access: 12 September 2012. Nevertheless, in media art the
term is now widely used for the process of documentation: “To record or make a
lasting representation of (sound or images); as, to capture an event on videotape,”
glossary, Inside Installations http://www.inside-installations.org/
onlinecoursevideodocumentation/module1/glos01.htm.
12 See, for example, Phelan (1993: 146-166).
13 Becky Edmunds. “A Work of Art from A Work of Art.” (2007). http://
beckyedmunds.com/#/on-documentation/4531976852. Last access: 12 September 2012.
14 The notion of tacit knowledge refers to the range of conceptual and sensory information, i.e., all forms of knowledge that cannot be represented: knowledge that
cannot be fully articulated, expressed in formulas, or described in documents
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(Polanyi, 1966). The notion of tacit knowledge is not uncontested and is often
viewed as subjective in conservation; it refers to the artist’s intent and the social
and cultural context in which a work is presented or performed.
15 Becky Edmunds. “A Work of Art from A Work of Art.” (2007). http://
beckyedmunds.com/#/on-documentation/4531976852. Last access: 12 September 2012.
16 This way the object, the video document, can also be regarded as a boundary
object, passing between communities where it faces different interpretive strategies in each one. For further reading, see Star and Greisemer (1989). Massumi
(2002) and Leach (2010) take the notion of the object further, claiming that the
object has its own agency besides being merely a mediation tool.
17 An impression of the size of their archive: “Over the last 16 years we have meticulously archived every aspect of each project: creative notes, correspondence, publicity materials, press, design work, software, production manuals. The archive
held by us includes 90 box files, 20 virtual models of cities and 900Gb stored on
servers. Because we work in collaboration so frequently archival materials relating to our work are held elsewhere (such as the University of Nottingham), usually
for technical or intellectual property reasons. These include logs, messages sent
and received, audio recordings, etc..” Notes taken from a proposal that was used
for Legacy, a one-off initiative developed in collaboration between the Live Art
Development Agency and Tate Research, 2008.
18 See Winget (2008) and Dekker (2010: 7.1) on preservation strategies for gaming.
19 For more information see: http://forging-the-future.net/ and http://
variablemediaquestionnaire.net/.
20 Or, in the case where an artist has passed away, his/her collector, programmer, or
technician – those closest to the artist and the work as it was made and exhibited.
21 http://capturing.projects.v2.nl.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
22 http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/majorprojects/mediamatters/.
23 http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/about/formalnotation.pdf.
24 See also: Delahunta & Shaw (2006), Winget (2008), Dekker (2010).
25 See, among others, Fauconnier & Fromme (2003), Jones (2007), Van Saaze (2009).
26 The idea of providing relations between different components (technical specifications) and occurrences (various situations and presentations: the ideal situation and minimal requirements) is further developed in the context of Inside
Movement Knowledge. Elements of different models are adapted to the specific
needs of contemporary dance documentation, see: Van Saaze, Dekker, and Wijers
(2010).
27 See, among others: Van de Wetering (1989), Sloggett (1998), and Beerkens et al.
(2012).
28 A method to capture different audience experiences was conducted by the
research group during the Creator project (in which Blast Theory’s project Rider
Spoke was developed). The “digital replay system” shows an interactive juxtaposition of materials generated by different communities over time. “The system
allows for new and unexpected discoveries as the work could be viewed through
growing numbers of disciplinary lenses.” (Chamberlain, 2010).
29 In the museum context this happens regularly, even with more traditional art
forms. See Van Saaze’s contribution to this chapter.
30 Geoffrey Bowker during his presentation at Memory of the Future, Ghent, June
2010.
31 Kunsthalle Zurich, 24 August 2002 – 27 October 2002; San Francisco MoMA, 14
December 2002 – 16 March 2003; the Institute of Visual Culture in Cambridge
(UK), 14 December 2002 – 16 March 2003.
32 This text is based on literature research as well as on fieldwork conducted at the
Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (NL), for my Ph.D. research (Van Saaze 2009). Interviews with (former) staff members were conducted between 2004 and 2008. I am
particularly grateful to the staff of the Van Abbemuseum for their generosity and
time in our conversations.
33 See also: Lind (2007). For a historical account of the collaborative aspect in the
arts, see: Green (2001).
34 Lind (2007). On the increase of collaboration practices in new media art, see also:
Diamond (2008).
35 It is interesting to note that, in addition to several artists, other cultural producers
such as the authors of the book No Ghost Just a Shell (Huyghe and Parreno, 2003)
were also considered contributors to the project.
36 In May 2006, the Van Abbemuseum lists 27 inventory numbers representing
works by the following contributors: Pierre Huyghe, Philippe Parreno, Henri
Barande, Angela Bulloch and Imke Wagener, François Curlet, Lili Fleury, Liam
Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Pierre Joseph and Mehdi Belhaj-Kacem,
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M/M Paris (Matthias Augustyniak and Michel Amzalag), Melik Ohanian, Richard
Phillips, Joe Scanlan, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Anna-Léna Vaney (source: museum
registration system Van Abbemuseum, May 2006).
37 Interview Phillip Van den Bossche, curator of exhibitions Van Abbemuseum, 13
January 2005.
38 See also Jon Ippolito (2008) on the limitations of standard collection management systems.
39 Interview with Margo van de Wiel, registrator collection at Van Abbemuseum, 15
May 2008 and email correspondence 26 October 2009.
40 Particularly noteworthy are Kristel Van Audenaeren’s M.A. thesis (2005) and Anne
Mink’s research and internship report (2007).
41 Interview Charles Esche, artistic director Van Abbemuseum, 27 March 2007.
42 See the contribution by Annet Dekker in this volume. I would also like to add
the documentation models developed within the European research project
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Inside Installations (http://www.inside-installations.org/research/detail.php?r_
id=482&ct=model).
43 See also: http://still-water.net/.
44 In the organization of the contemporary museum, the warehouse is conceived as
the functional space for all museum activities and not, as was often the case in
the past, as space dedicated to storage only. Inside MAXXI, which does not have
a permanent exhibition of its collection, the warehouse plays a role of primary
importance. It is worthwhile recalling how the Schaulager in Basel is organized
neither as a simple “warehouse by design,” nor as a museum with all works on
display. The works are all installed and visible, though as if they were in storage,
one beside the other, in closed and monographic spaces.
45 The INCCA now represents a platform of convergence for the most up-to-date
research in the field of conserving contemporary art; it offers a guide for the realization of interviews with artists (“Guide to Good Practice: Artist’s Interviews”)
that the MAXXI will use as a tool of research for documentation. See www.incca.
org (last access: 20 August 2012).
46 We must carefully distinguish between a restoration done by the restorer, and an
intervention by the artist. The latter should lead to an additional, second dating
of the work.
47
Operating retroactively, the first critical act is already that of making a selection
of the works to be documented, obviously beginning with those works in the collection that already present critical issues of conservation, or which may present
problems.
48 DIC – Documentare Installazioni Complesse (Documenting Complex Installations)
is a pilot project promoted and conducted by the Civiche Raccolte di Milano and
the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage, involving the MAXXI and other Italian
museums. During 2007, it was used to test the methodology of documentation
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
employed by the international group as part of the project Inside Installations.
Preservation and Presentation of Installation Art. During the same year, the MAXXI
Installazioni series presented three exhibitions of works from its permanent collection as the analysis of case studies of different problems related to the exhibition of complex installations with a technological basis. See Pugliese and Ferriani
(2009).
49 The OAC – Opera Arte Contemporanea (Work of Contemporary Art) chart was
proposed and developed by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage’s Istituto
Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione. This chart is easy to fill out, consult,
and update. Focused substantially on the analysis of material components and
conservation issues, the chart was developed based on international models that
were first proposed at the end of the project Inside Installations; it was reworked
in light of the specific research pursued by the museum. Recent work has focused
on the issue of archiving data and the possibility of creating connections between
the two types of charts, to avoid repetition and integrate the most developed sections of the two models.
50 Installation: steel bars, painted wood, mirrors, 525 x 550 x 570 cm. MAXXI Collection.
51 The drawings and silkscreen print are not a part of the installation, but works on
their own. The five drawings in the MAXXI collection belong to a series of 20 in total.
52 Project in progress of installation and destruction with epilogue singing by the
artist (legumes, grains, laurel, hot plate, Pyrex container, water, bags containing
a mix of legumes, grains, and poetry by Paola D’Agnese), final overall size approximately 400 x 400 cm. MAXXI Collection.
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PART III
teCHNologiCal
platforMs, preserVatioN,
aNd restoratioN
INTRODUCTION
Cosetta G. Saba
Within a framework of the system of relations between “technology” and “culture,” the third part of this book is dedicated to preservation and restoration
theories and practices, and has two sides. On one hand (in chapter 7), the history of research and technological innovation in the media area is highlighted,
also in the case of “low cost” examples, emphasizing the deconstruction and
reinvention processes produced by artistic practices with respect to the industrial structures of cinema (7.1), television (7.2), and information technology
(7.3). On the other hand (in chapter 8), epistemological frameworks are introduced, as well as working methodologies, projects, and experimentations,
case studies, decision-making models for film, video (8.1) and digital artworks
(8.2), and issues of preservation and restoration, focusing on their progressive
levels of institutionalization (best practices, recommendations, protocols,
etc.)
The two chapters in this part of the book introduce a history of the use of
“cinematic” technologies and treat the question of the treatment of the expressive material (physical, chemical, analog, or digital) in the context of preservation strategies, documentation, archiving, and access techniques elaborated
by museums or universities. Here, the material of these works is defined as
being coextensive to the image. The approaches discussed define the degree
of relevance that technology assumes with respect to the composition modes
of these works, the reproduction devices and specific exhibition context
needed to experience artworks based on cinema, television and information
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technology devices. The complexity of these artworks’ composition – more
precisely, the complexity of the practices that generate them – requires the
production, storage, accessibility, and interoperability of contextual information on the works’ cultural history (that implies the history of the transmission
of the artwork and its documentary corollary), the “textual” and “contextual”
reconstruction of the artistic intention (see Eco, 1990), as well as its reception
modes (see the contribution on media art and digital archives in chapter 4 of
this book). The relationship between the artist intent, the work’s identity, and
the use of technical equipment can reveal the degree of relevance and meaning that the equipment has, with respect to the artwork itself. This provides a
basis for determining the preservation strategies that can be adopted to confront the obsolescence of the work’s components (7.4 and 8.3).
In the current cultural industry, where different media forms coexist (see
Jenkins, 2006, and, for the film archival field, Fossati, 2009), artists use both the
latest and obsolete forms of media technology. When applied in artistic work,
these media technologies and the practices related to them are transformed,
in the process reconfiguring the way these works refer to the “sensory” (Rancière, 2000). The “phenomenology of the moving image” that descends from
this, passes through different media, stratifying, transforming, and expanding their languages into new composition forms, and into complex platforms
which are subject to obsolescence or deliberately based on obsolete technology. Given the physical and artistic instability of these artworks, as José Jiménez (2002) says, the museums and art institutions of the future will have much
more to do with generation, archiving, and transmission of information than
with the safekeeping and classification of material pieces. Yet, as the practice
of media art preservation shows (7.4 and 8.3), developing strategies of preservation that do justice to the concept and appearance of these works requires
that the material and technical components as well as the documentation of
its functionality, appearance, and experience are taken into account.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
REFERENCES
Eco, Umberto. I limiti dell’interpretazione, Milan: Bompiani, 1990.
Fossati, Giovanna. From Grain to Pixel. The Archival Life of Film in Transition. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009.
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture. Where Old and New Media Collide. New York and
London: New York University Press, 2006.
Jiménez, José. Teoría del Arte. Madrid: Editorial Tecnos, 2002.
Rancière, Jacques. Le Partage du Sensible. Esthétique et Politique. Paris: La Fabrique,
2000.
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T E C H N o lo G I C A l P l AT F o R M S , P R E S E R VAT I o N A N D R E S To R AT I o N
CHapter 7
Technological Platforms
INTRODUCTION
Simone Venturini
Technological systems are dynamic entities, the stability of which relates to
temporary convergence phenomena1 within a cultural set that establishes the
media system, based on industrial and communication standards and protocols. The dynamics of convergence do not only relate to the physical and
technical identity of media, they also work in terms of individual and social
imagery. In this sense, the aesthetic experiment in the arts sub specie technology has always worked as much on technological innovations as it has on protocols.2 The protocols (like standards and recommendations) are the results of
an economic and socio-cultural negotiation; they are a place for the redefining
of the convergence or divergence between different kinds of media. Furthermore, when the new technology is up and running, operations are activated
(an example being aesthetic finality) which explore the characteristics and the
potential of the new arrivals.
The technological innovations are a starting point for talking about mapping with regards to sensory factors and therefore invoke activity to produce
sensory remapping and expressive training practices, which are useful in the
reconfiguration of what Derrick de Kerckhove has called brainframes around
this new technology (Kerckhove, 1991).
In chapter 7, some of the operations and the modes that distinguish the
aesthetic actions from cinema technology and analogue and digital video will
be highlighted. The first “place” in which the aesthetic practices of research
operate is techniques (Altman, 2001), which can be interpreted as an alchemi-
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cal, laboratory, or handmade environment for using the technology available
and the human and corporal reclaiming of technology. The place of technique
requires choices, solutions and decisions that bypass and anticipate the supposed linear nature of the use of the technology, systems, and materials.
The aesthetic decisions about the use of the technology can at the same
time be informed by actions that look beyond the normal use of the object
and the immediacy of a functional representation. They are practical operations on the technology and materials of a reflexive nature, aimed at creating
aesthetic planning, which means a project that is not immediately useful, a
“planning forecast of many possible aims.” From this point of view, aesthetic
experimentation is to be understood as “a mainly meta-operational activity”
(Garroni, 1977).
The breaking practices (Shand, 2008) are other sensitive stimulating cultural points of techno-aesthetic experimentation. The error and breakdown
become features that allow for the recognition and reconfiguration of the
basic aesthetic and technological project and the subjectivity that produced
it, revealing the astonishment and the sense of uncanny that hides behind the
habituation to technological innovations (Gunning, 2003).
Aesthetic experimentation has always interacted with the category and
modes of amateurship (Zimmerman, 1995; Ishizuka and Zimmerman, 2007;
Shand, 2008) for financial reasons, for the opportunities of control upon the
process and the possibility of creating flexible use, exchange and communication protocols. In addition, amateur film can be considered as a liminal space
of transit and continuous experimentation. Therefore, the amateur area functions as a place where innovations can be checked and also as a place where
the starting utopian potential of technology can be maintained. The astonishment and unawareness that amateur film maintains as a reserve and a resource
is something “out of place” that must be considered as an unintentional
approach, which is preparatory and complementary to what is “out of mode,”
revealed by obsolescence as a precondition for the discourse intention and
action of reinventing the medium (Krauss, 1999).
The obsolescence includes its opposite, the industrial structures of production and reproduction (preservation and transmission) that affect and
guide artworks and preservation arenas. The changes of standards produce
obsolescences, remains, and destruction. Damage and decay are included in
the language as aesthetic idiolect, as indicators of a “breaking” practice. The
aesthetic aspect establishes the possibility of its own existence, too, in the
dialectic created by technology between “product” and “process,” between
norms and the deviation, “industry” and “craftsmanship,” and between “professional” and “amateur.”
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
7.1
THE HISTORy AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF
CINEMATOGRAPHIC PRODUCTION AND RECEPTION DEVICES
Simone Venturini and Mirco Santi *
Standard 35mm Film
In the first decade of the 20th century, Edison’s perforated 35mm film and the
aspect ratio of 1:1.33 was the format that was establishing itself and would
be taken on as the industry standard from 1909. Between 1923 and 1924, the
standards for the negative (BH) and positive (KS) perforations were set, together with the positioning settings for full-frame. With the introduction of the
optical soundtrack, halfway through the 1930s, the standards for sound film
were achieved (the Academy format, 1:1.37) and during the 1950s, panoramic
and anamorphic formats and magnetic sound were introduced.
The physical characteristics of film were used at an expressive level. For
more than just a few filmmakers (including George Landow, Peter Tscherkassky, Paolo Gioli) the perforations, the area of the soundtrack, and the frameline became expressive visual and audio elements. The physicality of the film
became material for aesthetic practices derived from the collage and from
found objects, and operates within a dialectic between norm and deviation,
between use (functionality) and out of use (breaking), between the invisibility
of the technical standards and the exhibition of protocols and structures.
From this point of view, Tscherkassky’s trilogy L’Arrivée, Outer Space,
and Dream Work from the end of the 1990s is exemplary. Through the use of
cinemascope, the artist achieved three objectives from his own experimental
research: making structural elements of the film such as the perforations visible, thus working on the concept of “outer space”; using a “classic” cinematographic format in an experimental context where paradoxically filmmakers
have often not considered alternatives to the 1:1.33; placing in the contemporary transition a format, which imposed itself on a previous moment of
transformation and crisis of cinema (the introduction of electronic television
images) (Bardon, 2001).
Substandard Film
The evolution of photography from a practice of only professional photographers to a personal and common experience – think of George Eastman and
his motto, “You press the button, we do the rest”3 – and the birth of amateur
T EC H N o lo G I C A l P l AT F o R M S
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cinema offer various analogies. In both cases, the easy-to-use instrument was
essential in making photography and cinematography an everyday affair.4
The first attempts were linked to the reduction from 35mm format to
17.5mm, and the production of the first film cameras such as Birtac (1898)
and Biokam (1899), for example, as well as different experiments such as Gaumont’s Chrono de Poche (1900), 15mm.
The introduction of the safety film (cellulose diacetate) together with
the Pathé Kok 28mm format (1912) gave life to the first system for cinema at
home. The 28mm combined safety and ease of use, good quality, the possibility to project films from a dedicated library, and to have a camera specifically
designed for home cinema purposes.
Amateur cinema therefore had to satisfy two requirements – practicality
and security – to which a third would later be added: the use of reversal material. These requirements would form the basis for the first small and popular
models: the 9.5mm Pathé Baby and the 16mm Kodak.
In 1922, Pathé put the 9.5mm on the market. Pathé’s slogan was “Petit,
simple et bon marché.” As well as the miniaturization, a key factor in the
growth and development was the accessory kit: tools to print and do the film
processing by themselves; rotary discs with color filters to “simulate” the
colors; and accessories to “extract” and enlarge single frames.
In 1923, Kodak put the 16mm on the market, although it was too expensive for many people. These were heavier cameras (4.5 kilograms compared
to Pathé’s camera which was barely one kilogram). It was possible to load
the camera with 30 meters of film (compared with the French format’s nine
meters). The loading of the spools required greater skill than the loading of
the 9.5mm’s “cartridge.” The 16mm was a more troublesome system, reserved
for the elite but also aimed at semi-professionals in schools and institutions.
The 16mm was an open system: the cameras were not the exclusive preserve
of Kodak, instead, the patent was made available to many different brands
(Bell & Howell being one noteworthy example) which would bring improvements and developments. The double perforations guaranteed remarkable
frame stability. At the beginning of the 1930s, with the introduction of sound,5
one row of perforations would be sacrificed to leave space for the soundtrack.
From the 1950s onwards, the spread of the magnetic medium would allow for
easier shots and sound recording.
The 16mm format started to be used at the end of the 1930s by Len Lye
and Norman McLaren. In the 1950s, amateur filmmakers, visual artists, students from art schools, and ordinary fans used the completely manual 16mm
cameras because their extreme versatility allows for a lot of experimentation
(think of the Bolex-Paillard H16). Much of the Underground Cinema and New
American Cinema of the time was made with such cameras (Maya Deren,
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
7.1
Paillard Bolex H16
with turret with three
lenses. Source: Archivio
Nazionale del Film di
Famiglia – Associazione
Home Movies.
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Gregory Markopoulos, Harry Smith, Kenneth Anger, Jonas Mekas, Stan Brakhage, and Robert Breer).
In 1932, Kodak put a new format on the market, known as 8mm (Standard
8 or Double 8). It was 16mm film which was seven-and-a-half meters long, with
twice the usual number of perforations; the spools were mounted in metal
casing to be loaded and exposed twice. In the area of the 16mm frame, after
the processing and before the lengthways cut, four images were printed. From
the cut and spliced film, fifteen meters were left, which corresponded to about
four minutes of film at sixteen frames per second.
The miniaturization of the filming and projection equipment would make
the format the most popular until the middle of the 1970s. From the 1950s
onwards, the Kuchar brothers would work on Kodachrome’s chromatic capacity and the Standard 8 format’s grain. Brakhage also used the format for filming as well as for hand-painting the film.
From 1965, Kodak started to sell Super 8, which was the same size as the
8-mm format; the improvement was made by redesigning the film, increasing the area by 40 percent, thanks to the modifications of the perforations. At
the same time, a new emulsion was released: Kodachrome II. Kodak aimed it
at family cinema. Amateur filmmakers remained loyal to the Standard 8 for a
long time (as long as stock remained available). In contrast, the Super 8 was
also the format of self-awareness, of the affirmation of the film diary, for example Walden (1969) by Jonas Mekas.
T EC H N o lo G I C A l P l AT F o R M S
Cameras
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The artistic use of the film camera started with its basic elements, working
around its optical and mechanical principles. The early avant-garde movements used many effects created with the camera; some of these included
optical distortions in La Folie du Docteur Tube (1915) by Abel Gance, as well
as multiple overlays, kaleidoscopic multiplications, positioning of the filters,
and surfaces in front of the lens, and slow and fast motion in Emak Bakia
(1927), L’Etoile de Mer (1928) by Man Ray, Ballet Mécanique (1924) by Fernand
Léger, and Filmstudie (1926) by Hans Richter.
In the experimental context, the cameras were chosen according to their
characteristics. The range of possibilities offered by Bolex-Paillard (speed
and variable shutter, interchangeable optical systems, rewinding of the film
for double exposures and fading) allowed many tricks to be carried out on
the camera: from slow motion and animation to time-lapse and pixilation.
For this reason, these cameras could be found in many of the American art
schools and they were used in television for reporting. Beaulieu was another
important brand in the construction of 16mm film cameras. The R16 resumed
Bolex’s tradition, compactness and versatility, not to mention the Angenieux
12-120 high quality zoom, which made it an instrument that was valued for
difficult filming in mainstream production.
In the experimental context the cameras were freed from normative constraints (Deren, 1965) or they were constrained with set movements or kept
still (as with certain structural and pop cinema). Finally, they were liberated
from human presence, as was the case for the camera in continuous and automatic movement at the core of La Région Centrale (1971) by Michael Snow,
a film that took conceptual action to its limits: the moving devices and the
mobility that was created in the 1960s with the transfocal lenses, the dolly, the
spider, and the camera-car; and in the 1970s firstly with the louma and then
with the Steadicam.
Film cameras could then be recognized as complete craftsmanlike or idiosyncratic devices, for example: Alexandre Alexeieff’s pin-screens or tools;
László Moholy-Nagy’s Light-Space Modulator, precursor to kinetic machines,
whose movements and light games were the basis for Lichtspiel (1930). Another example was the “infernal machine” made to shoot Oski’s painting that was
the basis of Fernando Birri’s La verdadera historia de la primera fundación de
Buenos Aires (1959).
Film cameras were also related to their original and fundamental role
in the camera obscura, like the example of Gioli’s “pinhole camera” (a small
empty metal rod with holes that was pulled manually) in Film Stenopeico
(L’Uomo senza Macchina da Presa, 1973-1981-1989).
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
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7.2
Camera mounted on rotating arms and
automatically moving counterweights for
Michael Snow’s La Région Centrale (1971).
Courtesy Michael Snow.
The liberation of film from the camera’s “dictatorship” involved abstract,
painted, and artistic cinema with drawing, painting, collage, engraving, rayographic practices (Christian Schad, Man Ray, and László Moholy-Nagy), and
abstract animation (Len Lye, Norman McLaren, Stan Brakhage, Marcel Thirache, Harry Smith, Aldo Tambellini, Thorsten Fleisch, and Ian Helliwell).
In addition to finding the first attempts at cameraless cinema6 in Man
Ray’s rayograms, as in the case of Barbel Neubauer, there was also the postproduction or archival cinema that used material that had already been exhibited, hidden, and found in assemblages that had roots in photomontage (John
Heartfield, Alexander Rodchenko). A practice that was also tied to the development of editing and optical printers and therefore also the possibility of
revising and reframing the film. This was a practice that was put in motion in
a way that was not dissimilar to “archival impulse” (Foster, 2004) and continued as an analytical, mnemonic, and imaginative exercise on various visual
repertoires (Dziga Vertov, Joseph Cornell, Ken Jacobs, Ernie Gehr, Al Razutis,
Martin Arnold, Gustav Deutsch, Tscherkassky, and Douglas Gordon).
T EC H N o lo G I C A l P l AT F o R M S
Emulsion – Base
208 |
At the beginning of the 20th century, different cinematographic emulsions
began to appear together with the first emulsions dedicated to the printing
of copies (in 1908 Kodak’s “Regular Positive”). Early in the second decade,
orthochromatic film increased the zone of sensitivity, to the radiation of the
visible spectrum. The spread of filming and projecting techniques that were
not professional became associated with the use of safety film. The difficulties in the development of a stable safety film base and guarantee of basic
conditions of transparency, resistance and flexibility persist, and a mixture
of acetate, butyrate, and nitrate was used until the 1930s and 1940s, even for
smaller formats. The beginning of the 1920s saw the spread of panchromatic
emulsions, the majority of film production companies included pre-tinted
stock materials. Around halfway through the 1920s, fine grain emulsions
started to arise, able to produce positive and negative duplicates from which
the final copies could be obtained. The reversal process was successful in cinema thanks to the 9.5mm, 16mm, and 8mm substandard formats. The substandard format experience was a fundamental forerunner and, in 1965, Fuji
put the Single 8 on the market, the first polyester film. After the Second World
War, the cellulose triacetate base spread, destined to replace cellulose nitrate
as the standard for 35mm films from 1951 onwards. Around halfway through
the 1970s, the polyester base replaced the triacetate in perforated magnetics,
and then took over as the base for 35mm prints in the second half of the 1980s.
The use of negative or intermediate film or mixed elements in projection
was widespread in the experimental field, for example, the use of the negative
in The Very Eye of the Night (1958) by Maya Deren; Berlin Horse by Malcolm Le
Grice (1970); in the works of Maurice Lemaître, Douglas Gordon, and Peter
Tscherkassky; the structural, pop, flickering elements in T.O.U.C.H.I.N.G.
(1968) by Paul Sharits; the interposition between negative and positive in Film
Feedback (1972) by Tony Conrad; or the use of negative, positive, black and
white, and color in the multi-cameras and multi-screens of After Manet (1973)
by LeGrice.
From the beginning of the 20th century, reproducing natural colors was
experimented with in different ways (Lumière, Urban’s Kinemacolor in 1906,
Chronochrome Gaumont in 1913). In 1905, Pathé introduced Pathé Color for
the coloring of positives with a mechanical system for color application. The
system was in use until early in the 1930s, but the techniques that asserted
themselves up until the end of the 1920s, in terms of symbolic and referential
representation, were tinting and toning. As the 1920s approached, the production of subtractive systems began. In 1922, the American film The Toll of
the Sea gave the first example of a color film created using the second Techni-
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
color system, and 1935 saw the use of the fourth Technicolor system, with the
film Becky Sharp – this was a subtractive system with three colors that would
remain in use until the end of the 1970s.
The first color systems beneficial for smaller film formats were Kodacolor
and Agfacolor, interesting but complex systems that were available from early
in the 1920s until halfway through the 1930s on 16mm format. During the
1930s the first systems of lenticular color reproduction began to spread. At
the start of the 1930s, Dufaycolor was also available on the Pathé Baby format.
But it was with Kodachrome (1935) and Agfacolor Neu that remarkable results
were obtained, firstly on 16mm and then on 8mm. The single-layer subtractive
Kodachrome emulsion for reversal film was the first real trichrome monopack.
Initially designed for 16mm, it was soon applied to 35mm slides, and 8mm
slides in 1936. The emulsion was cheap, with great chromatic stability, it was
much loved, had great success and did not go out of production until 2009.
The 1950s were the decade that saw color assert itself with monopack by Eastmancolor in 1950, Ferraniacolor in 1952, and Fujicolor in 1953.
The color system found a fertile testing ground in experimental cinema,
for example Composition in Blue (1935) by Oskar Fischinger, which used Gasparcolor (Fischinger himself helped to develop it), a system then used by Len
Lye and Alexandre Alexeieff. Another example was Colour Separation (1974) by
7.3
Reproduction of a frame from Isidore Isou,
Traité de bave et d’éternité (1951).
T EC H N o lo G I C A l P l AT F o R M S
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Chris Welby, based on the color separation process. The experimentation with
color then went in many different directions, from filters to flashing, from toning to all artistic cinema, experimental animation, and the early avant garde,
for example, Das Wunder. Ein Film in Farben (1922) by Walter Ruttmann, colored by hand.
The transforming action of the photo-chemical characteristics of film
was also at the root of alchemic practices (bleaching, modification to the processing and printing of the film, over- and underexposure) and went as far as
favoring the visionary lyricism and the ready-made of chemical physical decay
(the decay of nitrate and certain colors) and to propose an idea of cinema as
art of destruction, for example: Trasferimento di modulazione (1969) by Pierfrancesco Bargellini, and the works of Jürgen Reble’s Schmelzdahin group.
The layers of emulsion were also subjected to scratching, engraving, and heating (Brakhage, Isidore Isou, Lemaître, Olivier Fouchard, Karl Lemieux, YvesMarie Mahè, Jürgen Reble, and Thorsten Fleisch).
Sound on Film
From the beginning there were many experiments in synchronized sound
recorded onto a disc, including Kinetophone, Phono-Cinéma-Théatre, and
Chronophone. The techniques for the recording and photoacoustic reproduction of sound on film had their first important event in 1904 with Eugène
Lauste, when the practice of live musical accompaniment would have great
success, emphasizing cinema’s performative characteristics.
At the end of the First World War, the experimentation began to intensify.
In 1918, the German Joseph Engl, Hans Vogt and Joseph Massolle began to
develop the variable area. In 1919, Lee De Forest started testing recording at
variable density, creating the Phonofilm system in 1922. Between 1926 and
1930, the final phase of development in optical sound on film was started
and the system with separate negatives and variable area gradually came to
dominate for variable density and disc systems. In 1935, Gance presented the
sound and stereo version of Napoléon and, in 1940, Walt Disney made the fulllength feature Fantasia, in color and with stereo sound on the fantasound magnetic multitrack system. The electronic technology continued to spread in
cinema, through recording and post-production of the sound on the magnetic
tape. The main instrument for this practice was the Nagra-Kudelski recorder
(1951).7 This, and similar systems, laid the foundation for the live recording
of sound that would spread in the following decades, until in the 1970s Dolby
Stereo was introduced.
“Graphical” or “drawn” sound was an interesting experimental practice. In
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
the conversion period towards sound film, there was a rise in experimentation
and practices that mix optical sound, graphics and animation, and synthetic
music in many contexts and different countries; ranging from the abstract
films of Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling, to those of Walter Ruttmann. At the
end of the 1920s in the Soviet Union, the experiments and research of Alexander Shorin, Arseny Avraamov, and Evgeny Sholpo stood out. The practice of
utilizing graphic signs evoked an ornamental, synthetic, artificial, and graphic
idea of sound. Oskar Fischinger moved in a similar direction with the “sound
ornaments” in Experiments in Hand-drawn Sound (1931-32), as did Rudolph
Pfenninger, Moholy-Nagy with ABC of Sound (1933), Norman McLaren, Len
Lye, and the Whitney brothers with Variations (1941-42).
In many other cases, from the Letterists to much experimental cinema
from the 1960s onwards, the area of the soundtrack was engraved, scratched,
and the perforations encroached onto the area of playback to become an
expressive noise. The printing or insertion of images on the track connects the
audiovisual media and the cinematographic manufacture to graphic media
and the typographic manufacture, the visual writing of the sound, and the
orality of the graphics. There are examples of this in Halftone (1966) by David
Perry, who utilized the halftone screens used by newspapers to construct the
image of the sound; Soundtrack (1969) by Barry Spinello with the characters
and typographic symbols of the Letraset transferred onto a clear film stock.
Dresden Dynamo (1972) by Lis Rhodes and Newsprint (1972) by Guy Sherwin
contained typographic characters inserted in the area of the image and the
sound. Sherwin would then film daily objects and images, printing and inserting them into the soundtrack in Musical Stairs (1977) and Railings (1977).
7.4
Graphical sound: filmstrip from Guy Sherwin, Newsprint (1972).
Courtesy LUX.
T EC H N o lo G I C A l P l AT F o R M S
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Multiscreens, Installations, and Cinematic Systems
212 |
Edison’s Kinetoscope (1891) can be seen as a model for a system for individual viewing of moving images recorded on film, whilst the Lumière brothers’
Cinématograph (1895) can be taken as the successful model for projection
and collective viewing of images on a surface. From the beginning, the limits of vision were extended thanks to experiments with stereoscopy (FrieseGreene, Lumière).
In 1927 Henry Chretien’s Hypergonar, in the anamorphic format with a
1:2.66 projection ratio, allowed for the expansion of images and screens, ideally complemented with the multiscreen “polyvision”8 of Abel Gance’s Napoléon
and followed by the Fox Grandeur 70 mm format, in 1929. In 1952, the first
Cinemascope film appeared (with Fox perforations, four magnetic tracks,
1:1.27/1:2.44 ratio), then standardized as Standard Cinemascope with a 1:2.35
screen image and with an optical track. The senses extend toward the third
dimension during the “golden age of three-dimensional cinema” (during the
first half of the 1950s).
The panoramic and anamorphic formats multiplied (Vistavision, Technirama, 65mm and 70mm) and, with them, new experiments and experiences
appeared that continued for the whole of the 1960s (Circarama, Magirama by
Gance, Cinemiracle, Circle Vision, Kinopanorama, and Circular Kinopanorama). The experimentation of the projection device went in many directions,
which cannot be easily summarized in its entirety.9
M U LT I SC R E E N S
In 1927, Abel Gance first applied polyvision with his Napoléon. Even before
this first application in mainstream film, the early avant-garde movement had
already happily imagined (the futurists) or articulated (Moholy-Nagy) polyvision; they had also partly put the film in “situation” (Dada). At the end of the
1940s, Luigi Veronesi invoked “absolute films, projected by themselves or
simultaneously, in space, on multiple transparent screens, on different layers,
on screens of gas, permeable to bodies and colors” (Medesani, 2005).
The perceptive relationship between spectator and the projected image
was the main issue of a lot of structural cinema’s research practices, for example, through test effects, stroboscopy, and image flickering. Razor Blade (19651968) by Paul Sharits is an example that unites the stroboscope effect with a
synchronized projection of two films on two identical screens (or on two identical portions of screen). Globe (1971) by Ken Jacobs, can be mentioned as an
example of stereoscopy, a film that exploited the Pulfrich effect, an illusion of
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
three-dimensionality that was obtained by decreasing luminosity on one eye
(in this case through a polarized screen).
With “polyvison,” a narrative and aesthetic practice was introduced that
needed more surfaces as an alternative to, and an extension of, the classic text
editing and limitations that showed itself in the multiple and simultaneous
projections that would find later examples (Glauber Rocha, Malcome Le Grice,
Isaac julien, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Douglas Gordon, and Gary Hill).
M U LT I SC R E E N I N S TA L L AT I O N S
In 1952 with Le film est déjà commencé? Maurice Lemaître and the Letterist
movement began to break down the centrality of the film as object, film as
work, and the traditional modality of cinematic experience by putting the film
in “situation.” The screen became a target for objects, and lost its centrality,
whilst the film was projected in other places (on spectators, walls, or ceilings).
The protocol faded in favor of a happening, a situation in which everyone was
required to take on an unusual role. Lemaître’s following production was also
exemplary in this way, with screens full of strange objects, slides projected
everywhere within a room, putting the same screen in movement and invoking films that did not show themselves in their own materiality but only in the
minds of the viewers, called upon to imagine and represent them.
The expansion and multiplication of the screens began from the “panoramic,” environmental, and “ecological” idea that in 1896 gave life to the first
Cinerama – ten projectors arranged in a circle for the Exposition Universelle in
Paris (Crary, 2005): an exemplary experience that tied together the exceptionality and the ephemerality of these systems, the conception of environmental
and open installation. Sound experimentation, loops, and the multi-polyvision was represented by Varia Vision (1965) by Edgar Reitz (Fig. 7.5).
The majority of these multiscreen installations were confined to temporary exhibitions, but for this reason they were perfect for the experimentation
and expansion of cinema away from its usual environment, in many cases continuing a well-established tradition with theatrical (set design and lighting)
and kinetic-plastic origins applied to large spaces.
At the Montreal Expo in 1967, the set designer and theater director
Josef Svoboda presented the multiscreen installation Polyvision, composed
of cinematographic and slide projections on three-dimensional moving
objects.10 Also at the Expo in Montreal, the installation (35mm and 70mm)
In the Labyrinth included simultaneous projections on five screens that were
able to combine multiple images into one like the tesserae of a mosaic. The
installation was conceived and codirected by Roman Kroitor, who in the
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214 |
7.5
Installation plan, seen from the top, for Edgar
Reitz, Varia Vision (1965). Copyright: Edgar
Reitz Filmstiftung.
same year co-founded the society which in 1970 would become the IMAX
Corporation.
Another type of installation practice was concerned with the traditional
duration of the projection. Cinématon (1978-2009) by Gérard Courant, is a 154hour film, made using Super 8 and composed of single shots (portraits of art
and culture personalities) assembled together. Holes (started in circa 1990) by
Ian Helliwell, on the other hand, is a never-ending movie composed of pieces
of unwanted footage in Standard 8 that the director continues to splice and
add to with every new finding.11
V I S I B L E P ROJ EC T I O N SYS T E M S
The projected image can also be made up of many superimposed levels, like
the 16mm Altergraphies I (1981) by Fréderique Devaux which included the projection of the film on an écran hypergraphique achieved by projecting a slide.
The graphic superimposing of the screens was added to the sculptural nature
of projection machines. Another example of superimposing was represented
by Marcel Broodthaers’ screens as typographical backgrounds onto which the
16mm Le Corbeau et le Renard (1968) was projected.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
Further experiments could be found in the performances that place absorbent, masking surfaces and reflecting surfaces between the projector and
the screen as was the case of the body and the mirror in Guy Sherwin’s The
Man with the Mirror (1976). The projection surfaces also vary according to
their materiality: bodies, solid, liquid, and gas objects. Anthony McCall’s Line
Describing a Cone (1973) outlined – through the projection of a line in a dark
environment, immersed in a gaseous atmosphere produced by a smoke/fogmachine – the space of the room as a space progressively shaped by the line
that can be freely traveled over (see Fig. 1.5 in color section). On the contrary,
the room of the Invisible Cinema, conceived by Peter Kubelka in 1970, became
a ritual space of pure, orthodox and disciplined vision.
It is worth mentioning some of the obsolete and post-media machines
(harking back to the initial utopia of Bauhaus and the Avant-garde movements
of the 1920s), such as Megatherm and Hellioptical by Helliwell, which work on
a Super 8 loop. Other recent works reuse obsolete devices whose functioning
was based on circular and repetitive dimensions of the duration such as the
Kodak Carousel, or elements from pre-cinema (Phenakitoscopes) and from its
origins (Kinetoscopes).
Digital and Electronic Cinema
At the end of the 1970s, the electronic image became commercially viable:
starting with Michelangelo Antonioni’s experiences with electronic color correction in Il mistero di Oberwald (1980) and Francis Ford Coppola’s One from the
Heart (1982), and Zbigniew Rybczynski, pioneer in the convergence between
cinema and video, and experimentation in high definition. It is also worth
mentioning experimentation carried out firstly by Jean-Luc Godard and Peter
Greenaway and then by Aleksandr Sokurov, Lars von Trier, and David Lynch.
At the end of the 1980s, non-linear editing devices became widespread,
devices which had been in development since the beginning of the 1970s, for
video. In 1987 Sony introduced the Digital Audio Tape for the recording of digital audio tracks and at the beginning of the 1990s, multichannel audio coding
systems spread in cinemas: the Digital Theatre System, Dolby Digital (1992),
and Sony Dynamic Digital Sound (SDDS) introduced in 1993. Computer-generated imagery (CGI ) and computer-generated animation (CGA) constructed
digital worlds, mixing real and virtual scenery, reinventing and restoring
images from history and the history of cinema in a way never seen before. The
need to mix analog and digital images in post-production inspired a renewed
use of previously obsolete formats for filming and post-production such as the
35mm Vistavision and the 70mm.
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The spread of both “light” and “heavy” digital hardware and software, in terms
of cost and production, made way for two experimental possibilities: the aesthetic and expressive research, that is therefore limited, but also widespread
and fundamental in practical terms; the research of spectacular and global
simulation in terms of its impact, though limited to a few centers due to high
costs. For the first situation see Abbas Kiarostami’s ABC Africa, for the second
see Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones by George Lucas, both films using
digital means in 2001.
The second half of the 1990s saw the introduction of digital intermediate
process and digital grading. In more recent years the technology of projection has seen innovations in the area of digital light processing (DLP ). Threedimensional vision has also been brought back, made with 3-D digital cinema.
Digital cinema had to take on agreements, standards ,and protocols (such as
the digital cinema initiative, or DCI, 5, as well as JPEG 2000 and digital cinema
packaging, or DCP). Standards and protocols which aimed to include backward compatibility, able to correctly reassert the aspect ratio, frame rate, and
speed of archive film.12 Finally, there are more and more born-digital films,
which are created with digital audiovisual recording equipment, from the digital cameras on mobile phones to the new professional cinematographic cameras (such as Arri Alexa, Red Camera, Panavision Genesis, CineAlta, Canon,
Viper, and Fusion).
Today the digital cinema workflow is complete: starting in post-production (since the 1980s), and continuing with the production of professional digital cameras and projectors, the digital workflow is now running in a complete
way, from digital capture and digital screening via the digital post-production
phase. The digital intermediate workflow, with digital film scanning and
sometimes re-recording the digital frames onto analog film stock, will still
remain, mainly for the preservation and exhibition of film heritage.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
7.2
THE HISTORy AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS
OF VIDEO PRODUCTION AND RECEPTION DEVICES
Alessandro Bordina
The video system cannot be studied and described as a single technological
development but, according to Paul Conway’s analysis (1996), must be understood as an open and interconnected set of various related technology subsystems (for example, the screens and the equipment for viewing, the encoding
of the signal, the cameras, the devices and the equipment for recording and
reproducing). Each subsystem is subject to its own cycles of technological
change and obsolescence, which therefore leads to different system structures
over the years. The following description of the evolution of the devices for the
production and reception of electronic images will focus on the three main
subsystems that make up the “video technology set”: the display equipment,
the encoding and broadcast of the signal, and the equipment for recording
and reproduction.
1.
Viewing Equipment
C AT H O D E R AY T U B E SC R E E N S
The construction of equipment for receiving live images is based on the
research William Crookes did and products he made between 1858 and 1897,
as well as successive experiments by Ferdinand Braun. Representing the cathode ray tube’s “ancestor,” the instrumentation created during this research
period (known as the Crookes tube and the Braun tube, respectively) was not
designed for the reproduction of electronic images, but for the study of electron flux behavior.
In 1906, Max Dieckmann and Gustav Glage were the first to develop
research into the cathode ray tube (CRT) project, specifically for viewing the
electronic image. The images obtained using this method were not captured
using cameras, but drawn onto a Cartesian axis with a special pen that sent an
electronic signal to a 1¼-square inch CRT display (Magoun, 2007: 10).
The creation of a functioning reading and recording system, based on
the mechanism known as the “Nipkow disk,” took place between 1925 and
1928. In this phase the television equipment was based on both electronic and
mechanical components, but the low quality of the images obtained, and the
difficulty in overcoming problems connected with the amount of illumination
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necessary in recording, made for an unlikely commercial exploitation of the
television system.
The first, very limited, commercialization of electro-mechanic screens
happened in 1928, when Charles Jenkins got his experimental license for the
transmission of video signal from the Federal Radio Commission (FRC) for
Washington DC’s W3XK station. In 1929 Jenkins could rely on there being 30
viewers as his daily program of animated silhouettes was transmitted with a
definition of 48 lines at 15 frames a second. Various other transmission tests
would follow in the 1930s, especially as a result of the Radio Corporation of
America (RCA) and the development of television systems. In Europe, the first
electro-mechanic broadcasts, made by the Baird Company, were launched by
the BBC in September 1929.
The first public presentation of completely electronic viewing systems
took place in Japan in 1926 with the work of Kenjiro Takayanagi, and the following year, Philo Farnsworth demonstrated how his electronic screen prototype worked.
In the United States, in concordance with the transmission standard
defined by the National Television Systems Committee (NTSC) in 1941, the
first real mass commercialization of television equipment began; however, it
was soon interrupted by the Second World War. The production of television
screens was restarted in 1946 with the introduction of two new RCA models
(630TS with seven- and ten-inch screens), which were much more affordable
compared with pre-war commercial equipment.
Despite later developments, the viewing mechanism of the electronic signal, based on the output and orientation of electronic beams, remained the
working principle from the 1920s until the later developments that saw CRTs
replaced with plasma screens and liquid crystal displays (LCD).
The technology of television’s first forays into the artistic world was concerned with the use and modification of the viewing equipment. The video
signal would be altered by means of the manipulation of the signal’s viewing
system, for example in TV-Dé-coll/age by Wolf Vostell (1961) the images broadcast were deformed using magnets which interfered with the direction of electron flow. Similarly, Nam June Paik modified various TV sets in his Exposition
of Music-Electronic Television (1963), distorting the flow of electrons generated
by the cathode ray by using magnets and integrating the audio and video signals to create abstract forms (Zen for TV, 1961).
The changes to and the combination of television screens were fundamental aspects of the video art process, also in the output that followed. Monitors
became the basic element for the construction of installations (for example,
associated with the body in TV Bra for Living Sculpture, Nam June Paik, 1969
or Inasmuch As It Is Always Already Taking Place, Gary Hill, 1990) or they were
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
deconstructed until their working mechanisms were stripped bare (Between
Cinema and a Hard Place, Gary Hill, 1991), or used in a more sculptural way
that was not related to the viewing signal (Family of Robot, Nam June Paik,
1986; Filz-TV,13 Joseph Beuys, 1966).
V I D EO P ROJ EC T I O N
For at least 30 years of commercial use, the CRT remained the only way of
exploiting the video signal on the mass market. However, the desire to make
use of the electronic system in environments outside homes led various companies to investigate the possibility of a projection system that also used to
broadcast videos in the cinematographic circuits (Kitsopanidou, 2003).
Research relative to the construction of equipment for video projection
dates back to the early 1940s and the experiments in electronic image projection with RCA’s CRT projector (1940), and Fritz Fischer’s Eidophor (1943)
and Scophony (1936). Although the Eidophor system attracted the interest of
various companies in the 1950s,14 it would be the CRT system that became the
commercial standard for video projection, especially due to the launch of the
Advent Videobeam 1000 and 1000A (Advent Corporation) in 1972. The projector was made up of three cathode ray tubes, each of which projected the image
in one of the primary colors, the beams of light converged to compose the final
image on the screen, whose dimensions were four and a half feet by five and
two thirds.
The CRT projection system remained dominant until 1989 when the
Sharp Corporation15 put the first LCD projector onto the market (Sharpvision
XV100). The XV100 projector allowed for the construction of an image that
was 100 inches wide and, compared to CRT, was smaller, cheaper, and lasted
longer.
The use of video projectors in artistic techniques eliminated the sculptural element that had been created by screens, favoring integration between
audio-visual components and performance (see Interface, Peter Campus,
1972). If on one hand video projection returned the electronic image to cinema (for example in 24 Hour Psycho, Douglas Gordon, 1993), on the other hand
it allowed for more interaction with other materials (Judy, Tony Oursler, 1994)
or with urban environments (see Projektion X, Imi Knoebel, 1971; Projection on
South Africa House, Krzysztof Wodiczko, 1985). As had happened with cathode
ray screens, some artists altered how the signal was viewed by altering the electronic or mechanical components of the video projector (one such example
being One Candle/Candle Projection, Nam June Paik, 1988).
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The third key step in the technological innovation of viewing equipment was
the introduction of LCD and plasma screens. In May 1968, RCA announced
research on a new type of electronic display that would be lighter, cheaper, and
structurally very different, compared to CRTs. George Heilmeier’s research for
RCA attracted the interest of the Sharp Corporation, which decided to invest
in the possibility of using liquid crystal technology for the production of lighter, more portable calculators. In 1973, Sharp presented the Elsi Mate EL-805
pocket calculator, the first device to use liquid crystal technology in a viewing
system. After this first achievement, LCD technology was applied and adapted
to various kinds of products (alarm clocks, radios, watches). In 1988, Sharp
presented the first 14-inch LCD television.16
In 1969 at the University of Illinois, at the same time as RCA’s research
into LCD, Donald Bitzer, H. Gene Slottow, and Robert Wilson were making
the first experiments for the plasma display panel (PDP). The University of Illinois’s research attracted the interest of the Japanese television network NHK
and the companies Fujitsu, Hitachi and Mitsubishi. The first commercial
application was in 1983 when IBM produced a 19-inch monochrome display
that used plasma technology for the PLATO computer. It was Fujitsu, on the
other hand, that introduced the first 21-inch full-color television screen in
1992. The PDP system went through a large expansion at the end of the 1990s,
exploiting its technological superiority in larger screens (in 1997 Fujitsu put
the first 42-inch screen onto the market). Despite the rise in plasma screens,
companies’ investments in LCD products increased in the first years of the
new millennium, allowing for an increase in the performance of the liquid
crystal display, so much so that many companies abandoned research into
plasma systems.
The continuous abandonment of CRT viewing devices obviously signaled
a change in the way works of art were displayed. The reduction in the depth
of the screen allowed for more choice in the positioning and arrangement of
the monitors, which in some cases mimicked the material characteristics of
paintings and photographs (The Actor, Marty St. James, Anne Wilson, 1990;
Provenance, Fiona Tan, 2008).
2.
Encoding and Signal Transmission
The second technological subset to be taken into consideration relates to the
encoding of the signal.17 The first experiments in transmitting a television
signal were undertaken in the 1920s, using an electromagnetic system for
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
recording and for the viewing of the signal. A few months later there was the
public presentation of the first television, held by John Logie Baird in 1925
at Selfridge’s Department Store in London, and the American Charles Francis Jenkins broadcast the silhouette of a toy windmill from five miles away in
a naval station in Maryland to his Washington laboratory. In 1928, the Baird
Company sent the first transatlantic signal from London to New York and at
the end of the 1920s, a number of different electromagnetic television companies arose.
The demonstration of a completely electronic television system occurred
at the same time as the spread of the electromechanical television. Before
1930, the only people who had completed an entirely electronic system for the
production of a television image were Philo Farnsworth with the image dissector and Vladimir Zworykin with the launch of the iconoscope on behalf of
RCA.
Without a shared standard for the quality of the broadcast, the television
market had difficulties in developing. In the United States, the main hardware
manufacturers such as Philco, Zenith, and DuMont pushed for a legislative
definition for broadcast standards in order to avoid a monopoly in the sector. Towards the end of the 1930s, early negotiations about the standard that
should be adopted began between producers, but it was not until 1941 that
a definitive agreement was reached through the constitution of the National
Television Systems Committee. In May 1941, the FCC gave the go ahead for 18
channels, using a six MhZ bandwidth and a signal of 525 lines at 30 frames per
second.
In Europe in the 1930s there were three main systems for broadcasting a
television signal: the Marconi-EMI (405 lines, 25 frames per second, five MHz
of bandwidth) adopted in 1936 by the BBC Television Service; the system of
441 lines (25 frames per second, four Mhz of bandwidth) introduced in Germany in 1937; the system of 819 lines developed by René Barthélemy became
the standard for broadcast in France in 1948.
The definitive standardization of the European broadcast signal arrived
in 1956 with the introduction of the standard SECAM in France and PAL in
the rest of Europe, which was developed in Germany by Telefunken in 1963.
The two standards provided a definition of 625 horizontal lines at twenty-five
frames per second, and the bandwidth for broadcast was seven MHz.
Although a large part of video art production existed outside the usual
broadcasts, there were some examples of works designed specifically for
network television (This Is a Television Receiver, David Hall, 1976; The TV Commercials Chris Burden, 1973-1977). Over the course of the 1970s the spread
of video art production was also happening through public and specialized
television channels, the latter of which, in addition to broadcasting programs
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made up of video works, collaborated in the production (examples in the United States being the television station WNET-3, New York; WGHB-TV, Boston;
LBMA, Los Angeles; and in Europe included SWR, Baden-Baden; SFB, Berlin;
WDR, Cologne) (Huffman, 2008; Tamblyn 1987).
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Over the course of the 1940s, two modalities for encoding/sending/receiving video were developed, two alternatives to radio frequency: broadcasting
through cable and via satellite. Both types of channeling technology redefined the television signal allowing for an increase in the number of channels
available to the viewer and the development of pay per view. The first large
investment for the development of satellite technology was started by a multinational consortium that was made up of AT&T, Bell Telephone Laboratories, NASA, the British General Post Office, and the French National PTT. On
23 July 1962, the Telstar satellite sent the first satellite video signal for civilian purposes, visible in Europe through Eurovision18 and in the United States
through NBC, CBS, ABC, and CBC channels. The commercial spread of satellite television happened towards the end of the 1970s but it was the 1980s that
saw its large expansion. In an artistic field, the first attempt in using the satellite broadcast came with Sherrie Rabinowitz and Kit Galloway’s dance performance, Satellite Arts Project: A Space with No Geographical Boundaries (1977),
which was followed by Paik’s collaborative experiences in the 1970s and 1980s
(for example, the opening of documenta 6 in 1977 broadcast in 25 countries
with performances by Paik, Charlotte Moorman, Joseph Beuys, and Douglas
Davis; but also the later examples Good Morning, Mr. Orwell, Nam June Paik,
1984 and Bye Bye Kipling, Nam June Paik, 1986).
D I G I TA L SYS T E M S
The third turning point for the development of encoding and broadcast technology was the switchover from the analogue system for encoding the video
signal to digital technology. Research on the development of digital television
began at the end of 1950s and was carried out by Richard Webb for the Colorado Research Corporation on behalf of the National Security Agency, which was
funding a system for encrypted broadcast. In 1961, the first working prototype
for digital video communication (AN-FXC-3 (ZE-1)) was installed in the White
House, between the President, the Central Intelligence Agency, and Camp
David. The images transmitted had a resolution of 405 lines and used a six
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
Mhz bandwidth. In the public sphere, the development of a digital television
system was left to the commercial competition for high definition television
(HDTV). At the end of the 1980s, the spread of the analogue MUSE HDTV system, developed by Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK), forced American developers to
follow a method of processing a high definition signal that would not render
the satellite and cable market obsolete.
In 1990, VideoCipher developed a system to digitalize the television signal that allowed for four digital channels on the same bandwidth used for the
transmission of one analogue channel. This innovation led various companies
to develop a completely digital HD system. In 1993 the FCC created the Grand
Alliance (GA), a consortium of manufacturers for the definition of a digital
standard. In 1996, the ATSC standard was approved for the United States. In
Europe the definitive standardization of digital television took place in 1997
when the DVB-T standard was published, which would remain the standard
throughout Europe between 2000 and 2011.
The transition to the digital encoding of the signal had important consequences for the production and consumption methods of works made in
the video medium. The possibilities of editing and non-linear manipulation
of the signal increased the repertoire of techniques and modes of expression
available to artists. Describing his transition towards using digital video, Chris
Meigh-Andrews remembers:
I was then able to mix multiple videotape sources, produce video frame
grabs […] and perform image flips […]. Not only these new image effects
extended the visual complexity of my work at this time, they also opened
up my ideas to embrace new themes and ideas, particularly those related
to the nature of electronic imagery and its potential relationship to visual
perception and the flow of thought (2006: 264-265).
Since the 1990s, the use of digital video has led to greater interaction between
the audio-visual and information technology components, impelling many
artists to make interactive audio-visual works (Alchemy, Simon Biggs, 1990;
Tavoli (perché queste mani mi toccano?), Studio Azzurro, 1995).
3.
Recording and Reproduction of the Electronic
Analogue Signal
Research on the production of a recording system for electronic images on a
magnetic device began in 1951 at the RCA laboratories and the Ampex research
centers. The main problem the two laboratories needed to resolve was opti-
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mizing the use of the space on the magnetic device in such a way that it was
able to record the largest amount of information on the smallest amount of
tape possible. The first recording prototypes of the signal needed a large quantity of tape that had to pass over the reading/recording heads at high speed.
In 1956, Ampex was able to present the first commercial recording system to
CBS, ABC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and the British Broadcasting Corporation. The Ampex VRX-1000 was equipped with four rotating heads
for recording and reproduction using tranverse scanning of the signal on a
2-inch tape. The tape was 4,800 feet long (1,500 meters) and was capable of
recording an hour of video.
In 1965, Ampex produced the first system (known as 1 inch Type A by
SMTPE) that used 1-inch tape and that performed helical scanning of the tape.
The recording on 1-inch tape became the standard for television stations, big
industry and governments over the course of the 1970s. In 1976 the type C system, developed by Ampex in collaboration with Sony, would become the most
widespread format in broadcasting.
In the 1960s, whilst RCA and Ampex competed for leadership in the production of video recording systems aimed at broadcasting, Sony concentrated
its research on the domestic market of video reproduction systems using
magnetic tape. In 1965, Sony put two video recorder models (CV2000) on the
market, designed by Nobutoshi Kihara and aimed at the mass market. The
CV system used two rotating heads for the recording and helical scanning of
a ½-inch tape with a diameter of seven inches, capable of recording up to one
hour of video. Sony’s ½-inch system opened up a market of similar consumer
products that used the same sized tape (Panasonic NV-8100, Concord VTR600-1) or smaller (such as the Akai VTS-100 that used a ¼-tape), but based on
encoding and recording standards that were different for different companies. In 1968 the Electronic Industries Association of Japan introduced the
EIAJ-1 shared standard for video recorders which used tape that was ½-inch
(among the most common systems to use EIAJ-1 were Sony’s AV and Panasonic’s NY3130). A few years later the EIAJ-2 was developed for color videos.
The year before the EIAJ standard was defined, Sony had launched the first
portapack system. The Sony CV-2400 Video Rover was made up of a smaller
camera and a compact VCR that used the standard helical CV scanner weighing ten pounds and thirteen ounces (around five kilos). Two years later (1869)
Sony launched an EIAJ portapack (AV-3400) which had great commercial success and would go on to be one of the most used items in production, outside
broadcast.
Despite the commercial success of the EIAJ system, public demand called
for a more reliable system that was less complicated to use and this influenced
Sony to direct its research towards the development of a video recorder that
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
used closed cassettes as recording devices, rather than open reels.19 In 1968
Kihara made the first U-matic working prototype, which would be made commercial in September 1971. The system, which took its name from a peculiar
way of loading the tape (U-loading), used cassettes that contained tape that
was ¾ inch wide. Compared to the open-reel systems, the U-matic recorders offered higher quality and were more reliable both in the recording and
the reproduction phase. However, the higher system costs,20 the size and
the excessive weight of the players (60 pounds) hampered the spread to the
domestic market. The U-matic system would have success in the education
sector, small businesses and television stations, gaining reputation as a semiprofessional standard over time.21
If projects with television stations are excluded (for example the many
projects broadcast by stations such as WNET-3, WGHB-TV, LBMA, SWR, SFB,
and WDR), the majority of video art originally comes from the use of domestic video recorders, (mainly the ½-inch system until the mid-1970s, and on
the U-matic format after that). The low cost of the equipment and the ease in
production and copying of the tape allowed the artists to work at the limits, or
outside the norms of television broadcast production.
Video was also approved as a suitably ephemeral medium, existing only
when animated by an electric current and capable of being copied, recopied,
and disseminated like any other mass-produced merchandise. In spite of now
having to negotiate the more recent traditions of broadcast media, video artists felt they were working on a clean sheet of paper (Elwes, 2005: 6).
The “amateur” characteristics of the systems used influenced and conformed to the aesthetic exploration of the video medium in this first phase
of video art production. The absence of editing systems that were cheap
to use with consumer video technology was evident (see Vito Acconci’s first
video works), it also led to a lack of editing in the camera. In some cases, artists decided to modify the hardware themselves, manipulating the recording
mechanisms during the recording (Tape I, Bill Viola, 1972), or creating complex systems for recording and reproduction using more than one recorder at
the same time (such as Woody and Steina Vasulka’s video feedback).
The development of equipment and the manipulation of the signal (image
processor and video synthesizer) designed by the same artists, gradually
increased the possibility of altering the electronic image both in the recording
and the post production stages. At the end of the 1960s and the beginning of
the 1970s, several artists created their own devices for distorting and transforming the video signal. Amongst the most well-known was the Paik-Abe
Synthesizer, constructed in 1969 and used to produce “Video Commune,”
broadcast by WGBH in 1970. Paik and Abe’s synthesizer was a seven-channel
mixer/colorizer able to change the chrominance information and make up to
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seven image layers. In 1970 Stephen Beck created the Direct Video Synthesizer
at the National Centre for Experiments in Television. Unlike Paik and Abe’s
machine, Beck’s synthesizer was designed as an instrument for live performance and was not able to change images recorded on video camera. Being
generated directly from the equipment to the CRT color screen, through electric impulses, allowed images and abstract patterns to be viewed. In 1974 Bill
Etra and Steve Rutt produced the Rutt/Era Scan Processor which would be used
to produce some of Steina and Woody Vasulka’s videos (for example C-Trend,
1974; Time/Energy Structure of the Electronic Image, 1974-1975). The possibilities of changing the electronic image, created by Rutt and Era’s device, were
far superior to those previously synthesized. Thanks to a scan processor it was
possible to control the positioning of the lines on the screen, creating animations and video wave forms and creating images from the sound signal and
audio through the video signal. Using Rutt and Era’s synthesizer, the production of artists such as Vasulka became focused around the deconstruction of
the electronic image. In 1975, Woody Vasulka remembers that:
Compared to my previous work on videotape, the work with the scan
processor indicates a whole different trend in my understanding of the
electronic image. The rigidity and total confinement of time sequences
have imprinted a didactic style on the product. Improvisational modes
become less important than an exact mental script and a strong notion
of the frame structure of the electronic image. Emphasis has shifted
towards a recognition of a time/energy object and its programmable
building block – the waveform (Vasulka and Nygren, 1975: 9).
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
7.3
COMPUTERS AND DIGITAL RECEPTION DEVICES:
HISTORy AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS
Tabea Lurk and Jürgen Enge
From a curatorial perspective, the history of the computer and the development of technological reproduction and computing machines are two quite
distinct stories. Both formally and intentionally, they fall under different collecting categories and respond to different methods of display. They are also
subject to historical change. Today, “technological cultural goods” are not only
found in technology, science, and communication museums but have long
become an integral element of media art. The resulting interaction between
the two spheres has an impact both on the reception of history as well as on
how the objects of the relevant field of research are presented and preserved.
Until recently, technology museums emphasized the object-like character
of technological devices. The apparatus assumed the function of a (silent) witness of the past and its position in the history of technological development
was contextualized with the help of descriptive explanations and (audio)visual
models.22 Nowadays, however, museums are expected to keep the machines
operational and to exhibit them while still in service. Furthermore, curators
have recently taken to illustrating the cultural position and development from
the perspective of the history of technology with the help of artworks that
make use of such devices (technology > art).
Where art is concerned, however, the meaning of technological instruments is considered less important than the general artistic / aesthetic intention of the artwork (art > technology). While it was common practice up until
the turn of the millennium to merely replace or repair defect technical equipment, and the reproduction on specific hardware was rarely documented, the
instruments that are condemned to obsolescence are nowadays frequently
considered an integral part of the artwork, thus undermining the notion of
their interchangeability.23
It seems, then, that the areas of interest of technology and culture have
begun to overlap. In the following, we wish to further explore this phenomenon against the background of strategies of conservation.
History of Technology As Cultural History?
Going back to the dawn of the computer age, we find several prominent largescale computers that are of sufficient historical interest to merit preservation.
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These include computers such as the IBM 601 (1935, USA), the Z3 by Konrad
Zuse (1941, Germany),24 Colossus, the first computer programmable from
memory (1943, UK), Howard Aiken’s relay computer Mark I Computer (1944,
USA), the ENIAC 1, developed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert (1946,
USA), and, finally the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, to name
but the most prominent rarities (Da Cruz, 2005; Cray-Cyber, 2006). Each of
these has found a place in public and private special collections where they
illustrate and document the history of technology.
Because many original devices were destroyed or lost during World War II,
replicas of mainframe computers were constructed with the help of historic
plans, including, for example, the replica of the Z1 (1937; 1989) in the German
Museum of Technology (Berlin) and the famous Turing Bomb (1943; 2007) in
the Museum Bletchley Park (London) which was designed to decode Enigma’s
radiograms (1917). The use of replicas is especially interesting in cases where
a device’s mechanical mode of operation is visible – that is, primarily in periods preceding the introduction of integrated circuitry – or in cases where a
result that is computed in real time conveys cultural or historical values.
The Fascination of Computer Automation
Beginning in the 1960s, some of the instruments developed by computer scientists were introduced into the civil environment and were also made available as “multiprogramming devices.” Large-scale computers found their way
into the realms of scientific computation, research, and office automation
(business and administration).25 In the early 1960s, moreover, artists became
increasingly fascinated with the laws of logic (concrete art) as well as with the
unpredictability of chance which encouraged the creation of the first works
of computer art, mainly on university campuses with the help of mainframe
computers, but also occasionally with the help of machines at industrial computer centers. In some cases, the computer scientists themselves dabbled in
art, such as Frieder Nake and Georg Nees in Stuttgart on the Grafomat of the
Z64, Herbert Franke in Vienna on an ER56 computer (SEL programming), and
Michael Noll and Bela Julesz at Bell Laboratories in New York (Herzogenrath
and Nierhoff-Wielke, 2007; Anon, 2009). In other instances, designers commissioned computer-based calculations and then translated the results into
sculptures and paintings. This approach was pursued by, for example, Gottfried Honegger (starting in 1970 at the ETH Zurich), Karl Gerstner (starting in
1982 at IBM Stuttgart), and Alfred Beuler (1969/1982ff).26
Because the majority of these works assumed a material shape of some
sort, such as a sculpture, a painting, or a graphic, and only used the computer
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
for calculation purposes, anyone wishing to preserve the heritage of this first
generation of “computer art” must distinguish between the preservation of
the material works (graphics, paintings, and sculptures: classical conservation) and the history of the development of their programs. The latter is usually documented by providing a short text describing the program as well as
excerpts of the program’s text (Klütsch 2007). The punch card and the original
programming, however, have mostly not been preserved, not to mention the
software or the relevant reproducers.
Unlike the first generation, many works of the transition period since the
early 1970s required running computer programs. Thus the PDP computers that were manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation were used
for artistic purposes. Hans Haacke and other artists were already using the
PDP-8, built in 1963, by the late 1960s. Several such devices were employed
at legendary exhibitions such as “Cybernetic Serendipity” (1968, ICA London) and “Software” (1970, Jewish Museum NYC) that also served to blur the
boundaries between computer art and robotics or cybernetics. Only very few
objects and applications of this period survived, although some of them were
described for scientific purposes. While it is possible to imitate the functions
of these obsolete applications with the help of certain technological devices
(legacy approach) or to program the original artistic concept on present-day
platforms (hardware + operating system) (reprogramming), museums mostly
rely on text-, image- or video-based documentation.
Using Computers in the Home
We mostly associate the early age of the personal computer with IBM, the
corporation that in 1974 introduced the IBM 5100 and in 1981 ushered in the
standardization of PC components with its IBM 5150, thus allowing for platform-independent operating systems. Similar computers were manufactured
by Apple (since 1976),27 Commodore (since 1977),28 Tandy Corporation (the
TRS-80, 1977), Atari (1979-92),29 Texas Instruments (e.g., TI-99, 1979), Sinclair
Radionics (e.g., MK14, 1982), Amstrad (Alan M. Sugar Trading, e.g., CPC464,
1984), and, later, various portable calculators, for example, by Toshiba. Earlier developments also proved significant, such as the use of cathode ray tube
(CRT) monitors starting in the early 1960s, which at first visually reproduced
the results of the calculating operations as glass teleprinters, or the invention
of the computer mouse in 1968 by Douglas C. Engelbart and William English.30
With the emergence of the first 8-bit home and office computers in the late
1980s, artists were now able to use these instruments for their ends without
having to rely on an institution. At first, they worked directly on the code and
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made collages of programming elements that were then published in computer journals. Besides Andy Warhol’s famous sales campaign for the Commodore
Amiga Product Launch (1985), where he used the Amiga to portray the actress
Debbie Harry as part of a live performance, it was above all the TI99 / A4 (1981)
that gained cult status among artists, before Apple’s product lines became the
market leader in the field of graphic design. While Herbert Franke with his art
program “Mondrian” (1979) managed to make the transfer from the TI99 to
more up-to-date operating systems (Windows XP), many works of this early
period have only survived through their documentation, such as Alexander
Hahn’s A Young Person’s Guide to Walking Outside the City (1988).
Another genre of “computer-based” art (as it was now commonly referred
to) that survived from the late 1980s and early 1990s were interactive works
and installations, some of which remain fully functioning to this day. These
works not only involved the use of computers, but also incorporated computer
equipment such as matrix printers and ink jet printers as well as extremely
elaborate, self-made interfaces that were particularly popular in the mid-1990s.
While independently working artists had to make do with whatever they had
at their disposal – which is why their works reflect something like a status quo
at a particular time in a particular country – other artists working at university
research labs were able to launch much more complex developments. Everyday items such as plants, bicycles, suitcases, and many others were frequently
turned into digital input devices with the help of self-soldered analogue digital converters, thus expanding the realm of experience of computer-based
communication (Schwarz, 1997; Frieling and Daniels, 1997 and 2000; Wilson,
2002; Paul, 2003). The technological devices continued to produce artwork in
real time (by means of feedback) but it was nevertheless the case that technology, metaphorically speaking, was considered less important than the experience of observing the artwork. Where artists were awarded grants for research
stays at specific computer labs such as the MIT in Boston or later the Centre
Pompidou or the Institute for Visual Media of the ZKM – Center for Art and
Media Karlsruhe, they often had access to large-capacity computers made by
SGI – Silicon Graphics International (1981-1996), a company that developed
specific procedures for an accelerated representation of three-dimensional
images which could be used to animate two- or three-dimensional spaces.
Besides the professional SGI line, it was once again IBM that defined
the central standards for graphics cards with regard to home computers: the
monochromatic representation of text with the monochrome display adapter
(MDA) mode became available with the first PC in 1981, along with the color
graphics adapter (CGA) graphics card (1981, resolution: 320x200 pixels in fourcolor mode / 640x350 pixels in two-color mode); in 1984, these were replaced
by the enhanced graphics adapter (EGA) standard (resolution: 320x200 and
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
640x350 pixels in sixteen-color mode) and, in 1987, by the video graphics array
(VGA). With a 256-bit color depth and an initial resolution of 320x200 pixels,
the latter was capable of displaying around 250,000 colors. In the mid-1980s,
the most common graphics cards (next to the IBM line) were those manufactured by HGC – Hercules Graphics Card (1982, resolution: 720x348 pixels, 2
colors: on / off). The graphical representation of image material and later also
of colors was a special luxury unique to Apple computers, and these became
standard features with the introduction of the microcomputer Apple II (1977);
their processing power increased with every subsequent version. The Apple II
had its own digital graphics and character generator (resolution: 40x48 or, in
the high-resolution variant, 280x192 pixels, in 15 colors). From the mid-1990s
onwards, 3-D graphics boards became available for the home sector (e.g. voodoo graphics boards manufactured by 3dfx) whose development was promoted mainly by the games industry.
Although product lines proliferated in the 1970s and 1980s, it is still possible to purchase original versions of most early home computers. Collecting specific types of devices, components, or series (e.g., of computer games,
Apple Macintosh collections, etc.) has now become a culture of its own which
is why the conservation and restoration of museum artworks relies not only
on the reparation principle (where electrical engineers replace or repair individual components) but also, and especially, on what is known as the “storage principle.” To this end, museums buy and store hardware that matches
their pieces and then use this to replace or repair individual components if a
malfunction occurs (ideally documenting the process). By contrast, museums
have shown less interest in preserving and cultivating a passion for collecting
software. Subcultures such as the gamer scene and the “demo scene” are an
exception to this rule, having not only amassed many historical machines but
also developed and promoted very intricate emulators, thereby practicing the
“encapsulation principle” of original software components.31
From Hardware to Software
With the growing interest in “computer operating systems,” historians of
technology and media archaeologists now no longer restrict themselves to
collecting and maintaining computing machines and other machine-like
devices, but increasingly wish to expand the scope of relevant collections
to include control technology and software development. In this context, it
seems especially fascinating that present-day system architecture still bears
traces of some of the groundbreaking innovations in the historical development of computer systems.
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Thus in the early days of computer technology, electrophysical processes of
the circuit path took place above the physical hardware, which was then still
activated directly (e.g., the relay in the Z1), and its mode of operating was
determined by the Von Neumann architecture (see Von Neumann, 1945).
Since that time, data and programs use the same shared storage device, and
their specification (header) identifies the type of information that was being
processed.
With the development of procedural programming languages such as
FORTRAN (1957), BASIC (1964), and C (1972), it became possible to address
the individual memory locations to generate values, which in turn generated
control commands for the hardware. The communication between programs
and hardware thus became much easier. The procedures were executed in a
linear fashion.
Beginning with C++, the 1980s saw the broad adoption of object-oriented
programming languages that could compile data and functions into objects.
At the same time, modularization, that is, the collection of commands in software libraries, made for easier programming, as certain functions / commands
could be used repeatedly and did not have to be included in every program.
With the introduction of the platform-independent programming language
Java in the 1990s, a computer’s operating system was finally no longer dependent on its hardware.
Other innovations, which we can only mention briefly, took place in the
field of communication technology and the development of nets; the Petri
net, for example, was based on a generalized automata theory, and one of
its features was the concurrent execution of processes. The introduction of
addressable addresses TCP/IP (1984, transmission control protocol and Internet protocol)32 was another important innovation, as was the introduction of
hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP, 1993), a description language which helped
usher in the Internet age with its graphical user interfaces.
While artists only rarely questioned the system architecture itself, instead
preferring to develop artistic programs and applications or creating artistic
works with the help of the computer, the Internet age that began in 1993/1995
allowed them to explore completely new artistic practices. These spawned a
new genre that came to be known as “net art,” and, while it passed its zenith
with the dot.com crisis of March 2000 and has since been reduced to a rather
diffuse existence, net art nevertheless remains a productive field. Net artists
mostly either draw on web services such as Google images, Amazon, Wikipedia, and others, or they provide – en route to the cloud – communicative structures of action.
Going beyond the Western art world, moreover, it seems likely that artists
will increasingly make use of coding technologies. In this context, the asyn-
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
chronous, cryptographic coding of contents, such as the RSA (1977), can be
considered a milestone.33
As for reproduction devices, it seems as if there are no longer any limits
– artists avail themselves of new technologies as soon as they come on the market, or they continue to develop specific interfaces in research laboratories if
the available ones do not meet their needs. Large-scale projections, where
liquid crystal display (LCD) and occasionally digital light processing (DLP)
projectors have replaced the old CRT beamers, now exist alongside with reproduction modes for classical screens (from the CRT screen to the LCD monitor)
as well as portable end devices such as smart phones.
Since manufacturers do not offer much information about the durability
of this new generation of consumer devices, there is no way of telling how long
they will last. Nevertheless, it seems likely that the conservation and restoration of these artworks will become much more complex in the future, especially with regard to art forms such as App art that operate with closed systems
and codes.
Conclusion
Now more than ever, scholars recognize the critical importance of technological developments when examining innovations in media art, sometimes
emphasizing the artistic aspect, while at other times applying concepts of
media studies, the history of technology, or, more recently, media archaeology.
However, because many technology-based art forms are somewhat similar
to reproduction techniques, curators have tended to neglect the conservational aspects, believing it was possible to simply “reproduce” the material. We
now know that a technical apparatus that actually looks quite robust can be
especially fragile, a feature that scholars usually refer to as “obsolescence.”34
Instruments age and thereby become a weak point in the system.
But access to digital information is also fragile. It is, of course, possible
to make lossless, identical reproductions of digital information – unlike
print graphics or photomechanical or magnetic negatives / data carriers that
are prone to mechanical abrasion. But we have long ago reached new limits
of preservation: the problem of the readability of old data carriers, softwarebased components, dysfunctional software libraries, the interlinking between
programs and operating systems, and, finally, active memorization efforts. In
many cases, we can no longer intuitively operate vintage machines. Instead,
where a machine has been out of use for a long time or had some corroded
batteries replaced, a user must simply be aware of certain basic functions and
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occasionally even settings, for example, of erasable programmable read-only
memory (EPROM) programming, in order to get it started again. A computer’s
operating mode is not self-explanatory, that is, it cannot be logically deduced
from the mechanics of the individual components.
The practical preservation of computer-based products has thus far
mainly focused on two areas, namely the preservation of the object itself and
the preservation of its function. Where object preservation is concerned, we
may distinguish between, on the one hand, the preservation of the computing machines, of their mechanical and electronic elements (printers, monitors, input, and output devices) as well as the technological components (all
technological cultural goods) and, on the other hand, the preservation of the
paper- and plastic-based information and data carriers. Regarding the physical preservation of the latter, we may distinguish between the preservation of
the data carriers and the preservation of information. Preventive conservational measures slow the natural degradation of the material substance. Objects
must be stored in a constant climate35 and protected against electromagnetic
radiation, dust, sunlight, and mechanical wear, as well as against negligent
handling. Furthermore, the contents/information are often transferred to a
new platform (operating system + hardware), while occasionally recoding the
data that is to be preserved.36 Finally, emulators are also an option: contents
are encapsulated in a digital environment pretending to be the original environment (Lee et al., 2002; Humanities Advanced Technology And Information
Institute, 2009). Here, the preservation of information is similar to the preservation of functions. In contrast to the migration paradigm that is common in
archive management, art conservators are more concerned with an artwork’s
specific authenticity.37
Surveying the field of preservation strategies from a museological perspective, it seems as though the traditional difference of content and form is
repeating itself. While an emphasis on the preservation of contents focuses
on a machine’s functions, software components, and digital information, the
material preservation is more concerned with maintaining its casing, thus
placing greater emphasis on formal characteristics.
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7.4
OBSOLETE EqUIPMENT: ETHICS AND PRACTICES
OF MEDIA ART CONSERVATION
Gaby Wijers
The relationship between artistic intentions and technical equipment used
is of crucial importance in the conservation of media art, where sustainability of artworks is threatened by an ever-shortening lifecycle of playback formats and equipment for playback and display. In their joint research project
Obsolete Equipment, Preservation of Playback and Display Equipment for Audiovisual Art, (1 July 2009 – 30 June 2011), the Netherlands Media Art Institute
(NIMk, Amsterdam) and PACKED vzw (Brussels), together with several Flemish and Dutch museums, investigated the lifecycle, storage, maintenance, and
replacement of equipment in media art installations in order to provide best
practices and guidelines.
This contribution highlights two of the eighteen cases studied in the Obsolete Equipment project: Oratorium for Prepared Videoplayer and Eight Monitors,
a video installation made in 1989 by Belgian artist Frank Theys38 and I/Eye, a
computer-based installation made in 1984 by Dutch artist Bill Spinhoven van
Oosten.39 These cases provide insight into two divergent approaches explored
in the project. The first case demonstrates what we call the “original technology” approach, in which storage is the key preservation strategy, and the second
case is an example of the “updated technology approach” where emulation (as
well as virtualization, in this case) is the principal strategy.
Introduction
Media art installations, whether they are film-, video-, or computer-based,
have extremely diverse characteristics. Aspects including variability, reproduction, performance, interaction, and being networked are incorporated in
many works. Media art is not one static, unique object, but often a collection
of components, hardware, and software which together create a time- and process-based experience. Ready-made answers for preserving and re-exhibiting
these works do not exist. Here, finding solutions for preservation or exhibition problems requires research, preferably conducted in interaction with the
artist. The only accurate way to test if we have understood, documented, and
transferred the constituent parts of a work of art and the work itself is by reinstalling the work. The general research approach, therefore, is to conduct
case studies and interviews with artists and other key figures involved in the
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work. This approach was adopted for the Obsolete Equipment project by the
Netherlands Media Art Institute, NIMk, Amsterdam40 and PACKED vzw, Brussels.41 Eighteen case studies from the art collections of Flemish and Dutch
institutions and two artists were investigated, documented, and reinstalled
in order to gain insight in the requirements regarding storage, migration,
emulation, and virtualization, to identify the obsolescence of presentation
equipment and storage formats.42 Furthermore, research was done into the
ethical and technical requirements to which the preservation strategies must
adhere, both in relation to the original state of the artwork and with regard
to its (future) presentation. Experts from Zentrum für Kunst und Medien –
Karsruhe (ZKM), Tate – London, Imal – Brussels, and Bern University of the
Arts – Bern (BUA) shared their expertise and gave feedback on the process.
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Change and Challenges in Media Art Conservation
Since the end of the 1990s, media artworks and the obsolescence of the
equipment associated with them have received considerable attention in
conservation research and literature. Two divergent approaches can be distinguished: the “purist/original technology” approach, and the “adapted/
updated technology approach”. The first approach highly values the use of
original technology and wants to preserve the work as it originally appeared.
With this approach, the storage of old equipment and spare parts is key, and
the lifecycle of the work is related and limited to the lifecycle of the equipment. The second approach highly values the use of new technologies and
is known for the dynamic appearance of the work. With this approach,
migration and emulation are essential, and the eventual loss of authenticity
and historicity in relation to functionality and concept is part of the discussion about the possible strategies. Both approaches are valid but a suitable
approach somewhere between these two has to be found. It would be an error
on the part of collecting institutions to give up too quickly on old technology.
Although storage is the usual museum conservation approach, it has never
been common practice to collect all the equipment related to media artworks. Frequently, all the equipment required for an installation is no longer
available and/or the equipment pool is used to display a number of artworks.
In order to effectively deal with the problem of obsolescence, it is necessary
to collect relevant and dedicated equipment including spare equipment and
spare parts and to organize proper storage and regular maintenance. The
equipment is necessary for purposes of exhibition and research, as a reference for defining an artwork’s original appearance and as starting point for
emulation.43
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Once an artwork is no longer functioning properly, the next step is to analyze
the root cause and select an appropriate conservation approach. There are
some common acknowledged forms of conservation in the case of obsolescence:
– Storing/restoring/repairing the original equipment
– Acquiring spare equipment:
– Historical copy: replacing the equipment with the same model or
a type from the same period with the same or similar functions
– New copy: replacing the equipment with the same model or type
from a later period, i.e., a more recent model with the same or
similar functions
– Migration: Reconstructing the equipment with contemporary technology
– Emulation: Reconstructing the equipment with contemporary technology while retaining the original look and feel44
– Re-interpretation: Replacing the equipment with contemporary
equipment each time the work is recreated
– Reconstruction: A complete reconstruction of the work based on
available information
Two key approaches that deal with the problem of transferral are migration
and emulation. Case studies have shown that migration, transferring data to a
new carrier, is a rather simple process of continual upgrade and does present
a viable solution, assuring a high level of access and interoperability. In other
case studies, emulation has proven quite effective at producing an aesthetically authentic iteration of art objects, evoking the “look and feel” of the original.
These studies have also shown that emulation is always a temporary solution
and, since time-consuming and complex, best suited for circumstances that
justify a high investment (see Rothenberg, 2006). In order to circumvent the
fact that emulation is only a temporary solution, in Obsolete Equipment we also
explored the process of virtualization. Virtualization involves running software within a virtual environment.45
Despite all efforts to collect and preserve it, current technological equipment will wear out and become obsolete, which means that decisions have
to be made about whether and how to update it. The main question is how
to formulate specific requirements for the emulation process, taking into
account both the original appearance of the artwork and its future accessibility. Pip Laurenson proposes an approach that involves assigning significance to display equipment, its relation to the work’s identity based on
conceptual, aesthetic and historical criteria, and the role the equipment plays
in the work. She sees identifying functional significance as an initial step to
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understanding the importance and use of the equipment (Laurenson, 2004).46
The key questions are:
– Is the equipment purely functional or is it (also) conceptually important?
– Can the function of the equipment be mapped without discernible
change?
– Is the equipment visible or hidden from view?
– Is the equipment mass produced, tailor made, or modified (by the
artist)?
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The significance of the equipment can be deduced from the meaning and
value of the work. Some of the components may have significance beyond a
purely functional level. The case studies in the Obsolete Equipment project
demonstrated a clear distinction between the significance of playback and display equipment. The general tendency is to replace equipment or components
with the same mass-produced model or with equipment that has the same
functionality. The consensus is that, in most cases, the playback equipment
can be upgraded without causing too many problems. Display equipment is
more problematic, however. Replacing monitors and interactive features have
the most greatest impact on the appearance of the artwork.
Choosing from all the various conservation strategies can be simplified by
answering a series of questions using a decision tree developed by DOCAM.47
This tool helps users focus on those aspects of a work that relate to its integrity and authenticity, while reflecting on how these aspects are impacted by
the work’s technological components. Besides the collection, preservation, or
emulation of the playback equipment, the future preservation of works such
as the cases studied in the Obsolete Equipment project requires collecting
knowledge on the skills needed to service and maintain this equipment.
This brings us to another important aspect in media art conservation:
documentation. Due to their many variations in technology, effects, and form,
media artworks tend to follow a dynamic life cycle and require specific types of
documentation ranging from the documentation produced by the artists and
their collaborators in the production process to its use by conservators, curators, and critics in the mediation, dissemination, and history of the artwork
and its life cycle of exhibition, preservation, and restoration. Eventually, documentation elements might come to compensate for the loss or deterioration
of a work. As stated in the DOCAM Documentation Model: “Ultimately, it is
the documentation that will survive the work, becoming its historical witness
and sometimes supplementing any remaining fragments or relics.”48
In Obsolete Equipment we conducted research, interviews, and case studies to gain knowledge on equipment for video- and computer-based instal-
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
lations from the 1980s and early 1990s in order to develop guidelines for
emulation, migration, replacement, and storage of obsolete equipment. The
project resulted in a strong research network that will help us to face the complex challenge of digital sustainability in media art.
Case study one: Oratorium for Prepared Videoplayer and Eight
Monitors by Frank Theys, 1989 (M HkA)49
The primary focus of this case study was to determine what is important for
the preservation of this artwork, and what an adequate conservation strategy
would be (see Fig. 7.6 in color section).
The word “Oratorium” (“Oratory”) in the title has two meanings: “Oratory” stands for a choral work usually of a religious nature consisting chiefly
of recitatives, arias, and choruses without action or scenery, and is also the
name for a prayer room with a small altar. In Frank Theys’ installation, this
small altar takes the shape of a U-matic deck installed on top of a bass guitar
amplifier with speakers. Around these two stacked devices, eight video monitors placed on custom-made iron stands are facing each other in a circle. Each
monitor displays a black-and-white close-up of a man playbacking the song
You‘ll Never Walk Alone, the famous anthem of the Liverpool Football Club.
The soundtrack is a polyphonic version of this song performed by the male
choir of the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium). The ¾-inch U-matic videotape, on which the two-minute-long sequence has been recorded more than
once, has been taken out of its cassette and is looped. The loop runs in a circuit
both inside and outside the player, physically extending the tape in the space
of the installation. In this way, Theys uses the form of a video installation to
create a sacred space in which ritual and alienation meet. At the same time
he also pokes fun at grand emotions such as patriotism and rivalry. Because
the work is installed in the exhibition space in a transparent way, viewers can
understand how this video installation functions. They can walk around the
circular installation and observe the videotape running as a loop in and out
of the ¾-inch U-matic player. They can see how this ¾-inch U-matic player
transmits the video signal through a set of cables to the eight cathode ray tube
(CRT) monitors, and the audio signal to the audio equipment (and the CRT
monitors). The display equipment transforms the signals into image and
sound. Positioned in a circle around the video loop, with their screens facing
the center, the CRT monitors seem to “encourage” their own support/carrier.
After all, the image and the music cannot exist without the support/carrier
(the ¾-inch U-matic tape).
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T H E EQ U I P M E N T
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The equipment used for this work comprised a ¾-inch U-matic top loader
modified by the artist, eight identical CRT monitors, a guitar amplifier including the speaker and the ¾-inch videotape. The Sony VP2030 used in Oratorium belongs to one of the first generations of U-matic players. The deck’s
casing is made of wood, metal, and plastic and has a top-loading system. To
allow the tape to go out the player, Theys modified the original U-matic player.
Aside from the fact that the later models of U-matic players look very different
from the VP2030, they also cannot be modified to run the work: their frontloading systems do not allow the tape to go out. One of the main issues with
the functionality of Oratorium is the wear resulting from its use in working
order. The U-matic player is not designed for several months of non-stop operation during eight-hour-long days.
The original master tape was shot and edited on a U-matic BVU cassette.
In 2010, Theys made a digital sub master of the video in DV format and provided a copy to M HKA. This video file is now the duplication master used to
make new U-matic copies each time the work is installed. To be able to make
new loops in the future, M HKA would have to create a stock of blank U-matic
tapes and to keep at least one good U-matic recorder and spare heads (both no
longer in production).
The current monitors, Profiline TV8121, are 15-inch black-and-white
monitors designed for video surveillance systems. In order to preserve the
work’s integrity, it is essential that each of the eight monitors are identical
and that they each fit on the metal stands made specifically by M HKA for this
work, following the artist’s instructions. For Theys, the minimalist, sculptural
look of the current monitors and their grey color fits well with the work.
The amplifier currently used is a Marshall 4150 Club and Country Bass
100W 4x10 Combo Compressor Bass Amp. It has a dark brown covering and
a beige grill cloth with a Marshall logo. The amplifier’s physical presence and
its historical reference conveys an image of rock music, and is visually very present in the installation. The electrical and video/audio cables restrict the size
of the installation and the distance between the elements. The cables have to
hang one meter from the floor.
CO N S E RVAT I O N S T R AT EGY
At the beginning of the project, simulating the functionality of the installation
and its equipment was considered as a possible way to preserve the artwork.
A dummy tape would have been running in the installation while a digitized
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
version of the video displayed from a hidden player. Later, when discussing
this with the artist, it became clear that this was not an acceptable solution;
hiding how the video image appears from the audience would go against the
original intent of the work, which was to precisely reveal its own mechanisms.
The visual connection between the video image and its carrier, as well as the
various video dropouts generated by the unstable tape path would be lost. The
variable vacillation of the image due to the unsteady transmission of the video
signal thus should be seen as an integral part of the work, which contributes
to its “magic”, especially today, in our “binary world”. Furthermore, when
attempts to digitize sequences of the video loop were made, the capture software was not able to catch all the different video artifacts visible on the screen.
The continuous connection between image and support and the inherent
analog quality of Oratorium render impossible any attempt to migrate or modernize its components, making the storage of spare equipment and tapes the
only possible strategy for long-term preservation.
Collecting stocks of spare equipment, parts, and tapes, creating proper
storage conditions and ensuring maintenance – including preventive measures such as a regular survey of the critical devices and available resources in
terms of technical services – represents a continuous effort, but will help to
avoid future expenses for repair or searching for equipment. Above all, these
measures will push back the fateful moment when the equipment will no
longer be available, meaning that the work can no longer be displayed and
can only be partly experienced through documentation. Oratorium has been
actively exhibited since 2010, and will soon be shown in China. This is the
right occasion to make the necessary investment in equipment and expertise
in order to show the work not only at this time but also in the future.
Case study two: I/Eye by Bill Spinhoven van oosten, 1984
(NIMk)50
The primary focus of this case study was to determine what is needed for the
preservation of this artwork and in particular to investigate if emulation and
virtualization would be adequate conservation strategies (see Fig. 7.7 in color
section).
I/Eye (1993/2011) is a software-driven installation in which the involvement of the viewer is essential. The artwork consists of a video monitor, a
camera placed on top of the monitor, and a computer. The monitor shows a
full-screen, watchful human eye that is triggered by the viewers’ movements
recorded by the camera. The eye on the monitor follows the viewer’s movement, turning the observer of the work into the one being observed. If, for
T EC H N o lo G I C A l P l AT F o R M S
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some seconds, there is motion, the eye will continue to “look,” but if there is
no movement at all for some time, the eye will close completely. The closed
eye suggests it is sleeping. Meanwhile, the eye moves slowly up and down suggesting breathing.
As formulated by the art historian and critic Jorinde Seijdel, the encounter
with I/Eye provokes an overwhelming and unnerving experience within viewers
as “it challenges their own secure position as observers.” According to Seijdel I/
Eye makes people aware that they are constantly being monitored and observed
by others: “Big Brother is watching you” (Seijdel, 1997). According to Spinhoven,
the artwork exists in at least two or three versions, and the hardware (monitor,
camera, computer) was used in more than one version of the work. Spinhoven
still continues to develop further versions of I/Eye and sees the project as an
open-ended process. He is currently planning a web-based version.
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EQ U I P M E N T
The aesthetic appearance and functionality of I/Eye has remained the same
since its first exhibition in the window of NIMk’s predecessor, the Montevideo
Gallery in Amsterdam, in 1993. The equipment has changed over time, however, and was malfunctioning at the start of this research project. Spinhoven has
emulated and virtualized the hardware and software at NIMk and compared
the results of both strategies.
The early monitor (probably a spherical Philips monitor) was only used
once and was soon replaced by a Sony Cube Monitor PVM 2130. The monitor
shows a full-screen, black-and-white human eye (the artist’s own), composed
of five stills.
The camera on top of the monitor is equipped with a special fish-eye lens
to have a wider registration area and an automatic iris lens to control light
intensity. These lenses have been attached to the camera by the artist with
tape. There are no specific requirements as to the model – it can be a web cam
or FireWire camera – but it should have a show driver in order to connect it to
the software. The current camera used for the presentation at NIMk in 2011 is
a Monacor surveillance video camera type TVCCD-2000 CCD plus lens.
Through software processing, the computer recognizes the sense of displacement, thus causing an output image that gives the impression that the
eye, the iris, is following the passers-by. The artist wrote the software using
BASIC V Assembler language, which works on Acorn Archimedes Operating’s
systems and RISC OS. He stores the software on a Risc PC 600. Some modules
have been added to the hardware; this implies that the original performance
of the computer has been modified.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
One of the main issues to keep I/Eye working is the threat of obsolescence of
the hardware and software used. Generally speaking, with every new computer type its performance is enhanced and its processing becomes faster. The
behavior and functionality of I/Eye has a strong relationship with the specific
computer architecture. The first computer type implemented was an Acorn
Archimedes 410 home computer and the operating system Acorn RISC OS,
versions from 3.0 to 6.0. Due to the obsolescence of various components in the
case study research, we decided to reuse the Acorn Risc PC. The program creates an eye with a pupil on the basis of motion detection and pre-programmed
behavior. The artist encountered a number of setbacks while attempting to
activate the software. The cause was found in the digitizer, responsible for
capturing the camera image, which turned out to have been corrupted. After
replacing it with an identical one, the problem was solved. Incorrect settings
and the timing of its horizontal and vertical refresh rate caused differences
between the historical display of the I/Eye and the current one. Once the
functionality of one of the initial versions was recovered, the artist decided to
develop an emulator for the program.
CO N S E RVAT I O N S T R AT EGY
The hardware of this installation was emulated based on an analysis of its
technique and functionality in a different way compared to the “original”
hardware and software. The emulation does fully replace the original hardware and software. The re-installation of I/Eye in 2011 implied a balance
between the formal technical principle of the artwork and its core concept
versus the functionality of its components. Re-staging the artwork involved a
number of practical questions and deep understanding concerning the obsolescence and (in)availability of the operating system, the hardware, and the
display equipment, as well as the (in)operability and correct functionality of
the software.
A major part of the experience of this installation relies on the viewer’s
participation, which can only be achieved if the installation is fully functional.
For Bill Spinhoven, an artwork should have the possibility to grow and change
by using new tools or equipment instead of trying to keep the old versions
alive. Spinhoven still continues to develop further versions of I/Eye and he
considers emulation to be more important than the authenticity and historicity of the equipment. The artist emulated and re-installed the work to a fully
functioning condition.51
The recovered version is an assemblage of various historical hardware
elements running the historic operating system, Risc PC. In this context, we
T EC H N o lo G I C A l P l AT F o R M S
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244 |
could speak about emulation of the old installation with the help of available
historic parts from other computers. In this conservation of I/EYE, emulation
and migration go hand in hand. Migration of the data was and will be necessary to assure the work’s functionality. The emulation side of the conservation
of this work can be comprehended in various ways dependent on the point
of departure. Emulation of the installation as a whole may be conducted by
means of extracting the data from the old system and implementing them on
a newer one. To perform the work’s previous functionality, though, the old
version of the computer should be replaced by a similar version that closely
imitates it. This process might be classified as emulation of the first version of
the equipment, along with the migration of the data. In relation to the virtualization of computer systems, I/Eye demonstrates that once the crucial components of the artwork are isolated from the system and are stabilized, they can
be enclosed in a virtual environments of any given virtual machine software.
Potentially, they can be transferred an almost infinite amount of times, maintaining the work’s logic and functionality.52
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
NOTES
*
Chapter 7.1 was jointly written by Simone Venturini and Mirco Santi. Together,
they wrote Cameras, Emulsion - Base; Simone Venturini wrote Standard 35mm,
Film Sound on Film, Multiscreens, Installations, and Cinematic Systems, Digital and
Electronic Cinema and Mirco Santi wrote Substandard Film.
1
2
See Jenkins (2006) and Thorburn, Jenkins, and Seawell (2003).
With “protocols” I have in mind the interpretation given by Lisa Gitelman in
Always Already New Media, History, and the Data of Culture (2006).
3
It was George Eastman’s advertising slogan, used in 1888 to promote his revolutionary photographic equipment: Kodak camera.
4
Eastman also had the idea of making photography (and later cinema) a mass
phenomenon.
5
Regarding the unusual effects of the introduction of sound on the film multiplicity and plurality, see: Durovicova (2004); Bock and Venturini (2005); Quaresima
and Pitassio (2005).
6
“Zelluloid – Films ohne Kamera”, is the title of a recent exhibition that was held
at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt (2 June-29 August 2010), dedicated to the
cameraless cinema.
7
Nagra III NP was introduced in 1958. From 1962 onwards, with the neo-pilottone
synchronization system, Nagra became the standard in sound recording in film,
and it was the standard up until the end of the 1980s.
8
Abel Gance’s polyvision consisted of three 35mm cameras that were filming and
three 35mm projectors that were projecting. Compare the name and concept of
simultaneism with the polyvision conceived and theorized by László Moholy-Nagy.
9
A reference for the proper revival of the different formats and systems in modern
projection environments is Sætervade (2006).
10 In addition, see another of Svoboda’s inventions, the Polyecran, made of 112 moving cubes, each containing a pair of Kodak Carousels. It was shown in 1958 for
the first time and presented at the 1967 Montreal Expo.
11 Regarding the widespread utilization of the loop, see for example Sleep by Andy
Warhol, but also Martin Arnold, Bruce McClure, and Douglas Gordon.
12 See chapter 8.1 in this volume, “Operational Practices for Film Preservation and
Protocols for Restoration.”
13 Filmed on 16mm, the performance is a part of Identification created by Gerry
Schum, broadcast on 15 November 1970 by the channel, Südwestfunk BadenBaden (SWR).
14 The Eidophor system is used in cinemas, schools and various governmental
organizations (such as NASA).
15 For the history and description of how LCD video projection works, see
Hornbeck (1998).
T EC H N o lo G I C A l P l AT F o R M S
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16 The Sharp model mentioned was one of the first to be widely commercially available; before that, other LCD monitors had been produced but they were much
smaller, such as the 2-inch screen made by Masataka Matsuura in 1983 (see Kawamoto, 2002).
17 An analogue video signal is made up from a low-voltage electrical impulse that
contains information relating to the brightness of the pixels which form the electronic image’s horizontal lines and those relating to the synchronization of the
signal with the viewing equipment.
18 Eurovision is a European television consortium, the majority of which consists of
state channels; it was founded in the 1950s with the aim of sharing public service
broadcasting.
19 See the Sony site http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/CorporateInfo/History/
SonyHistory/index.html. Last access: 11 November 2011.
20 The price fluctuated around $1,300 for a recorder and $30 for a cassette.
246 |
21 The system was also used by television stations especially in reporting. In 1974,
CBS covered Nixon’s visit to Moscow using the U-matic recording system.
22 The preservation, documentation and exhibition of a historical computer usually
includes a brief account of its technological development (genesis), a compilation of technological data (classification, market introduction (+ original price),
processor, pulsing, RAM / ROM, operating system, mass storage device, input
and output devices (keyboard, mouse, printer, screen / terminal), graphics (text,
image), sound), an explanation of its capacities and modes of operation, an
analysis of data input and output, and a reference to the machine’s place in the
cultural history of complex computing machines.
23 A good example is the research project Obsolete Equipment. The Preservation of
Playback and Display Equipment for Audiovisual Art by Platform for the Archiving
and Preservation of Audiovisual Arts (PACKED) and the Netherlands Media Art
Institute (NIMk), see http://nimk.nl/eng/obsolete-equipment.
24 The Z3 is considered the first programmable, fully automatic computer that was
capable of floating point binary arithmetic. It replaced the Z1 (1938, a mechanical
computer for the calculation of floating-point numbers) and the Z2 (1939 with
electromagnetic relay technology), parts of which were developed during the
same period.
25 The transition from relays to the microchip took place in the course of four
computer or technology generations: first there were relays and tubes (until
around 1958), then came transistor circuits with transistors and magnetic cores
(1958-1966), followed by integrated circuits (1966-1975), and finally highly integrated circuits (since 1975), also called large scale integration (LSI) (cf. Computer
Sciences Collection Erlangen Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen Nuremberg, http://www.iser.uni-erlangen.de/). Regarding the home computer, relevant
factors include, for example, the bus width (8, 16, 32, and 64 bit) which determines
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
the storage size (RAM), the processor’s clock rate, which increased from 1-4 mHz to,
at one point, 4-5 GHz and then decreased due to the use of multiple cores, as well as
the parallelization of the CPU.
26 Lurk (2009a, 2009b, and 2010a). For the British history of computer art, see Brown
et al. (2008).
27 Apple I (1976) with an integrated screen, Lisa (1983), the compact calculator
Apple SE (1987) that features in several interactive artworks, and many more (cf.
http://www.apple-history.com/).
28 PET 2001 (Personal Electronic Transactor, also known as CBM, 1977), VC20 (actually VIC – Video Interface Chip, 1980), the legendary C 64 (Commodore 64, with
64 kilobytes of main storage, 1982), and the Amiga 500 (1986).
29 The first one being the Atari 2600 games console (1977), followed by the Atari 400
and 800 (1979), the Atari ST (since 1985) and Atari TT (since 1990).
30 For the development of the graphical (reproduction) interfaces, see the Webbox
History: http://www.webbox.org/cgi/_timeline60s.html.
31 For information about computer games in this context, see the website of the
Computerspielemuseum Berlin (http://www.computerspielemuseum.de/index.
php?lg=en); for the “demo scene,” see Botz (2011).
32 While TCP controls data transmission, delivers the application’s data stream,
and, where necessary, takes measures against data loss, the addressable address
(IP) ensures that the data packet reaches its destination.
33 The procedure was named after the initials of its founders Ronald L. Rivest, Adi
Shamir, and Leonard Adlemen.
34 This is contrasted with concepts of longevity, cf. Howard Besser, Information Longevity – http://besser.tsoa.nyu.edu/howard/longevity/.
35 The recommendations for the preservation of data carriers are: a maximum temperature of 19-25°C, a maximum relative humidity of 40-50%, UV protection, and
the use of acid-free protection films. In addition, data carriers should never be
stored horizontally on top of each other or on uneven surfaces (due to danger of
distortion and scratches), and direct handling of the reflective surface of optical
data carriers should be avoided. Finally, objects should be cleaned using a soft
cloth and a mixture of water and isopropyl alcohol (70%) (guidelines according to
Lurk (2010a), Matters in Media Art (2008), State Archives of Florida (2009), Swiss
National Sound Archive (2008)).
36 Common migration procedures are:
–
–
Refreshment of the readability and data carriers.
Replication, i.e., context checking the different information systems and
checking the short cuts for proper operation.
–
Repacking information if the refreshment was not successful.
–
Transformation, i.e., transfer to new storage media and systems.
37 See chapter 8.2 by Jürgen Enge and Tabea Lurk in this volume.
T EC H N o lo G I C A l P l AT F o R M S
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38 Collection Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp (M HKA).
39 Collection NIMk, Amsterdam.
40 http://www.nimk.nl.
41 http://www.packed.be.
42 Participating institutions: the Netherlands Cultural Heritage Agency (RCE), the
Kröller-Müller Museum (KMM), the Museum of Contemporary Art (M HKA), the
Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam (NIMk), the Municipal Museum
of Contemporary Art (SMAK), and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. The case
studies, interviews, guidelines, and other resources collected during the project
are published at http://www.obsolete-equipment.org/?q=nl/content/obsoleteequipment.
43 A collection of representative cameras, players, recorders, computers, monitors,
etc., is difficult to acquire and maintain. Attempts to build up such a collection
have been made by the Bern University of the Arts (BUA) and the ZKM (Centre for
248 |
Art and Media) in Karlsruhe.
44 In the realm of digital media, emulation has a specific definition. An emulator
is a computer program that “fools” the original code into assuming that it is still
running on its original equipment, thus enabling software from an outdated
computer to run on a contemporary one, see http://www.docam.ca/glossaurus/
view_Label.php?id=108&lang=1. In conservation vocabulary, to emulate an artwork is to imitate and upgrade it while still retaining the original look and feel of
the work, as a facsimile.
45 Virtual environments are created when operating systems and desktop applications are emulated and made independent from physical hardware. Virtualization
seems to be the next step in preservation of computer based art. Virtualization as
conservation strategy is explored by Tabea Lurk and Jürgen Enge; see http://www.
aktivearchive.ch/fileuploads/pdfs/Virtualisation_Summary.pdf.
46 See also Jürgen Enge and Tabea Lurk’s contribution to chapter 8 of this volume.
47 http://www.docam.ca/en/restoration-decisions/a-decision-making-model-thedecision-tree.html (last access: 18 September 2012).
48 http://www.docam.ca/en/documentation-model.html (last access: 3 May 2012).
See also Annet Dekker’s contribution to chapter 6 of this volume.
49 The description of this case is heavily based on the case study report “Oratorium
voor geprepareerde videoplayer en acht monitoren (Oratory for Prepared Video
Player and Eight Monitors) by Frank Theys, 1989” by M HKA and PACKED, 2011,
and Lorrain (forthcoming).
50 The description of this case is strongly based on the case study report “I/Eye Bill
Spinhoven” by NIMk, 2011 – http://www.obsolete-equipment.org/sites/default/
files/case_studies/ieye_bill_spinhoven_case_study_report_0.pdf (last access: 18
September 2012), and Hölling (forthcoming).
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
51 Emulation of Spinhoven’s work Albert’ s Ark (1990) was researched in the project
Inside Installations by NIMk and RCE. See Wijers (2011).
52 The work logic identifies the core components of the artwork and describes the
interlocking of the digital modules involved. This is documented in terms of how
it is anchored in the system environment and in relation to the overall artistic
aesthetic concept. Lurk (2010b).
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PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
CHapter 8
Theories, Techniques,
Decision-making Models:
The European Context
8.1
OPERATIONAL PRACTICES FOR A FILM AND VIDEO PRESERVATION
AND RESTORATION PROTOCOL
Alessandro Bordina and Simone Venturini *
Introduction
The operating practices of preservation and restoration raise complex questions of a methodological and theoretical nature. However, there are basically
three questions that we must answer in order to work correctly: a) What is the
identity of the material that we are analyzing? b) What are its conditions? c)
How can we look after it? The first two questions are of a diagnostic nature,
whilst the last one concerns the issues of prognosis.
First of all, the film materials need to be identified and classified, giving
them historic-documentary, formal-aesthetic, and technological identity; in
other words, reconstructing the internal and external history of film,1 as well
as its cultural history.2 Secondly, we must proceed to recognizing pathologic
symptoms and recording useful information for a diagnosis on the state of the
material. Finally, the third question is of a prognostic nature and depends on
the level of the intervention.
The first level of intervention is the storage (or passive preservation) and
involves the safeguarding of materials in air-conditioned environments – or
rather with certain temperatures, relative humidity, and air quality – and their
periodic checks. Passive preservation guarantees the survival of the artifacts
over time. A second level of intervention is the preservation (or active preservation) which “prolongs the existence of all that exists” (Païni, 1997), ensuring
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the transmission, the right reproduction of the visual and audio information
preserved on the artifact. The preservation procedures are finalized to transmit all the information, but they include an inevitable hybridization and creolization of the information transmitted and a correspondence – not always
verifiable or repeatable in the results – with the hardware and software utilized
and the decisions made, thus imposing extensive documentation of the interventions at this level of action. A third level is the restoration (and of the critical reconstruction of the text). Restoration is a process and an action that takes
place at a different level. Restoration is not limited to preserving what exists
or replicating or transmitting information preserved on originals, but aims to
recover lost quality, former synchronic and authentic conditions and, in doing
so, reveals approaches and finality that can be very different.3
Two appendices can be proposed for this initial synthetic description:
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1) The materials – film and video – are not human-readable, but need
technological mediation for their reproduction and transmission
(they are machine-readable/dependent). The action of transmission
represented by the preservation can be seen in systemic and set
theory terms (transmission as diasystem);4 in trans-historic and
communicative terms (the transmission as interface); and in terms
of transition and restoration of the experience (the transmission as
emulation, simulation, and remediation).
2) Our frame of reference is mainly represented by film-based artworks
and by video art, areas which require other factors being taken into
account (the role of the artist and the time when the artwork was
made, the technical and aesthetic experimentation) which call for
the revision and interpretation of the basic principles set out above
in a flexible way.
Guide to the Identification of Different film formats
The study of the physical characteristics of the materials5 includes the analysis
of the production process, the technological systems involved, and the degree
of systemic, technical, and functional obsolescence with respect to the current
standards. It allows for the identification of the film material typology and its
origins. The method and instruments for analytical surveying also allow for
the planning of the best ways for safeguarding and reproduction.6
The information to be researched can be split up into information relative
to the structure and the appearance of the material. A useful subdivision of the
film structure relates to the area of image, the area of sound, and the area of
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
the perforations. Another methodological suggestion calls for information to
be revealed, dividing into information outside the image area and information inside the image area.7
The classes of information useful to the structural analysis of material can
be synthesized into:
a. film format (35mm, 16mm, 9.5mm, 8mm, etc.);
b. format and shape of the image area (usually expressed through
the relationship between the height and the width of the film: i.e.,
1:1.33);
c. format and system for the recording of the soundtrack (area or variable-density optical, magnetic, mono, stereo, and on disc);
d. format of the perforations;
e. type of emulsion and of color system (black and white, color, handpainted, tinted, toned);
f. type of element (negative, intermediate, duplicate, positive, reversal,
etc.); type of base (nitrate, acetate, polyester, etc.);
g. information on the film’s edge (edge code, duplication marks, cueing
marks, etc.);
h. editing marks (tape and cement splices, blooping, signs for printing,
for fading in and out and cross fading);
i. metadata (labels, note);
j. documentary data on the living and cultural history of the object.8
8.1
Edge code of camera negative, in the upper right displaying the
notch for the activation of changing light on the printing machine
according to the Debrie method, cueing carried out during the
sight grading. Source: Società Umanitaria – Cineteca Sarda/La
Camera Ottica, Università degli Studi di Udine.
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Guide to the Identification of Different Types of Video formats
The identification of the format of video materials is the basis for the understanding the recording system, the definition of technological obsolescence,
and recognizing suitable hardware for reading the signal.
The most common type of magnetic device can be divided into five categories of width: 2 inch, 1 inch, ½ inch, ¾ inch and ¼ inch. However, such
classification is not sufficient for recognizing the specifications of the recording system that uses one of these tape formats. Before proceeding to the evaluation of the support and signal’s state of decay and the identification of the
equipment, it is necessary to obtain at least three other types of information
relating to the material:
–
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Recording Format: the recording system can be ascertained through
identifying the traceable device, in many cases, through the indication on the case and on the tape’s rims. By reading the identification
codes it is possible to recognize the recording format.9 It should
8.2 Metadata about recording systems, video content, previous filings and
cataloging of materials in a ¼-inch tape of Anna (Alberto Grifi e Massimo
Sarchielli, 1972-1975). Source: Fondazione Alberto Grifi/Centro Sperimentale
di Cinematografia – Cineteca Nazionale/La Camera Ottica, Università degli
Studi di Udine.
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–
–
be noted that, in more than just a few cases, the same tape can be
utilized by different generations of the same recording system.10 In
the playback phase, the alterations can be checked (for example,
synchronism and chrominance), which can be interpreted as indications of a recording system that is different from the one recognized
by reading an identification code.
Manufacturer of the tape: The identification of the brand can provide
useful information on the ways of treating and regenerating tapes.11
System of transmission of the signal: The transmission standard utilized (NTSC, PAL, SECAM) can be obtained or deduced from the carrier’s metadata. If the metadata does not explicitly refer to the system
being used, it can be inferred from information relating to the time
and place it was produced.
Once the format of recording, the manufacturer, and the transmission format have been identified, it is possible to proceed to the verification stage of
the chemical, physical, and mechanical conditions (see below under “Guide
to the Diagnosis of Physical, Chemical, and Mechanical Decay Syndromes of
Video Materials”). After this stage follows the regeneration of the devices, then
the playback stage and the digital acquisition of the signal (see below under
“Operational Practices for Video Preservation and Restoration Protocols”).
Guide to the Diagnosis of Physical, chemical, and Mechanical
Decay Syndromes for film Materials
The alterations detected during the analysis of the physical and chemical state
of the elements can be subdivided into damages, errors, and defects.12
By damages we mean biological, chemical, and mechanical alterations to
the material due to use or negligence and the decay of materials.13 By errors we
mean the alterations present during the transmission of the contents, or rather
during the duplication process of the materials. While the errors belong to the
area of cultural history and the copying process, the defects are understood as
signs and indications of limits, of the characteristics but also of incorrect uses
of the recording system and the technology employed at the beginning.14
In the specific field of cinema of aesthetic experimentation, such a category must be reviewed and reconsidered in light of the strategy, intentions, and
each artist’s techniques, that often “play” and experiment with the alterations
of the correct ways of recording, with the exaltation of the technological limits
and with the research of damages as an expressive element (see chapter 7.1).
The characteristics and the processes of the decay of the film bases used in
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8.3
Frames of a film on a nitrate base
in an advanced state of decay.
Source: Collection Vincenzo
Neri, Archivio Nazionale del
Film di Famiglia – Associazione
Home Movies /La Camera Ottica,
Università degli Studi di Udine.
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Below: 8.4
Cans with 8mm films on an acetate
base in an advanced state of decay.
Source: Collection Togni, Archivio
Nazionale del Film di Famiglia –
Associazione Home Movies /La
Camera Ottica, Università degli
Studi di Udine.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
cinematography are known and have been described in literature. The intensity of the decay of cellulose nitrate can be visually and olfactorily detected and
is measured conventionally through the five stages of decay.15 The syndrome
of the decay of the safety acetate base is known as the “vinegar syndrome”.16
An instrument for revealing and monitoring the state of a collection is made
up from IPI’s A-D Strips (Image Permanence Institute, 2001). Even in the case
of cellulose triacetate, the survey can be carried out through visual and olfactory detection and can be identified with one of the five stages of decay defined
in literature.17 The polyester base, even if very stable, is subject to problems of
core set memory and delamination.
The color image decay “can be manifested as color fading, color balance
shift, yellowing, or color bleeding”, whilst the silver image decay “can be manifested as microspots, silver mirroring, or overall image discoloration” (Adelstein, 2009: 9).
To “diagnose” the state of a material requires describing and interpreting
the symptoms of the decay in order to assign a conventional value to them, to
measure the intensity and put them onto the scales of decay. Finally, the result
of the diagnostic survey defines a “health status” for an element or a collection.18
Guide to the Diagnosis of Physical, chemical, and Mechanical
Decay Syndromes of Video Materials
We can also adopt a classification for video materials, based on the difference
between damages, errors, and defects. In the case of analogue video, the definition of errors also includes modifications to the signal caused by the playback equipment that was used. The reproduction of the video signal is closely
tied to the technology of the time. Such equipment can produce changes in the
display of the image (after the decay of mechanical or electronic components
or as a result of a difference in the calibration between the playback equipment and that which produced the signal). The types of alterations (errors
and defects) that can result from equipment malfunction in the production
and playback stage are in many cases similar, complicating the analysis of the
causes of alterations to the signal. However, in view of the recovery or restoration it will be an opportune moment to define, where possible, the origins
of the alteration (productive and interpretative), to proceed to their compensation (for errors), or to their maintenance (for defects and elements of the
work’s aesthetic and material history).
The damages of the magnetic audiovisual carriers are determined by factors such as frequency and conditions of use, chemical composition of the
tapes, and environmental conditions of conservation.
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One of the most common causes of chemical decomposition of the magnetic
tapes is the “sticky shed syndrome” (Association of Moving Image Archivists,
no date: 7). The causes of sticky shed are generally the prolonged exposure of
the tape to relatively high temperatures and humidity. It can be diagnosed
through tactile, visual, and olfactory inspection of the device. The upper part
of the tape becomes sticky to touch and the tape tends to become attached to
the spool. At a visual level, dusty or gummy residues can appear (disintegration
of the top coat); furthermore, the device emits a pungent odor. A tape affected
by sticky shed, if used without appropriate regeneration treatment (see below)
will present problems of drag, caused by the friction between the tape and the
reading equipment. The friction inevitably leads to the detachment of parts
of the magnetic layer, with the resulting irreversible loss of recorded information.
Another cause of chemical decomposition is the loss of lubricant. The
lubricants are added to the binder to reduce the friction between the tape’s
top coat and the mechanism. Such substances are consumed, even in small
measures, every time the tape is reproduced. The level of lubrication of the
8.5
Magnetic ½-inch tape suffering from biological decay (the
presence of mold is due to the high humidity of the storage
environments).
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
surfaces can reduce even in archived tapes due to evaporation caused by temperatures and humidity being too high or too low. Problems with drag of the
tape in the reproduction phase can be traced to a loss of lubricant.
The tape surfaces can show biological decay, traces of dust, or crystalline
residue indicating the presence of mold, caused by the tape being badly isolated, storing it either in a place that is not clean or that has increased temperature and humidity. This decay affects and damages the reading of the signal
(with continuous loss of signal and impulsive noises on the screen) and the
playback mechanisms (especially on the video and ACE heads).
Finally, there are faults of a mechanical origin which might affect the polyester base of the tape. The most common is the distortion on the base that
can cause problems in the tracking in reproduction. Every time the temperature or humidity suddenly changes, the tape’s flange expands and contracts,
causing physical stress to the device and causing permanent distortion of the
substrate.
In the same way as errors and defects, faults become apparent during the
viewing of the video signal, in the form of image deterioration. The most common form of deterioration present is dropout, which results in the loss of one
or more of the lines that make up the image. The losses are often due to lack
of magnetic paste on the tape, but they might also be caused by the presence
of dust, or other elements which impede the reading of the signal. Another
frequent deterioration is that defined as impulsive noise. The defect becomes
visible in the form of a white dot with a comet-like tail. When the signal is
treated with time base corrector (TBC), the dot, along with the associated drag,
is transformed into a white or gray line.
Another type of deterioration is crosstalk (the interference of one video signal with another), which can be caused at the recording stage by the overlapping of another video source, or as the result of a wrong reading of the video
tracks by the heads.
Other common types of signal alteration include jitter, the disengagement
of the vertical synchronism, and the disengagement of the horizontal and vertical synchronism. The jitter is caused by the partial loss of information relevant
to the horizontal synchronism (see Fig. 8.6). It becomes visible in the form of the
“flagging” of a part of the image. The lines, and especially those at the top and
the bottom of the screen, appear not to be aligned with the rest of the image.
The disengagement becomes visible through a vertical instability of the
image, which appears to be the correct shape. This is not really an inherent
fault of the player, but compensation of TBC. Without TBC we would not have
the disengagement of the picture, but the disengagement of the synchronism
with complete loss of image.
Identifying the reasons for the signal’s deterioration is often complex,
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8.6
Comparison of a frame from Quartieri Populari (Anna Lajolo and Guido Lombardi,
1973). On the left: problems of synchronization of the lines of both fields of the
image due to transportation problems and the loss of horizontal and vertical
synchronism. On the right: the result obtained after regeneration of the physicalchemical support and stabilization of the video signal via TBC.
given that the same type of image alteration can be traced back to the device’s
decay, the malfunction of the reading equipment, and errors during copying
or production. The analysis of errors in various versions of the same work,
and the check on quantity and time for an alteration inside the same video,
can help to construct hypotheses relating to the reason for deterioration. The
reconstruction of the technological, productive, and aesthetic context of the
finding and its original equipment give fundamental information for the diagnostic stage, the classification of the alterations to the signal, and for defining
and evaluating the damage to the work.
Guide to the Care, Monitoring, and Storage of Film Materials
To formulate a prognosis on the future of materials, it is necessary to use tools
and methods that are able to forecast a life expectancy based on the recorded
level of decay and taking into account the predicted conditions of the preservation.19 The diagnostic tools can be simple (such as the testing of acidity
using A-D strips) or complex (such as mass spectrometry) and there are objective scientific tests and subjective surveys to clearly understand them and in
order to distinguish them.
In recent years there have been studies on the stability and the behavior
of color emulsions over time, and film bases in acetate and polyester based on
two distinct methods. The first area of study used the technique of accelerated
ageing (Arrhenius approach), a predictive method that produces the life expec-
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
tancy (LE) of the materials in conventional conditions at 20°C and 50% RH
accepted by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The second has application in long-term aging, or rather the incubation of “test materials for a period of ten years in order to evaluate life expectancy predictions”
(Bigourdan, 2002: 40-41). The two experimental situations have produced
results that are to a large extent overlapping; with the capacity, therefore, to
confirm the quality of the method of artificial acceleration of time.
The standards for the preservation of film bases are known and published in form of recommendations by the ISO.20 The materials must also be
preserved in horizontal positions inside the cans and wrapped around cores
that have passed the photographic activity test (PAT).21 The IPI recommends a
simple protocol of long-term film collection preservation based on concepts
and the key actions: identifying, assessing, and storing. The IPI has also developed a preservation management process based on systems of monitoring
and tools for recording, analyzing, and interpreting data relative to the main
variables represented by the temperature and relative humidity. The definition of “health status” and the methods and management tools for predicting
the future state of materials provide a basis for outlining a plan and a strategy
for passive and active preservation of single materials, as well as entire collections.
Guide to the care, Handling, and Storage of Video Materials
To ensure a future readability of the information contained in the magnetic
layer of the tape, it is necessary to keep the device in a clean environment, with
a stable climate and an adequate temperature/humidity ratio.
The ideal conditions indicated by various organizations (Cuddihy, SMPTE,
NARA) are a temperature of 18°C with a possible range of 2°C and the relative
humidity at 40% (with a possible variation of about 5%). The ANSI standard
allows for a maximum temperature of 20°C with relative humidity between
20% and 30%.22
A key factor in the correct conservation of the magnetic materials is the
environmental stability. The variations in humidity and temperature over
a 24-hour period must not exceed 2°C (for the temperature) and 5% (for the
humidity). For this reason it is necessary to provide constant monitoring of the
temperature and humidity of the environment and a period of acclimatization
of the films before putting them in the archive and before taking them out
again.
Although the risk of demagnetization is very low, it is advisable to guarantee that the environment in which the work is placed does not have an external
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static magnetic field intensity that is over 4 kA/m and the external variable magnetic field over time is not more than 800 kA/m (Deggeller and Gfeller, 2006).
operational Practices for Film and Video Preservation and
Restoration Protocols
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Here we propose some protocols. The first protocol originally comes from the
fields of art restoration and literary philology; the second is aimed at the remediation of sound recordings. The third and fourth protocols come from the
experience of preserving experimental cinema, the fifth analyzes and represents the decision-making processes applied in the field of film preservation.
Finally, the last protocol proposes a system of preservation, documentation,
and digital access to cinema for film archives.
The first protocol is aimed at the preservation of specific versions and
single textual occurrences. It is based on the principle that every act of preservation cannot be defined without being documented. This protocol (Canosa,
Farinelli, and Mazzanti, 1997) provides for the creation of a preliminary statement, an intervention report, a diary of works and a final report. Alongside the
expert diagnostic investigation on the state of the materials, the preliminary
statement includes the description and documentation of the available film
and non-film materials. The reliability and authenticity will be made problematic for all non-film materials described, they will be dated and measured in
relation to the weight they have in defining the decision-making process. For
the film materials described, the history and relations with other materials
will be reconstructed. The intervention report will be based on the preliminary
statement, according to verifiable limits (technical, economic, political, cultural) and prearranged objectives.23
The intervention report should contain experimental tests and should
clarify the workflow that is predicted with diagrams and detailed protocols.
The diary of works can be considered an accurate survey, the daily notes of the
differences and modifications made during the work with respect to the intentions laid out in the plan. The final report represents the testimony to the work
carried out and should be published in the most suitable places.
A second example of a protocol comes from the “remediation of sound
documents.” In musicology, a valid protocol for a “sound signal transfer on
a new recording device” must minimally describe and include the following
working stages: a) choice of sample to transfer; b) restoration of the recording
device; c) choice of equipment; d) adjustment to intentional alterations of the
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
recorded signal; e) adjustment to incorrect recording settings; and f) adjustments to involuntary alterations of the recorded signal (Canazza, and Casadei
Turroni Monti, 2006).
A third protocol is a series of guidelines proposed by Jon Gartenberg for
the specific treatment of experimental cinema materials, starting from the
experience accumulated over the course of many preservation projects (Gartenberg, 2007). The guidelines suggested by Gartenberg are “1. Know the history of the genre [...]; 2. Establish a working collaboration [...]; 3. Focus on the
artist’s creative process [...]; 4. Document the version of the work preserved
[...]; 5. Shadow the economic models of the commercial film industry [...]”
(2007: 40-45). Gartenberg continues with a schema for the technical restoration of experimental films based on the above principles:
1. Assemble and study detailed documentation about the artist’s career
and related individual works. 2. Track down all camera originals, prints,
and related production elements. 3. Perform detailed physical inspections of each individual film element. 4. Perform detailed comparisons
for all elements of a given film. 5. Make preservation and access decisions consistent with the guiding principles. 6. Document in written
form the preservation history of the work and the preservation decisions
made (2007: 45-47).
It is useful to compare Gartenberg’s proposal with the restoration project of
a large collection of Dutch post-war experimental films.24 In these materials,
“Non-standard techniques were constantly used to reach particular aesthetic and visual effects and no film or copy was ever made in the same way. [...]
That’s why these films are also so unique and at the same time so fragile.” The
organizer’s opinion is that many artists’ work must be thought of as “a constant work in progress,” to which can be added, “the almost total lack of historical documentation.” It is difficult to respond unequivocally to the choice
between respect for the material or the aesthetic experience, “once we accept
this a whole new range of possibilities become available as long as the restoration process is well documented and the filmmakers themselves still recognize in the new products their ‘artistic intention’” (Monizza, 2008).
A fifth protocol is made up of the result of a qualitative study based “on
the methodology of ethnographic fieldwork.” A study made by investigating
the context in which film preservation takes place in the United States aimed
to document decision-making processes and the “individual tasks performed
by archivists, curators, catalogers, and projectionists in specific situations and
explored the many difficult decisions that they must make during the course
of preservation work” (Gracy, 2003:3).
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Here is the general process that was documented:
[...] preservation is a linear process involving activities, inputs, and outputs, from the initial stage of selecting a film to the final step of providing
access to it through exhibition or other means [...]: 1. Selecting a film for
preservation; 2. Procuring funding and/or resources; 3. Inspecting and
inventorying a film; 4. Preparing a film for laboratory work; 5. Duplicating
a film at the laboratory; 6. Storing the master elements and access copies; 7. Cataloguing the master elements and access copies; 8. Providing
access to the preserved film (2003: 6).
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Finally, the European project EdCine (2006-2009)25 had, as an objective, in its
archiving programs “Digital Storage and Access System for Film Archives with
relevance to other digital born and film originated, digitally derived content”
(EdCine/Archives, 2008: 1). The architecture of the proposal consists of:
[…] two packages, the Master Archive Package (MAP), for long-term preservation, and an Intermediate Access Package (IAP) designed to make
the access to the stored items [...] where the content (image, sound, texts,
etc.) is stored jointly to its technical metadata [...], to ensure that the content is correctly displayed when accessed (2008: 3).
EdCine proposed some requirements to respect the film (or to put it better, the
cinematographic experience) in the various forms that it had over the course
of a century, amongst which: “[...] 1. The resolution of the projected screen
image should not be visually lower than that of the original film image [...].
2. The frame rate of a digital cinema projection should be the same as that of
the original film. 3. The aspect ratio of the image should be that of the original
film [...]” (Ibid.: 4).26
The protocols described a swing between the treatment of single materials and experiences and projects of digitization and large-scale migration,27
through the preservation of entire collections. The importance of the documentation, metadata and consequently of reversibility, the innocuousness
and the criticism of the operations carried out, is evident in all the experiences
that are described, but it rarely becomes reality in public and editorial forms.28
The documentation should be at the basis of the definition and choice of more
complex digital storage protocols, extended to hardware and software, which
the reading and transmission of data (encapsulation) depend on, and to the
construction and management of digital assets. For the latter, and in general,
there must be a strong presence of detailed pertinent metadata, including
human readable reports.
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V I D EO P R E S E RVAT I O N A N D R E S TO R AT I O N P ROTO CO L S
The debate on the definitions of decision models and protocols for the preservation and restoration of the video work has been developed in Europe and the
United States since the beginning of the 1990s. The first publications make
up a technical guide for archiving, care and preservation of analogue devices.
Over the course of the 1990s and at the start of this century, coinciding
with the development of a series of projects on the preserving migration of
video materials kept in museums,29 some manuals that define the practical
outline for a technique of treatment, regeneration of the chemical-physical
characteristics and the digitization of the video signal were published.30 The
procedure described in these manuals can be synthesized in a process that
has five phases: 1) cataloguing, examination and documentation; 2) tape preparation; 3) remastering; 4) documentation of remastering and preparation; 5) keeping the original material and new masters safe.
The first phase is the inventory, the collection of metadata and the photographic documentation of all the materials. There must be a check and
documentation of the state of conservation for all the devices (Wheeler, 2002:
3). The modality for the inspection of materials for the diagnostic means of a
single device or an entire collection are as set out above, under “Guide to the
Diagnosis of Physical, Chemical, and Mechanical Decay Syndromes of Video
Materials”.
The tape documentation phase is followed by planning for interventions
on materials for restoring the functionality of reading and digital acquisition
(Hones, 2002).
The most common modalities for the preparation of tapes are the practices of baking and cleaning. The baking of tapes allows for the temporary readability of tapes affected by hydrolysis of the binder. They are put in a ventilated
oven (see Rarey, 1995) at a constant temperature of 50°C for a minimum of
eight hours.31 This procedure temporarily restores32 the consistency of the
binder on the surface of the tape, therefore allowing the tape to pass through
the reading mechanism without losing the magnetic paste. This is a controversial procedure, some conservers maintain that baking is too invasive and,
in the long run, damages the tape.33
Cleaning is used to eliminate dust and biological contamination from
the surface of the tape. As with baking, there are different conclusions on the
effectiveness and the long-term consequences regarding the techniques used.
The most common technique, known as dry cleaning, involves putting the surface of the tape under pressure, in contact with a dry cloth. This technique is
the opposite of wet cleaning, which involves the addition of chemical agents
to the cleaning. The latter practice is more effective than the former; however,
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the long-term consequences of the chemical stability of the device are still
being debated.34
The remastering stage includes the reading of the tapes, the stabilization of the signal and the digital acquisition of the signal (see Fig. 8.7 in color
section). The main differences in this stage of the technical protocol regard
format and the destination hardware of the new digital master. The digital signal’s conservation format has to include all the information from the starting
signal and has to have compensated for the possible alterations introduced
by the system of reversing. The conservation copy is then divided based on the
use of material preserved in terms of the access copy.35
During the preparation and remastering stage, the parallel process of documenting the interventions that have been carried out is introduced, allowing
the recording of material history. At the end of the preservation process, the
originals and the new digital masters are made safe and archived in ideal climatic conditions (see above, under “Guide to the Care, Handling, and Storage
of Video Materials”).
Despite the highlighted differences, the technical protocol that has just
been mentioned represents a shared base of the main experiences of video art
preservation gained over the last twenty years. This workflow does not however
take into account the issues relating to the conservation of the aesthetic and
historic designs of the work, which is subject to preservation. For this reason,
alongside the study of operational practices aimed at preserving migration of
the signal contained in obsolete devices, museums and research centers proposed decision models and action protocols aimed at verifying the effectiveness of the preservation procedures in relation to the transmission of works’
aesthetic historic and cultural values.
A common reference point in the definition of the methodology of the
intervention is the decision model outlined by the Foundation for the Conservation of Contemporary Art in Amsterdam, aimed at describing and regulating the process through which decisions are made, about the restoration and
conservation of contemporary art.36 The conventions and preservation trials
that followed investigated and analyzed the critical points that emerged from
the Dutch model, referring them to time based works. The main methodological points that have largely polarized the scientific debate on the preservation
of time based works are the definition of acceptable alterations, the role of
stakeholders in the preservation process and the replacement/emulation of
the work’s original components. The theoretical deepening and the completion of experimental preservation projects led to the production and testing
of intervention models, working diagrams and instructions for interviewing
artists.37
A comparative analysis of different experiences of video art preservation
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
highlights divergent methodological and protocol choices that are sometimes
contrasting, in relation to issues such as the choice of the version to preserve,
the involvement of stakeholders, the evaluation of the alterations definable as
damage and acceptable corrective interventions. In comparing the preservation experience carried out by ZKM in Karlsruhe (Frieling and Herzongerath,
2006), the Netherlands Media Art Institute (Coelho and Wijers, 2003), and the
Laboratori La Camera Ottica and CREA at the University of Udine,38 important
differences emerge, in the adopted decision model and the program of intervention in relation to the afore-mentioned points. If on one hand such divergences in action can result from a heterogeneity in the preservation objectives
and the conditions of material, on the other hand it is clear that much of the
methodological discordance is attributable to the lack of a shared model for
intervention and documentation.
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8.2
OPERATIONAL PRACTICES FOR A DIGITAL PRESERVATION AND
RESTORATION PROTOCOL
Jürgen Enge and Tabea Lurk
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The search for adequate preservation and restoration protocols that are capable of fulfilling the specific requirements for the conservation of complex
digital cultural goods has revealed an ambivalence that is characteristic of
the current situation in the conservation and restoration of computer-based
art forms. On the one hand, documentation has assumed an increasingly
important role in preserving art – not least because the objects, at the time of
being recorded, seem so fleeting and fragile that a permanent preservation or
access to them becomes difficult or almost impossible; many objects, moreover, assume different (physical) forms of appearance.39 On the other hand, the
objects themselves seem to resist this effort as it is sometimes not clear on
which system of reference the documentation should rely. Finally, conservators – most of whom have not received a basic education in computer science
– are nevertheless expected to analyze information objects in a technically
sustainable way. Among other things one result is that very heterogeneous formats of documentation exists which cover just certain aspects and are often
hardly compatible to each other.
Richard Rinehart, for example, presented a comprehensive “System of Formal Notation for Scoring Works of Digital and Variable Media Art” in 2004, based
on the Extensible Markup Language (XML) and containing a “Survey of Related
Work” (2004 and 2008). Metaphorically speaking, the system he proposes takes
the metadata as its starting point; the question of how the relevant information
is retrieved in the first place is, naturally, not touched on. By contrast, an outline
of this latter approach is contained in the guidelines for the documentation of
networks such as DOCAM, INCCA, Virtual Platform, and the Inside Installations
Project as well as the guidelines for the acquisition of the Matters in Media Art
Project; these, however, can only identify the relevant data up to a certain depth,
and anything that lies beyond this point constitutes a gray zone.40
We greatly appreciate the different approaches and try to combine certain
aspects. In the text that follows, we wish to introduce the concept of “work
logic”. This concept proposes to transfer the parameters of the classical, material based documentation in conservation science to the semantics of digital
artworks. From these parameters, we develop a methodological procedure
that has been tested on complex digital objects (artworks). We conclude with
some practical routines that are suitable for the conservation and restoration
of computer-based art forms.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
work logic and the Structure of complex Digital objects
Since the late 1980s, we have seen a host of very different artworks and artistic applications whose visible appearance is calculated in real time by a computer. Based on digital instructions (algorithms), the system generates certain
audiovisual or haptic effects that are embedded within a larger artistic concept and are either self-contained or “open” to the outside (Lurk, 2009b). In
the latter case, artists may, for instance, start live meta-queries of web services
such as Google, Flickr, Wikipedia and many other portals, and then display
them as parts of an artwork (Lurk, 2010).
With their manifold appearance, many such digital artworks correspond
to the definition of complex digital artworks. According to this definition, a
digital object is complex if a) there is no simple description of its technical file
format, its display or its reproduction, or if b) the object is dynamic, that is, it
includes interactive components or embedded programming.
What makes these artworks so specific in their essence, then, is that software components are fundamental to what they are and therefore are essential
for ensuring their authenticity. In the past, conservators approached the problem of preservation by focusing on a machine’s casing, and often redundantly
bought and stored reproduction devices in large quantities.41 In the long run,
however, a sustainable preservation policy requires an understanding of information technology. To this end, the concept of work logic was developed; this
proposes to identify and classify the computer-based elements of an artwork
in all their complexity, and to document how they connect to other system
components.
The concept of work logic does not conceive of the artwork as a self-contained entity but instead distinguishes between, on the one hand, its “core”
which constitutes its essence, and, on the other hand, aspects of its appearance, its artistic concept, and its historical context (see Fig. 8.8). All four areas
contain definitions of significant properties that are key to preserving an artwork’s authenticity and thus providing us with a differentiated and hierarchical picture (Laurenson, 2006).
In other words, the concept of work logic encompasses those (digital)
components of an artwork that constitute its authenticity while distinguishing between core components and the hierarchically ordered work-relevant
components. As can be seen from the system for the graphical classification
of the components (see Fig. 8.9 as well as the case study at the end of this
chapter), we develop a layered model that begins with the core and indicates
a decreasing relevance as it moves to the periphery. A decrease in relevance
means that a stabilization measure may become more invasive (such as when
updating the operating system).
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272 |
8.8
Graphic visualization of the four areas of work logic (by Tabea Lurk)
The discussion of possible changes should follow the standards of conservation and restoration (American Institute for Conservation of Historic and
Artistic Works, 2009). Generally, one must ask whether the conservation strategy is one of fluid actualization (migration) or one of freezing the work in its
current state – known as the “enclosing encapsulation” approach (virtualization/emulation) – and why one approach is preferable to the other. While fluent actualizations by migration seem less invasive in the short run (but may
lead to significant changes in the long run), the enclosing encapsulation
approach means that the adjustments that go along with stabilizing the work
will stagnate as soon as the first preservation action has taken place. The latter
method thus centralizes the preservation of the artwork’s historical integrity.
It is important to document and evaluate every preservation action in a transparent and detailed fashion.
The concept of work logic registers “hard facts” (in the sense of the technological facticity of the artwork) as well as “soft facts”, in terms of the artwork’s meaning. The meaning of an artwork triggers the preservation strategy
and should be adjusted to the artist’s intention and the specific environment
Work Core
Work-relevant Component
Software Library
Substitute System
Operating system
Emulation
8.9
Schema for the classification of digital work components (by Jürgen Enge)
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
Host System
in which he conceived of his work. 42 Thus, it is important to evaluate the relevance of the technologies that were used. Furthermore, the work logic schema
(Fig. 8.8) differentiates between the individual artist’s intention and the more
general historical context which the artist reflects on in one way or another (in
the guise of the “Zeitgeist”).43 It is also subject to very general historical conditions (Klütsch, 2007; Krameritsch, 2007; Lurk, 2009a).
from the work logic to a Structure of Documentation
The work logic principle does not only identify an artwork’s (core) components. It can also be applied to the structure of conservational documentation,
consisting of the identification and description of the object (semantically
and in terms of cultural history), a documentation of examination (detailing the present state of the object), a treatment plan (generally including
a specific risk management plan) and a documentation of treatment which
fully and transparently documents all preservation measures (Falcão, 2010).
Finally, where possible, handouts with information about further treatment
are recommended; these should also provide information about monitoring
routines.
A model for documentation that is based on these aspects would have the
following format:
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CHAPTER 0: FRoNT PAGE
Title (and subtitle)
Illustration/image of the artwork (incl. caption)
Short record information:
Title
Artist
Year
Type
Interactive, computer-based installation
Owner
Including version, e.g., (#1/5)
Preservation period
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Documentation date
Author(s)
Achievements
E.g., migration to virtual machine and stabilization of hardware
(camera) interface
Summary: This brief summary (ca. 500 characters) identifies the object and the purpose of documenting it.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1: DESCRIPTIoN oF THE ARTWoRk/INSTALLATIoN
Description: A semantic description of the artwork’s external features.
Historical context: The historical context provides information about the meaning of the artwork;
it may also include autobiographical information about the artist and about related works, either by
the same artist or by other artists using the same technology.
Form and structure: A technical description that includes specific information about the type/genre, behavior, and handling (installation) and further elements regarding the participation by viewers.
Materials used and techniques employed: A description of technological components, including
applications, software modules, and libraries that are needed for all kinds of technological interfaces
and for the internal communication with the operating system.
Preservation history: If possible/accessible, provide information about earlier restoration measures
or other changes made to the artwork (including modifications by the artist).
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
CHAPTER 2: IDENTIFICATIoN oF THE ARTWoRk’S CoMPoNENTS
The following analysis identifies the components of an artwork or installation in detail. This type of
object identification usually takes place during the object analysis as soon as more precise information (regarding, for example, the software components) becomes available.
Title
Subtitle
Acronym
Date
Artist
Programming
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Concept/text
Material/technology
E.g., computer, camera, beamer, software
Type/genre
E.g., interactive, software-based installation
Resolution/aspect ratio
E.g., 1024x768px/4:3
or comments like: “Installation box is not exactly specified.”
Components
files delivered by the artist/addressed by the application, including
software libraries
work-relevant components, such as the grabber
Details can be specified below
Client-side software
operating system (oS) information, further details can be specified
below
Reproduction software
Media player if required/other tools required for display
Signature
Remarks
Such as: “The artwork was part of the media production for Expo 2000.”
Number of versions
Further versions/editions
References
E.g., the artist’s website
Owner
Including number/edition index, e.g., (#1/5)
Inventory number
Client/corperation
License
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CHAPTER 3: DoCUMENTATIoN oF THE CURRENT STATE
The documentation of an artwork’s current state lists all its relevant components. It identifies the
significance of both the work’s core and the work’s relevant components, and explains the relation of
the core software to the systemic environment as well as the communication with the hardware. This
form of recording thus also provides curators with a first idea of the artwork’s proneness to errors and
identifies, within a risk management framework, those elements requiring stabilization.
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Hardware
Even in cases where the artist did not provide any information about the hardware (because it can
be replaced or otherwise procured by the museum), it nevertheless makes sense to roughly specify
the requirements. Relevant information includes:
– Information regarding the operating system; these could be as vague as “linux-compatible
personal computer”
– Information regarding the graphics card, e.g., open Gl-compatible graphics card
– External interfaces: e.g., video input/camera; video output/beamer; intersections for audio
devices or for homemade interfaces, etc. It is absolutely necessary to specify the latter’s command structure (plug-in position, etc.).
Generally, the more specific the information, the easier it is to preserve the object and ensure its
authenticity.
operating system
Describe the version of the current operating system (oS). If possible, note the first oS to have
ever been used for the artwork’s application (first installation). This is important with regard to the
technical context and the genesis/development of the artwork.
Work files44
It is important to document in detail the list of all available work files and all further data and information that were provided by the artist. The following information must be recorded: title/file name;
specification of the software type used and its corresponding function; exchangeable/related software or hardware components; remarks about the license under which the work was produced; if
possible, identify all possible alternative software tools/components that, for example, may have
been used in earlier versions.
Explicit dependencies
This is a very important area in which dependencies that exist within the artwork are classified.
we distinguish between explicit dependencies resulting from, for example, a specific hardware or
software or the addressing of web services (for net art), and implicit dependencies.
Implicit dependencies
These frequently result from conceptual decisions or from chain of events within a program’s process structure.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
CHAPTER 4: CoNSERVATIoN CoNCEPT AND RISk MANAGEMENT
The conservation concept is based on a precise analysis of the work’s core and of its individual components.45 It discusses possible stabilization measures and weighs the necessity of conservational
and restoration measures (see Hummelen and Sillé (1999); kucsma (2008); lauterbach (2010);
wijers (2010); Thibodeau (2002)). frequently, there will be several options, and it is necessary to
distinguish between the best possible and the minimally necessary options.
Because digital works of art allow for several approaches, and because the measures are often not
performed on master files but on working copies (cf. the process definition given below), we may
consider several parallel approaches.
Please note that a risk assessment must be carried out individually for all components mentioned
above. furthermore, a final comprehensive risk analysis is necessary. contrary to the default risk, as
was already determined for the individual components, here the interaction of the different components comes into focus. In this way, it is possible to weigh priorities and gauge future procedures as
well as possible contingencies.
In order to ensure that a “return to 0/initial state” is possible at all times, backup copies must be
stored in a safe location and remain untouched. Please note: one only ever works with the copy,
never with the “original” artwork, which is stored in an “audit-proof” filing system. An audit-proof
filing system ensures that an object will not be altered or lost once it has been stored in the archive
(see below).
CHAPTER 5: DoCUMENTATIoN oF TREATMENT
The documentation must transparently record every intervention and operation. Here, it makes
sense to use the structural analysis of the work that was developed as part of the conservation
concept and often results in a graphical representation, and to add a list of the measures performed.
Another important feature of digital objects is that they lend themselves to the possibility of a
primary documentation, that is, documentation of the (original) object on the code level. This must
be done by an expert who is proficient in programming in order to avoid irreparable damage to the
object. Because of the possibility of “out-commenting” certain areas of a software, changes can be
inserted right next to the original code and labeled accordingly. This double structure of the old
code and the stabilized version can be rearranged as necessary so that either the original or the
updated version of the artwork is used.
CHAPTER 6: RECoMMENDATIoNS FoR FURTHER TREATMENT
The subsequent treatment identifies the artwork’s weak spots and its fragility as well as the monitoring routines.
APPENDIx WITH REFERENCES
References may include detailed information and analysis protocols, the artist’s biography, a bibliography, an exhibition history, correspondence, and additional professional literature.
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organization and Planning
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The steps sketched above can be combined to form a relatively simple working
model whose handling relies on the established OAIS model (Open Archival
Information System). OAIS uses the term SIP (submission information package)
to refer to archival material that, having been submitted to the owner, museum,
or archive, must be inventoried or enhanced with specific metadata to create
an archive master (International Organization for Standardization, 2012). Similarly, digital conservation produces a master copy only when the object is first
recorded; this is then stored, preferably in an audit-proof filing system, as an
archival information package (AIP). Audit-proof filing is a technical term that
describes the most secure and reliable form of archiving documents.46 Working copies and master copies that are produced at later stages are stored in the
archive either before changes are made, or as soon as a condition has been
achieved in which the object is worthy of documentation or preservation.
In order to be able to distinguish at all times between the source (original),
the backup and working copies, and the object currently in use (the dissemination information package, or DIP), we recommend archiving/storing the
digital masters and DIPs, together with the documentation, in an audit-proof
8.10
Schema of the documentation procedure (by Tabea Lurk)
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
archive; for example, in the institution’s administration department. As most
damages are the result of negligent handling, this makes the whole procedure
more reliable.
The procedure, then, is as follows: after the initial backup of all digital
files/data carriers (hard drive of the main computer, all CDs/DVDs/floppy
disks/other hard drives/flashcards, etc.), two copies are made: one copy, as the
archive master, the other becomes the working copy which is used for identifying the core components.47 This backup procedure should not be performed
on the original, nor on the initial backup. If possible, the initial backup should
be made without connecting the computer to a power supply or letting it boot
automatically.48
The next step is the analysis of the computer system, that is, the location
of the artwork in its technological environment. If the artist does not provide
information about the artwork’s core components (for example, in the form of
a backup copy), the analysis can be conducted by means of the exclusion principle. This means looking for those components that differ from an equivalent “empty” basic installation.
As soon as the relevant hard- and software (interfaces) have been identified,
a risk assessment must be made in order to identify unstable components. We
recommend a prioritization beginning with the most fragile components (for
example, hardware obsolescence -> software interface -> system libraries, etc.)
The next step is providing an executable working copy (AIP1). After that,
the original can be booted and compared to the working copy. This is followed
by stabilization measures and the establishment of monitoring routines.
In the monitoring process, all components are checked for functionality;
it is also necessary to assess whether the risk of possible damage has changed
in the meantime. In the above image (Fig. 8.10), the loop arrow on the left represents the repetition of the process each time something has changed.49
case Study: Liquid Perceptron
The following excerpt of a conservation file applies to the above schema for
the stabilization of an artwork and an artistic working tool.50
Description: Liquid Perceptron (2000) is an interactive computer-based installation by Hans Diebner, which simulates a dynamic, neural network. The neural cells are represented by pixels in a two-dimensional field, which displays
an image of the user on a screen. The cells are stimulated by the user’s movements and trigger wavelike structures/movements, thus irritating the simple
video image (feedback) (see Fig. 8.11 in color section).
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Form and structure of the artwork: Liquid Perceptron analyzes data from a video source and generates a real-time image from it. This is projected onto the
wall as a full-screen projection. The only specific installation instruction by
the artists is to fill the entire wall (see Fig. 8.12 in color section).
Materials and Techniques Applied: Because of the scientific character of the
simulation, the source code, consisting of a looped differential equation (LiqPerFastClean.cc), was identified as the artwork’s core.51 The artwork is based
on a Linux platform; the external hardware (camera, beamer) can be replaced
without interfering with its meaning.
The following comparison of the original structure and the stabilized structure of the artwork summarizes the graphical schemas that were described in
detail in the complete documentation file.52
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8.13
Work logic of Liquid
Perceptron; the top
diagram depicts the
initial state, while
the bottom diagram
illustrates the stabilized
version (by Jürgen Enge,
2010).
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
As can be seen from the comparative schema of the work’s architecture in Fig.
8.13 (top: initial state, bottom: present state), the V4L1 (video for Linux 1) function was replaced by the current version of the same library (V4L2). This supports the usage of different video camera interfaces like Firewire (IEEE1394)
and TCP/IP camera signals. In order to feed the video signal into the work core
(LiqPerFastClean.cc), a new video grabber subsystem was implemented. This
communicates with the V4L2 module and is based on a C++ class library. Open
source components for grabbing video signals from various devices and for
the decoding of the raw image frames are conducive to sustainability.
conclusion
Preserving computer-based art is no trivial matter, and requires a methodological approach and transparent documentation. Where these requirements
are met, artworks can be preserved for the future in a careful and sustainable
manner. Thus digital conservation relies less on craftsmanship or on electrotechnical engineering than on an understanding of mathematics and logic
which emerges at the interface of informatics and the humanities. In accordance with the standards established in 1994 by UNESCO’s Nara Conference,
this approach enables minimally invasive stabilization measures and avoids
the inadvertent creation of dimension-reducing documentation.53
For this reason, artists should be asked for the source codes of the artworks that are to be preserved as soon as they are acquired; otherwise, seemingly simple applications may quickly present significant conservational
challenges. Aside from accessing the source code, a work-specific analysis and
a listing of the components means, metaphorically speaking, looking behind
the screen’s surface. A careful approach to the preservation of artworks, however, also implies the possibility of working in parallel and of employing alternative procedures and, in this respect, differs from classical conservation. The
above account has detailed the conditions that are necessary for this approach
to be successful.
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8.3
CASE STUDy: THE CONSERVATION OF MEDIA ART AT TATE
An interview with Pip Laurenson (Head of Time-based Media
Conservation at Tate54) by Julia Noordegraaf55
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Tate’s collection of time-based media art currently consists of approximately
350 works,56 the majority of which have been collected from the 1990s onwards.
Most of these works are artist’s installations rather than single-channel pieces.57 Tate is actively collecting and acquires about 50 time-based media works
a year, which averages out at about one a week. The first permanent post for
time-based media conservation at Tate was established in 1996; this grew to
become a dedicated conservation section in 2004. Time-based media conservation is part of the Collection Care Division, and is responsible for the conservation of all works in the collection, for registration, art handling, photography
and Tate’s library and archive.58 Tate’s Conservation Department is divided
into conservation sections for paintings and frames, sculpture, paper, timebased media, and conservation science. The guiding principle underpinning
conservation at Tate is the idea that all works in the collection should receive
the same standard of care regardless of medium. Within a contemporary art
collection, this drives innovation to find solutions to challenges presented by
new materials and new forms of artistic practice.
There are currently three time-based media conservators at Tate and one
conservation technician. The conservators divide their time between work
related to acquisitions, exhibitions and displays, loans, and collection care.
Whilst the point of acquisition is critical for all works entering the collection, it
is perhaps particularly so for time-based media works of art. One could say that
at this point a work is prepared for its future life in the collection. When a work
is acquired, information is gathered that will guide its care and display. Copies
of the media elements are made in different formats for access, display, and
archival purposes and information from the artist and their representatives
is gathered which helps to establish what it is that is important to preserve.
Conservators also consider any equipment needed to display the work and its
significance for the meaning and identity of the work in order to determine
its status and whether spares should be acquired. Tate’s conservation department hold detailed information in the conservation files but core collection
management data related to each component is also held on the collection
management system. The cycle of display is invaluable for time-based media
works of art as it provides moments of close engagement, and re-engagement,
with the work. Many of these works are installed slightly differently each time
they are displayed – perhaps because of technological changes or changes in
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
response to a space. For each display, conservators work with those involved in
the exhibition, often the artist as well as the curator, to provide detailed floor
plans and specifications. The conservation of time-based media installations
goes beyond the care of the material components to also consider how best
to preserve the performative aspects of the work which are only fully realized
when it is installed. A proactive approach to the conservation of time-based
media works of art is essential to their care. So in addition to the reactive work
of responding to the loan, acquisition, and display programs, conservation
has a structured stream of activity that maintains maintenance and migration
schedules for the range of works in their care. This includes migrating video
onto new stock and new formats, preparing items for cold storage, monitoring
vulnerable software-based works, and managing the potential impact of and
increased rarity of equipment.59
Laurenson trained as an object conservator at the City & Guilds of London Art School with a specialization in the conservation of polychrome, wood,
and stone objects. She came to Tate as a sculpture conservator under a Henry
Moore Foundation internship in 1992. During the period of her internship,
Tate acquired Bruce Nauman’s Violent Incident (1986). Tate’s acquisition procedures for works of other media being accessioned into the collection were
already highly developed, however, when working on this piece she realized
there was little established to guide the acquisition of time-based media artworks. With a travel scholarship from the Gabo Trust she visited museums
and artists who were working with time-based media to explore possible
strategies for their conservation. Laurenson indicates that during this time
she learned a great deal from the artist Bill Viola, who is deeply concerned
about the preservation of his work and was supportive in helping her to understand what needed to be established at Tate. Laurenson’s appointment as a
conservator of time-based media coincided with the moment the collection
of time-based media started to rapidly grow. She gradually developed a conceptual framework within which she could operate, particularly around the
challenges of preserving installations (see, amongst others, Laurenson, 1999,
2004, and 2006). Inspired by Jonathan Ashley-Smith’s book Risk Assessment for
Object Conservation (1999) she developed an approach for assessing the most
significant risks for time-based media works, for example, the risks posed by
the failure and obsolescence of particular technologies, within the context of a
work specific analysis to understand where value and meaning lies.
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where Time-Based Media Conservation Is Different:
A Need to Think Ahead
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In Laurenson’s view, the practice of conserving time-based media works is
firmly embedded in the wider practice of fine arts conservation. She indicates
that in the context of contemporary art museums, conservators often act as
brokers between a number of different people and activities as part of the
team that facilitates various events, from acquisitions and loans to exhibitions
and displays. The nature of time-based media does however impose a slightly
different focus for conservation; where the traditional emphasis might be on
technical skill associated with treatment, the focus of time-based media conservation is on understanding what is important to preserve both in terms of
the tangible and the intangible from the moment of acquisition. As Laurenson indicates, the conservation of time-based media works entails a need to be
pre-emptive because ensuring that a work is displayable in the future requires
action to be taken as early as possible in the life of a work. Whereas for other
types of art ‘benign neglect’ might not be immediately problematic, in the
case of time-based media works this is not an option. Collecting detailed documentation on the concept, significance, production, display, and experience
of the work is of crucial importance in order to be able to preserve and exhibit
it in the future.
Conservators at Tate are deeply involved in the collection process. The
curators identify and select key works, write interpretative texts indicating the
importance of the works in the context of the collection, and work closely with
the artist and the gallery on the details of the acquisition. However, it is the
conservators and registrars who are charged with the responsibility of how
practically to bring the works into the collection to enable them to begin their
life in the museum, ensuring that the museum has what is needed to keep
them displayable. Tate is a demanding environment for display, for example
at Tate Modern time-based media works need to be fully operational for 70
hours per week.
When a time-based media work is considered for Tate’s collection an
assessment is made to establish clearly what it is that is being acquired, what
is important to the conservation of that work and how it was made. Often, this
is the first time artists are asked these detailed questions, especially if it concerns works from the 1960s or 1970s that were not made for the art market
or museum system. Established artists, such as Bill Viola or Gary Hill, have
large studios that support their practice and can provide detailed instructions
about their installation. In other cases works may be more “thinly specified”
(Laurenson 2006) and the artist may be less concerned with the production
of the complete and tightly defined works. In other cases a work might be
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
acquired early in its life and the technical details may not be fully resolved.
This was the case with the acquisition of Carlos Garaicoa’s Letter to the Censors (2003), a sculptural installation consisting of a scale model of a fictional
Cuban cinema theater in which a montage of the opening credits of censored
films is screened (see Fig. 8.14 in color section). There were some practical
problems with elements of the work overheating, presenting the potential risk
of damage to the model. In addition, in order to see the work in all its detail it
is necessary to get so close that the very act of viewing creates risks of damage,
especially at Tate Modern where visitor numbers exceed five million a year. In
this case, conservators and conservation technicians worked closely with the
artist to resolve any outstanding issues, coming up with solutions to various
practical problems, such as designing a special crate for the model and determining various conditions for the display of the work.60
As Laurenson indicates, in cases like this a time-based media conservator
should adopt a more process-oriented model of documentation, whereby the
museum stays in dialogue with the artist in understanding how the work may
evolve over time while still remaining true to its conceptual core.61 This balance, between allowing for evolution while still paying attention to the integrity of the work, is a core challenge in the contemporary practice of time-based
media conservation.
The conservator as Broker: collaborating with Artists
Laurenson acknowledges that for many artists understanding the role of
museum staff, in particular conservators can be difficult; specifically in the
delineation of roles between the conservator and the artist or studio when
dealing with works which are not fully technically resolved. She rejects the
sometimes voiced opinion that these ways of working appear to reposition
the conservator as co-author of an artwork.62 In Laurenson’s view, conservators are working in a professional context, acting as brokers between the artist
and the museum in order to facilitate certain technical aspects of integrating
works into the collection when a work is first acquired. In this context, she
sees the role of the conservator as a facilitator and the conservation of timebased works as a process where decisions are based on a dialogue between the
artist and the museum staff.63
As Laurenson indicates, exhibition plays an important role in the conservation of time-based media. The first installation of a new work in a museum exhibition may be the first time the artist experiences the work as fully
installed. In fact, the exhibition of the work is the only moment it really exists
as a whole: the synergy between sound, image, and environment that charac-
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terizes a work in its installed form disappears when the work is dismantled
and stored.64 Although the inaugural exhibition may be an important point
of reference for later exhibitions and for conservation decisions, a work may
also evolve either to a fixed form or to an identity that is more fluid. Because of
the link to the performative in the display of works as installed events in the
gallery, the concept of the “original” that is so prevalent in traditional conservation does not operate in the same way for time-based media works. Tracking
the different iterations of a work – its manifestation in exhibitions at different
places and moments in time – provides a frame of reference for future conservation and display decisions (see also Jones and Muller, 2008). During the
lifetime of the artist, he or she is one of the major stakeholders in decisions
about conservation and display. Once the artist is no longer around, one can
use this frame of reference to “intelligently install the work,” as Laurenson
describes it.
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Challenges in the Preservation of Time-based Media works
Time-based media conservators are currently caught between two equally
urgent priorities: dealing with older technologies and issues around obsolescence, and addressing new challenges presented by software-based art.
Despite the urgency of the questions raised, it remains difficult to secure
research funding to develop sustainable solutions to these challenges.
With regard to the management of older technologies used in the production and display of time-based media works of art in Tate’s collection, the disappearance of the knowledge on how to handle that technology is perhaps as
great a challenge as the obsolescence of the technology itself (see also Laurenson 2010). A particularly apt example is the collection of works based on 35mm
slides. These works are a cause of concern, especially since in the summer of
2010 Kodak announced the discontinuation of the production of Ektachrome
35mm slide duplication stock and can offer no replacement for this product.
This is a good example of the fact that the preservation of technology-based
works is often at odds with developments in a commercially driven industry.
Laurenson indicates that, as with all time-based media works, a first step
is to establish the role, significance and function of the technology in the artwork. In the case of works based on 35mm slides, some artists have used this
technology because at the time it was the most easily available material for
their purposes. For these works the artist may be open to replacing the analogue 35mm slides with digital projections. Whilst a shift to digital technology might represent the loss of a link to a particular time and the role and
status of 35mm slide technology at that time, and also a significant change
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
in the look and feel of the work, the museum might value these links to the
original technology more highly than the artist. Other artists, however, value
the analogue photographic material for its specific characteristics, such as a
very high level of detail and a particularly rich rendition of color. A 35mm slide
creates an image by light passing through the transparency. This creates a still
image very unlike an image generated electronically; an electronic image is a
constantly changing scan, trace, or pulse of light and is therefore never truly
still. Tape slide technology is, for example, central to the practice of the artist
James Coleman. In her extraordinary essay “…And Then Turn Away?” Rosalind
Krauss explores the way in which Coleman has taken tape slide “from a commercial world of advertising or promotion and imported it into an aesthetic
context” not simply adopting this as a novel support but, she argues, inventing
a medium (Krauss 1997: 8). Structurally, the works of Coleman are dominated
not only by the luminous quality of slides as large projected images that slowly
dissolve and change: the medium and apparatus of tape slide is also significant in the circularity of the carousel, the choreographed rhythm of the images as they are repeated, and the way in which the voice-over works, or works
against, the images. In this case, therefore, the relationship of the medium to
the work of this artist is far from incidental or trivial.
Tina Weidner, a time-based media conservator at Tate, has invested a
great deal of time and attention acquiring in-depth knowledge about the
duplication of analogue slides, understanding all the parameters of working
with sets of old slide stock and collaborating with labs. Slide-based installations require a large number of duplicates to be produced whilst the work is
on display as the process of being projected causes the images to fade. Therefore, while master images can be preserved by cold storage, duplication is still
necessary to ensure the work remains displayable. In the near future, alternatives to traditional methods of slide duplication will have to be found in order
to be able to continue to show slides as 35mm transparencies. This requires
detailed and focused research to ensure that the aesthetic qualities of slidebased works are understood in order to fully comprehend what it is we are trying to preserve and evaluate alternative conservation strategies. As Laurenson
indicates, it is extremely difficult to obtain funding for this type of research;
however, Tate has recently been awarded a grant from the Esme Fairbairne
Foundation to pursue this work.
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New Challenges: From Analogue Film and Video to
Software-based works
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Laurenson explains that, contrary to film archives which may only hold an
occasional viewing of a specific film, Tate needs many prints in order to display film-based works, since 16mm film works might be on display for periods
of either six or twelve months or more and the lifetime of one print is only
a few weeks.65 Usually it is not possible to obtain the negative from the artist, so Tate acquires an inter-positive, two inter-negatives and two reference
prints, one from each inter-negative, as well as an artist’s proof supplied by
the artist as reference for the sound, color, and contrast. All of this material
is created when the work is acquired and is kept in a cold-storage facility. In
addition, they archive sound elements of the film as a digital file and an optical sound negative (Laurenson, 2011: 38). For the production of accurate and
high-quality prints from these materials, the time-based media conservation
department closely collaborates with a range of film laboratories in various
locations around the world who are still able to produce 16mm film.
For their video works, Tate has established what Laurenson describes as
an “orderly migration programme.” As with all the works in their collection,
time-based media conservators work with the artist to document the way in
which the piece was originally produced. This has become increasingly important now that artists can edit their video on laptops using a wide range of different technologies and software. The acquisition process, led by the conservator
Kate Jennings, therefore begins with a series of questions regarding how the
work was made. From this, a decision is made as to what is the most suitable
form for the work to be supplied from the artist to the museum. This is known
as the “artist-supplied master”: a version of the work that represents the best
available master. For example it may be a DV file within a QuickTime wrapper
or a digital Betacam tape. From this, Tate produces an archival master in an
uncompressed video format, which is migrated every seven years (although
previously this has been to D-5, a professional, uncompressed digital video
format, material is currently being moved to a file-based system). Uncompressed video is more resilient than compressed video as the greater redundancy of information helps to mitigate against errors. Uncompressed video
also creates less risk of errors arising should there be a change of compression
algorithms in a given migration path. This archival master is preserved alongside the native format in which the artist or their gallery supplied the video.
Tate is currently moving towards preserving uncompressed video as data
on servers and data-tape formats such as Linear Tape-Open (LTO). For this,
they are exploring the potential of using a system that has been developed by
the BBC called Ingex. Ingex is a suite of open source software applications
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
designed for low-cost flexible tapeless recording, both for television production and for archiving (ingex.sourceforge.net). The suitability of this system
for the preservation of Tate’s video collection is being explored alongside
other systems such as those which are based on the use of JPEG 2000.
Besides exploring digital data storage for video, Tate is also facing the challenges of preserving and exhibiting software-based works. Matters in Media
Art, a collaborative project funded by the New Art Trust between Tate, the
Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, is currently looking at both the requirements of a digital repository for
artworks and also the specific needs of software-based art. One of Tate’s timebased media conservators, Patricia Falcão, has conducted research into the
preservation of software-based artworks and is integrating the results of this
research into the conservation of the works in Tate’s collection. At present,
the museum is in the process of acquiring a work, one element of which is a
website: Sandra Gamarra’s website of the fictitious but highly realistic Lima
Museum of Contemporary Art, LiMAC (www.li-mac.org). This is a work in process, since the artist will continue to contribute and collaborate with others to
create content for the website as it evolves. Tate has formed an internal working group to address the challenges of collecting Internet artworks with staff
from the Information Systems Department, working closely with conservators
and registrars to identify and develop the necessary infrastructure and skills
needed in order to collect this type of work. The strategy being developed for
this work is to create a mirror website, for which the museum will secure the
assets, code and permissions from the artist, so that if a time comes when
the actual site is no longer available, the museum can use this mirror site to
ensure that the work will still be accessible to the public. Such an acquisition
again requires new expertise, for example an understanding of the structure
of servers and the dependencies and vulnerabilities of web-based artworks.
Laurenson sees the acquisition of a work like LiMAC as an opportunity to
find out what is involved in the display and conservation of this type of Internet-based work. At the same time, the knowledge and skills obtained from this
case study feed back into the bigger picture and informs the strategies for the
conservation of other similar works in the future.
The future of the Profession: Specialization
Laurenson indicates that it is difficult to generalize regarding the knowledge
and skills needed for the conservation of time-based media works. A basic
requirement is a good understanding of the broader context of conservation
as a profession – an understanding of the ethical principles underpinning
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conservation decision making, a structured approach to assessing risk and
the development of strategies for the long-term care of works of art and the
documentation of decisions made in the process of conservation. Laurenson
again stresses the importance of taking the long view, of understanding from
the start how these works might be maintained, how they should be revisited,
both during exhibition and storage.
Conservators of time-based media art are dealing with a wide range of
people and technologies – the field of expertise required is very broad and
extends beyond the heritage sector, into the broadcast and media industries,
for example. Therefore, it is crucial that time-based media conservators are
able to communicate with all kinds of specialists in many different fields,
such as technicians and computer programmers. Time-based media conservation is a rapidly evolving profession; dependent on a rapidly changing
technological environment and emerging artistic practice. Time-based media
conservators therefore have a steep learning curve throughout their career; in
learning about new technologies, responding to changes in the industries on
which those technologies depend, and also in understanding new meanings
that technological mediums take on and the ways in which they are harnessed
and exploited by artists. Often these conservators are dealing with problems
for which there is little precedent within conservation.
Finally, even within the rather young profession of time-based media
conservation Laurenson observes a gradual specialization towards certain
types of time-based media works, such as analogue or digital ones. At Tate,
for example, Tina Weidner has developed a thorough expertise in analogue
slides and film. She collaborates with a range of professionals who work with
film and photography, including those who work within laboratories and in
the maintenance and production of equipment. It is Laurenson’s expectation
that this tendency towards specialization will only expand in the near future.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
NOTES
*
Chapter 8.1 was jointly written by Alessandro Bordina and Simone Venturini.
Together, they wrote Introduction; Simone Venturini wrote the sections on film
materials and Alessandro Bordina wrote the sections on video materials.
1
The analytical proposals in this musicological field become useful in the area of cinematography and video, see Orcalli (2006: 17): “The study and remediation of audio
documents includes both the document’s internal history (that is the set of transformations of the document in the process of making and transmitting the recorded
sound) and its external history (or rather the characteristics of the materials, of the
systems and the technological devices that produced it and made it accessible).”
2
3
Compare with the “cultural history” outlined in Cherchi Usai (2001: 1027, and 2000).
The canonical aims of film restoration, as they are theorized and can be found in
the practice, coincide with the reproduction of the state of the copy (“the unrestored film as it has come to us”), the first public screening (the opening night:
the film as it was seen by its first audiences”), or other confirmed historic occurrences, the will of the author (“the film that its creator intended to make”) and
the adaptation to contemporary taste (“a film that keeps in mind a modern audience and the way we may see things”). In musicology the aims and approaches to
sound documents are partly the same as the documentary, sociological, reconstructive, and aesthetic approaches. See, respectively, Bowser (2006: 38-39), and
Orcalli, (2006). The restoration practices involve other issues relevant to ethics
and documentation, since they record (and at times sacrifice) the original material according to instances generated in the present, with aims of communication.
The politics of access collide with the long-term preservation practices adopted to
stabilize magnetic tapes, for example, or to postpone the difficulties and aporiae
of recovery to future stages and more advanced technology.
4
See Segre (1979: 58-64 in particular).
5
This study must always be associated with the analysis of film-related materials. A
pioneering text (the first version dates back to the 1950s), which is essential in identifying the materials of early cinema and, in a more general sense, to understand
the “evidential paradigm” at the basis of the method of analysis, is Brown (1990).
6
The following books can be considered useful manuals: Farinelli and Mazzanti
(1994); Read and Meyer (2000); National Film Preservation Foundation (2004).
7
See the “critical analysis of materials” which is described and summarized by
Farinelli and Mazzanti (1994).
8
For a broader description, in terms of history and examples of the various elements of the classes that are quickly indicated here, such as color, see chapter 7.1.
9
A quick way is by looking up the guides to the identification of video systems;
some of them can be found on the web. The Videotape Identification and Assessment Guide Texas Commission on the Arts (http://www.arts.state.tx.us/video/pdf/
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video.pdf), the Video Format Identification Guide (http://videopreservation.
conservation-us.org/vid_id/index.html), and the database of the Video History
project (http://www.experimentaltvcenter.org/history-tools, last access: 23 October 2010) are the most complete.
10 For example, a U-matic tape that was produced before the production of SP
recording systems can be used with SP recording systems.
11 Different brands of tapes react in a different way to the preservation environmental conditions. For example, the Sony ½-inch tapes seem to have more problems
relating to the hydrolysis of the binder and the loss of the lubricant.
12 This division is well known and used in Italy. It has been recently used again by
Wallmüller (2007). It should be emphasized that in recent years American literature proposed again part of the European scientific tradition, French and Italian
in particular.
13 The Image Permanence Institute describes the three categories of “environmen-
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tally induced decay” as follows: “Biological Decay. Biological decay includes all
the living organisms that can harm media. Mould, insects, rodents, bacteria, and
algae all have a strong dependence on temperature and RH [...] Chemical Decay.
Chemical decay is due to spontaneous chemical change. [...] Chemical decay is a
major threat to media that have color dyes and/or nitrate or acetate Decay Caused
by Improper Storage [...] Mechanical Decay. Mechanical forms of decay are related
to the changes in size and shape of water-absorbing materials such as cellulosic
plastic film supports or the gelatin binder in photographic materials. RH is the
environmental variable that determines how much water is absorbed into collection objects” (Adelstein, 2009: 2).
14 For a definition of the errors, see Farinelli and Mazzanti (2001), and Canosa
(2001). Canosa, in particular, clarified how the regime variants belong to the
regime of the original, whilst the errors belong to the regime of the copy. The
methodology of the audio restoration adopts similar, but not identical, subdivisions. In this field, the defects roughly correlate to the category of “involuntary
alterations” that result from imperfections and distortions in the recording
system or incorrect settings in the recording. The intentional alterations relate
instead to the equalization phase.
15 National Fire Protection Association (1994): “Stage 1: Film has an amber discoloration with fading of the image. Faint noxious odor. Rust ring may form on inside
of metal film cans. Stage 2: Emulsion becomes adhesive and the film tends to
stick together during unrolling. Faint noxious odor. Stage 3: Portions of the film
are soft, contain gas bubbles (nitrate honey), and emit a noxious odor. Stage 4:
Entire film is soft and welded into a single mass, the surface may be covered with
viscous froth, and a strong noxious odor is given off. Stage 5: Film mass degenerates partially or entirely into a shock-sensitive brownish acrid powder.” See also
the 2011 update of the same publication.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
16 For a first approach to vinegar syndrome see Reilly (1993) and Gamma Group
(2000).
17 “1. The film begins to smell like vinegar. 2. The film base begins to shrink. As the
base shrinks irregularly, the film resists being laid flat. It curls and warps along
both length and width. 3. The film loses flexibility. 4. The emulsion may crack and
eventually flake off. 5. White powder may appear along the edges and surface of
the film” (National Film Preservation Foundation, 2004: 14).
18 See the sanitary and diagnostic analysis of the Danish Film Institute’s collection,
published in Nissen et al. (2002).
19 See note 20, and National Film Preservation Foundation (2004: Fig. 4).
20 Nitrate ISO recommendations: maximum temperature: 36°F (2°C). RH from 20%
to 30%. ISO 10356 Cinematography: storage and handling of nitrate-base motionpicture films (Geneva: International Organization for Standardization), 1996.
Acetate and Polyester ISO recommendations: maximum temperature depends on
maximum RH: 14°F (-10°C) maximum temperature for 50% maximum RH; 27°F
(-3°C) maximum temperature for 40% maximum RH; 36°F (2°C) maximum temperature for 30% maximum RH. ISO 18911 Imaging materials, processed safety
photographic films, storage practices (Geneva: International Organization for
Standardization), 2000, revised by ISO 18911: 2010 (Adelstein 2009).
21 The photographic activity test (PAT) is an international standard (ISO 18916:
2007) developed by the Image Permanent Institute.
22 See note 20.
23 See note 5.
24 Restoring post-war DUTCH EXPERIMENTAL films, project organized by the former Nederlands Filmmusueum, now the Eye Film Institute, and in particular by
Simona Monizza in collaboration with Guy Edmonds and Daniel Meiller.
25 The EDCine – Enhanced Digital Cinema project finance by the European Commission in the 6th Framework Programme (http://www.edcine.org).
26 For an update on the state of the digital camera and digital preservation of cinema see also the recent Mazzanti (2011). See also: Digital Agenda for European
Film Heritage, “Challenges of the Digital Era for Film Heritage Institutions”.
Http://ec.europa.eu/avpolicy/docs/library/studies/heritage/final_report_en.pdf ;
International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF), Technical Commission, “Recommendation on the deposit and acquisition of D-cinema elements for long term
preservation and access v. 1.0 2012.09.02”. Http://www.fiafnet.org/commissions/
TC%20docs/D-Cinema%20deposit%20specifications%20v1%200%202010-0902%20final%201.pdf. Last access: 17 July 2012.
27 For example, the project PrestoSpace (http://prestospace.org) and Images for the
Future (http://imagesforthefuture.com/en); Europeana (http://www.europeana.
eu). Last access: 12 July 2011.
28 See the pioneering experiences of Eileen Bowser (2006) and several essays and
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reports on single restorations at the end of the 1990s. More recently, there have
been the restoration reports on Spione (Fritz Lang, 1928) and A Film Johnnie
(George Nichols, 1914). The fields of historic-critical texts and the documentary
hypertexts deserve a mention. See Bowser (1975), and the magazine Cinegrafie.
See also Wilkening (2010) and “A Film Johnnie restoration report” at http://
chaplin.bfi.org.uk/restoring/casestudy. Last access: 12 July 2011. For the documentation of restoration practices, see also important works such as Canosa,
Farinelli, and Mazzanti (1997) and Kromer (2010).
29 In 1991 Jim Linder coordinated the intervention of video art sources recovery
for the Andy Warhol Foundation; the following year the Netherlands Media Art
Institute/Montevideo, within a conservation project for the modern art of the
Deltaplan Culture Conservation, started reformatting, for preservation purposes
some tapes belonging to the Dutch institute; in 1996, Video Data Bank finished
the preservation of 65 titles from the Castelli-Sonnabend collection.
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30 One of the first conferences to propose a debate on the need for video art preservation, called the Symposium on Video Preservation, was organized by the Media
Alliance at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1991. See Boyle (1993).
Various other technical manuals followed this text by Boyle, see Miller Hocking
and Jimenez (2000), Hones (2002), and Wheeler (2002).
31 Tapes that are particularly affected by hydrolysis can require more time; checking
the weight before and after baking will show the quantity of water that has evaporated in the process.
32 The effectiveness of baking is limited to a few days, after which the effects of the
procedure are nil.
33 Alternative treatments have been proposed by: Marie O’Connell (using an isopropyl drip), see http://richardhess.com/notes/2006/03/09/wet-playing-of-reel-tapeswith-loss-of-lubricant-a-guest-article-by-marie-oconnell. Last access: 23 October
2011; Roger Nichols (using the tape vacuum system), see http://rnmastering.com/
VacuumPack.html. Last access: 23 October 2011; and Kromer (2008).
34 For a risk benefit analysis of wet/dry cleaning, see Boyle (1993: 24).
35 For a first approach to the correct conservation format and instruments, see
Wheeler (2008).
36 “The various conservation and/or restoration options are considered within a
framework of risks, meaning and limitations. In this way, technical possibilities
might yield to ethical or economic considerations, or a treatment might be abandoned in the light of ideological priorities,” Foundation for the Conservation of
Modern Art (2005: 168).
37 See the models of intervention proposed in the following European experiences:
Inside Installations. Preservation and Presentation of Installation Art (2004-2007)
coordinated by the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage (http://www.
inside-installations.org/project/detail.php?r_id=643&ct=introduction, see also
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
Scholte and Wharton, 2011); the Media Art Resource Website created by Electronic Art Intermix in collaboration with Independent Media Arts Preservation (IMAP)
(http://www.eai.org/resourceguide/preservation.html); and the Variable Media
Network coordinated by Jon Ippolito and Alain Depocais (http://www.
variablemedia.net/). Last access: 23 November 2010.
38 Compare the preservation and restoration experiences carried out by La Camera
Ottica laboratories and CREA at the University of Udine on video sources of the
Venice Biennale (2004-2011); by the Videobase group (2009-2011); and on the
video archive Anna by Alberto Grifi (2011) documented in Saba (2007 and 2009).
39 Some authors have suggested supplementing text- and image-based documentation
with videographic or even computer- and net-based documentation. See, for example, V2_ (2007), Wijers (2007). Others examine more methodological aspects, like
Cramer (2002), Lavoie (2004), Van Saaze (2009), Obermann (2009), Dekker (2010).
40 See, for example, Inside Installations (2007), International Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art (2008), Documentation and Conservation of the
Media Arts Heritage (2009). A clear account of the preservation procedures can be
found in Lee et al. (2002).
41 Until now, by contrast, the software components of computer-based artworks are
often copied to equivalent hardware via cloning; these procedures and transformation processes resemble an (unreflected) black box procedure. However, if the
reproduction hardware plays a crucial role, such as in Cory Arcangel’s famous
Nintendo Game Cartridge Hacks that was created in the 1970s and 1980s with obsolete hardware, this then constitutes the artwork’s core.
42 While some artists consistently work with the most recent tools available, others
make a point of deliberately using obsolete software because, for example, they
may wish to critically question the immense speed of technological development.
43 See, for example, the different issues of the Journal on Computing and Cultural
Heritage, Parikka (2007), and http://computerarcheology.com/ (last access: 21
September 2012).
44 According to Matters in Media Art (2007), these “work files” are also referred to as
“assets” in the framework of the acquisition process.
45 This aspect can be illustrated with the help of schematic representations, examples of which are provided at the end of this chapter.
46 For security reasons we would suggest audit-proof filing. This ensures that even if
someone accessed the stored documents – as should be possible for the revision
of the material, for example – he/she technically cannot manipulate the documents without being caught.
47 While a flawed procedure may result in a dimension-reduced object that would
then merely have a documentary function, a total loss frequently occurs only
when the computer is started up again after it has been transported or stored for a
long period of time.
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48 A backup of the carefully dismantled hard drives can, for example, be made
with the help of Clonezilla. This process requires a great deal of care, especially
in determining the correct copying direction; otherwise, the object may be
destroyed beyond repair (if in doubt, consult with a computer scientist).
49 Pitschmann (2001) has developed a concept for sustainable collections of web
content. See also Frasco (2009).
50 The complete documentation of “Liquid Perceptron” will eventually be made
available through the INCCA network, see http://incca.org/.
51 The artist is a physicist. The artwork can therefore also be understood as a comprehensive study of his scientific research. This becomes obvious in the programming’s structure whose modeling relies on Fortran.
52 See chapters 4 and 5 of the complete documentation file that will be made available on the INCCA website, see note 21.
53 The Nara Document on Authenticity, passed by UNESCO in 1994 and included in the
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ICOMOS guidelines in 1995, examines the relevance of historical circumstances
for the authentic preservation of cultural goods (Lemaire and Stovel, 1994).
54 Pip Laurenson changed positions shortly after this interview to become the Head
of Collection Care Research at Tate.
55 The interview took place at Tate Britain, London, on 11 October 2010.
56 As of October 2010.
57 Single channel video works from distributors usually come under license. For a
work to be part of Tate’s collection it is legally necessary for Tate to hold legal title
to the work. It is therefore not possible for Tate to acquire licensed works into its
main collection.
58 As Laurenson indicates, the position of time-based media conservation within
the division of Collection Care is quite distinctive in that in many modern art
museums, for example the Pompidou in Paris, the conservation of time-based
media is not done by the collection department but by the media art department,
where curators of media art have developed quite a detailed knowledge on the
preservation of time-based media works.
59 Tate is a family of four museums which are served by a central collection. Tate
also loans out many of its works to other museums and exhibitions.
60 Because of the great level of detail and care with which this work was acquired
Garaicoa himself jokingly referred to this work as the “Mona Lisa of Havana.” See
http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/majorprojects/garaicoa/themes_1.
htm.
61 For a discussion of this approach in relation to Garaicoa’s installation, see http://
www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/majorprojects/garaicoa/themes_1.htm.
62 This point is often made in relation to curating media art. For example, new
media art curator Christiane Paul states that: “The role of a new media curator is
increasingly less that of ‘caretaker’ of objects (as the original meaning of the word
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
‘curator’ suggests) and more that of a mediator and interpreter or even producer”
(Paul, 2008: 65. See also Cook, 2008: 42).
63 For an example of how the collaboration with an artist can take place, see the discussion of the conservation of Tony Oursler’s Autochthonous AAAAHHHH (1995) in
PACKED (2010).
64 For a detailed description of the storage of the various parts of installations at
Tate, see PACKED (2010).
65 The exact number of weeks depends on the length of the film, the conditions of
the gallery, and how well the equipment is maintained.
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PART IV
aCCess, reuse, aNd eXHibitioN
INTRODUCTION
Barbara Le Maître
This fourth part of this book, which focuses on what is generally referred to as
“exhibition strategies,” is structured in two parts. First, the ten contributions
that make up chapter 9 explore the diversity of setups or principles of exhibition relating to film images that left behind their original cinematographic
context (and its regime of projection in a theater with the lights off) to move
towards museum spaces; or to works which come from the large and difficult
to define category that is sometimes called media art or even time-based art.
Second, Sarah Cook asks and discusses a fundamental question based on her
experience as a renowned freelance curator of media art: What now for curatorial practice?
Without going into the detail of the following texts, I should probably
emphasize an aspect which the outline given above pretends to conceal: even
though the works of media art and films “defecting to the museum” may
appear side by side in many exhibitions, even though they may be composed
in part or in whole of similar moving images, they still raise markedly different
issues. For lack of space I will mention just one of these, which is characteristic
and crucial.
As its name indicates, media art became established more or less under
the auspices of (contemporary) art, while cinema, if it may occasionally be
credited with artistic value, is not immediately (or exclusively) a product of art.
To put it better still: for film, entering the temples of art that are museums or
galleries implies a journey which could be described in the terms once used by
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André Malraux to refer to his “Musée imaginaire”:
To say that saints, Danaes, beggars, and jugs have become paintings, that
gods and Ancestors have become sculptures, is to say that all these figures have left the world in which they were created for our own world of
Art (which is not only the world of our art); it is to say that our Imaginary
Museum is founded on the metamorphosis of where the works it selects
belong.1
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In short, when film is exhibited as “Art” in the “art world,” for example, in a
museum, it breaks from its “original affiliation,” that is, the world of the film
industry. This is not to say that the film has no aesthetic or artistic value outside
of the museum. The problem raised here is institutional rather than aesthetic:
when presented in the “art world,” film brings up issues for the museum as an
institution. For their part, works of media art do not go on the same journey
to reach the temple of art, but they are also confronted with some problems
inherent in this temple: often contravening the criteria that define the traditional objects of art, these works do force the institution of the museum, or
any other party responsible for their presentation, to reconsider the ordinary
modalities of the exhibition as well as that of preservation and restoration,
incidentally.
Confronting moving images with different origins throughout this part
of the book, we do not mean to forget these differences. However, the stakes
are not so much about speculating on these differences as about questioning
the fact that, for film images as well as media art works, the exhibition is not selfevident.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
NOTE
1
This is Franck Le Gac’s translation of the original French quote: “Dire que les
saintes, les Danaés, les gueux et les pichets sont devenus des tableaux, que les
dieux et les Ancêtres sont devenus des sculptures, c’est dire que toutes ces figures
ont quitté, pour notre monde de l’Art (qui n’est pas seulement le monde de notre
art), celui dans lequel elles étaient créées ; que notre Musée Imaginaire se fonde
sur la métamorphose de l’appartenance des œuvres qu’il reticent” (Malraux, 1965
[1947]: 240).
REFERENCE
Malraux, André. Le Musée imaginaire. Paris: Gallimard: 1965 [1947].
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ACCESS, REUSE AND EXHIBITIoN
CHapter 9
Exhibition Strategies
INTRODUCTION
Barbara Le Maître and Senta Siewert
Titled Exhibition Strategies, this chapter is structured as a dialogue between, on
the one hand, a reasoned panorama of the contemporary presence of film in
museums and galleries and, on the other hand, a series of shorter approaches
concentrating on visual objects, more specific phenomena and issues. The latter aims to put into perspective the questions raised in the panorama, which
necessarily reach beyond the sole medium of film to affect the vast territory of
media art.
At stake beneath what Philippe Dubois qualifies as “the cinema effect in
contemporary art” (see his contribution to this chapter) is, first and foremost,
the overview of the wide-ranging phenomenon of migration by which cinema,
exceeding its traditional apparatus, took its independence from the darkness
of theaters in which it had been projected until then to enter museum spaces
where it is now exhibited. This phenomenon of migration is considered within
a historical perspective (where video, as it turns out, played the part of a decisive relay between cinema and the museum) as well as an aesthetic perspective (in which changes involving the primary apparatus of cinema, spectators
included, or the film-object, are traced).
Secondly, three sets of texts complement, comment, expand on, or clarify
the questions already raised. The first set, entitled Exhibiting Images in Movement, articulates contemporary as well as less recent instances of the problem. Indeed, some exhibition choices recently made by the ZKM – Center for
Art and Media Karlsruhe (Claudia d’Alonzo and the exhibition Mindframes –
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310 |
Media Study at Buffalo 1973-1990, for instance) stand to benefit from a comparison with principles of arrangement preceding them, those implemented
by Dominique Païni as part of his programming work at the Cinémathèque
française, to mention but one example (see Stéphanie-Emmanuelle Louis’s
contribution to this chapter). Besides, once in the museum, film de facto finds
itself compared to one of the emblematic objects of the place, the painting;
the issue of “exhibited cinema” is thus also related to the predominant model
of painting (see Barbara Le Maître). This first set of texts proposes a kind of
travel in time, as the question of the exhibition of moving images changes
according to various technical or technological eras.
A second group of texts titled The Image Travelling Across Territories outlines the underpinnings of the contemporary economy (in the usual sense of
a distribution in social space) and geography of moving images. Some of the
themes thus approached are the passages between art – in the 1960s and the
1970s, this consisted of performance, installation, and conceptual art – and
cinema (Ariane Noël de Tilly), before the circulation of music videos, from television to museums, festivals, and the Internet (Senta Siewert), down to the
multiple experiences of augmented reality and cyber technologies conducted
through the media lab V2_ Institute for Unstable Media (Arie Altena).
Finally, a third section titled New Dispositifs, New Modes of Reception
addresses the issue of changes in the cinematographic apparatus, raised by
Philippe Dubois, notably by offering analyses of particular works which, each
in its own way but always at a productive distance from cinema, rethink the
film-object, its regime of representation, its mode of perception, or the spectatorial body it implies (see Teresa Castro on the conversion of the film into
a map, or Térésa Faucon on the installation as an experience of montage).
Elena Biserna’s text proposes a reflection on the reinstallation of a work by
Max Neuhaus which, though it does not refer to the cinematographic apparatus, may be related to some film practices: indeed, one may wonder what the
contemporary practices of recreating installations or exhibitions share with
the traditional film remake. Beyond the analysis of specific cases, this part of
the book also features an essay on the online availability of representations of
video art (Renate Buschmann).
Last but not least, this chapter does not claim to be exhaustive, as many
other theoretical propositions and objects could have found a place in its construction. The structure has been laid out but it is not closed: it could integrate still more elements and is a lever more than a comprehensive survey. In
our view, it constitutes an instrument designed for appropriation and further
thought.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
9.1
FROM CINEMA TO THE MUSEUM: A STATE OF AFFAIRS
9.1.1
A “CINEMA EFFECT” IN CONTEMPORARy ART
Philippe Dubois
Two Symptomatic and Symmetrical Exhibitions at the
Centre Pompidou
There is ample evidence that international contemporary art, at all levels and
in every way, is being “invaded” by what I call a cinema effect; this can both
provoke irritation as well as pique curiosity, as shown by current events in the
arts. One example perfectly epitomizes this phenomenon: in April/May 2006,
the Centre Pompidou programmed two significant events, the quasi-symmetrical posture of which could not be ignored. The first of these events, an exhibition titled “Le Mouvement des images. Art, cinéma,” which was designed
and curated by art historian Philippe-Alain Michaud, aimed to revisit pieces
from the collections of the Musée national d’art moderne in light of forms and
“thoughts on cinema” – a light both real and virtual, literal and metaphorical.
The exhibition aimed to confront the following question: how, and to what
extent, may it be said that “the cinema” (insert as many quotation marks as
necessary here) more or less subterraneously has informed, fed, influenced,
worked through, inspired, and irrigated work (paintings, sculptures, photography, architecture, design, installations, performances, videos) by a number
of artists of the 20th century whose categorization “on the side of cinema”
was not necessarily evident (Matisse, Picasso, Barnett Newman, Frank Stella,
Bustamante, Robert Longo, Chris Burden, and Wolfgang Laib, to name a few).
The question – fascinating, open, bold – revolves around four structuring configurations, defined as four “components of cinema” (the run of the film in
the camera or the projector, projection itself, narration, and montage) and is
obviously very symptomatic of this “cinema effect” to which I refer. The exhibition was accompanied by a retrospective of experimental films, older as well
as more recent, which also belong to the museum’s collections and whose
screenings were programmed thematically according to the same configurations. At more or less the same time at the other end of the Centre Pompidou
– and it was not clear whether this was intentional or coincidental – another
exhibition, much anticipated and somewhat disappointing, was featured.
Entirely designed and developed by Jean-Luc Godard (with the assistance of
Dominique Païni), it was to be titled “Collage(s) de France. Archéologie du
cinéma, d’après JLG” in reference to/reverence for Godard’s long-time fantasy
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of an appointment to the Collège de France. The exhibition was eventually
renamed “Voyage(s) en utopie, Jean-Luc Godard, 1946-2006. À la recherche
d’un théorème perdu.” This filmmaker’s exhibition, the scenographic continuation of Histoire(s) du cinéma, is entirely structured as a huge installation,
dreamed and left unfinished, a kind of cacophonous construction site full of
traces and scattered fragments, bits of texts, images, and sounds (cinema,
painting, literature, music) presented in every possible way (models as a series
and even as a mise en abyme, more or less miniaturized screens in all positions, multiple reproductions, abandoned pieces, etc.). The whole organizes
a sort of collage of ruins out of a vision of cinema that is at once poetic, metaphysical, and geopolitical, and crossed by its countless relations to art. Here
again the exhibition is accompanied by a complete theatrical retrospective of
films by (and on, and with) the author. All in all, then, two major exhibitions,
almost simultaneously exhibited in the same major location, one that symbolizes art, each echoing the other like two sides of the same layered issue, that of
the complex relations between cinema and contemporary art. Put schematically: on the one hand, cinema in art, on the other hand, art in cinema. Art as
cinema, and cinema as art. Which is to say: “the cinema, contemporary art.”
It is the comma in that phrase that matters here, because it plays a pivotal role
between “cinema” and “contemporary art” and leaves the link between the
two poles open in all directions.
So let me repeat (and this is nothing new, dating back as it does to the
mid-1990s): the world of contemporary art is increasingly marked by the
insistent presence of what could be called a “cinema effect” both far-reaching and superficial, often monumental, fetishistic even, occasionally poetic,
sometimes intelligent, and possibly sensible. At any rate, this “cinema effect”
is extremely diversified, takes multiple forms, and operates at all levels (institutional, artistic, theoretical, or critical). What I would like to try and do in
this simple introductory presentation is to lay things out. Not analyze this or
that particular aspect or throw myself into this or that individual approach
(by a museum, an exhibition, an artist, an oeuvre). Rather, I only want to deal
with this “cinema effect” as a global phenomenon: to adopt a panoramic, categorical perspective, on the one hand, positing a framework and identifying
the main forms of this phenomenon; and on the other hand, to offer a few
thoughts on the historical and aesthetic causes and stakes it seems to entail.
This is an introductory text that sets up the context, in a way.1
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Exhibition Cinema? Post-cinema? Third Cinema? A Matter of
Territory, Identity, legitimization, Power, Gain, and loss
First, on an institutional (or socio-institutional) level – on which I will not
dwell – the pervasive resonance of this phenomenon, its omnipresence even,
asks questions both from cinema and from art. Questions of (respective) places. Questions which I will not take so much as questions “of trend” (trendy)
as questions as to “the world of art.” From the moment when, 15 years ago,
almost every major biennale (Venice, dokumenta, and others), every museum
(of every size, from the Centre Pompidou to the MAC in the small Belgian city
of Liège), every art center (such as the Villa Arson in Nice, Le Fresnoy in Tourcoing, Le Consortium in Dijon), and every more or less “trendy” art gallery
started systematically featuring exhibitions or works involving “the cinema”
in one way or another in its programming, it became evident that the stakes
went beyond works and approaches to include territories. It seems to me that
these are issues of territories (and therefore of a cartography of arts and of geostrategy), that is, issues of identity (of the cinema and of art) as well as reciprocal legitimation – and thus, of symbolic power.
Speaking of the exhibition of works involving “the cinema” in one way or
another calls for quotation marks, so uncertain are identities these days, with
mixes being the rule, sowing doubt and spreading confusion on the question
of the “nature” of phenomena attended to. For one of the central points of the
problem is there: is what we see in exhibitions (still) really “cinema”? Is it cinema as it “migrated,” as it has been said, leaving the darkness of “its” movie
theaters for the much brighter rooms of the museum? And, if that is the case,
what for, to what end? Or is it cinema which has been diverted, disowned,
transformed, metamorphosed? Into what? Is it a “beyond” or an “after” of cinema, as if cinema no longer was? Critics, ever prompt to react, or dramatize,
have in fact come up with various terms to refer to it: I seem to remember,
for instance, that Jean-Christophe Royoux was the first to use the expression “exhibition cinema” in the texts published in the periodical Omnibus
(the expression was reused for a while by several other critics or institutions,
from Régis Durand to Françoise Parfait, from Art Press to Art Forum, from the
Venice Biennale to the Kassel dokumenta, before it was dropped). The phenomenon was also talked of as “post-cinema,” which associated it with that of
rampant digitization, the DVD market, and the distribution of films over the
Internet. Pascale Cassagnau prefers the expression “troisième cinéma,” literally, “third cinema.”2 And the list goes on… Exhibition cinema, post-cinema:
labels do not matter. The issue raised is clearly that of the identity or nature of
“the cinema,” an assumed nature which proves or appears to be hypothetical
(there where it felt self-assured, solid in its specificity), a nature which is now
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called into question, relativized, shaken, transformed, betrayed perhaps, not
to say fast disappearing (the cinema, a “vanishing art”?). This uncertainty with
regard to identity is obviously fundamental on a theoretical level (and could be
examined in the Deleuzian terms of “lines of deterritorialization”), but also at
the level of institutions: it has implications for what Bourdieu called symbolic
legitimization: in these transfers and translations, in these migrations and
mixes, which stands to gain and which stands to lose, between cinema and
contemporary art? And to gain or to lose what, exactly? A place in the sun? The
gates of heaven? A descent into hell? What does each of these entities (art, cinema) bring to or take away from the other? In which direction has the balance
of power settled at this point? Which of the two legitimizes or vouches for the
other? Which one dissolves or gets lost in stretching to such an extent? Could
cinema find rejuvenation in the museum, a youthful effect both positive and
innovative, a noble sublimation for its ignoble (popular and commercial) origin? Or might it be a sign of weariness, flagging, exhaustion on the part of “the
art of the 20th century,” so viscerally tied to the idea of theatrical exhibition
and its ritual, suddenly incapable, at the beginning of the 21st century, of finding a place to rest, to settle, of finding which way to turn in order to survive
while diversifying itself? And could contemporary art, which was sometimes
depicted as somewhat expressionless, abstract, and even abstruse, desiccated
or drained of its substance, be given some degree of reality, embodiment, life,
soul, breath, sound, and fury thanks to the arrival of photographic images in
movement, light, and sound? Or on the contrary, has it lost itself and its bearings to the point of trying to hang on to any cheap spectacular effect to pretend
it is alive? And are these changes in location of a symbolic nature, or are they
a matter of sociology, of audiences? Is it an economic question involving markets and market shares? Who loses, who gains, and what is lost or gained? I
am not going to proceed further on this line of thought, but the phenomenon
should certainly also be questioned in these terms, and a doctoral thesis on
the subject would be much anticipated.
The Spectator and the question of the Apparatus
On an artistic level, on which I will elaborate in more detail, this phenomenon
of a “cinema effect” clearly opens extremely diverse perspectives.
First, in aesthetic terms, and to expand on what has just been said, I should
point out that this emergence of “exhibition cinema” has also taken place over
a background of changing apparatuses. It thus raises the issue of the place of
spectators: as images left “their” good old dark theaters to be exhibited in the
rooms of art museums, a whole series of parameters on the “specific” modes
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of reception of these images shifted, and with them a host of questions on the
“nature” of each of them appeared. For instance, what happens (for the film
spectator) in the move from the large, communal dark theater, where everything disappears into obscurity for maximum and exclusive concentration by
all upon the rectangle of the screen, to a more individualized vision, often on
several simultaneous screens, and in a brighter environment for the film in
the whiteness of the museum space? Is it possible to see an image in the same
way when it is projected in light as when it is projected in darkness? In what
way may this change dilute the effect of absorption and fusion of the collective spectator? Does it contribute to transforming him/her into an isolated,
divided, wandering subject? What happens with the change from an immobile, seated position in the movie theater, to the mobile, upright posture of
the passing visitor in the exhibition? Can the hypnotized spectator become
a distanced flâneur? What is experienced in the passage from the standard
duration imposed by the single uninterrupted run of the film to more random
modes of vision, often fragmented and repetitive (the loop), of images that are
always there, that may be left aside and retrieved at will? Does the captive of
temporal duration in the movie theater find freedom in the exhibition space?
Is it a shift from the singular to the repetitive? Conversely, what is the consequence for the museum when lights have to be dimmed and spectators have
to feel their way along in a darkened room? How should sound circulate when
it cannot be located? What are the sensorial implications of the exhibition
of a projected, luminous image, as immaterial as it is ephemeral, in a large
format and in movement, poles apart from the object-images (photography,
painting) which could play into classic perception in museums? How to guide
the visitor through the narrative display of images telling a story? And the list
of questions goes on… This whole set of modifications and interrogations
deeply destabilizes what could until then be considered as established categories. The very idea of “cinema” or “art” (in the sense of work of art) finds itself
strongly relativized. And institutional interrogations prove to be aesthetic as
well.
A Generational Phenomenon
What is more, when it comes to individuals, we simply have to admit that there
is a generational phenomenon: over roughly the past fifteen years, a whole
array of artists seems to have taken over the object of “cinema” or the thought
on that object. They have placed it at the center of their practice, as though the
point was to revive, to (re)animate the world of contemporary art by providing
it with a life and an imaginary; if it is not new, it is at least rich – historically,
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culturally, and aesthetically. This is an objective fact, if only quantitatively.
And if it does not represent a “school” per se, it is at least a movement that may
almost be called generational (with some notable exceptions such as Anthony
McCall or Michael Snow, whose pioneering works date back to the late 1960s
or the early 1970s). At any rate, the names of these artists, many of whom are
prominent on the current international art scene, are well known: Douglas
Gordon, Pierre Huyghe, Pierre Bismuth, Stan Douglas, Steve McQueen, Mark
Lewis, Doug Aitken, Pipilotti Rist, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Sam Taylor-Wood, Tacita
Dean, Rainer Oldendorf, Philippe Parreno, Dominique Gonzales-Foerster, etc.
To these now established figures, an extraordinarily high number of younger
artists should be added: lesser known, to be sure, they still massively contribute to the flood we are facing today. This emergence of a generation, it seems
to me, cannot be thought about separately from its counterpart in cinema. For
at the same time, but in the opposite direction, many (established) filmmakers are turning to the field of art to propose works, most often in the form of
installations, sometimes new (made especially for a specific exhibition) but
not necessarily, as many appear as (more or less original) spatializations of
their films or worlds designed for museums and galleries. These are filmmakers’ installations: those, now well known, by Chantal Akerman (who over the
last few years has made them a personal specialty); Chris Marker’s historical
and original realizations, from his Zapping Zone at the Centre Pompidou first
presented in 1990 to his recent Prelude: The Hollow Men at the MOMA and the
magnificent Silent Movie; Agnès Varda’s developing installations (her interesting Triptyque de Noirmoutier and the whole exhibition “L’île et elle”); not
to mention the various, and more or less creative attempts by Johan van der
Keuken, Abbas Kiarostami, Atom Egoyan, Peter Greenaway, the association
between Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, and of course Godard’s
Voyages en utopie, already mentioned. As it appears from the names above,
many of these installations were made by an often older generation than that
of exhibition cinema: Varda, Marker, and Godard could be their parents and,
in a way, they are.
Passing on Historical Images: Experimental Cinema and
Video Art
Finally, to fully map things out, it should also be said that exactly midway
between these two worlds between these artists-working-with-the-cinema
and these filmmakers-thinking-of-themselves-as-artists-or-trying-their-handat-artwork, there is the whole world of experimental filmmakers and video artists: small yet intense, teeming with activity, diverse, and open. They are the
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ones passing things on between the two worlds with which we are concerned.
And they each have their history and their autonomy, which I cannot possibly
recount here.3 With respect to classic theatrical screenings, experimental film
clearly instituted “the installation” (in a general, expanded sense, to use Gene
Youngblood’s term) as another form of existence for cinema: projection on
several screens, on uneven surfaces, in space, etc. And, just as clearly, video
introduced the large-format moving image in the world of contemporary art
galleries and museums – especially as it moved from “video sculpture” (with
the monitor, a multiplied, piled-up, aligned image-cube, as its totem) to “video
projection” (on a large screen, in digital quality) in the late 1980s. As historical
and aesthetic agents in the passages between art and cinema, experimental
cinema and video art put into play the very forms of the encounter between
these two major fields.
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The Main Figures of the Cinema Effect: A first Attempt at
categorization
Staying within the perspective I chose, setting the scene by way of introduction, I would like to try and describe a few of the major modes of this cinema
effect, simply and with examples to illustrate my points. This does not involve
a systematic typology, nor does it stem from a will to be exhaustive or a desire
to freeze what is moving, but rather to scan briefly, without a detailed analysis,
and with a bit of rationality, the extremely diverse terrain with which we are
dealing. Accordingly, I would like to go briefly through four figures which represent typical forms the relation between cinema and contemporary art can
take, four figures of the cinema effect among many other possibilities: variations on the idea of reuse, starting from the most literal (or explicit, or direct)
instances to move towards the most metaphorical (implicit, indirect).
Reuse as a Principle
Reuse is undoubtedly the most self-evident notion. The primary meaning of
this principle, as its name indicates, points to a gesture – an effective gesture
which constitutes each piece of art: the material and physical borrowing of
filmic object(s). Reuse as a gesture may take many forms: recycling, reproduction, sampling, citation, reference, inspiration, reappropriation, absorption,
diversion, reconversion, transformation, distortion, disfiguration, etc. Reuses
may be integral or partial, faithful or altered, direct or indirect… They are what
first comes to mind in discussions on the presence of a cinema effect in con-
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temporary art. Yet this is not to say that they are the most explicit or immediately visible, or that what is at stake with them is simple or transparent —far
from it. Several singular forms of reuse may be identified, whose variations,
following a certain progression, illustrate the principle.
The Exhibited Film4
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This is somewhat the matrix of the phenomenon, and a primary example
immediately comes to mind in that area: Douglas Gordon’s famous 1993 24
Hour Psycho. When he appropriated Hitchcock’s film to turn it into a video
projection on a large screen in the middle of a museum gallery, Gordon reused
the movie Psycho (forcing it out of the cinema) to exhibit it (and not just project
it) in a space and an institution devoted to art. He even exhibited it as a whole
(in its totality) but did not preserve its integrity, subjecting the film to a fundamental distortion by using extreme slow motion. Indeed, the complete projection of the film in Gordon’s version spans 24 hours instead of the standard
hour and a half. This experiment on the duration of reception, the patience of
the spectator, and the rules of the institution, still fully belongs to a performative inspiration quite characteristic of the 1970s. Most of all, though, the slowness of the projection completely metamorphoses the visual sensation of the
film, (re)discovered in the minutest details, in the plasticity of each of its shots
and decomposed movements. The experience proves as plastic as temporal:
Psycho, the cult film we thought we knew by heart, feels as though it had never
been seen before (not like this, in any case). Each gesture, each facial expression, each action finds itself almost analyzed, “contemplatively scrutinized.”
A thousand unsuspected, invisible facets are thus revealed in and through the
thickness of the slow motion. In that regard, it would be interesting to compare this piece by Douglas Gordon with another reuse of the same Hitchcock
film, Gus Van Sant’s shot by shot remake, in which Psycho operates less as an
“exhibited film” than as an “installed film” within another film. This is a new
way of treating the old question of the remake in the light of practices of contemporary art, and from that standpoint, Van Sant is probably the most interesting filmmaker today: Gerry or Elephant could be viewed as formal responses
in film to questions raised by contemporary art.
Many other cases could be mentioned to illustrate this figure of the “exhibited film,” if only another installation by the same Douglas Gordon, Déjà vu
(2000), not to mention his “impossible” Five Year Drive-by (1995): John Ford’s
The Searchers slowed down to the point of reaching a virtual screening time
of five years, the time of the diegesis! Or the triple projection of the same Hollywood film noir, Rudolf Maté’s D.O.A., on three large screens juxtaposed edge
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to edge. These three projections differ from one another by only the slightest temporal unit (one image/second). Maté’s film thus runs at a speed of 23
images/second on the first screen, at 24 on the second, 25 on the third. Small
causes, great effects. This minuscule variation in speed, imperceptible at first,
gradually comes to undermine the synchrony of the three projections until the
film splits into almost three different films and proves challenging to connect
back to itself.
Another recurring manner of exhibiting a film in its integrality but not in
its integrity consists in separating the soundtrack from the image. Various artists have more or less done away with the visible part of an original film, keeping only the continuity of its sound. This is the case of some of Pierre Huyghe’s
pieces such as Dubbing, which presents the viewer with a still, uninterrupted
shot lasting 90 minutes of the whole crew of dubbers facing the camera and
looking at a screen off the frame as they work on a film never seen but the
French dialogues of which are heard throughout (and read thanks to the text
appearing at the bottom of the image). Pierre Bismuth’s work (Post Script/
The Passenger, 1996, or The Party, 1997, for example) also plays with the gap
between sound and image, presenting transcriptions of these works by Antonioni and Blake Edwards typewritten in real time by a secretary who hears the
films without seeing them.
What emerges from all these experiences, in the end, is a “museum version” of a film almost in the sense of the “multiple versions” known in film
history. What is at stake is the film, the possibility of its exhibition, and how
this possibility transforms, not so much the film itself as its reception and perception by the spectator. Each piece working towards a version of a film that
may be exhibited proves a meta-perceptive analytical experience where the act
of seeing images is itself questioned. To see an “exhibited film” is not to see
it again, it is to see it (or hear it) differently, and therefore wonder about this
alterity.
Cited Films
Things are very different with this second figure. Far from attempting to
exhibit a film, to give spectators a (more or less altered) version of it to offer a
new viewing experience, it seeks to look about anywhere, to tap into the infinite material of film, of all kinds of films, from different corpuses, whether
heterogeneous or established, to take fragments, bits, selected passages, to
piece together something “new.” This is primarily a work of investigation,
search, excavation, and secondarily a work of selection, cutting, carving out.
And lastly, it is a work of re-organization, assembly, montage. Finding, disfig-
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uring, (re-)configuring. Reuse here is less a gesture of presentation (exhibiting) than a gesture of de-/re-construction. The operation does not aim for an
original object (the matrix film), but rather for a more general or transversal
film imaginary.
Here again an established and sanctioned practice, which has placed this
question at the center of its approach, immediately comes to mind: found footage. Found footage films lie precisely on the threshold between experimental
cinema and exhibition practices, since they may be seen at screenings as well
as installations in the spaces of art. When filmmaker-artists such as those from
the contemporary Austrian school (Martin Arnold, Matthias Müller, Claude
Girardet, or Peter Tscherkassky, for example) revisit cinema, and more particularly Hollywood’s narrative cinema, they make films or installations which
do not just “attack” the original filmic material (this physical dismembering
is very pronounced with Peter Tcherkassky for instance, but also, though differently, with Martin Arnold): they also “enter” the films as cultural objects
and work on the imaginary or the ideology for which these serve as vehicles, in
order to give a sometimes critical, sometimes poetic, version of them. Home
Stories (Matthias Müller, 1990) focuses on the stereotyped narrative and figurative postures of the 1950s Hollywood melodrama. Martin Arnold’s Alone
(1998) and Pièce touchée (1989) take apart – rather humorously – the gestural or
postural unconscious of bodies and characters buried in the folds of ordinary
images. Outer Space or Dreamwork (Peter Tscherkassky, 1999 and 2000) reinvent specifically figural modes of narration out of the same original material.
In the same general sense, one could even include the films of Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi (all films since Du Pôle à l’équateur), Bill Morrison
(Footprints), Al Razutis and his Visual Essays, Mark Lewis and his “cinema in
parts,” and so on. All these operations play with the flesh of film images, take
cinema apart and put it back together to draw new or renewed ideas or sensations from it. The installation-like presentation of these films is certainly not
always a priority, but each film may in itself be considered quite exactly as a
specific installation of fragments from other films. Either it assumes specific
dimensions, as with the set-up of Chris Marker’s 1995 Silent Movie, with its five
video screens stacked into a column and its random program of infinite combinations of shots produced out of the images saved on the five video discs; or
the arrangement on three screens placed in a row, one in front of the other in a
kind of memorial stratification, as in Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi’s La Marcia dell’ uomo. Or of course Godard’s whole exhibition-installation
at the Centre Pompidou, Voyage(s) en utopie, a boundless construction site of
multiple citations.
What is left of this whole tradition of artworks comprising “cited films” is
the general idea that cinema is unmistakably and par excellence the imaginary
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of images that haunts our minds and occupies contemporary visual memory,
whether we like it or not. The film image is at once material and specter, the
hint at the fiction of an image, the ghostly flesh always there, strong and fragile
at the same time. All these installations keep reiterating it, on a critical, ironic,
denunciatory, or iconoclastic mode: the cinema, films were, by the end of the
twentieth century, the backdrop for our relation to images, and as a consequence to the world. Our visual thought is a “cinematographic” one.
The Reconstructed Film
This third form still relates to the figures of reuse, yet with some distance (from
literalness), insofar as it does not involve the material reuse of an image, but
a reuse of sorts in the second degree, the creative reuse of the formal idea of a
film, that is, a reconstruction (in the sense of the reconstruction of a crime). The
reconstructed film may be to the (original) film, the matrix, what the tableau
vivant is to the painting. Remade (a remake), with (more or less) new actors
and in the spirit of a connection to the object of reference, the new film plays
with all possible dialectics between faithfulness and inaccuracy, reproduction and transformation, sameness and otherness. These games of similarity
and dissimilarity, in which the share of invention always vies with the share
of reconstruction, are at the center of the operation – and at the center of the
works relying on this principle. Here are a few examples.
Pierre Huyghe’s L’Ellipse (1998) is a three-screen installation that “creates” a sequence shot “missing” in Wim Wenders’ film The American Friend
(1977). The screens on the left and on the right successively show a sequence
of the film in two shots which originally produced an ellipsis. On the left, the
character played by Bruno Ganz is shown in Paris, in a Left Bank apartment;
on the right, the same character can be seen in a different place, this time
on the Right Bank; between the two, Wim Wenders’ film skipped what happened thanks to a cut. Twenty years after the shooting of Wenders’ film, Pierre
Huyghe (re)shot the ellipsis and exhibited it: he asked the same actor, Bruno
Ganz, 20 years older, to walk from one place to the other again, and filmed an
eight-minute sequence shot of him in 1998 as he crossed the Pont de Grenelle.
The sequence shot is projected on the central screen between Wenders’ two
successive shots, the delayed reconstruction of an interstitial absence. A man
walking – and thinking – in an interval between two dated shots, crossing a
bridge to bridge between two places and two times. A memory going back and
forth in the present, in the aftermath of the memory of a film with a hole in it.
A spatial gap reconstructed in the production of a temporal gap.
The Third Memory (2000), another work by Pierre Huyghe, is a reconstruc-
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tive arrangement comprising three layers. “Originally,” as far back as sedimentation allows to go, there is a story which made the news in 1972: a stickup
that went wrong that involved hostages at a Brooklyn bank. American television had already shot part of the action live (showing the police overdoing it
as they surrounded the place). Then there was a famous film, Sidney Lumet’s
1975 Dog Day Afternoon, which “staged” the story of the heist, interpreting it in
a fictional reconstruction with Al Pacino playing the part of the hold-up man.
Finally, Pierre Huyghe not only reused this double visual material, which serves
as a counterpoint in his work: he also carried out a meticulous reconstruction
of the attack of the bank in a studio, with simplified sets, extras standing in for
the employees of the bank and the police, and most of all – this is where the
whole project started – the actual aged hold-up man “in person”: John Wojtowicz, playing himself. He had served his sentence, had been released from jail,
and “(re)enacted the scene” for Huyghe in a way in which he could attempt to
“give the real version of facts” while taking part in a reconstruction almost 30
years later. He is thus both the person and the character in this three-tiered
arrangement; he is the actor and the main protagonist (which he really was),
the author (in the full sense of the word), the director (he gives directions,
directs extras), and even the distanced commentator after the fact, criticizing
Lumet and Pacino’s “inaccurate” version of his story.
Constanze Ruhm’s work, with her project X Character and more particularly X Characters/RE(hers)AL (2003/04) and X Nana/Subroutine (2004), also
proceeds from this logic of reenactment, but along still other perspectives. In
short, the idea is to start anew from relatively well-known characters in fiction
films who are already part of our memory as spectators. The Nana of the second example comes from Godard’s Vivre sa vie; the seven female characters
of the first example come from different films and filmmakers: Alma from
Bergman’s Persona, Bree from Alan Pakula’s Klute, Giuliana from Antonioni’s
Red Desert, Hari from Tarkovsky’s Solaris, Laura from Kershner’s Eyes of Laura
Mars, Rachael from Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, etc. The seven women, none
of whom physically looks like her model, find themselves waiting in a stylized
airport. Ruhm approaches these characters as belonging to a new fiction but
with a cinematographic past and lived experience, an identity already there.
These complex works involving films, photographs, books, and installations
are very open mixtures of dialogues invented in contemporary situations and
in more or less pregnant filmic imaginaries. They smoothly and subtly associate proximity and distance, resemblance and dissemblance, reconstruction
and invention.
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Formal Figures of a Virtual Cinema
The movement away from literalness continues with this new category of figures in material reuse, for here the relation to cinema plays out, not at the level
of one or several films in particular, but at the more “abstract” or general level
of “filmic forms” such as the shot/reverse shot, the eyeline match or the match
on action, crosscutting or parallel editing… All these forms, which shaped
film language, serve – not without some degree of adaptation – as models
for the mise-en-scène of many artists’ installations, whose formal debt to all
these established figures in cinematographic writing is obvious. One recurring principle in this area is the transposition of temporal forms of cinema
(notably the whole dynamic drawn from editing) into a spatial arrangement in
the exhibition. The genuine fascination of post-cinema artists for the form of
the multiple screen may be understood in this way. The co-presence of several
screens in the gallery according to specific arrangements may be thought of
as a kind of direct transposition in space of the figures of editing in cinema.
Countless works cultivate not only the reference to forms, but also to typical
filmic themes which are as many topoi, basic motifs, standards in cinema. For
instance, many installations set up scenes of meals at a restaurant, domestic fights, encounters, declarations of love, escapes, etc., between two protagonists, which cinema has accustomed us to seeing in shot/reverse shot,
crosscutting, matches on action, sometimes even crossing the axis of action
or linking up certain angles or gestures. Many scenes presented in multiplescreen setups may be found in the work of Stan Douglas, Sam Taylor Wood,
Steve McQueen, Doug Aitken, Rainer Oldendorf, and many others. The shot/
reverse shot of cinema becomes a simultaneous projection on two screens facing each other, side by side, or at a right angle reproducing the positions of
cameras during shooting. Generally, what film delivers in the succession of
shots, the exhibition stages in the spatial simultaneity of its screens, playing
with all possible “matching” effects but doing so in space (visual rhymes, symmetry, inversion, reversal, etc.). This is not without evoking the vertical montage (as opposed to horizontal montage) brought up by Abel Gance in relation
to all the visual arrangements which his triple screen made possible, according to him.
This logic eventually raises the issue of the narrative, approached frontally by some artists (Doug Aitken, Steve McQueen, Pipilotti Rist, or Eija-Liisa
Ahtila, for instance). Is it possible to tell a story in (and through) the space of
installation, and if so, how? Multiple screens, in that they spatialize the succession of shots, may be used in this way by adjusting quite precisely to the
very progression of visitors in the exhibition. Their path, moving from screen
to screen, then functions as a shot by shot progression in the story told by the
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film. The walk articulates narration, the figure of the narrator is the figure of
a walker: I walk, therefore I am (the story). The path may be linear (though
that is rather rare), it is more often than not complex, multiple, fragmented,
labyrinthine, it may be open or closed, fast or slow, etc. Here visiting the exhibition amounts to “seeing a movie,” and the (immobile, seated…) spectator
turns into a flâneur, in Benjamin’s sense.
It thus becomes apparent that this takes us into areas where the question
of cinema in contemporary art works becomes increasingly secondary, virtual,
abstract, implicit, and metaphorical. It is indeed about an effect. And PhilippeAlain Michaud’s exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, mentioned at the beginning of this text, marks to some degree its end point. What “effects cinema”
in some of the works presented in “Le Mouvement des images” often has to
do with a sort of extreme virtuality: it may be a gesture, a posture, a form, a
frame, a movement, a detail – sometimes a mere play on words, even, as with
the thin film of dry milk in Wolfgang Laib’s milkstones. The cinema effect is
there indeed, haunting, as it does, our ways of seeing.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
NOTES
1
For more information, analyses, or ideas, see the many published articles (notably in Omnibus and Art Press), catalogues (from everywhere), and books dealing
with the subject, four of which deserve particular attention: Bellour (1990); Païni
(2001); Parfait (2001); Cassagnau (2006).
2
Translator’s note: this has of course nothing to do with the Third Cinema that
emerged in Latin America in the 1960s.
3
4
See Chris Wahl’s chapter 1 in this same volume.
Translator’s note: the English term for the theatrical screening of films, exhibition, is obviously the same term as that used in the context of the display of art
works in museums and galleries. In French, on the other hand, the term exposition, when applied to film, assumes full significance in that theatrical presentation is referred to as exploitation.
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REFERENCES
Bellour, Raymond. L’Entre-images 1. Photo, cinéma, video. Paris: La Différence, 1990.
Cassagnau, Pascale. Future Amnesia (Enquêtes sur un troisième cinema). Paris: Sept/
Isthme, 2006.
Païni, Dominique. Le temps exposé. Le cinéma de la salle au musee. Paris: Éditions de
l’Etoile/Cahiers du cinéma, 2001.
Parfait, Françoise. Vidéo. Un art contemporain. Paris: Éditions du Regard, 2001.
E X H I B I T I o N S T R AT EG I E S
9.2
EXHIBITING IMAGES IN MOVEMENT
9.2.1
EXHIBITING/EDITING: DOMINIqUE PAïNI AND PROGRAMMING AT THE
CINéMATHèqUE FRANçAISE AT THE TURN OF THE CENTENARy
Stéphanie-Emmanuelle Louis
“After all, isn’t programming also laying shots and sequences end to end
with dramatic purposes in mind? To program is to edit.” (Païni, 1992 : 30)
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Ever since the 1930s, cinematheques have historically been the places where
museums present films: in preserving films, cinematheques inscribe their
exhibition within a heritage network. They thus systematize the re-release of
the films and foster their anachronistic re-appropriation by audiences. Still,
this practice of exhibition began to be approached as an issue in and of itself
only in the late 1980s, in a context of transformation of the cinematographic
and audiovisual landscape through the question of programming or, put very
literally, of the organization of programs.1
It was Dominique Païni who, from his French base – the Cinémathèque
française, which he headed from 1992 to 2000 – championed the debate
through many texts and interviews which historicized the practice of programming and explored its contemporary implications. Païni probed the legacy
of Henri Langlois, whose programs at the Cinémathèque française between
1936 and 1977 remained legendary. In that regard, his interpretation in terms
of collage programming seems rather widely shared in the world of cinematheques (Rauger, 1995; Claes, 1995). However, Dominique Païni has put it
into perspective using the practice of filmmakers, including, notably, that of
Jean-Luc Godard, which has apparently met with more reservations. This theoretical reflection steeped in practice uses analogy as an exploratory process:
programming is akin to editing, an ontologically cinematographic manipulation. Let us note in passing that, as far as we know, there is no text by Langlois
that supports this reading.
This last aspect, which makes Dominique Païni’s approach singular,
seems particularly revealing of the cinema effect “which [haunts] our ways
of seeing” (Dubois, 2006: 25). Following the chronological landmarks given
by Philippe Dubois, I will highlight the generational roots of a perspective
which tends to take over “the object of ‘cinema’ or the thought on that object”
(Dubois, 2006: 18) to contemplate the exhibition of objects which are part of
a cinematographic heritage. In the end, a new historical perspective for the
cinema effect may emerge.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
Cinema in the Age of Museums
1992, the year when Dominique Païni was appointed director of the Cinémathèque française, was marked by an increased mobilization for cinema in
France, with the centenary of the invention fast approaching. Cinema, so it
went, should be considered a cultural good to be preserved and passed on as
the heritage of a community – hence its entrance into the museum. To reconsider the legacy of the Cinémathèque française is imperative, as it has been
the museum of cinema in France and the issue of the exhibition of the films
featured in the collections has proved an impetus as much as a constraint
throughout its history.2
The new director considered the centenary as a pivotal moment, arguing
that “cinema has been conquered as an art, it has retroacted on other arts, it is
time to demand that the Cinémathèque become a genuine Museum” (Jousse,
Tesson, and Toubiana, 1992: 86). To introduce cinema into the museum thus
associated two points of view: one attempting to define art within cinema,
another considering it within a general artistic context. However, its collections distinguish the Cinémathèque from museums of art in that they mostly
comprise films, that is, works unfolding in time, in addition to the specific
paradigm of their presentation, projection. This primary mission is the focus
here.
While the question of programming had been a strong interest of
Dominique Païni’s since the 1970s, from his experiences leading discussions
in film clubs, then as the owner of repertoire movie theaters,3 his appointment
at the Cinémathèque française inaugurated a new stage in his reflection. His
formative years had been characterized by a constant commitment to the
defense of the specificity of filmic objects, so that each could be acknowledged as a “signifying practice” (Païni, 1971: 65). He had also advocated
adapted spaces to valorize these objects, “gallery-theaters” (Païni, 1984 : VI) or
“showcase theatres.” (Le Péron, Toubiana, 1984 : 45) Programming gradually
emerged as a central element in this arrangement of relations, where films
find their spectators and thereby become cinematographic works.
The new direction of the Cinémathèque française thus constituted an
end point to this aspiration to a genuine presentation of cinema in a museum
space – in a new environment, however, since programming had to be founded on a collection of film archives. This was not self-evident, because historiographic production, rather than simply being echoed (as at the time of the
Studio 434), now had to be put into perspective through the selection of films
from an extremely diverse collection which did not only include masterpieces.
In accordance with its mission as a museum, the Cinémathèque participates in the exploration of film heritage. As a consequence, programming
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cannot be limited to an appendix of history: it constitutes in itself a particular form of writing. As it contributes to developing cinematographic taste,
the Cinémathèque also proposes artistic hierarchies, even temporary ones, a
practice which encourages comparisons and invites re-evaluations. The institution thus represents the place where a critical outlook on cinema has historically been able to exist. Programming may indeed be a way to think cinema
solely through films.
Programming – Editing
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Confronted with the collections, the “cinephile-turned-curator” found perceptive stakes likely to give direction to his heritage mission: “to speak of these
films, to describe them, or more specifically, to describe the impressions they
produced in me, appeared as the right method to contemplate their place
within programming” (Païni, 1996 : 56). The act of programming was mostly
informed by the knowledge of corpuses, yet it also rested on the subjectivity of
the point of view. Moving beyond the conspicuousness produced by the exhibition of an old object in the museum then became possible, to enter a critical
interaction between films, spectators, and programmer through a sensualist
approach.
While film production may also be approached from a sociological standpoint, as was for instance the case at the Cinémathèque de Toulouse,5 the
project advanced by Païni had more to do with an iconology. The method
consisted in “putting films side by side, finding the origin of a film image and
tracing its destiny from film to film, from film to text” (Païni, 1995 : 29). Programming in a cinemathèque could thus amount to a “film aesthetic akin to
a montage forcing thematic commonalities, reducing stylistic indifferences,
and joining images and thought” (Païni, 1995 : 29). Consequently, the arrangement of filmic objects became not only a visual composition, but an iconological one as well.
Countless artistic references support the closeness between programming and editing, or montage; they also seem to introduce an analogical slippage towards a plastic conception of programming where a cinema-effect is
expressed. Duchamp explained how “[the act of] showing made the work” (Païni, 1992 : 23). Cage and Boulez epitomized the practice of collage and the connections between works. Barthes, with A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, invited
to “teach the history of a literature, no longer stemming from a chronological
and evolutionist conception, but derived from an artistic project privileging
intuitive associations and experimental comparisons, in other words a history of literature which would itself be a writing” (Païni, 1992 : 26). From one
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
end of this gallery of “portraits of artists as programmers” to the other, one
found Henri Langlois and Jean-Luc Godard, whose respective oeuvres were
compared to montages of attractions, in an explicit reference to Eisenstein.
From the Cine-Father to the B-Movie Filmmaker6
The analysis of Histoire(s) du cinéma7 may be qualified as heuristic in the
thought on programming developed by Païni: “such is Godard’s project today,
as Langlois’s yesterday: to use passages to free themselves from certain constraints (one of which, the availability of films, is not the least). It is about
covering a history of cinema thanks to the remains of cinema, ‘scrap films,’
if I may call them that, found in the garbage, salvaged from the apocalyptic
history of an uncertain art which Langlois described as almost devastated and
which a certain type of historian, comparable to a ragman, may write” (Païni,
1997 : 83).
If these two manipulators of films meet as they bring into play an imaginary museum of cinema, Godard benefited from video as a technical tool for
historical comparison, whereas the ephemerality of projection always set
objective limits to Langlois’s impulses.8 Still, like Godard’s, Langlois’s work
comes down to “brutalizing films, twisting them, setting their signification
ablaze, diverting them from the project of their author to reveal the madness
in them – a madness repressed by Hollywood’s industrial and moral system,
and which is exalted (exhaled) as soon as programming edits films together in
a montage like that of Eisensteinian attractions and irreversibly turns categories and generic or stylistic labels upside down” (Païni, 1997 : 179). A study of
screening schedules9 shows a method made of synchronous lines, comparisons, and juxtapositions tending towards cinematographic figurability; and
where, in the end, “the association of films itself amounts to an image” (Païni,
1997: 173). On the scale of an evening, and more largely of a retrospective, programming heritage films thus becomes a signifying montage subject to the
same constraint of temporal unfolding as a film.
The analogy between film and programming suggested by Dominique
Païni – but never stated so literally by him – may help design the exhibition
of films in cinemathèques. Its limitations are in the fact that professionals in
film archives have not embraced it, which is why I propose, by way of conclusion and more generally, to question the historical context in which this interpretation appeared.
In the mid-1990s, the issue of showing the collections seemed to preoccupy museologists. In 1993 André Desvallées referred to the “know-how of exhibitions” as “expographie,” or “exhibition writing,” thus singling it out among
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the many activities of museums (Desvallées, 1996 : 174). Dominique Païni’s
discourse should be read in the same climate of clarification in professional
practices. One may wonder, then, whether the reference to cinema to explain
programming in cinemathèques did not tend to legitimize the entrance of
film into the museum in the eyes of rather reluctant cinephiles.
Clearly, however, this cinematic way of thinking about programming was
steeped in a personal film culture nurtured on Bresson, Straub, and Godard,
to mention but a few. This raises a more general question: could the consecration of cinema as part of the national heritage not also be translated in its
re-appropriation as material for thought? Taking advantage of undeniable
technological advances, contemporary artists, and exhibition places, through
their respective practices, seem to have answered in the positive.
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PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
9.2.2
THE EXPANDED ARCHIVE: THE MINDFRAMES EXHIBITION
Claudia D’Alonzo
From 16 December 2006 to 18 March 2007, the ZKM – Center for Art and Media
in Karlsruhe (Germany) hosted the exhibition MindFrames – Media Study at
Buffalo 1973-1990, curated by Woody Vasulka and Peter Weibel (Vasulka and
Weibel, 2008). The exhibition presented works by some of the most important
artists from the Department for Media Studies at Buffalo (New York University)
who, through their teaching, contributed to making this a leading institution
in the history of media art: James Blue, Tony Conrad, Hollis Frampton, Paul
Sharits, Steina and Woody Vasulka, and Peter Weibel. MindFrames spanned 30
years, the time during which the department was under the direction of Gerald
O’Grady. As the founder and lead figure at Buffalo, O’Grady created an interdisciplinary teaching structure based on the synergy between very different
areas including technology, communication, art, and experimental cinema
(Minkowski, 1978). The artists shown in the exhibition can be seen as pioneers
exploring the relationship between art and technology, as demonstrated by
their studies on techniques, tools and languages, as well as their theoretical
research, developed in papers, conferences, and publications (Vasulka and
Vasulka, 1992).
MindFrames represents an important event in the media art field for two
main reasons. First, the exhibition has brought the Buffalo Media Study’s
experiences into the museum context, through the presentation of a large
number of works that had not previously been shown in a single display. This
represents an important act of cultural memory and documentation. Second,
MindFrames is an exemplary case of innovative media art exhibition design. As
we shall see, the curatorial project has re-edited the specific features of “the
digital database as symbolic form” into an exhibition, as identified by new
media theorist Lev Manovich (Manovich, 2001:194). The choices made by the
two curators deal with a complex ongoing debate, which aims at establishing
modalities for bringing media art to the museum. Whilst the exhibition is not
a final response to the numerous issues raised by this debate, it has certainly
suggested some interesting new directions. These two focuses of MindFrames
have been made possible thanks to a third one, represented by the digitization
of the works. Indeed, a large part of the analogue works (film, video) has been
transformed into digital. The following text aims to show how MindFrames
represents an original example of media art exhibition.
Within his analysis of the transformation of audiovisual contents caused
by the migration from analogue to digital media, the German media archae-
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ologist Wolfgang Ernst highlights that the most significant consequence is
not the re-activation of audiovisual cultural objects but the creation of relationships between those objects through hyperlinks. Indeed, one of the main
functions of the digital archive is not to record each single file, but to establish
logistic links between them. In the same way, the Net is not characterized by
its contents but rather by the protocols of information exchange (Ernst, 2010:
4). The digitization process implemented on the corpus of MindFrames thus
has transformed each document in an ontologically dynamic digital object,
participatory and located in a network of relations. The filmic and analogue
video materials in this exhibition have been transformed into digital data not
only in order to preserve them from deterioration, but also to transform them
into digital information, recorded onto a server, connected to the Internet and
the exhibition space. This setup allows the audience access through different
modalities inside the exhibition space as well as via an online platform, as we
shall see. MindFrames makes the digital archive structure of complex relations
a fruitful model for exhibiting media art: it encourages each spectator/user to
‘browse’ through the hyperlinks network, moving through the relationships of
connected artworks and consulting the network in interactive ways.
The exhibition setup, designed by Woody Valuska and produced by Shinya
Sato, divided the large space on the ground floor of the ZKM Media Museum
into three concentric rings, including separate areas within them (Minkowski,
2007: 57). The outside ring was a large circular space accessible from various
directions. It contained artworks by all the artists, mixed together. Along the
ring, the audience could find several kind of works, mainly video wall projections but also various installations which had been redesigned especially for
the exhibition: from the Vasulkas’ multichannel video matrix, Weibel’s video
installations, and Woody Vasulka’s “interactive mechanical ambients” to Paul
Sharits’ film projections. Besides the installations, the outside ring also contained a “galleria,” displaying a variety of paper documents and photographic
material, as well as a film room, a video room, a documentary room, and a
concert room, for audiovisual performances.
This variety of works faithfully represented the richness of personalities
that characterized the Buffalo Media Study’s scene. The same function was
performed by the Grand View, a large projection on three screens showing
footage of many of the exhibition’s works. This screen was suspended in the
center of the exhibition space that could be surveyed from the balcony on the
second floor. The general overview from the first ring represented an exhaustive recognition of the languages and media experimentations that allowed
the birth of what is now called media art.
From this collective space, the rest of the exhibition zoomed in on the work
of each author: the audience had access to several small projection rooms ded-
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
icated to each artist, similar to black boxes, in which the works were projected
on the walls. A circular room at the center of the exhibition was divided into
eight media labs, one for each artist, showing a collection of works that aimed
at increasing understanding of the individual artist. In this area, there were
eight video jukeboxes, interactive workstations with a touch screen which
allowed the viewer to select films or video artworks and archival video interviews with the artists. The whole audiovisual content – in total approximately
400 hours of film, video, documentary, and video interviews – were distributed
into the exhibition spaces from a central server.
Three features that Woody Vasulka established as bases of the MindFrames
project were fundamental in creating an exhibition of this kind. According to
Vasulka, the whole exhibition should have been presented: first, in digital format; second, remotely controlled (thus delocalizing the connection between
the exhibition and the actual artwork), and third, disseminated through the
Internet using the OASIS Archive, which is a platform for the presentation
and dissemination of audiovisual works and other documents independent
of exhibition location, through the web.10 Using such an interactive, online
interface, the single users (individuals, researchers, and general public) have
access to an interlinking database metadata system, collecting documents
available by institutions taking part in the project.
The concept of the exhibition thus was that of a macroscopic database
connecting the exhibition spaces of the ZKM in Karlsruhe to a server located
in Cologne – a server which hosted the large number of audiovisual works/
data. This method has never been applied to a media art exhibition. The OASIS
platform is the element that has allowed the transposition of the exhibition
process into an expanded online database access experience. The digital
archive retains features described by Wolfgang Ernst: a relationship structure,
represented in the exhibition by the net of hyperlinks connecting the documents; a dynamic nature, as represented by different access modalities; and
interactivity, which is enabled through the exhibit’s video jukeboxes.
Consequently, besides seeing MindFrames as an exhibition project, one
should also analyze it as an innovative distribution model for digital cultural
content. An apt reference for such an analysis is the definition of database as
a cultural form, elaborated by Lev Manovich. Manovich defines the database
not only as an organization of electronic data, but also as a cultural metaphor
that has a determining role in the construction, registration, and spread of
knowledge and contents in the digital era. Manovich’s analysis shows how the
technical procedures related to digital archiving are not just a media aspect
but have important consequences for the intrinsic nature and dissemination
of information: the computer ontology projects its consequences on the contemporary culture and society (Manovich, 2001:194). As I have already empha-
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sized, MindFrames makes this essential shift from a technical realm into a
cultural one visible, making the digitization and archiving processes useful
models for designing the exhibition display.
In his discussion of the exhibition in the accompanying catalogue, John
Minkowski acknowledges the exhibition’s historical value but criticizes it for
the possibilities of experience given to the audience. Minkowski states that
the large number of works and documents presented in a way presents a limitation to the project: “Viewers may have been sated, gasping for breath, and at
the same time frustrated at not being able to take it all in. After six days there,
I still felt that I had only scratched the surface” (2007: 57). He thus indicated
the impossibility of entirely observing the corpus of works and so to perceive
the abundance of materials as an obstacle to interpretation. Minkowski here
points out a weak spot of the exhibition, which, to refer once again to the database model of Manovich, we could call the subject of “interface.”
One of the main repercussions that electronic document archiving produces on contemporary society is the requirement to design the ideal interface
to reproduce information and elaborate access procedures. Manovich underlines that traditional cultures had little information but could find excellent
interfaces for their diffusion in well-defined narrations such as myths and religions. On the contrary, the digital era is characterized by an information overload but still has not managed to develop satisfactory methods to interact with
all these data. Once again, the main point is not the content in itself but the
architecture of access to the data. This requires what Manovich has dubbed
as info-aesthetic: a theoretical analysis of the aesthetic of access (Manovich,
2001: 193).
For these reasons, MindFrames represents a possible interesting case
study addressing one of the main issues of digital media studies through a
cultural project. Coming back to Minkowski’s view, his analysis does not consider the innovative and deep structure of the exhibition. More specifically,
whilst recognizing the value in the wealth of documents and access modalities, Minkowski is hopelessly searching for a linear and narrative model of
interpretation. As becomes clear from the above discussion of the specific
nature of digitized audiovisual content, linear narration is not the appropriate model for making sense of a database-style exhibition like MindFrames.
In the same way as a user relates to a database, the viewer should completely
renounce the claim to look up the whole artwork, finding an always different
way to navigate through the corpus. So, MindFrames encourages the viewer to
an exhibition experience which uses dynamic and interactive navigation at the
same time, dislocated from the hic et nunc of the exhibition space.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
9.2.3
EXHIBITING FILM AND REINVENTING THE PAINTING
Barbara Le Maître
Following up on Philippe Dubois’s thoughts on the “cinema effect” and contemporary strategies of presentation of films in museum spaces, I would like
to examine the encounter between film and painting. As the primary object in
museum exhibitions, at least when it comes to art museums, the painting as
an object operates according to a particular visual regime and falls within a system that regulates its perception.11 Questioning the encounter between film
and painting seems necessary insofar as the discussion inaugurated around
the turn of the 1990s on the entrance of film and/or cinema into the museum
has focused more on what happens to cinema in the era of its exhibition in
museums (instead of its projection in movie theaters) than on what happens
to the forms and objects that have historically constituted the museum in the
era of their contamination by film.
Before getting to the heart of the matter, some specifications are in order.
If, as this text proposes to discuss, the encounter between film and painting
is vividly or intensely actualized these days on the contemporary art scene, on
the one hand, this encounter takes place against the background of a history
of cinema regularly confronted with the issue of painting and, on the other
hand, the same encounter introduces a kind of dialectical reversal in the field
of contemporary art.
on Contemporary Art (in General) with Regard to
the Painting12
Indeed, it seems that contemporary art was established on the principle of a
refusal, and even a firm dismissal, of the painting:
For several decades, painting has alternately been declared dead and
back. Painting does not come back any more than it dies. Yet the painting
has disappeared or is disappearing. The unease produced among many
sincere art lovers by the art of our time owes to the sense that artists today
live and create on an absence and a lack […]. The painting is par excellence an object that may be stored. It may be kept as easily on the walls as
in compact reserve collections, safe and easily accessible. That is not the
case of the majority of works produced over the past forty years, and more
particularly of the large installations which are to contemporary art cent-
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ers and major exhibitions such as the biennales and the Kassel Documenta what the paintings made for the Salons were to the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. (Wolf, 2005 : 11, 31)
All in all, contemporary art has cast aside painting as a medium and as an art
form, opting instead to materialize in other forms such as installation or performance – or so the story goes. In this context, if the contemporary exhibition
of film does imply painting, as I assume it does, the event in the field of contemporary art is a considerable one: something like a “return of the repressed”
or, to put it more precisely, a reappearance of the major issue of painting on
the very site where it was contested (and from which it was even ousted).
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on the History of Cinema (in General) Confronted with
the Painting
While contemporary art was established without the painting, the same does
not apply for cinema. Indeed, briefly put, cinema never ceased to be in confrontation with painting throughout its history, albeit in multiple and diverse
modes – as if the film image had to negotiate its “visual logic” with its prestigious pictorial equivalent in order to exist as a valid image. The expression
“painting shot” (plan-tableau) emblematically returns all the time in discourses related to cinema, in various texts and with different meanings, qualifying a
form of autonomy of the shot inherent in early cinema for Noël Burch (1990),
for instance, or a transposition of painting into a tableau vivant more strongly
connected to modernity for Pascal Bonitzer (1987: 29-41). Still, can the question of the painting actually be addressed by any filmic object?
Essentially, a painting is an object and it is 1) painted; 2) visible;
3) mobile (it may be moved without any other operation than transportation); 4) autonomous (neither its spatial organization nor its signification
are modified by these movements; 5) symbolic (its symbolic value is always
higher than its functional uses); 6) unique (there is only one original);
7) identity-related (it has an identified author and contributes to the identity of its individual or collective owner); 8) valued on a market (it draws its
monetary value from demand) (Wolf, 2004 : 84).
Beyond the regular comparisons between certain types of shots and the model
of the painting, cinema, for the most part, admittedly produces objects which
do not really refer to pictorial objects called “paintings.” And the multiple,
moving, luminous images of cinema definitely involve effects of material and
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
medium that are quite different from those produced by the pictorial object.
In addition, which is the medium of the image in cinema: the surface of its
inscription, or the ever-ephemeral surface of its projection? Also, the distribution of the film in the form of multiple prints runs against the principle of
uniqueness of the original which defines the painting – among other noticeable differences.
It is in the field of contemporary art, on the walls of galleries or museums
rather than in traditional movie theaters, and precisely on the side of what
Philippe Dubois describes as a “cinema effect,” that such hybrid objects may
be identified. While any confusion with their pictorial equivalents is unlikely,
they still reinvent the painting object in spite of everything, reformulating its
aesthetic as well as its economy (as far as the articulation between original and
copy is concerned, for instance). This phenomenon of re-appropriation of the
painting is best exemplified by two figures: Sam Taylor-Wood, whose Still Life
(video stills, 2001), exhibited at the Tate Modern, is made up of components
that disintegrate in speeded-up motion before the spectator; and Mark Lewis,
with his single-shot films that look like “slow paintings,” to borrow Julien Foucart’s expression. But then, how does this re-appropriation play out?
on a Particular Encounter between Film and Painting on the
Contemporary Scene:
The Example of Algonquin Park, September (Mark lewis, 2001)
In a text devoted to the pictorial aspects of Mark Lewis’s films, Bernhard
Fibicher (2003) goes back over a few paintings which seem to lie behind Algonquin Park, September. He evokes more specifically Boat on the Elbe in the Early
Fog by Caspar David Friedrich (1821). Sometime earlier, another commentator
had also mentioned Friedrich while suggesting that the hybridity at work in
the film was more complex and richer:
Although it was shot in Ontario in Canada, it could easily be the setting
for a Caspar David Friedrich painting […]. Slowly, as the mist begins to
clear, it reveals a small boat being rowed through the channel between
the island and the shore. The allusion here is to the Lumière brothers,
and their film Boat Leaving the Harbour (1895) – Lewis’s own personal
favourite of all the Brothers’ films and, in his view, one of the seminal
landmarks in the history of cinema (Bode, 2002 : 16).
In short, this is a film that, in some respects, repeats a project which was initially that of painting (Friedrich’s, in the first place), while paying homage to
E X H I B I T I o N S T R AT EG I E S
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the cinema of the Lumière brothers (not to say remaking it). Yet exactly which
aspects of this film belong in the pictorial realm? And how does the film alter
or, perhaps, even reinvent the painting?
If Algonquin Park, September is so strongly associated with the painting,
beyond the reference to Caspar David Friedrich, it is first of all because Mark
Lewis renews the “aesthetic system of the painting,”13 referring to “a principle
of arrangement (as well as contained expansion) of a fable or a complex figure
within the strict frame of a composition,” in Jean-François Chevrier’s words
(1990 : 75). However, all things considered, this principle qualifies the views
resulting from the filming setup typical of the Lumière brothers as well as the
ordinary visual organization of the painting – a setup that, as is well known,
combined a still, single frame and an uninterrupted recording lasting as long
as the reel itself. Of course, in the Lumière films, as well as the Lewis one, and
unlike the painting, some motifs or figures sometimes exceed the frame – but
most of the time, representation does not follow them. In other terms, keeping to the still, single frame, the Lumière films did contain and even curbed
the potential expansion of the fable and its figures. Incidentally, the history of
cinema largely revolved around this site, this problem of an “expansion of the
fable” beyond the edges of the frame, the strict frame of a composition… In
the end, through this double – pictorial and cinematographic – reference (the
coupled allusion to Friedrich’s painting and to the Lumière films), Mark Lewis points out something like a complicity or a kinship between the aesthetic
logic of the painting and a type of shot inherent in early cinema (see Fibicher,
2003). Most of all, Lewis gives this complicity, which more or less secretly runs
and works through the history of cinema, a concrete, visual form.
Indeed, at a different level, “the impression of a painting” is evidently
reinforced by the exhibition of Lewis’s works on the white walls of museums
or galleries, rather than in the darkness of cinemas. The reinvention of the
painting thus implies qualities internal to the representation as well as other
qualities relative to the places and modes to display this representation.
Finally, if the painting is a matter for discussion here, notably when it
comes to its relation with the setup of the Lumière films and beyond, it is not
only because the filmic painting brings its “luminous material,” its “reproduced movement,” and its “recorded temporal flow” to the painting, but also
because the principle of the loop, which governs the exhibition of such films
in museum spaces, allows something like an intermittent painting to appear
suddenly, then disappear, reappear, disappear again, and so on.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
NOTES
1
Raymond Borde, the curator of the Cinémathèque de Toulouse and a historian of
cinemathèques, has published an overview of these questions (Borde, 1989).
2
The Cinémathèque française was founded in 1936 out of a ciné-club, Le Cercle du
cinéma. The fact that screenings were privileged over the scientific preservation
of prints caused a break with the FIAF in 1959 and spurred the creation of the
Service des Archives du film of CNC in France in 1969.
3
In the 1980s, Dominique Païni was the programmer at the movie theaters Studio
43 and Studio des Ursulines in Paris.
4
Some examples from the program at Studio 43: “La France de Pétain et son
cinéma” on the occasion of the publication of Jacques Siclier’s book, “Le cinéma
après guerre: Libération et moralité,” relying on Raymond Chirat’s Catalogue des
films français de fiction 1940-1949, “Le cinéma français 1970-1980: de nouveaux
imaginaires,” inspired by François Guérif’s book Le Cinéma policier français.
5
Founded by Raymond Borde in 1964, the Cinémathèque de Toulouse, in its first
20 years, was mostly a place where relations between cinema, history, and society
were explored.
6
In an August 19, 1983 column, Serge Daney used this expression with respect to
the French critic André Bazin, whom he then compared to Henri Langlois: “He
was, with Henri Langlois, the other great B-movie filmmaker of his time. Langlois
had an obsession: to show that all of cinema was worthy of preservation. Bazin
had the same idea, but in reverse: to show that cinema preserved the real and
that, before signifying it and looking like it, it embalmed it” (Daney, 1998 : 41).
7
A series of eight documentaries, Histoire(s) du cinéma was made between 1988
and 1998 by Jean-Luc Godard. Using excerpts from preexisting films, these documentaries are not structured chronologically. Instead, they rest on a montage
proceeding by association of ideas, themes, and stylistic concepts. With the collage, spectators find themselves confronted with a subjective vision of history that
draws its mode of expression from the resources of cinema itself.
8
Projections of excerpts were to punctuate the progression of the Musée du cinéma, but they could not be maintained on a long-term basis for technical reasons
having to do with overheating projectors (Mannoni, 2006 : 425).
9
The study was carried out using the program from the retrospective 25 ans de
cinéma organized for the 20th anniversary of the Cinémathèque française (1
October 1956-31 March 1957 at the Musée pédagogique, rue d’Ulm in Paris). The
catalogue can be found at the Bibliothèque du film in Paris (PCF 18-B1 : 1956).
10 See www.oasis-archive.eu/. The OASIS Archive is designed to be a user-friendly
interface for digital document research and for the dissemination of individual
works. At the same time, incorporation into the OASIS Archive assures the preservation of the digitized artworks.
E X H I B I T I o N S T R AT EG I E S
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11 This text deliberately refers to the painting as a particular object and thus uses
the phrase “the painting” as the translation of “le tableau” in the French original.
12 For more developments on the relation of contemporary art to painting, please
see my text “De l’effet-cinéma à la forme-tableau” (Le Maître, 2009). I wish to thank
Luc Vancheri for allowing me to use some elements from that text here.
13 In French: “système plastique du tableau”.
REFERENCES
Bode, Steven. “Orbital – Périphérique.” In the exhibition catalogue Mark Lewis, London, Film & Video Umbrella. Oxford/Nice: Museum of Modern Art/ Villa Arson,
2002.
Bonitzer, Pascal. “Le Plan-Tableau.” In Décadrages – Peinture et cinéma. Paris: Cahiers
340 |
du cinéma & Editions de l’étoile, 1987.
Borde, Raymond. “Les cinémathèques patrimoine ou spectacle.” Archives 25 (1989)
October.
Burch, Noël. Life to those shadows. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990.
Chevrier, Jean-François. “Les aventures de la forme tableau dans l’histoire de la photographie.” In the exhibition catalogue Photo Kunst, Arbeiten aus 150 Jahren – du
XXè au XIXè, Aller et retour, 11 November-14 January 1989. Stuttgart: Staatsgalerie
Stuttgart, 1990.
Claes, Gabrielle. “Montrer les films conservés.” FIAF Manual for the Access to Collections, July 1995: 1-8.
Daney, Serge. “André Bazin.” in Ciné journal. Vol. II. 1983-1986. Paris: Cahiers du
cinéma, 1998: 41-46.
Desvallées, André. “L’expression muséographique. Introduction.” In Rencontres
européennes des musées d’ethnographie. Actes des premières rencontres des musées
d’ethnographie (1993), edited by Claude Badet and Jacqueline Kerveillant, 173176. Paris: École du Louvre, 1996.
Dubois, Philippe. “Un ‘effet cinéma’ dans l’art contemporain.” Cinéma & Cie (2006) 8:
15-26.
Ernst, Wolfgang. “Underway to the Dual System. Classical Archives and/or Digital
Memory.” In Netpioneers 1.0. Contexualizing Early Net-based Art, edited by Dieter
Daniels and Gunther Reisinger, 81-99. Berlin, New York: Sternberg Press, 2009.
Fibicher, Bernhard. “Painterly aspects in Mark Lewis’s new films.” In the exhibition
catalogue Mark Lewis. Bern: Kunsthalle Bern, Argos Editions, 2003.
Foucart, Julien. “Les peintures lentes de Mark Lewis.” Dits (Fall-Winter 2006) 7: 36.
Jousse, Thierry, Charles Tesson, and Serge Toubiana. “Cinémathèque. l’Art de programmer. Entretien avec Dominique Païni.” Cahiers du cinéma (September 1992)
459: 83-89.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
Le Maître, Barbara. “De l’effet-cinéma à la forme-tableau.” In Images contemporaines –
Arts, formes, dispositifs, edited by Luc Vancheri, 117-132. Lyon: Aléas, 2009.
Le Péron, Serge, and Serge Toubiana. “Court-Circuit. Entretien avec Dominique
Païni.” Cahiers du cinéma (March 1984) 357: 41-45.
Mannoni, Laurent. Histoire de la Cinémathèque française. Paris: Gallimard, 2006.
Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001.
Minkowski, John. “MindFrames. Media Study at Buffalo, 1973-1990.” Film Quarterly
61 (2007) 2: 56-62.
—. “The Videotape Collection at Media Study, Buffalo.” Afterimage 5 (1978) 7 – http://
www.experimentaltvcenter.org/history/people/ptext.php3?id=59&page=1. Last
access: 20 September 2012.
Païni, Dominique. “Portrait du programmateur en chiff nier.” Le Cinéma, un art moderne, Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 1997.
—. “La cinéphilie au risque du patrimoine, ou les états d’âme d’un cinéphile devenu
conservateur.” Cahiers du cinéma (January 1996) 498: 54-57.
—. “Sans l’ombre d’un pli. Falbalas de Jacques Becker.” Cinémathèque (Spring 1995)
7: 29-34.
—. Conserver, montrer. Où l’on ne craint pas d’édifier un musée pour le cinéma. Programme. Paris: Yellow Now, 1992.
—. “Cinéma prénom musique. Note d’un montreur de films incertain(s).” Cahiers du
cinema (February 1984) 356: VI-VII.
—. “Lettre sur ‘Les Clowns’.” Cahiers du cinéma (May-June 1971) 229: 64-65.
Rauger, Jean-François. “Misère de la monographie, monographie de la misère.” Cinémathèque (Spring 1995) 7: 106-111.
Vasulka, Woody, and Peter Weibel (eds.). Buffalo Heads. Media Study, Media Practice,
Media Pioneers, 1973-1990. Karlsruhe/Cambridge, MA: ZKM | Center for Art and
Media/MIT Press, 2008.
—, and Steina Vasulka (eds.). Eigenwelt der Apparatewelt. Pioneers of Electronic Art.
Linz: Ars Electronica, 1992.
Wolf, Laurent. Après le tableau. Paris: Klincksieck, 2005.
—. Vie et Mort du tableau (vol. I). Paris: Klincksieck, 2004.
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9.3
THE IMAGE TRAVELING ACROSS TERRITORIES: CINEMA, VIDEO, TV,
MUSEUM, THE wEB, AND BEyOND
9.3.1
ON PASSAGES BETwEEN ART AND CINEMA
Ariane Noël de Tilly
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In the section Passing on Historical Images: Experimental Cinema and Video Art
of his article on the cinema effect in contemporary art, Philippe Dubois briefly
mentions how experimental filmmakers and video artists have operated in the
passages between art and cinema. He argues, on the one hand, that experimental cinema has originated “installations” as another existing form of cinema
and on the other hand, that it is video art that has introduced the large-scale
moving image in museums and art galleries. In what follows, I would like to
propose a few nuances and complementary perspectives by discussing historical examples. Firstly, because a few artists, such as Andy Warhol, have worked
with both mediums from the start, and secondly, because these experimental
filmmakers and video artists shared concerns with other flourishing art forms
of the time such as minimalism, conceptual art, and installation art. The aim
is thus to broaden the perspectives to examine these passages.
One of the first dialogues or passages between the universes of art and
cinema is Andy Warhol’s Outer and Inner Space (1965), a work that combined
video and film in its making. In August 1965, the New York-based magazine
Tape Recording lent a Norelco video recorder to Warhol in exchange for an
exclusive interview (Goldsmith, 2004: 71). The artist first presented the videotapes in October 1965 in an underground space.1 He eventually used two of
the videotapes he had made, recordings of Edie Sedgwick, in the making of
Outer and Inner Space. The film is made of two reels, each lasting 33 minutes.
Each reel portraits a filmed Edie sitting next to a flattened Edie (the image
prerecorded on video and played on a monitor). The actress is talking to a person outside the screen and, occasionally, when she turns a little towards the
right it gives the impression that she is having a conversation with herself as
if the filmed Edie is talking to the videotaped Edie. As stated by curator Callie
Angell, the “outer” and “inner” of the title “refers not only to the dichotomy
between Sedgwick’s outer beauty and inner turmoil, so vividly diagrammed in
this double portrait, but it also describes the two very different spaces of representation occupied by the video/television medium and by film” (2003: 14). By
using both video and film for the making of Outer and Inner Space, Warhol was
able to explore their similarities and differences. Working with both mediums
was rather infrequent in the 1960s, but it became common practice in the
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
1970s, as some artists were using videotapes to record, but would then transfer the result to films (and vice versa). Outer and Inner Space was first screened
as a double projection in January 1966 at the Filmmakers’ Cinematheque in
New York, a place where many experimental filmmakers were presenting their
films at the time. Warhol’s Outer and Inner Space is exemplary of this passage
between the universes of video and cinema as it can nowadays either be exhibited in a museum or screened in a cinema; it has different presentation modalities: it can either be a single or double projection – in the former case, the two
films are projected one after the other; and it finally combined, in its making,
video and film.
Another type of passage that occurred in the 1970s was when experimental filmmakers and visual artists deconstructed the cinematic experience and
exhibited the components making it possible in museums, art galleries, and
alternative spaces. For instance, with works such as Line Describing a Cone
(1973) and Long Film for Ambient Light (1975), Anthony McCall made visible to
the audience elements that were not intended to be explicitly seen by viewers
in the cinema: the projector, the beam of light, the screen, the projectionist,
and the space itself in which the projection was taking place. Line Describing
Cone “is dealing with the projected light-beam itself;” it “begins as a coherent line of light, like a laser beam, and develops through the 30 minute duration, into a complete, hollow cone of light” (McCall, 1978: 250). Rather than
being projected on a screen, the film is projected on a wall. Artificial fog is also
introduced in the exhibition space, to make the beam of light clearly visible
as it develops into the shape of a cone. Because viewers are invited to walk
about, around, and through the cone of light, Line Describing a Cone cannot
be presented in a standard cinema; it needs an empty space, as it is a threedimensional work.
In 1975, at the Idea Warehouse in New York, McCall proposed an even
more radical experience: a film that did not use camera, filmstrip, projector,
or screen. Long Film for Ambient Light used space, light, and duration instead.
Over the course of twenty-four hours, McCall invited visitors to walk into an
empty Manhattan loft where the windows had been covered with diffusion
paper and lit in the evening by a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. In
Long Film for Ambient Light, McCall stripped down the cinematic experience
to its most fundamental feature: light. At the same occasion, it reminded the
public that if there is no lightbulb in the projector, then the film remains invisible.
In this translation of the cinematic components from the cinema to the
space of museums and art galleries – thereby turning them into “light cubes”2
– the influence of other artistic movements evolving at the same time such as
minimalism and conceptual art, has to be considered. After all, McCall and
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other artists and filmmakers exhibited the minimal and necessary features of
the cinematic experience, and, in many cases, this was done within a rigorous
conceptual structure. Cinema is approached here as an idea and experiments
were done about how the idea of cinema could be expressed through different means. The aim was also to remove the emphasis on the very medium of
film, to trigger a shift of perception, and to stress the importance of the process. Like artists working in the field of minimalism or conceptual art, they
questioned the very nature of art and eliminated all non-essential forms; they
introduced a shift in the perception of the viewers.
While certain artists were conducting experiments with film to exploit its
sculptural properties and its possible expansion in space, others began working with video.3 Until the first Sony Portapak was released in 1965, artists such
as Nam June Paik and Wolf Vostell made interventions on television monitors.
Françoise Parfait has coined the term “vidéoclasme” to qualify their actions
(2001: 21). As she explains, Paik and Vostell treated the monitors as sculptural
forms and objects that they had to position and to connect in the available
space. The artists initially distorted the TV signal and worked on the display of
the monitors themselves; they were not yet dealing with videotapes. It is also
important to point out that video art and video installations appeared almost
at the same time. Indeed, Paik and Vostell’s interventions can be called video
installations, as the artists had taken into consideration the space in which
the artworks were presented. These works were developed in the exhibition
space itself rather than in the studio. The gallery space became their site of
creativity. In that sense, video was just as important as film in rethinking the
exhibition modalities of the museum.
Alongside these “vidéoclasmes,” other artists, such as Peter Campus, were
working with the real-time feedback property of video. In 1974, Campus created Shadow Projection, a closed-circuit video installation in which the viewer
can see herself projected in the exhibition space as her presence was recorded
live by a surveillance camera.4 This interactive artwork uses a theatrical light,
a surveillance camera, a screen, and a projector. The surveillance camera and
the projector are connected in order to form a closed circuit. Once the visitor
stands in front of the light, the surveillance camera records her body and the
recorded image is projected in real time on the screen displayed in the exhibition space. If the visitor is facing the screen, then it is her back that is projected
onto it; if she is facing the camera, then her front is projected onto the screen;
either way, the visitor will never be able to see her front as she cannot look in
both directions (towards the surveillance camera and towards the screen) at
the same time. Campus’ work made the visitors realize that Shadow Projection
could not be apprehended by a unique and single point of view. A frontal perspective was no longer possible.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
Like Paik’s and Vostell’s interventions discussed above, Campus’s Shadow
Projection has to be considered within a broader scope of artists who started
making installation art in the 1960s and 1970s. In the beginnings, the artists
were making ephemeral, temporary and site-specific works. One of the main
features of installation art is spectator participation. As Campus has claimed,
the work was interactive because “the projection really engaged the viewer to
become, literally a part of the piece” (Hanhardt, 1999). Campus’ closed-circuit
video installations were perceptual experiments in which the viewers were
invited to perform actions and to try to understand how their movements in
the exhibition space were projected onto the screen. These works by Campus
share the concerns that artists making installations had: turning the visitors
into participants.
To conclude, the artworks discussed above have led us to adopt complementary perspectives to look at the passages between art and cinema. Rather
than uniquely examining the passages between video art and experimental
cinema, the present contribution attempted to contextualize the creation of
video art and experimental film within the artistic production of the 1960s and
1970s, and more specifically, in relation to minimalism, conceptual art, and
installation art. Firstly, the example of Andy Warhol’s Outer and Inner Space
has shown that video art and film were intertwined in his artistic practice. It
was also used to point out that works such as Outer and Inner Space offer different exhibition modalities and that they do not have a unique destination
(the cinema or the museum) as they can be screened and exhibited. Secondly,
the study of Anthony McCall’s Line Describing a Cone and Long Film for Ambient Light showed how McCall has deconstructed the cinematic experience
and how he has questioned the very nature of the film medium. His approach
shares similarities with the concerns of conceptual and minimal artists who
were working at the same period and who were challenging the nature of the
art object and the spatial experience with their interventions. This should be
taken into account while looking at these passages. Thirdly, the last examples
discussed (Paik, Vostell, and Campus) showed how the artists shared the concerns of contemporary artists making installations and how they attempted to
turn the visitors into participants.
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9.3.2
ACROSS THE TERRITORIES: EXHIBITING MUSIC VIDEO
Senta Siewert
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In recent years, a particular genre of media art is increasingly finding its way
into museums and art galleries without much recognition from art and film
scholars, namely, the music video. Also in scholarly research on media art,
the music video genre generally tends to receive only passing mention. The
reason for this seems to be that music videos are usually perceived as a purely
commercial medium, and not an art form.5 The art world’s failure to recognize the music video is compounded by its ever-decreasing presence on television, which has led some media critics to speak of the “death of the music
video,” not unlike the concerns around the “death of cinema” (see Cherchi
Usai, 2008). By contrast, as I will show, music videos are alive and kicking, and
the changes taking place within music television can be seen as an opportunity for music video to expand into other venues. Moreover, I argue that the
music video deserves the same kind of attention as film and video art, since
these accepted art forms often clearly borrow from the visual and narrative
strategies of the music video. As this contribution will make clear, a volume on
media art such as the present one should necessarily take the phenomenon of
the music video into account.
Taking a cue from Thomas Elsaesser, who argues for museums as a permanent home of film art, I will make a similar claim for music video art within
museums. Elsaesser writes that canonical films should be perceived from the
perspective of art historians or film anthropologists. As Elsaesser explains,
“[t]he archive and the museum can and must take over from the film studio,
the distributor and the exhibitor, to save, restore, preserve and valorise: as artworks as well as heritage and cultural patrimony” (Elsaesser, 2009: 1).
Philippe Dubois is similarly interested in the relationship between cinema and the museum. With his concept of “cinema effects,” Dubois describes
certain video installations that introduce the cinematic apparatus into the
museum context and which refer to cinema or to film history.6 In what follows,
I discuss how Dubois’ idea of the “cinema effect” can be used productively
when discussing the role and place of music videos in the contemporary exhibition scene. I suggest to call this phenomenon a “music video effect.” While
Dubois examines only video installations that reference films, it is noteworthy
that music videos also refer to films and television, often using the technique
of found footage.
In the museum, various exhibition strategies reveal to what extent an
artistic work is shaped by a particular mode of presentation. In what follows,
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
new exhibition platforms for music videos will be analyzed on the basis of
three examples: VIDEO: 25 years of video aesthetics, which was shown at the
NRW Forum in Dusseldorf, I want to see how you see in Hamburg’s Deichtorhallen, with works by over 50 artists from the Julia Stoschek Collection, and the
New York Guggenheim show YouTube Play: A Biennial of Creative Video.7 I will
first examine the existing relationship between MTV and television before
elaborating on new contexts for music video, namely, the museum, festivals,
the Internet and urban space. These new platforms provide a basis for understanding the distinct operations of the “music video effect” in contemporary
arts and culture.
TV and MTV
The official emergence of music television in the 1980s was predated by extensive experimentation in video art. During the 1970s, many artists attempted
to liberate modern art from its static existence. Video art pioneers like Nam
June Paik and Wolf Vostell focused on the technology at first, manipulating
the equipment itself. Vostell called this method “dé-coll/age.” Television sets
were covered in tape, wrapped in barbed wire or set in concrete, to emphasize
the passive spectator sitting apathetically in front of the TV screen and waiting
to be entertained. Examples include Nam June Paik’s Zen for TV (1963), Wolf
Kahlen’s Mirror-TV (1969-1977) or Joseph Beuys’ Felt TV (1970). The embrace
of the music video as a new form of artistic practice by television coincided
with these experiments in video art. In this sense the new art form of the music
video followed the earlier experiments with synaesthetic perception, colorlight-music and visual music in films by figures such as Walter Ruttmann,
Oskar Fischinger and Hans Richter in the 1920s and 1930s. All of these practices attempted to fuse images and music into a unified whole.8
Starting in the 1980s, musicians and visual artists began to make use of
the new platform of music television, where they could work on forms of visual
expression guided by the music, and thus develop a new aesthetic. The starting point for the creative process was a preexisting song: musical structures
that shaped the time axis could be transposed onto the image axis.9 Short
units (intervals) would be repeated, analogous to the repetitive note or chord
progressions (riffs) of pop/rock music. Besides the typical portrayal of subcultures, the aesthetic of the music video marks a specific interplay of image
and sound as well as a rhythm of the montage and the creation of new visual
worlds. Some music videos use music that follows the image, while others create added value with a contrapuntal arrangement of image and sound.
The American broadcaster MTV increasingly began to feature videos
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with fast-paced editing for mass consumption, thus fulfilling the demands of
both the music industry (promotion) and the TV industry (entertainment).10
Steve Blame, one of the first and best-known VJs, describes MTV as a promotional platform where a completely new star image could be established
in the short period of three minutes.11 However, from around the year 2000
music videos began to recede into the background of MTV’s programming,
which increasingly focused on docusoaps and reality shows. Since then, in
order to be seen, the music video was in need of new screening venues and
exhibition platforms. As a result, music videos are finding their way into
museums and gallery spaces, a phenomenon that can probably be explained
both by a new acceptance on the part of the art scene and the adaptation of
music video to the art world. I will now examine the re-positioning of the
music video more closely, with particularly attention to display strategies
within the museum.
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Museum and Art Gallery
The exhibition VIDEO: 25 years of video aesthetics showed 100 videos. The videos were displayed on individual monitors set up in rows, presenting the most
important contemporary tendencies culled from the workshops and archives
of the video avant garde. Ulf Poschardt, the exhibition’s curator, stated: “In
contemporary video, reality and fiction, high and low, art and advertising,
identity and virtuality, all coincide” (Poschardt, 2003: 10). The monitors displayed art videos, advertising commercials and – for the most part – music videos. This selection meant that visitors were given the opportunity to compare
the visual styles of the different videos and the overlap between genres. The
exhibition demonstrated that many videomakers no longer have any reservations about working within multiple artistic forms. Among the artists and
filmmakers whose work was shown in the VIDEO exhibition were artists such
as Matthew Barney, Marina Abramovic, Anton Corbijn, William Kentridge,
Pipilotti Rist, and Bill Viola.12 Chris Cunningham, for one, participated not
only with music videos and commercials but also with his video installation
Flex (2000). A surprise was that Damien Hirst did not show classical video art,
but a music video. Ridley Scott’s commercial for Apple Macintosh (1984) was
included, as was David Lynch’s Adidas: The Wall (1994). In addition, the exhibition included videos by Jean-Luc Godard and an episode from Andy Warhol’s
MTV show 15 Minutes (1986). The combination of music and advertising in the
work of a single artist was evident with Spike Jonze’s music video Praise You
(1999) for Fatboy Slim and his Lamp commercial for IKEA (2002). The exhibition design reflected the equal status given to the three genres of music, art,
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
and advertising: the monitors were set up in rows in such a way that the different genres and examples could coexist side by side.13
By contrast, I want to see how you see – a 2010 exhibition in Hamburg’s
Deichtorhallen showing works by over 50 artists from the Julia Stoschek Collection – followed a different display strategy. The industrial architecture of
the Deichtorhallen made it possible to use special structures to create a multifaceted video path leading the viewer through the exhibition. The roof of the
great hall was covered up, creating a mysterious semi-darkness that served to
draw attention to the video works. The most distinctive feature of the show
was the decision to accord a central place to Björk’s music video Wanderlust
(2008). The video’s position within the hall lent it equal, if not to say privileged,
status alongside video art classics by Monica Bonvicini, Douglas Gordon, Isaac
Julien, Anthony McCall, Marina Abramovic, and Bruce Nauman.
The video for Wanderlust was directed by the artist duo Encyclopedia
Pictura (Sean Hellfritsch and Isaiah Saxon). Spectators equipped with 3-D
glasses could experience the cinema ambiance of the black box and got
immersed in Björk’s fairy-tale dreamworld. In the video, Björk drifts through
fantastic mountain landscapes. The vivid stereoscopic 3-D images show animals and landscapes created through a mix of classical animation techniques,
computer graphics, and live-action filmed sequences. The 3-D effects evoke a
bizarre world with its own structures and perceptual possibilities, and thus
help create a surreal, illusionary, sensuous, and immersive experience. The
video reflects the music’s rhythm, and makes reference not only to the videos
Björk created together with Michel Gondry but also films such as The NeverEnding Story (Wolfgang Petersen 1984), and early cinema classics like A Trip to
the Moon (George Méliès 1902) and short films from cinema’s first decades.14
After having discussed museum strategies, I will now examine the existence
of the “music video effect” in the context of festivals and via Internet and DVD
platforms.
Festival, Internet, and Urban Space
Early cinema shorts of the kind mentioned above were showcased in a retrospective program at the 2010 Short Film Festival Oberhausen, under the title
From the Deep: The Great Experiment 1898–1918. Some of them, such as the
film Serpentine Dances (France/USA ca.1896–1898), seem like precursors of the
music video since they have certain features in common with the music video
such as the short length, and the dancing and musical accompaniment.15
Apart from these early works, the festival also showed current music videos
in the MuVi section, which was initiated in 1999 and has since become a key
E X H I B I T I o N S T R AT EG I E S
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component of the Oberhausen festival program. MuVi, a competitive section, brings together artistically noteworthy music videos from Germany and
around the world. Thus, in addition to music television, museums, and galleries, the music video has found yet another platform: the film festival. Oberhausen’s festival director Lars Henrik Gass confirmed this in an interview:
It is really striking that music television, which introduced the genre of
the music video, now shows fewer and fewer of them. It’s a completely
absurd development, but it has led to the very real possibility that music
video will outlive music TV. In other words, music video nowadays has
a thriving life of its own. Videos are shown at film festivals, they are
watched on the Internet, they are having a wild time and really no longer
need promotion from music TV to survive.16
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Gass refers here to the Internet as a new presentation platform for music videos. Reinforced by the recent popularity of YouTube and other video websites,
artists can now present their work online as well.
One of the music videos that was shown in the MuVi-section of the Oberhausener Kurzfilmtage was also shown in the same year at the first video
biennial organized by YouTube in cooperation with the Guggenheim. In the
2010 exhibition YouTube Play: A Biennial of Creative Video, the music video
Synesthesia by Terri Timely (2009) was one of the 25 winning films out of the
23,000 clips sent in from 91 countries. The jury evaluated the videos according
to the categories of music video, experimental film, and animation.17 These
videos were shown as large-scale projections on the walls in the Guggenheim
Museum New York.
With this display at the museum, music videos left the apparatus of the
television behind, as well as the classical cinema screen and the space of the
black box. These videos even extended beyond the Guggenheim museum
space and reached a bigger audience due to their projection on the outside
walls of the museum, in public space. The barriers of the exhibition space were
extended even further, since the videos were shown at the same time in other
Guggenheim Museums (Berlin, Bilbao, Venice) and on YouTube in order to
reach an even larger global public. With this exhibition, the music video (and
also the other forms of short film) finally reached some of the most acclaimed
museums as well as the Internet.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
Music Video Effect
Having taken into account the various developments that have affected the
music video, I propose that we speak of a “music video effect,” comparable
to the “cinema effect.”18 The music video aesthetic crops up in other artistic
media and thus gains entry into the cinema, museum, festival, Internet, and
urban space contexts. When the music video enters these various contexts,
its avant-garde aesthetics of visual pastiche is foregrounded. The example of
Björk mentioned above perfectly encapsulates the shifts undergone by the
music video since its invention: a video abandons the TV monitor and is projected onto a film screen inside a black box in a museum space, thus becoming part of a complex exhibition strategy and is shown in the Internet and
distributed on a DVD which can be purchased in the museum shop.
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E X H I B I T I o N S T R AT EG I E S
9.3.3
DEVELOPING, PRESENTING, AND DOCUMENTING UNSTABLE MEDIA
AT V2_19
Arie Altena
Unstable Media
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The origins of V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media go back to 1981, to the
founding of an artist initiative in a squat in the Dutch city ‘s Hertogenbosch.
During the 1980s their focus shifted to electronics, robotics, and the use of
media and computers, and V2_ became a center for art and media technology. In 1987 V2_ issued the Manifesto for the Unstable Media. It was written out
of dissatisfaction with the art world and its unwillingness or inability to take
on new technologies. Since then, V2_ has taken up the name Institute for the
Unstable Media, and has used the term ‘unstable media’ for the field it is covering.20
In the Manifesto, unstable media are defined as all media that “use streams
of electricity and frequencies,” and it states: “Instability is inherent to these
media.” Though the original manifesto is now a historical document, it still
serves as an inspiration. V2_’s current mission statement contains not only
a reference to unstable media, it still states that instability is a creative force
that is essential to the continuous reordering of social, cultural, political, and
economic relations in society.
V2_ organises events, exhibitions, lectures, and festivals. V2_ also helps
artists to develop technology, it publishes books, and it documents its own
activities. V2_’s basic attitude toward electronic art is one of taking it as selfevident that, in a world filled with new media and new technologies, there will
be artists who work and experiment with these technologies to make art, to
react to the world, to express their feelings, to take a critical stance, or to shape
a different “world.” The idea of a relation between the use of unstable media
in society and in the arts is as self-evident for V2_ now as it was in 1987.
Presenting
In 1994 V2_ moved to Rotterdam. This move coincided with the upsurge of
interest amongst artists in the possibilities of the Internet and the WWW
for artistic expression and intervention. V2_ became one of the sites for this
vibrant culture, and showed net art, as well as the work of artists working
with virtual reality and 3-D projection. “Cyberspace” was the buzzword in
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
those days, and it was during that time that V2_ developed into a professional
organisation with an international network. The Dutch Electronic Art Festival
(DEAF) – organized more or less biannually – became the meeting ground for
this network of artists and scientists. The first edition took place in 1994, the
most recent one was the 2007 edition.
V2_has a series of events that run throughout the whole year and combine
lectures with performances and presentations in various formats. Wiretap was
the longest-running series (1993-2002); this was followed by Tangents (20022007). The dot.nu series (2000-2002) presented works in progress by many
live cinema artists, who at the time were often still studying at art school. The
Test_lab series, which started in 2006, is meant as a showcase of work in progress. These events show the current state of unstable media, and are also an
occasion to show what the V2_lab is developing, and to test it on a critical audience.
V2_ takes a thematic approach with all of these events. Every DEAF, for
instance, had its own theme, and even from the titles, one can see V2_’s particular approach toward technological art.21 The emphasis lies on interaction,
machine-body interface, and biological metaphors: Digital Nature, Interfacing
Realities, Digital Territories, The Art of the Accident, Machine Times, Information
is Alive, Feelings are Always Local, Interact or Die! These festivals were combinations of performances, concerts, an exhibition of mostly interactive installations, a film program, a symposium, lectures, workshops, expert meetings,
and, occasionally, site-specific events. This has now become a standard format for new media art festivals.
The festival and presentation formats and the development of thematic
programs probably have been more important to the curators and organizers
of the DEAFs and other V2_events than theoretical curatorial considerations
derived from the world of contemporary visual arts. For V2_ the context of
technological arts and technological society with all of its fascinating developments (from computer games and scientific 3-D imagery to the uses of
RFID, GPS, and biotechnology) comes first. But it is important to stress that
technological arts are not about technology, they are about our world, about
human feelings, our interactions with computers – or about any of the other
“things” that contemporary art can be about. In that sense there is no difference between technological art and “traditional” art.
While organizing a festival, including an exhibition, the simple question
of how to build (often complex) installations and how to place these inside the
space available becomes a crucial concern. Works have to be set up properly
so the audience can experience them fully. Because a festival often takes place
at many different locations, it is possible to show performances on stage and
computer installations in a semi-public space, as well as large installations in
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354 |
a large space, and smaller works in separate rooms. Some works might be projected large on a wall, others screened on a monitor in a black (or white) box;
other works might be screened on a monitor on a pedestal, and some works
need a space as a playing field all on their own. Some works require a variety
of exhibition modalities. Ideally, it is the work itself that determines the exhibition modality, yet in reality, compromises are also sought, necessitated by
practical concerns.
New media festivals characteristically incorporate and accommodate
different ways of presenting. Both artists and organizers are (or should be)
conscious of the fact that “presenting” an artwork on stage or on screen during a lecture or artist presentation (talking about the work, showing clips), is
something different than presenting the work itself as an autonomous work in
an exhibition. As V2_ aims to stimulate debate and develops works in collaboration with artists, this type of artist’s presentation is very important. They
include also test setups and first public presentations of works in progress.
Showing a work which is still in progress can give the artist important insights
into how an installation is functioning and what needs to be calibrated or
changed. In most cases, such presentations have to be distinguished, however, from an exhibition or a proper performance of a finished work.
Another issue is the fact that complex interactive installations and technological works are often further developed after the first “proper” exhibition of
the work, often because with time, a better technology becomes available (for
example, a new type of sensor, or better software). Works go through versions.
On the other hand, several works might be developed using similar technology
and a similar concept.
If this sounds as if mostly practical considerations determine the presentation formats, I could rephrase it by saying that the instability of the situation
is taken as the starting point for finding the best way to present, exhibit, or
even develop a work. In the end, it is the thematic approach that determines
the choice of works to be shown. This is also true for the international exhibitions curated by V2_, such as Zone V2_ at MOCA in Taipei (2007).
Developing
At the V2_lab, artists collaborate on electronic art projects and technical
research projects with hard- and software developers, technicians, and scientists. These long- and short-term projects focus on the use of new technologies
for artistic means and on the cultural and social implications of these technologies. The research projects have resulted in software tools, mixed media
applications, and artworks that have been presented at various V2_events.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
Since 2010, the V2_lab has been researching the topics of augmented reality
and wearable technology. Augmented reality is the term for the layering of
digital information onto physical reality as we perceive it; wearable technology concerns technology that can be worn on the body, or becomes part of the
body, and often looks for connections to the world of fashion. Both concern
the naturalization of technology and the incorporation of technology by the
body and the mind.
Dutch artist Marnix de Nijs has collaborated with V2_ on various occasions,
including on an augmented reality game entitled Exercises in Immersion. This
work is about how the body adapts to the world it perceives through its senses,
even if the sensory information it receives is not congruent with reality. For
this work, De Nijs required a system that senses a player’s location in real time
and tracks what the player is viewing. It took a long time to develop the technical aspects of this system and, to some extent, this stalled the development
of the artistic concept. In the end, a workable solution was found, combining
sensors with custom-made software, and a first public test of the installation
was shown at DEAF in 2007. The installation needed a complete hall for itself
(at Pakhuis Meesteren in Rotterdam); no other work was exhibited there. Now
the work mainly “exists” for the public in the form of texts, photographs documenting the exhibition, and a number of videos, some of which are available
at V2_’s website. One video shows De Nijs talking about the work, interspersed
with footage from the installation and visuals explaining the technology.22
German artist Aram Bartholl developed his Tweet Bubble Series as an artist
in residence at V2_. He started from the idea of showing Twitter messages on
a T-shirt. Initially, Bartholl hoped to develop a T-shirt which could show any
Twitter message, and code software that could connect the shirt to the Internet. This implied a very complex technological development process, which he
(and others) assumed would not do justice to the simple, elegant concept. He
subsequently realized four different versions of a shirt showing Twitter messages, using far simpler methods to get the idea across. Pocket Tweets used the
mobile phone itself as screen: you put the phone in a special pocket on the front
of the shirt; Loud Tweets used a LED name badge connected to the Internet;
Paper Tweets lets you print out your most recent Twitter message on a sticker;
and Classic Tweets is a thermochromatic T-shirt that can show three different
classic Twitter messages. These versions were presented on stage in V2_ test
lab, Fashionable Technology. This is a work that is very suitable for a type of artist presentation at an event. In addition to an artist talk in which the concept is
shown, and maybe explained, it could include videos of former presentations
or performances, a rehearsed performance, and/or an invitation to the public
to try the works out for themselves. In fact, Bartholl often uses a mix of these
forms – though a performative approach is important to him.
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Documenting
356 |
Documenting works like Tweet Bubble Series and Exercises in Immersion
includes recording both the conceptual and technological development as
well as storing software and technical specifications. To preserve the work, one
also has to store physical components. In the case of Exercises in Immersion,
this is a complex and costly affair, as there is quite some hard- and software
to take into account. Additionally, videos of presentations and performances
should be stored, and it is also important to keep a record of the cultural contexts which were important to the development and the concept of the work;
artist statements and interviews often give insight into this as well. For interactive works in particular, there is the issue of the calibration of the work (how
fast or slow should it react?) and the preferred interaction. Such issues could
be covered by descriptive texts, interaction diagrams, and video documentation of the work in action.
Because V2_ has documented its own activities from early on, there is an
archive of hundreds of videotapes, digital video files, and over 15,000 digital
and digitized photographs.23 These are an invaluable resource for the history
of electronic and new media arts in the Netherlands. They also accidentally
and partially document some of the works that were shown or developed at
V2_, and thus continue their visibility on a different platform. To give an example: the video registration of Dick Raaijmakers performance Intona is probably
the only video of this work in existence. What once was “just registration” can
become an invaluable resource for art history or reconstruction only 20 years
later. Similarly, the archive contains a live stream of the V2_event at which
Bartholl’s Tweet Bubble Series was presented, and photographs that document
it, just as is the case for Exercises in Immersion. The task of the V2_archive is
to make this material, mostly digital born, accessible to the public through a
website.
On V2_’s current website, items are connected through keywords, a related-items algorithm, and through editorial links (human-made connections
between different items in the website). Works, events, people, organizations, articles, videos, and photographs are connected by both humans and
machines, enabling the visitor to explore and discover the history of V2_ and
technological art.24 This can be seen as one of the presentation strategies of
V2_ – many people will only get to know works through the online documentation. It is a way in which works “exist” for the public, although this type of
“existence” should not be confused with the work itself. There are many artists
who make work for online exhibition, but they are a minority among the artists who work and exhibit at V2_.
Ideally, documentation of works should grow over time. Essays and
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
reviews could be added over time, as could archival material dug up from V2_
computers. (An example of this are wikis used during the technical development.) Software used to run a work could be offered for download. When such
documentation becomes very refined and rich, it seems almost possible to see
it as a substitution for physical preservation. This, however, can never be the
case for interactive installations, as these have to be experienced physically.
Video art – especially single-screen works – could indeed be preserved
online. Additionally, screen-based digital or interactive work that can run
on any normal computer can be preserved up to a certain extent in a digital
archive. An example of this are several net artworks that V2_ hosted in the late
1990s that still have their original files on V2_’s server. One could give website
users access to such works even if it means they just download the original
files. Making a work function in a “sufficient” way, however, may or may not be
possible at times, depending on the type of work. Often works made in the past
were so technically simple (by 2011 standards) that they will still run without a
problem. On the other hand, they might not run in the right way, as computers
today are faster, browsers have changed, and some works made heavy use of
the context of other websites that may have disappeared or radically changed
since the 1990s. In other words: archiving the files is one thing, but the ways in
which a net artwork can be brought to “life” can be best decided on a case-bycase basis, for instance when there is an opportunity to install or exhibit such
a work again.
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NOTES
1
In 1965, Warhol recorded at least eleven videotapes with the Norelco camera. As
indicated by Callie Angell, “the only accessible footage from these early video
exists in [Outer and Inner Space], which Warhol, in effect, preserved by reshooting
them in 16mm” (Angell, 2002).
2
3
I borrow the expression “light cube” from David Joselit (2004: 154).
Of course, some of them, such as Andy Warhol discussed above, but also VALIE
EXPORT and Peter Weibel, were working with both mediums.
4
Shadow Projection was initially shown at The Kitchen in New York 9-18 May 1974.
See The Kitchen Calendar: http://www.eai.org/user_files/supporting_documents/
MAY74EAI.pdf (last access 5 August 2010). It was then shown in the exhibition
Projected Images (Walker Art Center, 21 September-3 November 1974) discussed
previously in this chapter.
358 |
5
6
An example of this approach is Goodwin (1992).
Dubois defines the “cinema effect” as follows: “this ‘cinema effect’ is extremely
diversified, takes multiple forms, and operates at all levels (institutional, artistic,
theoretical, or critical).” See page 312 of the present volume.
7
VIDEO: 25 years of video aesthetics, exhibition held at the NRW Forum in Düsseldorf 24 January-18 April 2004; I want to see how you see, exhibition held at the
Deichtorhallen Hamburg 16 April-25 June 2010; YouTube Play: A Biennial of Creative Video, exhibition held at the New York Guggenheim 21 October 2010.
8
See Cytowic (2002); Weibel (1987). See also chapter 1 of the present volume. Paik’s
background in music theory, and the influence of John Cage, are part of the context for his avant-garde musical practices and his attempts to break with Western
musical conventions and representations, such as the live performances in which
Paik destroyed a piano.
9
Links between the phenomenological qualities of sound and image as well as the
possibility of creating new forms of experience are discussed in Siewert (2010).
10 MTV was launched in the US in 1981 with a video by The Buggles, aptly titled
“Video Killed the Radio Star.” Six years later, MTV Europe was launched.
11 Steve Blame, cited in the introductory episode of the seven-part documentary
series Fantastic Voyages –Eine Kosmologie des Videoclips (Director: Christoph
Dreher, Assistant Director: Senta Siewert, produced in 2001 for Arte). Three
noteworthy publications on the music video: Keazor and Wübbena (2005); Krüger
and Weiss (2007); and Vernallis (2008). The latter characterizes the music video
aesthetic as determined by an intensified audiovisual continuity.
12 Further artists whose work was shown include Dara Birnbaum, Peter Callas, Ingo
Günther, Mariko Mori, Joe Pytka, Jo Sedelmaier, Tarsem Singh, Klaus vom Bruch,
Ridley Scott, Traktor, Sophie Muller, and Rotraut Pape.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
13 Other comparable exhibitions include: “Exposition of Music Electronic Television,” Galerie Parnass, Wuppertal (1963); “Art of Music Video,” Long Beach Art
Museum (1989 + 1999); “What a Wonderful World – Music Video in Architecture,”
Groningen Museum (1990); “Visual Music,” Museum of Contemporary Art, Los
Angeles (2004); “Sons & Lumières,” Centre Pompidou, Paris (2004); “The Art of
Pop,” Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Cologne (2011). Another platform for
music videos are DVDs, especially DVD collections of the work of individual
music video directors, which have a wide potential audience: music fans, music
video enthusiasts, as well as art aficionados. They buy these DVDS, which are also
offered for sale in the gift shops of most contemporary art museums. To name
just a few examples: The Work of Director Chris Cunningham, The Work of Michael
Gondry, The Work of Director Spike Jonze, The Work of Director Anton Corbijn, The
Work of Stephane Sednaoui, The Work of Mark Romanek and The Work of Jonathan
Glazer, Various Artists – Music Video Art (all released by EMI between 2003–2005).
14 Gondry directed the videos for Human Behaviour (1993), Army of Me (1995), Isobel
(1995), Hyperballad (1996), Jóga (1997) ,and Bachelorette (1997).
15 Serpentine Dances (France/USA ca. 1896-1898), 60m, 3’, 35mm, color, from the
archive of the Cineteca di Bologna. The film program was curated by Eric de
Kuyper and Mariann Lewinsky.
16 From an interview conducted during the 2010 festival, with students from my
seminar on “Media Art Institutions and Promotion” (Ruhr-Universität Bochum,
summer semester 2010). In the interviews, various film directors and organizers noticed that music videos are increasingly less associated with television
and more often with visual art. Other important festivals in this context are the
European Media Art Festival (Osnabrück), transmediale (Berlin), Ars Electronica
(Linz), Internationales Bochumer Videofestival, and the International Symposium on Electronic Arts (various locations).
17 The jury members were Laurie Anderson, Animal Collective, Darren Aronofsky,
Douglas Gordon, Ryan McGinley, Marilyn Minter, Takashi Murakami, Shirin
Neshat, Stefan Sagmeister, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Nancy Spector.
18 The “cinema effect” can be found also in the Hamburg exhibition discussed
above. The installation Destroy She Said (1998) by Monica Bonvicini shows
selected film clips of various film divas, such as Monica Vitti in L’Avventura (1959),
Jeanne Moreau in La Notte (1961), Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion (1965), and
Brigitte Mira in Fear Eats the Soul (1973).
19 Many of the sources used for this article can be found on V2_’s website; Altena
(2008 and 2009), Bartholl (2009), Mulder (2010) Mulder and Post (2000) and Nijs
(2007) are referenced to directly.
20 For more information about V2_’s mission, history, and research, please see
http://www.v2.nl/organization, http://www.v2.nl/organization/mission, and http://
www.v2.nl/lab/research.
E X H I B I T I o N S T R AT EG I E S
| 359
21 When I write “technological art” in this text I refer very broadly to art which in one
way or another uses electronics and/or computers.
22 Available online at: http://www.v2.nl/files/retrospective/2007-EI4.mp4/view.
23 The current V2_archive should not be confused with V2_Archive, under which
name V2_ released a large number of cassettes, some artist videos, LPs, and
CDs in the 1990s. V2_Archive (as a cassette and record label) was run by Peter
Duimelinks at V2_. V2_archive is now used as the name for the online archiving
activities of V2_.
24 However, it needs to be said that the implementation of all the archive material
on the website is far from finished. For instance, the presentation of a certain
work developed in collaboration with V2_ would also ideally have descriptions
of the software and hardware that was used, and would include links to software
downloads (if developed by V2_) and technical documentation.
360 |
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—, and Maaike Post. Book for the Electronic Arts. Rotterdam: V2_ Publishers, 2000.
Nijs, Marnix de. Exercises in Immersion 4. 2007. Http://www.v2.nl/archive/works/
exercise-in-immersion-4. Last access: 21 September 2012.
Parfait, Françoise. Vidéo. Un art contemporain. Paris: Éditions du Regard, 2001.
Poschardt, Ulf. Video – 25 Jahre Videoästhetik. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2003.
Siewert, Senta. “Re-Enactment of Music-Video Clips in Feature Films.” In Extended
Cinema. Le cinéma gagne du terrain, edited by Philippe Dubois, Frédéric Monvoisin, and Elena Biserna, 136-140. Udine: Campanotto Editore, 2010.
Vernallis, Carol. “Music Video, Songs, Sound. Experience, Technique and Emotion in
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” Screen 49 (2008) 3: 277-297.
Weibel, Peter. Clip, Klapp, Bum. Von der visuellen Musik zum Musikvideo. Cologne:
DuMont, 1987.
E X H I B I T I o N S T R AT EG I E S
9.4
NEw DISPOSITIFS, NEw MODES OF RECEPTION
9.4.1
VIDEO INSTALLATIONS AS EXPERIENCES IN MONTAGE
Térésa Faucon
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Walking through spatial arrangements involving multiple screens, such as
those evoked by Philippe Dubois in the conclusion, makes it possible to postulate a spectator-editor. Thanks to their mobility, spectators experience the
gestures of the editor: moving (from one screen to the next), stopping, coming back, seeing the loops of images again. The multiplication of screens in
space invites one to edit, tapping into a desire to transform the diverse into a
universe, link scattered elements back together, interpret them, and to order
them to perform a specific reading. However, spectators do not produce a
montage (in the sense of a series of images given to see), their gesture is performative. It is the very act of editing which is at work there. To experience
editing is to apprehend the virtuality of the interval, the movement of a shot
towards another shot described by Vertov. Spectators then become aware and
learn about what Thierry Kuntzel called “the other film,” the physical medium of film but
which should not be considered in its materiality as a strip of celluloid,
in the succession of visual signs and sound signs laid out according to
an axis (the ribbon laid flat, unwound) but rather, as in a virtual film, the
film underneath the film. This other film would be like the ribbon wound
up on the reel, as a volume; a film freed from temporal constraints, and
in which all elements would simultaneously be present, that is, without
any effect of presence (screen-effect), but ceaselessly referring to one
another, matching up, overlapping, clustering in configurations “never”
seen nor heard when the film runs in the projector. […] A text-film, at last
(Kuntzel, 2006: 113-4).
This film text reveals the “[original] virtuality of editing” (Bullot, 2003), and it
points to its blind spot. It should be remembered that, for the first 30 years of
cinema, editing techniques did not make it possible to see the image in movement. To edit was to touch images before seeing them, to feel the rhythm passing through one’s fingers as they held the film, to count film frames and time.
Experiencing the interval is thus to apprehend the threshold (schwelle), in
this instance, the space between screens, as a zone, a highly vibratory space.
Benjamin noted that “transformation, passage, wave action are in the word
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
schwellen, swell” (Benjamin, 1999: 494). Spectators familiar with installations
remember that, quite often, these spaces confuse one’s bearings (scale and
orientation) and are defined through a “geometry of the unstable,” characterizing the fluid world of the screen according to Jean Epstein, who found
new possibilities in these omni-audiovisual, immersive, and multisensorial
“arrangements of images-spaces” (Bellour, 1994: 52). This singular kind of
space, explored by spectators as
the cinematographic space […] does not have any homogeneity or symmetry, it represents a space in movement or, to put it better, a space created, not by the well-determined positions of solids with stable shapes
of Euclidian space, but by ill-defined movements of specters whose form
also evolves and which behave like fluids. Euclid reportedly drew his
figures on the sand of Alexandria’s beaches. […] A fundamentally moving
world requires a kind of geometry that works on quicksands. And this
geometry of the unstable governs a logic, a philosophy, a common sense,
a religion, an aesthetics founded on instability (Epstein, 1975: 215).1
One installation, The Ground Is Moving (Christophe Oertli, 2010), epitomizes
particularly well the qualities shared by the cinematographic space and the
space of installation at the same time as the fact that these spaces may give
way, that they are variable and even fluid. The setup is simple: two screens are
juxtaposed, linking spaces into urban panoramas (streets, places, gardens),
most of the time without revealing the join (see Fig. 9.1 in color section). This
recomposed contiguity is sometimes flaunted by the temporal continuity of
the movement of passers-by from one screen to the other, sometimes betrayed
by the temporal disturbances restoring the sharp edges of the frame and
affecting the parts of a body (a hand, for instance) or causing cars to appear/
disappear at a crossroads on either side of the join. This “trick panorama”
meets with the resources of a space conducive to all kinds of conjuring acts
inherited from Méliès. The installation also trains the look of spectators to the
movement inherent in editing through the movement of looks or bodies from
one screen to the other. The movement of the camera sometimes mimics the
mobility of the spectators’ look, with sudden accelerations in the course of a
very slow tracking shot, accelerations whose effect borders on that of a whip
pan, all unwinding a panorama which could proceed indefinitely. The space
slides along under the eye as would the ground under a chassé. This equation
of eye and foot is often noted in experiences of walking/editing actualized in
video installations. Another principle well known by walkers also governs editing, since the space is not only smoothed out by these effects of uninterrupted
run. Darker areas (arcades, porches, and doors) and well-lit areas, points of
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suture (posts, columns, trees) also define it as a striated space, made of folds,
trap doors, the site of all disappearances where bodies seem to follow “secret
smugglers’ paths” (as notably described by Kracauer, see below) before reappearing somewhere else or substituting for other bodies. These movements
do not occur only in space, but also in time:
When I peered to all sides, from the sun into the shadows and back to
the day, I had the distinct sensation that I was moving not only in space
in search of my desired goal, but often enough transgressed the bounds
of space and penetrated into time. A secret smugglers’ path led into the
realm of hours and decades, where the street system was just as labyrinthine as that of the city itself (Kracauer 2009 [1964]).
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For Electric Earth (1999), Doug Aitken started from this temporal experience
of space, which also problematizes the posture of the spectator in the space
of the setup through the figure of break-dancer Ali Johnson. Eight screens distributed in a rectangular space recompose a deserted urban landscape, which
sometimes unfolds from screen to screen, sometimes retreats into the next
screen in a mirrorlike effect. The same goes for temporality, which seems to
regain a continuity and a development through the circulation of the character or to go into a loop through the multiplication of the same shot on several
screens. Spectators are invited to follow into the character’s footsteps and
experience the energy of that space. Everything begins with the man looking
into the camera, facing spectators/visitors. This first shot makes the “according,”2 or tuning, possible. Spectators follow into Ali Johnson’s gaze just as they
will follow into his step or even his dance. The character is lying in his bed
in a state of prostration, a remote control in his hand, in front of a television
screen showing just snow. His sleepy eyes express only boredom and lethargy,
and he is as inexpressive as the flickering monitor. He whispers, “A lot of time,
I dance so fast that I become what’s around me. It’s like food for me. I, like,
absorb that energy, absorb the information. It’s like I eat it. That’s the only
now I get.” He then starts to move, walks, and seems to be receptive to the
energy of the electrified earth he crosses, the surroundings of an airport and a
deserted commercial zone at dusk, for instance.
“Taking a walk can be an uncanny experience. Propelled by our legs we
find rhythms and tempos. Our bodies move in cycles that are repetitious and
machine-like.” The walk of the man, more and more mechanical and spasmodic, thus moves towards a strange dance that seems to mimic the rhythm
of machines and automatons of the deserted urban space he crosses – with the
stop by the laundromat probably being the most striking. Indeed, “the landscape is stark and automated, but the electricity driving machines is ultimately
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
more important than the devices it drives. It’s what the protagonist responds
to, and, in turn, what puts him in motion” (Doug Aitken, in Anton, 2000: 30).
Aitken seems to stage the abolition of “the double scene, the double way
to exist” for the spectator, as Daney described it (1993: 32), if the setting into
motion of the character in this space of fluxes is associated with the movement of the spectators’ response in the installation as they enter into an
interaction with the fluxes of images. The eight screens of the installation display close-ups of the different rhythmic and vibratory agents contaminating
the movement of the dancer to give spectators of the installation the chance
to experience it as well, to help this movement to spread to the body of the
spectator. Spectators are thus caught up in this space of circulation, not in
the sense of the immobilized or trapped captive, but rather with the idea of
literally being mobilized, by conduction – of being plugged into these fluxes of
images and taken away, swept along by them.
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We lose track of our thoughts. Time can slip away from us; it can stretch
out or become condensed. But this loss of self-presence, it seems, can
sometimes produce another kind of time, the speed of our environment
becomes out of sync with our perception of it. When it happens it creates
a kind of grey zone, a state of temporal flux. The protagonist in Electric
Earth is in this state of perpetual transformation. The paradox is that
it also creates a perpetual present that consumes him (Doug Aitken, in
Anton, 2000: 31).
The walk of the character in Electric Earth, like the movements of bodies in The
Ground is Moving, seems to unwind a perpetual, ungraspable present without
aim nor incidents.
Consequently, it appears as though the most accurate term to refer to
the movement of the eyes slipping from an image to the next, from a motif to
another motif, may be a term borrowed from video, possibly in opposition to
the usual definition of montage but corresponding to the idea that montage
belongs in the flux, in vibration, in mutation rather than in fragmentation and
articulation. Processing involves work on the image itself, its material, its flux.
Is it not what spectators of the installation experience when they activate the
energy of the interval? Do they not discover that the image has various possible becomings? According to Élie Faure, this definition of the image and
of montage refers to the essence of cinema. Process, by way of “procession,”
thus takes us back to cinéplastique, to this ability to experience plasticity with
“the constant unexpectedness forced on the work by a mobile composition,
ceaselessly renewed, broken and reconstructed, vanished, revived, collapsed,
monumental for a split second, impressionistic the next” (Faure, 1953: 26).
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9.4.2
FROM THE FILM TO THE MAP: PATRICk kEILLER AND THE CITY OF
THE FUTURE
Teresa Castro
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Designed by English filmmaker Patrick Keiller, the source for the installation
The City of the Future is an interactive DVD investigating the representations of
urban landscape in early British cinema (1896-1909).3 Based on the DVD, the
installation was presented at the British Film Institute (London) from November 2007 to February 2008 (see Fig. 9.2 in color section). Combining 68 films
from the period, it comprised five screens laid out in the room according to
the geographic relations between locales represented in the films, thus using
cartographic spatialization as its fundamental principle. Each screen featured
a different sequence: introduced by maps, these were organized as a journey
in the United Kingdom of the early 20th century. On the main screen, a strip
of images reconstructed an itinerary from Nottingham to Halifax while two
screens nearby presented films shot in Greater London and documenting a
trip between Halifax and Barton as well as images recorded during a journey
between New York and Dublin. Spectators were invited to stray from these predetermined paths and explore other British and overseas landscapes thanks
to the maps.
Since the early 1980s, Patrick Keiller, who was originally trained as an
architect, has been reflecting on urban spaces in contemporary Great Britain.
The author of several “semi-documentary” films (in the artist’s own words),
often designed as travelogues or imaginary diaries tapping into the British
documentary tradition (London, 1993; Robinson in Space, 1997), he set out on a
different line of experimentation with The City of the Future. Conceived as an
installation, the latter still centers on the urban environment and the figure of
the city. The artist had already explored spatial and scenographic possibilities
of this medium with Londres – Bombay, a monumental installation presented
at Le Fresnoy (France) in 2006 and featuring about 30 screens. A new essential element appears in The City of the Future: cartographic images. Though
they appear on all screens, their role should not be mistaken as that of a mere
interface or even a nice-looking navigation menu. These images provide the
key to understanding some aspects of Keiller’s project, including the very
choice of the installation as the device to explore images. Transforming – and
dramatizing – the spatial relationships between its constituent elements in
the substance of the work, Keiller saw a sounder option in the choice of the
installation as an exhibition format. As he explained in a 2007 interview to The
Guardian:
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I embarked on an exploration of landscape in early film, with the idea
of discovering something about the evolution of urban space (…). Early
films are generally between about one and three minutes long and, lacking montage, close-up and other sophistications, they depict spaces in
which one’s eye can wander. Because of this they encourage repeated
viewings. A compilation film, which had been my initial expectation,
seemed to deny their most intriguing possibilities. I had the idea to
arrange them spatially, on a network of maps, and set about making a
“navigable” assembly that has since evolved to include 68 early films of
UK and other landscapes, in which the films can be viewed in two interconnected ways: both by exploring a landscape of maps and films, in the
manner of a flâneur, and as a linear sequence (Keiller, 2007).
Inviting the eyes to wander, these films encourage a “para-cartographic” look:
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Maps involve imagined spaces and imaginative spatial exploration. The
pleasure in viewing them is a form of journey: viewing maps stimulates,
recalls, and substitutes for travel. Like engaging with a map, experiencing film involves being passionately transported through a geography.
One is carried away by this imaginary travel just as one is moved when
one actually travels or moves (domestically) through architectural ensembles (Bruno, 2002: 185).
The choice of the installation allowed Keiller to exhibit these films, not as
documents, but for the wandering look that characterizes them. A visual phenomenon by nature, the cinematographic movement of the look gradually
substituted for the multi-sensorial experience of conventional travel. If, in
the films of the first decades of the 20th century, the movement of the spectator’s look was inscribed in the images by the many panning shots punctuating them, in Keiller’s installation such movement has become concrete again.
Since the layout of the installation was dictated by geographic elements, the
work also operates as a kind of three-dimensional diagram of possible paths,
inviting spectators (and their gaze) to wander physically. In so doing, the
installation elevates wandering to the status of a model for reading and interpreting images. In that sense, The City of the Future as a device succeeds in pacing a critical territory and in exposing some fundamental trends in the films
of early cinema, thanks to the dramatization and the organization of images
possessing a topographic value. These trends are related to the spectatorial
gaze summoned by these films and the model of the journey underpinning
them, as well as the geographic imagination in which they take part.
Insofar as The City of the Future is a device for arranging and displaying
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images marked by the dramatic dimension of its spatializations and the cinematographic aspect of the movements it encourages, could it not be defined as
a three-dimensional atlas, one shaping a wandering gaze quite literally? With
Keiller’s installation, the atlas as a form is brought up to date, and accordingly
much transformed, in the space of an exhibition gallery. The approach chosen by the artist makes the films “navigable,” as Keiller opts for a cumulative
and analytical logic that defines atlases, considering films critically, from the
standpoint of how they may inform us about the evolution of urban space.
Also, his arrangement of images is subject to a conception of segmentation
and progression which is at once geographic and internal to the film’s space.
Perfecting the atlas as the mise en scène of a totality – a geographic one, in this
case – and as a device for articulating relations between places, The City of the
Future is an atlas of filmic landscapes in the United Kingdom in the first years
of the 20th century.
Still, the mapping impulse of Keiller’s project is not limited to these
aspects. Given the fact that the artist claims to use the installation device, not
only to be able to archive, but also to observe differences between yesterday’s
and today’s urban spaces, the main issue for this installation and its images
is to map out a virtual landscape. With his installation, Keiller puts to the test
Henri Bergson’s hypothesis that the images of the past contain those of the
future.4 By confronting us with these images of the past in the present, the
artist’s avowed goal is to map out possible experiences of the city in the future.
The idea of mapping invokes a new definition of the map here, such as the one
advanced by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, for example:
What distinguishes the map from the tracing is that it is entirely oriented
toward an experimentation in contact with the real. (…) The map is open
and connectable in all of its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant modification (1987: 12).
If this definition is often mentioned with respect to the appropriation of cartographic images by contemporary artists, in this context it makes the resort
to ideas of map and mapping even more precise. Indeed, rather than freezing
the relations between places in a closed, completed representation – which
can thus be referred to tracing – Patrick Keiller’s “atlas installation” looks
like an open aggregate of relations, like a map whose moving coordinates are
ceaselessly redefined by the movements of visitors and the users of the DVD.
Conceived as a journey in a plurality of virtual “maps” tracing only possible
paths, The City of the Future is an instrument of critical pacing inspired by the
images themselves and the wandering gaze they give rise to. Finally, insofar
as the installation generates its own “territories,” it appears as a kind of uto-
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
pian fiction, translated physically as the circularity of the installation. At once
closed and open, the latter is capable of turning its limits into a totality and
multiplying its visual and critical horizons infinitely. The eminently urban
subject matter of Keiller’s project finds all its scope around this last idea, the
“installation atlas” being in the end a “utopics of the city” in Louis Marin’s
sense: a real and imaginary construction of spaces showing incoherent places
and spaces (Marin, 1984). As Marin noted, “a portrait, a city map is thus at
once the trace of a residual past and the structure of a future to be produced”
(Marin, 2001: 205). Bearing the trace of this old memory, Keiller’s “installation
atlas” recreates in the space of a gallery the figure of the map, understood both
as experimentation on the real and as diagram producing a whole class of possible narratives. The part played by spectators and the trajectories they follow
is essential, their bodies – like their gazes – becoming the source of a logic of
composition of images.
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E X H I B I T I o N S T R AT EG I E S
9.4.3
SITE-SPECIFIC EXHIBITION AND REEXHIBITION STRATEGIES:
MAX NEUHAUS’S TIMES SqUARE5
Elena Biserna
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Times Square is a permanent sound installation created in 1977 by Max Neuhaus in New York. Often considered a pioneering example of sound art, this
work should also be regarded as one of the first time-based site-specific artworks in public space. The installation was active until 1992, when Neuhaus
decided to stop it because of his inability to continue to monitor it by himself.
After ten years, thanks to the initiative of the Christine Burgin Gallery, the artist reinstalled Times Square on its site, making the work accessible again 24
hours a day and, subsequently, donating it to the Dia Foundation.
The reinstallation process is of particular interest because it took the form
of a recreation of the work by the artist himself and can lead us to consider
some core issues of the relationship between exhibition and reexhibition with
a focus on site-specificity. The first part of this text aims at investigating Times
Square’s relationship with context and audience in the framework of coeval
site-specific and public art practices; the second part describes the reinstallation project, while the third discusses this work in the context of current
preservation strategies taking into consideration the roles of the artist, of
technology, and the notions of authenticity and identity of the artwork. These
issues are involved in the multilayered relationship between preservation
and exhibition decisions transforming reinstallation, as we will see, in a new
“creative process.”
Times Square, 1977: In Situ Sounds
Max Neuhaus’ Times Square is a complex sound topography – a volume defined
by acoustic, intangible boundaries – created by continuous synthetic sounds
diffused in an underground chamber, part of the subway ventilation system,
in a triangular pedestrian island on Broadway, between 45th and 46th streets:
a crowded and cacophonous place crossed every day by thousands of passersby (see Fig. 9.3 in color section).
Like all of Neuhaus’s other installations, it was created through a long process of analysis, investigation and experimentation in situ. In the case of Times
Square, as the artist declared,
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
I began making the piece by investigating what the resonant frequencies
of the chamber were. The next step was a gradual process of selecting
which resonances to use and how to use them. I finally determined a set
of sonorities, four independent processes, which activate the resonances
I chose, activate the chamber. These resonance-stimulator sounds are
produced with a synthesis circuit and come out of a large loudspeaker
horn, one by two meters (Neuhaus, 1994d: 66).6
The sounds audible in the pedestrian island, coming from the chamber
through the grating, are the result of the interaction between the frequencies
and the acoustic characteristics of the architecture: they result in a continuous
drone, “a rich harmonic sound texture resembling the after ring of large bells”
(Neuhaus, 1983: 17). The sound installation is thus physically bound to the
architectural context: the underground space becomes a resonant chamber
creating a continuous sound field, which can be experienced by the listener
moving on the grate.
Max Neuhaus’ place works, and Times Square in particular, should be
considered in the framework of a wider area of research that – rejecting a
conception of art as production of objects and refusing modernist art’s self-
9.4
Max Neuhaus installing Times Square, New York, 1977 © the Estate
of Max Neuhaus. Courtesy of the estate of Max Neuhaus.
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referential autonomy – turned to the creation of site-specific works. In the case
of Neuhaus, an artist with an important musical background, the medium is
sound. Deliberately abandoning musical official circuits, the artist led some
of the post-Cagean legacy’s ideas to extreme consequences and reterritorialized them into the art system. Firmly convinced of the hearing’s possibilities
to strongly influence the perception of space, Neuhaus operated a fundamental change of paradigm, “that of removing sound from time and putting
it, instead, in space” (Neuhaus, 1994a: 5), creating installations to be experienced perceptually by an audience which is free to manage both the spatial and
the temporal dimension moving within them. These works are thus aligned
with the phenomenology-oriented site-specific practices which, according to
Miwon Kwon, “focused on establishing an inextricable, indivisible relationship between the work and its site, and demanded the physical presence of
the viewer for the work’s completion” (2002: 11-12). Times Square’s form is not
autonomous, but dependent on the context and the audience’s experience.
Moreover, the relationship with site is, in the artist’s intention, not limited to its architectural level. He affirmed, “They [place works] shape, transform,
create, define a specific space with sound only. They exist not in isolation,
but within their context, the context of their sound environment, their visual
environment, and their social environment” (1994: 58). Times Square was not
commissioned; it is the result of an independent project carried out independently by the artist for about three years (See Tomkins, 1994). The artist stated
repeatedly that the idea of this work was born by his fascination for this place,
New York’s “most public of places.” This choice is based on the will to involve
a wider audience outside the constrictive boundaries of cultural institutions.
The necessity of expanding art’s audience and working in everyday contexts is
shared by a large group of artists between the 1960s and the 1970s and, since
the mid-1970s, also some of the organizations promoting public art in the US
– first of all the NEA, which provided funds for Times Square – acknowledged
the new site-specific post-minimalist instances (Lacy, 1995: 21-24. For an overview of exhibition spaces at the origins of installation art: Reiss, 2001).
Seen from this perspective, the installation seems to elude the two public
art paradigms which, according to Kwon, were prevalent during the 1970s and
1980s: the “art-in-public-spaces” – renowed artist’s sculptures indifferent to
their context installed in public space – and the “art-as-public-space” – designoriented urban interventions (2002: 56-82). Neuhaus’s approach appears more
similar to Richard Serra’ Titled Arc (1981): the two artists share the same refusal
of the two public art models described by Kwon and the same understanding
of site-specificity and permanence, even if the “interruptive and interventionist model of site-specificity” (Kwon, 2002: 72) proposed by Serra seems to differentiate the two works. The modes of relationship of Times Square with its
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
site and audience are subtle and unobtrusive. The installation is an elusive
presence: it is invisible, unmarked by any sign, and therefore anonymous, not
identified as “art”; the sound texture – which resembles a bell’s resonance – is
not plausible in that place, but nevertheless familiar; the equipment is not visible. The careless passer-by may cross this space every day without recognizing
its presence. It is a place to discover personally: “my idea about making works
in public places is about making them accessible to people but not imposing them on people”, the artist explained (Neuhaus, 1994c: 72). Neuhaus’s
approach aimed at blending the work within the context and at creating an
unexpected experiential involvement of the listener in his daily life.
Times Square 2002: Reinstallation
Since 1977, Times Square had been working day and night (except for brief
interruptions for maintenance problems) until 1992, when the artist, unable
to continue to maintain it by himself, finally stopped it. After some years, gallerist Christine Burgin began working on the reinstallation project with Neuhaus, obtaining the collaboration of the MTA/Arts for Transit and the financial
support of Times Square BID and private residents. The work was finally reinstated on 22 May 2002.
As the underground chamber was accessible from the subway, the original technical equipment had been stolen or lost.7 The reinstallation, thus,
necessarily turned in a true recreation process carried out directly by the artist.
The original technologies were replaced by up-to-date equipment suitable
for outdoor conditions. Neuhaus designed the new sound system in 2000 and
this project was almost completely replicated during the reinstallation: the
actual audio equipment consists of an MP3 audio player system (AM3 digital
audio machine), two CROWN K2 amplifiers (one live and one backup), and
two speakers; the entire setup is protected by airtight enclosures and a jail cell.
The artist recreated the sounds on site using Max/MSP, a visual programming
language that allows real-time synthesis and signal processing. The resulting
MP3 files are stored in compact flash memory cards.8
From the beginning, the artist planned also a monitoring system which
would allow the installation to be remotely controlled and to provide an alert
in case of malfunction: a Sine Systems RFC-1/B Remote Facilities Controller
connected to landline enables one to listen to the sounds (through a microphone placed in the speakers enclosure) and to check other parameters.9 In
addition, Neuhaus could also control the installation daily with the help of a
webcam.
Following the donation of the work to the Dia Foundation in 2002, the
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artist also instituted a long-term preservation program including biannual
visits to the site (Cooke, 2009: 42). During these visits, Neuhaus continued to
retune the installation: he increased the output volume because he felt that
the ambient sounds had become louder, and the speakers installed in 2002
were changed to improve longevity.10
If the technological components were completely replaced, the anonymous nature of the 1977 installation, instead, was fully respected. Even when
the work became part of the Dia Foundation collection, no signal or plaque
was used: the installation is still an anonymous and elusive presence in urban
space. The only change that denotes the transition of Times Square from an
informal system to the “institutionalization” is the power supply, which in
1977 was obtained from the public light fixture and now by an appropriate
power generator.11
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Reinstallation as Recreation
The reinstallation of Times Square highlights some of the issues and challenges which conservators are facing with time-based artworks, problematizing
them in the framework of site-specificity.
The first issue is the role of the artist, which is increasingly important for
conservation and documentation strategies elaborated by international networks and projects such as Variable Media, Inside Installation, or Tate Modern’s conservation department. In the case of Times Square, the artist had a
central role to the extent that he seems to assume also the conservator’s role:
not only was the reinstallation carried out by him personally, he also planned
a monitoring system and was directly involved in the maintenance program
during the following years.12
Another important issue is, as Pip Laurenson states in her interview
included in this book, “the role and function of the technology in the artwork”
(chapter 8.3. See also Laurenson, 2004). The use of up-to-date display and production technologies confirms Neuhaus’s strictly functional conception of
technology (speakers are, in fact, never visible in his installations). In 1984,
he stated, “When I start a work, I start a process of research in technique. I am
looking for the best means available at this time for this particular piece […]. I
don’t think it changes the essence of the work; it just changes the means I have
to realize it” (1994c: 77).
In relation to these issues, the notions of authenticity and identity of
the artwork become central. In Times Square, not only were the technologies
changed, the sounds were recreated ex novo as well. We are not faced with a
migration, but – using Variable Media terminology – with a reinterpretation of
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
sounds. Neuhaus refused a traditional notion of authenticity based on physical integrity. On the contrary, he was interested in reconstructing the work’s
“identity,” adopting a notion of authenticity which we could compare to the
one proposed by Laurenson – based on the “work-defining” properties – or by
the Variable Media Approach’s method – based on the “medium-independent
behaviours” of the work (Laurenson, 2006; Ippolito, 2003: 51). He used to recall
that, “In music the sound is the work, in what I do sound is the means of making the work, the means of transforming space into place” (Neuhaus, 1994b:
130). Sound has no value in itself. The properties significant to the work’s
identity were not identified in the material components, but in the relationship with context and in the listener’s experience which, as we have seen, were
at the basis of the “first” Times Square and of coeval site-specific practices.13
In that sense, Times Square shows how every reinstallation becomes also a
specific and unique “creative process” in which, as Laurenson suggests, “decisions are revisited and sometimes remade as to what aspects of the work are
significant to its identity” (Laurenson, 2006).
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9.4.4
FROM ARCHIVAL MODEL TO EXHIBITION PLATFORM?
VIDEO ART AS A wEB RESOURCE AND THE IMAI ONLINE CATALOGUE
Renate Buschmann
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Video art has become a dominant force in the contemporary art world since
it began over 40 years ago, and many artists now work with this medium as a
matter of course. Characterized by its dual visual and auditory nature and its
flowing visual imagery, video art has, throughout its history, reacted to technological developments, not only continuously challenging habitual modes of
seeing but also demanding unconventional contexts of presentation.14 Whenever new technologies of information and communication became available
in the past, they generally gave rise to new options for producing and exhibiting contemporary art.
With the advent of digital data transfer, it has become possible to spread
videos over the Internet so that such “reproductions” can now be viewed on
any computer with an Internet connection. Compared to more conventional
localized exhibitions, this seems like an enticing prospect as it promises an
unlimited transfer of those artworks whose audiovisual qualities can only be
displayed with the help of a set of playback and display equipment (in this
case, a server and a corresponding Internet platform as well as a PC with an
Internet connection and a monitor). This enables audiovisual works to “travel” around the world, metaphorically speaking, without requiring transportation; theoretically, at least, they are available to every interested member of the
online community. While such a global resource for the distribution of video
art certainly constitutes an advantage, one must also ask whether an authentic
reception of historical video art can or should legitimately take place within
a new medium such as the Internet. Since the early 2000s, the World Wide
Web has been used to preserve and promote video art, thus retrospectively
creating – 30 years after the first major artistic video productions – conditions
that seem adequate to the dissemination of this time- and technology-based
art form beyond the museum’s walls. One of the first initiatives that sought
to popularize video art by means of the Internet was the Media Art Archive.
Created in 2005, it became available as an “online catalogue,” with the establishment of the Dusseldorf-based foundation imai – inter media art in 2006.15
In this text, the imai online video pool will serve to illustrate the functions and
requirements such a platform may fulfill, while also highlighting where this
type of web-based presentation conflicts with present-day ideas of copyright,
originality, and reception.
It seems useful to begin with a brief historical review which will show that,
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
interestingly, the shift from classical modes of display in exhibitions to innovative technical contexts was not only a feature of the history of video art but
also of the early stages of concept art. In both cases, the underlying curatorial
intention was to design an exhibition environment that was geared towards
the requirements and conditions of a novel artistic genre. It would seem that
curators were especially likely to make such decisions when faced with artworks whose materiality was of a limited or non-continuous nature. Beginning
in the late 1960s, concept art, the defining feature of which is dematerialization according to art critic and curator Lucy R. Lippard, provided curators with
manifold occasions for testing unusual forms of display and promotion. The
one-time gallery owner Seth Siegelaub, for example, maintained that books or
magazine issues designed by artists could replace conventional exhibitions,
since concept art was about making verbal statements and sketching and documenting ideas rather than actually realizing them. In 1968, Siegelaub invited
seven artists to contribute 25 pages each to his Xerox Book which later became
famous and was produced with the help of the then-popular Xerox copying
technology (Altshuler, 1994: 236-240).
In November 1969, the exhibition Art by Telephone at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago demonstrated how a medium of communication,
the telephone, could be integrated into the curator’s work: the participating
artists, among them John Baldessari, Dennis Oppenheim, Richard Serra, and
Günther Uecker, were asked to communicate all relevant instructions concerning the production and montage of their sculptures and installations by
telephone, and the museum staff was then entrusted with assembling them.
The artists’ telephone conversations were recorded and a disk record was published in lieu of an exhibition catalogue. On the one hand, the exhibition demonstrated that concept art should primarily be understood as providing ideas
purely on the level of information; on the other hand, it showcased the beginning of the global age of information and of the “global village” that Marshall
McLuhan had predicted, where local distances are rendered insignificant as
long as the transmission of news and information is guaranteed.16
In 1970, Information, an exhibition curated by Kynaston McShine at the
Museum of Modern Art in New York, similarly conceptualized the dissemination of information as the core of artistic activity and of the museum’s
educational function. Reflecting on these issues, McShine asked a question
that remains relevant today: “How is the museum going to deal with the introduction of new technology as an everyday part of its curatorial concerns?”
(McShine, 1970: 141). A progressive way of dealing with this matter was evident
in the film and video section which included a cinematheque – an “information machine” – devised by the Italian designer Ettore Sottsass, Jr., especially
for this occasion, where viewers could choose among a large selection of artis-
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tic productions and watch them on one of 40 monitors. Here, the difference
between concept and video art was palpable: while the former does not necessarily have to assume a material form and can instead rely on the spectator’s imagination, visualizing the information stored on the videotape is an
existential act if the artwork is to be perceived for even a brief period of time.
While the first group exhibition of video art, TV as a Creative Medium17 at the
Howard Wise Gallery in summer 1969, remained committed to the traditional
gallery space, Gerry Schum in 1968 began to pursue the far-reaching idea of a
“television gallery” (Groos, Hess, and Wevers, 2003). Schum was committed
to an effective fusion of the contents of concept art and their visualization by
means of television and video and managed to persuade several influential
concept artists to collaborate with him; together, they produced tapes that are
now widely regarded as pioneering works of video art. Crucially, Schum’s aim
was to transform television into a theater stage for his concept art or rather
video art exhibitions, to thereby overcome the borders of traditional art reception, and to use this increasingly influential mass medium to reach a wider
audience.
What these historical models illustrate is that the promotion of the immaterial but technology-dependent genre of video art is usually associated with
a reliance on new information technologies for the purpose of presentation.
Accordingly, the Internet and its globally accumulated data network represent
another challenging medium of dissemination. For the old Media Art Archive
and today’s imai’s online catalogue, however, Internet accessibility was not the
foremost concern; rather, it was an obvious implication of an extensive process of archiving and preservation. Beginning in the early 1980s, the Colognebased media company 235Media had established itself as the only German
distributor of video art, assembling, in the course of 20 years, an impressive
archive of international video art. When it became clear in the early 1990s that
the lifespan and stability of video storage media were limited, and that therefore backup procedures were necessary, the response was to initiate a largescale conservation program. Between 2003 and 2005, the company’s research
team viewed some 3,000 tapes of video art and documentaries, drew up a list
of priorities based on conservational and art historical considerations, and
finally set out to digitize more than 1,200 videos. It was also decided that an
Internet platform would be developed with a view to making this new video
database accessible to the public. The Media Art Archive went online in 2005,
interestingly, the same year that marked the beginning of the now-legendary
video portal YouTube. The following year, the Media Art Archive, along with its
stock of videos and video distribution network, became the basis of the newly
founded Dusseldorf-based imai foundation. Currently titled the imai Online
Catalogue, the video platform comprises several tasks: it provides a detailed
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
list of the foundation’s collections, it serves as a catalogue for the video distribution program, it provides students, instructors and scholars with a research
tool for audiovisual art, and it gives a general overview of artists and artworks
from the 1960s to the present.
Compared to other video databases,18 the imai Online Catalogue has the
crucial advantage of allowing users to view every video in its full length. While
other databases only show selected sequences, often lasting less than one
minute, or only provide complete access to a limited number of users, the
imai Online Catalogue allows users to access all information free of charge and
does not require prior registration. All videos can be played in their full length
with a small-format QuickTime frame; metadata and additional documents
provide further information about the video and the artist, and search functions (by artist, title, year and keyword) allow users to browse the extensive
database. The Online Catalogue differs from other databases precisely in that
it is not just a collection of facts but actually gives users the option of viewing
audiovisual works in their full length, which is what makes it an important
institution for conducting online research about video art in a visually concrete way. This sort of comprehensive online publication that does not merely
quote from the works in question requires a legal basis. As a rule, when museums, institutions, or private collectors buy a video work, they also acquire the
right to screen it exclusively in their premises, effectively prohibiting its online
publication. The imai foundation, however, in its capacity as a distributor of
video works, has signed legal agreements with the artists listed in its database
that permit the presentation of their videos via the imai website. The imai
Online Catalogue nevertheless deliberately refrains from showing videos in the
kind of high-resolution and full-screen mode that Internet users have come
to expect, instead opting for a preview quality that is designed to protect the
artworks against illegal distribution.
This restriction reveals the discrepancy that exists between the aim of
making video art accessible online on the one hand and the artists’ legitimate
wish to protect themselves from copyright infringements on the other. When
artists decide to make their works available in good quality on popular platforms, as many have done in recent times, they are simply exercising their discretion as copyright holders. An institution such as the imai archive, however,
must choose modes of online presentation that do not interfere with a work’s
characteristic features, especially since many of them may now be considered
historical. On the one hand, transferring a video archive into a public terrain
such as the Internet affords the possibility of reaching a range of viewers that
is larger than, and different from, the sort that one would find in the controlled environment of a museum, and of allowing them a greater degree of
flexibility. On the other hand, it is important to bear in mind that such tech-
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nological innovations mean that online viewers necessarily adopt a mode of
perception that is quite different from the way the artwork in question was
originally displayed. Much has been made of the fact that the aesthetic impact
of video art is very much dependent on its modalities of presentation (see, for
example, Schubinger, 2009; Blase and Weibel, 2010). Even though the imai
Online Catalogue mostly consists of single-channel videos whose instruments
of presentation do not have definite sculptural qualities (unlike video sculptures and installations), one could still legitimately ask whether a screening
that is not based on the technology that was prevalent when the video was
first made does not effectively preclude an authentic reception.19 This would
mean that all videos from the 1970s, the 1980s, and even the 1990s should not
be made available on the Internet as a matter of principle. However, this distinctly historicist attitude is countered by a host of other curatorial opinions
whose influence can be observed (among other places) in several exhibitions
where videos are displayed on almost standardized neutral black monitors, in
a “black framing” (Amman, 2009: 217ff.). The imai Online Catalogue’s reduced
viewing window accommodates such considerations and thus constitutes a
compromise that enables an online presence of historic videos while simultaneously making it clear that their display on the Internet cannot be considered
an equivalent to the original version.
The mode of display is, without a doubt, of crucial relevance where the
works in question convey a message that relies on the nature and disposition
of the television broadcast and the video recording or of the television set and
monitor box. The imai Online Catalogue features some such examples: Douglas
Davids, in his video The Last Nine Minutes (1977), refers to a spatial investigation inside the monitor box; Mike Hentz in Green-Phase (1978/80) experiments
with the ambiguity of the monitor screen, even breaking it towards the end
of his performance; Franziska Megert’s video Off (1989) consists of electronic
residual signals from CRT televisions, and Michael Langoth’s video Retracer
(1991) requires a conventional television set as a frame, because the events
taking place on the screen are sucked into such a television by a zoom in the
video (see Fig. 9.5 in color section). Where works like these are presented on
a flat screen that is connected to the Internet, this will inevitably entail a loss
of visual perception and authenticity that the viewer must compensate for by
relying on his or her context sensitivity and abstracting from the present conditions of reception. Within the imai collection, however, such cases are relatively rare and it was therefore decided to integrate them into the catalogue for
reasons of documentation.
Presently, the archival character of the imai Online Catalogue is very much
in the foreground (see Fig. 9.6 in color section). The imai team has managed
to establish a point of contact by way of the Internet that enables those inter-
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
ested to tour the video art archive which had previously received little attention and could not be visited at an actual location.
Viewers may now enjoy the flexibility of selecting videos based on their
individual preferences, and of beginning, interrupting, resuming, and repeating the playback at any time that suits them (see Fig. 9.7 in color section). In
2008, imai launched the “video art kitchen” series which represented a first
step towards providing online visitors with thematically arranged, “curated”
compilations of videos from its archival collection.20 These collections gather
video works under diverse headings such as scratch videos, gender, dance,
and audiovisuality, and do not only help viewers orientate themselves within
the immense archival collection, but also accentuate contents and motifs that
have been prominent in video art throughout the past decades. In this sense,
the “video art kitchen” constitutes an experimental contribution to the project of probing the imai Online Catalogue’s exhibition potential, while remaining within its previously established framework.
It was observed above that the dematerialization of video art as well as the
technical options for displaying it – which must be customized accordingly
– are pivotal for inspiring a reflection on adequate modes of Internet presentations. It is possible that the reception of this genre requires a more subjective,
private kind of “seeing,” since it has been shown that in conventional exhibition contexts, spectators find it difficult to direct their attention towards the
entire (and often unknown) duration of a video artwork (Graham and Cook,
2010: 100-103). The media lounges that have recently become popular in
museums and exhibitions are rooted in the idea of showing video art in a private, pleasant atmosphere. Internet galleries and archives may have precisely
this advantage of providing the comfort of bringing art into one’s “own living
room,” the premise being that it is easier to focus on time-based artworks in
one’s own four walls than in a public space. But the opposing view, according
to which the Internet induces people to consume a confusing wealth of information and images in a restless and superficial manner, is equally prevalent.
The recent launchings of Google museums and online art fairs underpin the
idea that a physical encounter with, and perception of, the original artwork
is of secondary importance, and that consequently its online copy becomes a
veritable replacement on account of its constant viewing and unlimited accessibility.
Although online presentations are becoming ever more popular, video
art archives such as the imai Online Catalogue must perform a complex balancing act if they are to satisfy their users’ wish for a maximum of high-quality information and simultaneously meet the necessary standards regarding
copyright law and the authenticity of artworks. Bringing video art to Internet
portals prompts many questions, especially where the archival character is
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replaced by an exhibition format involving full-screen displays in high resolution. These questions have yet to be conclusively answered. Is it admissible for
all videos – no matter which period they belong to – to homogenously appear
on the computer screen, whose appearance and material character is rooted
in contemporary technological culture? What sorts of transformations occur
where playback parameters such as contrast, brightness, color, and volume
are no longer determined by artists and curators but are subjectively determined by the viewer? How can, where larger screen displays are available,
original specifications regarding format and basic settings be guaranteed
every time the video is viewed? Will it be possible in the future to provide not
just single-channel videos but also video installations with an adequate mode
of online presentation? In theory, the web-based distribution of video art presents a great opportunity for drawing attention to an artistic genre that, on
account of its difficult accessibility, has long been neglected by scholars and
museums alike. In practice, however, it remains necessary to develop viable
database models for video art so that an adequate interface design and innovative software may respond to the specifics of historical and contemporary
video art.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
NOTES
1
More and more installations whose architecture was conceived in the white cube
are thus seen out in the city dialoguing with the environment and exposed to all
interactions and mutations, depending on the projection sites.
2
The term [“accordage”] was borrowed from Daniel Stern (1985) by Raymond Bellour to define the relation of the spectator to the film. See Bellour (2002).
3
The DVD was produced as part of a larger research project that also included a
database on films shot between 1896 and 1973, which is available at http://vads.
ahds.ac.uk/resources/CF.html.
4
The following quotation from Bergson’s Matter and Memory was projected at the
entrance of the installation: “Images are perceived when senses are open to them.
These images react to each other in accordance with laws I call laws of nature
and, as a perfect knowledge of laws would probably allow us to calculate and foresee what will happen in each of these images. The future of the images must be
contained in their present.”
5
I would like to deeply thank Silvia Neuhaus, Patrick Heilman, Christine Burgin,
and Cory Mathews for generously providing valuable and essential information
and documents without which this text would not have been possible.
6
Even if some details of the original technical equipment are not clear, comparing
the documentation I was able to find, I may suppose that, in 1977, the sound system was composed by custom sound synthesis electronic circuits, an amplifier,
and the large horn-like loudspeaker Neuhaus mentions. In a proposal submitted
in March 1974 to the Rockfeller Foundation, and conserved in its archive (“Subway Vent. A proposal for a sound installation for Times Square,” 1974, p. 5, folder
entitled “Hear.Inc. 2 1975-1978,” box R1672, series 200R, Record Group A81,
Rockefeller Foundation Archives, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New
York) Neuhaus described the project technologies (Max Neuhaus, “Electronic
components and sub-assemblies; Loudspeaker – Klipsch model K-D-FB; Amplifier – Bozak CMA-1-120”) and mentioned the “Design of sound generating unit”
suggesting the design of specific electronics for the installation. One of Neuhaus’
drawings (Neuhaus, 1983: 17) shows that this resonance system was originally
located at the left side of the triangular-shaped chamber’s base. It remains
unclear if other speakers were used: in one photograph (Fig. 9.4), it is possible to
see also two high-frequency horns. Some images of the equipment installation
are included in a video by John Sanborn and Kit Fitzgerald (1982, http://www.
max-neuhaus.info/neuhaus-tsq.htm) and in the poster for Times Square.
7
8
Christine Burgin, email to the author, 17 June 2010.
During my research, detailed technical specifications were not found. The
information about the technical equipment, the monitoring system and the
maintenance program (unless otherwise specified) is the result of several email
E X H I B I T I o N S T R AT EG I E S
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exchanges (8-28 February 2011) with Patrick Heilman, Dia Foundation’s digital
media specialist, who worked with Neuhaus after the donation of Times Square to
the Dia Foundation. The information about the project designed in 2000 is drawn
from Neuhaus’s equipment block diagram and a quotation form by audio consultant David Andrews dated 18 July 2000.
9
The RFC-1/B is programmed to call every day and also to report on four possible
modes of system failure: “loss of signal from the loudspeaker,” “opening of the
locked door to the cage,” “loss of AC power,” and “change in the loudness level of
the loudspeaker” (letter by David M. Andrews to Christine Burgin, 14 May 2002).
The equipment block diagram shows that, in the first project, Neuhaus thought
to use another system: a Sine System DAI-1.
10 A new, more resistant formulation of speakers was chosen by the artist, who personally retuned the installation on this occasion as well, because this altered the
installation’s sounds.
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11 Christine Burgin, email to the author, 17 June 2010.
12 This fact, on the other side, could also be the reason for the lack of detailed documentation on both the 1977 and the current installation. We could also suppose
that, in the future, when the technologies used to produce and display the work
may become obsolete, replacing them without the artist’s intervention may be
problematic.
13 This case seems antithetical to the examples of relocation or refabrication of sitespecific artworks from the 1960s and 1970s on the occasion of important exhibitions which took place in the last decades (Kwon, 2002: 33-43): site and ways of
exhibition remained unaltered.
14 Two books have recently been published that explore the exhibiting of video and
media art: Amman (2009); Graham and Cook (2010).
15 See http://www.imaionline.de/onlinekatalog.
16 McLuhan first adumbrated this idea in The Gutenberg Galaxy, published in 1962,
and subsequently expanded on it in The Global Village (1989) (McLuhan and Powers, 1989).
17 Ira Schneider published a filmic documentation of the exhibition which can be
viewed in the imai Online Catalogue.
18 For a comparison of online archives of media art, see Blome (2009).
19 Christoph Blase remarks: “In actual fact one could say that playing vintage videos
on modern screens is almost tantamount to falsifying the artwork.” (Blase, 2010:
380).
20 See http://www.imaionline.de/videoartkitchen.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
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E X H I B I T I o N S T R AT EG I E S
CHapter 10
On Curating New Media Art
Sarah Cook
INTRODUCTION
The constant navel-gazing on the part of curators into the terminological
black-hole that is ‘contemporary curating’ tends to produce more discussion about its undecidability and fluidity, rather than precipitating any
serious theoretical crisis or professional rupture (Charlesworth, 2007:
93).
An untested observation about the existing scholarship of curatorial practice
suggests that the majority of articles about curating and the curatorial profession (considering those mostly published in the mainstream contemporary
art press but also those found in the academic press) concerns the work of
freelancers and what their large-scale temporary shows mean for the state of
contemporary art (O’Neill, 2007). In other words, what is published generally focuses on “power people” in the art world – “über-curators” akin to the
Harald Szeemans or Hans-Ulrich Obrists of the world – and “experimental”
exhibitions such as Obrist’s Utopia Station at the Venice Biennale in 2003. By
contrast, discussions about curating new media art in particular have tended to focus on the changing role of the institutional curator and the issues
brought up by the necessary tasks of a museum, from collection to exhibition
to preservation. The first type of curating might generally be characterized by
its equation of curating to DJ-ing or editorializing, and celebrated for its innovative and opinionated ways of showing work to the public (The New York Times
memorably described one freelancer-curated show as being “on the nebulous
topic of nonplaces” (Armin, 2010)). Institutionally based curating tends, on
the other hand, to exemplify the mandates and characteristics of the institution in which it takes place – the shows look like their host museum, reflecting
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its values and speaking to its identified audiences (such as, for example, the
well-considered reinstallations of the permanent collection at Tate Modern
in London).
The new-media-curating mailing list, which I coedit in my work with the
online resource for curators of media art, CRUMB, has wondered aloud about
this, populated as the list is, with commentators who are both institutionally
based and freelance.1 Is there a difference between institutional and freelance
curating when it comes to new media art? Is the scholarship around the exhibition of new media art more prevalent in the field of museology than it is in
curatorial studies? Or is it that the field of curatorial studies is more resistant
to addressing the challenges to exhibition practice that new media art throws
up?
In our book Rethinking Curating. Art After New Media (Graham and Cook,
2010) we deliberately addressed this latter point, and considered how the
practice of curating new media art suggests new ways to curate art, considering exhibitions which were museum-based as well as ones which were extrainstitutional (or even self-institutionalized). We also sought to foster debate
around curatorial models beyond the traditional group show or exhibition.
Yet, although we feel we made a contribution to the discussion, a distinction
still remains between how the curating of new media art has been described
mostly with reference to institutional issues, while the practice of curating
contemporary art has been theorized predominantly with reference to extrainstitutional practice and, in its way, has largely ignored media art.
Does this matter? What is important is that in the scholarship surrounding
the field of media art (of which this book is a part) much attention has been
given to significant recurring institutional issues which urgently need to be
addressed if we are to overcome the historic gap between new media art and
contemporary art: why do museums not collect new media art? Why do museums rarely show new media art? What are the difficulties associated with exhibiting new media art in museums in terms of marketing, education, or audience
development? One can add to that list of practical questions other more theoretical ones, which have also repeatedly been discussed on the CRUMB mailing
list: What words do we use to describe media art? Is “new media art” still a category worth maintaining? What other terminology can we use to describe the
range of art practice we now encounter in this age after new media?
In Rethinking Curating we suggest considering the behaviors, or significant characteristics of the exhibition, of the work, alongside (and sometimes
instead of) its medium: Is the work time-based, or is it lens-based art, or interactive or participatory? These categories and taxonomies have been cause for
much debate. While some argue that the discussion that inevitably results
from this concern with categorization (loosely paraphrased as, “why is new
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
media art still not yet a part of Art?”) is the beginning of the end, the categories
themselves do serve a purpose in pointing out the leading edges of the field.2
If we take as a given my untested assumption that curatorial scholarship
(of contemporary art) revolves around the freelancer and the one-off event,
and that museology (of new media art) is based on institutional practices and
collections, we have the beginnings of the vexed path we have to follow to find
answers to the question of how to curate art after new media. In museums,
new acquisitions to the collection have to be categorized and usually vetted
by committees of specialized interest (contemporary, modern, photography,
drawing, Mexican, European, Canadian, Indian, etc.). New media art exhibitions, by contrast, have often been deeply temporary affairs in interstitial
spaces – online as much as in real space, often in relation to residencies or
festivals (one need only think of the myriad of festivals which have brought
emerging art forms like new media to the public’s attention such as Transmediale in Berlin or Wunderbar, the festival for participatory performance art
practices in Newcastle, UK).3 And, of course, on the rare occasions when new
media art is collected, it poses the greatest challenges to existing museological categories (see chapter 8.3).
In scholarship, which seeks to find commonalities across a diverse range
of practice, too often this is glossed over in search of one “way” to curate, the
so-called silver bullet. But that demands unhelpful generalizations. Like all
socio-political subjects, it is nearly impossible to speak of art exhibitions,
art history, or the curatorial without either close readings of the art works
involved, or the conditions of art’s institutional setting. Yet, two problems
seem recurrent, or perhaps inescapable, when looking back over a decade or
more of curating media art: first, that art’s temporary exhibition is predominantly a “drive-by event” viewed by curators undertaking some kind of mad
“novelty hustle” (what we might call the temporal question) and second, that
those exhibitions, and the curators who curate them, are continually trying to
escape the tyranny of the overarching theme (what we might call the subjective
question). In looking at both of these questions, could the practicalities of the
commissioning process be part of the answer?
THE DRIVE-By EVENT / THE NOVELTy HUSTLE / THE TEMPORAL qUESTION
While we were working on the exhibition here in Berlin, Maurizio [Cattelan] said that curating a biennial is like pointing a gun at your head and
smiling at the same time, and waiting for someone else to come and pull
the trigger... […] We need to think how biennials can become more flexible structures and understand what they can offer to artists that galleries
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and museums can’t. By looking for new venues for the exhibition in order
to connect the Biennial to a different idea of space, we are trying to say
that when you reconsider the contents you have to reconsider the format
too. It would be good to leave something functioning after the exhibition,
but we’re not equipped for that yet. After all, a biennial is still a one-night
stand. (Massimiliano Gioni in Robecchi, 2005).
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Curators of contemporary art are fundamentally concerned with the new, and
with that concern comes a pressure to create exhibitions and events that demonstrate this newness. Work rarely enters the museum straight from the studio – it is shown somewhere else first. These temporal events and exhibitions
(unless staged by the museum seeking to collect the work, for the sole purpose
of documenting it and allowing their trustees to see it in situ) are often, though
not always, in off-site, non-museum events, curated by adjunct curators, freelancers, or curators on contract (for example, the Glasgow International, an
annual three-week-long city-wide visual arts event, has a full-time year-round
festival producer but a “seconded” or short-term contracted curator).
Audiences at these events are also themselves engaged in a kind of “driveby” viewing, in the words of Michelle Kasprzak (Cook, 2012), or what curator
Barbara London memorably described as “the novelty hustle” (Cook, 2010: 64)
– trying to see as much work as possible, and see it first, to bring it back to their
institution. This is the same whether you are a curator visiting documenta or
the Dutch Electronic Arts Festival (DEAF). Often these events are so large, or so
short-run, that it is difficult if not impossible to give works the attention they
deserve. There is a widely acknowledged fatigue with this, but few solutions
have been suggested. In the words of one newspaper journalist at documenta,
The quantity of work depending on the projected, moving image requires
an inordinate degree of audience commitment and stamina […] It cannot
be given full attention in this context, unless one moves to Kassel for a
week. I could spend six-and-a-bit hours watching walrus hunts and icecutting in the Arctic, but not on multiple monitors ranged along a busy
corridor (Searle, 2002).
New media art, including web-based art, has long been exhibited in short-term
exhibitions, often in a ghetto of their own making of recurrent dedicated festivals, such as ISEA (which changes city each iteration) or PixelAche (originally
in Helsinki but now spread out across Finland).4 This has been as much a consideration of funding opportunities as led by the internationally-networked
qualities of the art itself, as artist and curator Olia Lialina has pointed out,
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
On-line galleries only store facts and demonstrate that a phenomenon
exists. They neither create a space, nor really serve it. The same applies
to festivals and competitions. Even if they are intelligently organised
they are not events in net life. Mostly they are […] the easiest and trendiest way to save money given to media events. Now that everybody knows
the Internet is our paradise on earth, the long-awaited world without
borders, visas, flights or hotels, it is the best way to make your event international (Lialina, 1998).
A longer look back, to say 1960 through 2000 would show that the new media
arts, particularly networked, electronic works including net art, have been
subject to many “ways” of exhibition – from their initial inclusion in museumbased exhibitions in the 1970s (such as Software and Information5) to their
addition to exciting and global newly-founded festivals in the 1980s (such as
the World Wide Video Festival in Amsterdam or Ars Electronica in Linz), to
the creation of explicit online platforms for its presentation, such as servers
and lists in the 1990s (The Thing, Rhizome) and then again their inclusion in
museum exhibitions in the 2000s (such as 010101 or the Whitney Biennial6)
(Cook, 2004). Given that new media art has changed forms, and continues
to, across this time period, it is difficult to generalize the ways in which it has
been shown (as fads for mobile technology projects are outstripped by apps,
or by screen-based data visualizations, or participatory performances…7).
It is in fact only from the year 2000 onwards, with the unrelenting rise
of contemporary art biennials and festivals the world over, that the festival
has become the most widely accepted, or default, mode for new media art’s
distribution. This may not even be a new media or digital arts specific festival, such as, for instance, the one-night-only, dusk-til-dawn “Nuit Blanche”
manifestation in Minneapolis, Northern Spark, which is rife with digitallyinflected public art projects such as David Rueter’s project of wifi-transmitting
and -receiving synchronized flashing bike lights (The Kuramoto Model / 1000
fireflies) which were given out to a thousand of the city’s many cyclists. New
media art’s “festivalization” remains a key characteristic of its exhibition, just
as the widespread adoption of technology suggests that the more social and
temporary nature of arts festivals is the default mode for an encounter with
networked culture.
One example, which I can report on first hand, is the Abandon Normal
Devices Festival (AND), which has taken place in the Northwest of England,
swapping locations between Liverpool, Manchester, and across Lancashire
and Cumbria each year. In the 2011 AND Festival in Liverpool I curated, with
the collaboration of Jean Gagnon, a small group exhibition which was on view
only for the five days of the festival – an extended weekend. The exhibition,
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Q.E.D., sought to bring together work which appeared to be the result or documentation of some kind of experimental process on the part of the artist (see
Fig. 10.1 in color section). This artistic output, read as evidence, suggested
how artists engage in scientific forms of hypothesis and enactment. The exhibition was curated not only for the context of the festival (which had a theme
about belief structures) but also for the audience attending the biennial threeday conference on media art histories.8 More than a few curators commented
to me that the exhibition did not look like a new media art show, nor did it look
like a festival exhibition. I can only assume this is because for this particular
constellation of audience members I deliberately combined works of an historical nature (such as Norman White and Laura Kikauka’s documentation in
drawings, schematics, photography, and video of Them Fuckin’ Robots, 1988)
and new commissions (Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg and Sascha Pohflepp’s project to model the world through an installation which investigated live and in
real-time the weather forecast, or Scott Roger’s two-part glass object and virtual animation piece investigating fluid dynamics). Alongside this I included
works which were recent but not widely known either in contemporary art or
new media art circles (such as Joe Winter’s geological-like whiteboard “paintings” and prints from his project Xerox Astronomy, 2008, or Michel de Broin’s
Braking Matter, 2006) or well-realized works which were the result of extended
research investigations on the part of the artists (such as Ulrike Kubatta’s
hyperreal documentary performance work about the women’s space program
at NASA, or Axel Straschnoy’s collaboration with researchers at Carnegie Mellon University to make art by robots for robots).9
The curatorial conceit, that I could show documentation resulting from
a pseudo-scientific artistic practice, helped get around the usual tropes of a
“new media art show” that it should be full of functioning prototypes or novel
technological experiences facilitated by the artist present alongside. There
were plenty of those kinds of works elsewhere in the festival – from John
O’Shea’s pig’s bladder football project to Kurt Hentschläger’s sensory-deprivation immersive installation Zee in the main galleries at FACT. The fact that
the exhibition Q.E.D. was on view for a short time period, and attendant to a
conference, meant the works could be “reference points” for a longer-lasting
and bigger discussion rather than have to be fully developed theses in and of
themselves.
It has been suggested that in contemporary art festivals, such as the Venice Biennial, it is often the case that the freelance curator gains credibility (and
has their name in the largest type on the poster) but that the art is easily forgotten (or, as mentioned above, impossible to take in). By contrast, in new media
art festivals, it has often been the case that the works are prototyped and open
for participation with a minimum of mediation, with the presence of the artist
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
there enhancing or troubleshooting its presentation, and therefore is a manifestation of a less explicit form of curating (curating as project management
or event-production). I would suggest that it is in the combination of older and
new works in the same exhibition around a tightly defined curatorial concept,
that it is possible to get around the “novelty hustle” and build shows which,
regardless of their short-runs (5 days or 2 weeks) offer to a drive-by audience a
more sustained meditation on art.
But with the tightly controlled curatorial concept comes our second prevalent problem in the curating of new media art…
THE TyRANNy OF THE THEME SHOw
Once taxonomies begin to settle in, the truly avant-garde begin to move
on (Lichty, 2004).
The common danger in curating exhibitions for biennials and festivals is that
curators feel they have to know about and comment on the whole world – current affairs, philosophy, politics, cultural studies, etc. – and not just art, in
order to make their exhibitions timely and relevant. For example, the much
discussed “platforms” of documenta 11, where the exhibition was considered
just the final and not most important manifestation of the curatorial ideas at
play, is evidence of a tactic adopted to deal with this increased workload (and
increased demand on the international art fair/event that it be truly global
in relevance). Yet that necessity – of tying art to debates taking place within a
wider community than arts makers – fits quite well with new media, which is
increasingly part of a larger cultural transformation.
So if new media, or technology itself, is no longer enough of a hook for an
exhibition, then comes the need for a more general encompassing theme to
collect works around. Yet then, is the tyranny of the theme just another way
to get around the problem of “naming,” so common with media art? Looking
back to a debate on the new-media-curating discussion list in 2004 offers a
series of thoughts still relevant today. A number of them are excerpted here:
The taxonomies that new media art curators, academics, artists and critics are dealing with go much deeper than the structuring logic of a museum’s collection or exhibition programming schedule, they permeate
the entire culture industry such as … grant awarding bodies, and more
visibly they shape or determine the structures of art schools and graduate programs within research universities so that the definitions of new
media art are made or shaped before the art is even produced. Secondly,
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new media art as a category for collection, exhibition, archiving has been
for the most part institutionally created. Unlike other ‘avant gardes’ or
emerging media (photography, video, film), ‘new media art’ has been
institutionally embraced within the same generation of its introduction,
by embrace, I mean included in major biennials, have become a funding category [...], and now with the fact that you can earn an MFA in net.
art, created its own dept. within the academy. So unlike earlier moments
when definitions were usually connected to individual artists’ practices,
new media art has sort of, in my estimation, been reversed engineered so
to speak (Sutton, 2004).
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What I think has been interesting – and important – about net art in
particular and ‘new media’ in general has been how much it has been
self-defined and self-propelled. With the history of ISEA and Ars Electronica and numerous other festivals, I don’t know what ‘new media as a
category for collecting, exhibition, archiving has been for the most part
institutionally created’ even means. Perhaps it is my U.S. set of blinkers, but I think it is the lack of acceptance that defines the institutional
response to net art and new media art, not its reverse engineering. I think
the initial problem was that so many important new media artists were
being thrown into the ‘visual arts’ and ‘media arts’ pools for review and
hardly ever getting funding. Creating new media categories – at least in
the United States but arguably elsewhere – was an attempt to respond to
work not create it or force it in a direction (Dietz, 2004).
[…] What [an earlier post not included here] denounces as a ‘hierarchical
system of selection, promotion, official recognition, award – something
that once again cuts out the truly collective/anonymous/networked/feedbacked nature of creativity and production,’ is – if you ask me – curatorial
practice that ‘has to’ make choices, selections, and create public attention for artistic practices. to assume that this automatically and unavoidably ‘cuts out the truly collective/anonymous/networked/feedbacked
nature of creativity and production’ seems a bit short-sighted, considering the effort that has been made, not only by transmediale, to include a
variety of art and creative practices (Broeckmann, 2004).
I note now that the Arts Council in the UK removed all the categories
of funding that they used to have, and now you have to define your own
funding requirements. This of course does something similar to Ars
Electronica’s move [of abolishing prize categories] – it forces the artist
to consider their own position in relation to everything else, not just in
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
relation to the small bubble that the funders/commissioners give them
an opportunity to slip into. I would hope that this will make people look
at art rather than at technology for antecedents and references, but who
knows (Pope, 2004).
In 2005, just after this debate took place, Steve Dietz and I co-curated an
exhibition called The Art Formerly Known As New Media at the Banff Centre in
Canada.10 We were drawing, for our checklist, on a long list of alumni to the
then Banff New Media Institute – artists who had participated in residencies,
workshops, summits, and conferences on a range of themes pertinent to the
new media field over the previous decade (from 1995). These themes ranged
from data visualization to immersion, from artificial intelligence, to what constitutes identity online. It occurred to us that a retrospective view of the history
of new media art had to be very deliberate in its move away from the media
and technology part of its definition. After all, all technologies were once new.
What seemed more important was selecting works where the artists continued to interrogate these larger, more resonant themes within their work. For
instance, we included Catherine Richard’s work Shroud/Chrysalis II (2005),
an installation including a woven copper blanket and a low glass table in a
white room, in which visitors to the exhibition are invited to lie down and be
wrapped up, to temporarily insulate them from the surrounding electromagnetic spectrum. Faraday cages were once new media; what remains pertinent
today is the problem of living our lives continually “plugged in.”
The Art Formerly Known As New Media may have been a way to move the
theme of the show away from newness and technology towards other themes,
such as embodiment or agency. In the years since this exhibition this tactic
of the new media art group show clustered around a theme, continues to be
prevalent, and has resulted in a kind of tyranny, and chase – which festival will
work with which theme first? Once a theme, such as biotechnology or environmental response, has been claimed by a festival, and all the best work on
that theme shown there, does that mean that other festivals and exhibitions
cannot take it on?
Of course this is a silly way to think about curating. An exhibition at one
museum about the ready-made will likely not stop another curator at another
museum mount an exhibition about ready-mades.11 Working in a field where
there are three kinds of newness on the go at once – new technologies as both
tool and medium, new methods of making art or processes, and new ideas to
manifest in those works – does mean that one has to be curatorially creative and
led by real ideas of interest to resist the urge to just pick one theme and try to
make everything fit into it. In other words, being led by the content of the works
themselves is going to make for a stronger exhibition experience than grouping
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things together because they all could be understood under a larger umbrella
theme, such as the environmental crisis to cite one. In contemporary art, media
and methods are increasingly varied, and history has shown that most exhibitions which are solely medium-based tend towards the uninteresting.
THE ALLURE OF COMMISSIONING
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Many exhibitions have taken place within and without museums, but have
they made the situation of how to curate media art any clearer, if the characteristics and behaviors of the work (and the requirements of the audience in their
engagement with that work) have also moved forward? Exhibition history is a
growing field of study but still underdeveloped in the histories of media art.
Yet as Paul O’Neill has written, given the changing media at play in art, and the
different roles played by the artist, the audience, and the curator, there is no
one solution for curators.
In the new curatorial rhetoric the emphasis is on flexibility, temporality,
mobility, interactivity, performativity and connectivity. This new found
urgency to seek a common language is exemplified by the number of
international curators who have treated them [exhibitions/biennials] as
a collective activity, using them as a means to explore the processes of art
production through temporary mediation systems rather than presenting art and its exhibition as a finished product (O’Neill, 2005: 7).
This concern to show work in progress, or the usually hidden process of making art, is familiar to curators of new media who have always had cause to do
so, where audiences have often played a big role in bringing the artwork into
existence or completed the experience of the work. Which brings us back to
the question of categories and what exactly it is we are trying to curate, whether in a museum, festival or other context. Media art curator Jacob Lillemose
has commented that,
I often hear Danish museum directors ask for a list of categories because
it would make them feel more comfortable with digital art; it frames
digital art in accordance with the principles of non-digital art. However, I
think they misunderstand the challenges and do themselves an unintentional disservice. Digital art demands new ways of institutional thinking
about art works both in terms of curating and preservation; it’s difficult,
sure, but also a chance for the institution to develop (Lillemose in Graham, 2004).
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
The curating of work in progress means getting involved in the creation of
the work “further up the idea stream,” in the words of curator Scott Burnham
(Cook, 2009). Which perhaps is why commissioning has become the common
function of both the new media art curator and the extra-institutional freelance curator. A 2011 article in Art Journal pointed out that curators often talk
of the “projects” they are working on, as that allows a myriad of outcomes, from
exhibition to publication. A debate on the CRUMB list in 2010 addressed this
aspect of the curatorial role, wondering if commissioning can help towards
new curatorial models for new media art. Some excerpts follow.
I have always found commissioning to be a very dialogical process. The
conversation one starts with an artist (as a curator) can go on for a year or
more before anything goes into production. Sometimes things fall into
place quickly, but in my experience at least, this does not happen very
often. Especially in relation to variable media... the production phase is
also highly dialogical; as various logistics, contexts and ideas shift and
develop throughout that process. Very little is rigidly defined by the artist
or the curator at the outset. If there is anything I am likely to define (when
playing the role of curator), it is context. Though even this is likely to be
dynamic. Parameters can change or opportunities arise... (Dipple, 2010).
Depending on your institutional setting you may, as a curator, have more
or less so called ‘power’. I find it hard to discuss power relations in the
abstract. Power is always exercised in an institutional context. […] But my
attitude has always been to give freedom to the artist in the first place as
they know more and are the specialist in terms of technology; but it also
is giving them responsibility. The only aspect that always gets in the way
is financial resources. But if you establish the financial framework right
off the bat, rarely is it a major problem after (Gagnon, 2010).
New media art certainly seems a natural for commissions since there is
(or was) not such a large body of extant work to ‘shop’ for. And new media
production is naturally technical, involved, and labor intensive. Sometimes the curator or gallery/museum tech staff know as much or more
about different aspects of the technology as the artist (not always, but
sometimes). This means that close collaboration is necessary, and it also
results in the dynamic you mention, where the collaborative boundary
between curator and artist is blurred. On the one hand, this appears to
be a good thing; breaking down the old curatorial model where the artist
is asked politely to drop off their work at the loading dock and disappear
until opening night (to paraphrase Robert Storr) (Rinehart, 2010).
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Establishing a framework for the art project with the artist in advance, getting involved in the different stages of the production of the work, and keeping
discussion open about how the work is going to be exhibited, are all activities
which take important time on the part of the curator And the more time taken
in the curating of a project, the more collaborative with the artist it is, the less
likely it is that the curating will be “sloppy” in the style of the all-out, huge,
temporary theme show, where, often for reasons of space, time, budget, and
marketing pressures, one-size-fits-all is the only method available.
IN CONCLUSION
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The unofficial CRUMB motto is that once you have curated new media art you
never curate art the same way again. Which is another way of restating the lessons above – that once you have collaborated with artists, including commissioning their work, you might be less keen on the curatorial model of practice
which seems to only result in a big themed show seen by a drive-by audience.
Other practical and theoretical problems with the way art is received will no
doubt come to replace those two mentioned so far. For instance, a common
complaint, written nearly a decade ago, is still the case today:
Perhaps critics, print magazines and newspapers would consider writing/
printing/commissioning more articles about ‘one-person shows,’ individual web sites or single ‘projects,’ rather than round-table discussions
or those articles covering entire festivals, biennials, etc. (although there
are great exceptions, the latter type of articles is the one most often ending with the ‘So, is it art?’ question, because you can’t possibly develop
a full, well-argued critical judgement of one art project when covering a
whole festival) (Broegger, 2003).
This comment rightfully suggests that the curator’s role also has to encompass
the scholarship around media arts (its history, and its key works, understood
in a monographic form) if we want to help evolve better ways to show the work.
What other lessons have we learned from curators dealing with new media
arts in the field in the last ten years? First is that in the last decade the art has
changed a lot and as such defining the roles and responsibilities of the curator remains a case-specific activity. Artworks made ten years ago have been
almost completely forgotten (or, in the case of net-based art, left to molder
online while software and operating systems are upgraded rendering their
coding obsolete) while earlier histories (twenty or more years) of media art,
including time-based and lens-based practices, are gradually being excavated,
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
and restaged and reshown. How do we keep the recent memory of art alive?
Can freelance curators – those who are non-institutional, non-collecting, notmuseum-based – help, through their practice, to extend the future relevance
of recent media art? How can we take the best of a freelance curator’s attitude
to engage with new art forms and new themes, and mix that with the institutional curator’s responsibilities to scholarship and preservation? Perhaps the
time has come for curators to ensure that the considered exhibition, or the
single art commission, extends beyond the “drive-by” “one-night-stand” of a
festival or biennial, and speaks to ideas beyond the obvious and beyond the
tyranny of the overarching theme.
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o N C U R AT I N G N E w M E D I A A R T
NOTES
1
See http://www.crumbweb.org.
2
This is an ever-evolving area of inquiry; for its most recent significant entry see
Quaranta (2010).
3
Transmediale, see http://www.transmediale.de. Wunderbar, see http://www.
wunderbarfestival.co.uk. For a considered look at the place of new media art
within the history of the Venice Biennale, see Franco (2012).
4
Recent iterations of the ISEA (the Inter-Society for Electronic Art) festival have
been held in Istanbul and Albuquerque, see http://www.isea2012org. After ten
years of programming, PixelAche has changed its director and its format and
largely abandoned the festival model in favor of year-round, community-based
programming related to new media culture, under the strand Pixelversity, see
http://www.pixelache.ac.
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5
Software: Information Technology: Its New Meaning for Art took place at the Jewish
Museum in New York in 1970, curated by Jack Burnham; Information took place at
the Museum of Modern Art also in 1970, curated by Kynaston McShine.
6
010101: Art in Technological Times took place at the San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art in 2001 instigated by David Ross and curated across four departments
of the museum; the 2000 edition of the Whitney Biennial attracted attention for
its inclusion of net-based art practices, see Graham and Cook (2010).
7
On the former, see the discussions from the eyeo festival, held in 2012 in Minneapolis – http://www.eyeo.com. On the latter, see Benford and Giannachi (2011).
8
Rewire: The fourth international conference on the histories of media art, science, and technology was hosted by FACT at Liverpool John Moore’s University,
see http://www.mediaarthistory.org.
9
The exhibition Q.E.D. took place in Liverpool in 2011 and is documented online
with the gallery guide available to download from http://archive-2011.andfestival.
org.uk/event/qed.
10 The Art Formerly Known As New Media, Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff, Canada,
2005. See the catalogue for the exhibition available in Cook and Diamond (2011).
11 Obviously many museum exhibitions are based around collections which are
distinct to the museum.
REFERENCES
Armin, Janine. “The Creative Landscape of Independent Curators.” The New York
Times 15 June 2010. Http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/16/arts/16ihtrartfreelance.html?pagewanted=all. Last access: 25 July 2012.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
Benford, Steve, and Gabriella Giannachi. Performing Mixed Reality. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 2011.
Broeckmann, Andreas. “heuristics / techno-culture.” New-Media-Curating Discussion
List, 8 September 2004 – http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/new-media-curating.
html.
Broegger, Andreas. “criteria for judgements of quality?” New-Media-Curating Discussion List. 3 June 2003 – http:// www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/new-media-curating.html.
Charlesworth, J.J. “Curating Doubt.” In Issues in Curating Contemporary Art and Performance, edited by Judith Rugg and Michele Sedgwick, 91-99. London: Intellect
Books, 2007.
Cook, Sarah. Notes from an unpublished interview with Michelle Kasprzak, Rotterdam, May 2012.
—. “Multi-multi-media. An interview with Barbara London.” In A Brief History of
Curating New Media Art, edited by Sarah Cook, Beryl Graham, Verina Gfader, and
Axel Lapp, 57-72. Berlin: The Green Box, 2010. Originally published online, 2001 –
www.crumbweb.org.
—. Curatorial Master class with Scott Burnham. New York: Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, 2009 – http://www.eyebeam.org/events/.
—. Balancing Content and Context. Towards a Third Way of Curating New Media Art.
Ph.D. diss., University of Sunderland, 2004.
—, and Sara Diamond (eds.) Euphoria and Dystopia. The Banff New Media Institute Dialogues. Toronto: Riverside Architectural Press and The Banff Centre Press, 2011.
Dietz, Steve. “reverse engineering?” New-Media-Curating Discussion List, 8 September
2004 – http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/new-media-curating.html.
Dipple, Kelli. “Re: Three questions about commissioning variable media.” New-Media
Curating Discussion List. 8 March 2010 – http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/newmedia-curating.html.
Franco, Francesca. Art and Technology at the Venice Biennale. Ph.D. diss., Birkbeck
College London, 2012.
Gagnon, Jean. “Re: Three questions about commissioning variable media.” NewMedia-Curating Discussion List. 3 March 2010 – http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/
new-media-curating.html.
Graham, Beryl. “Taxonomies of Media Art. September Theme.” New-Media-Curating
Discussion List. 8 September 2004 – http:// www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/new-mediacurating.html.
—, and Sarah Cook. Rethinking Curating. Art after New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 2010.
Lialina, Olia. “cheap.art.” Rhizome. 19 January 1998 – http://rhizome.org/discuss/
view/28198/#c1026. Last access: 25 July 2012.
Lichty, Patrick. “Re: Definitions.” New-Media-Curating Discussion List. 6 September
2004 – http:// www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/new-media-curating.html.
o N C U R AT I N G N E w M E D I A A R T
| 403
O’Neill, Paul. “The Curatorial Turn. From Practice to Discourse.” In Issues in Curating
Contemporary Art and Performance, edited by Judith Rugg and Michele Sedgwick,
13-28. London: Intellect Books, 2007.
—. “The Co-dependent Curator.” Art Monthly 291 (November 2005): 7-10.
Pope, Ivan. “Re: taxonomies, definitions, archives, etc.” New-Media-Curating Discussion List. 8 September 2004 – http:// www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/new-media-curating.
html.
Quaranta, Domenico. Media, New Media, Postmedia. Milan: Postmediabooks, 2010.
Rinehart, Richard. “Re: Three questions about commissioning variable media.” NewMedia-Curating Discussion List. 3 March 2010 – http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/
new-media-curating.html.
Robecchi, Michele. “An interview with Maurizio Cattelan and Massimiliano Gioni.”
Contemporary (special issue on Curators) 77 (2005) – http://www.contemporarymagazine.com/profile77_3.htm.
404 |
Searle, Adrian. “Being Here Now.” The Guardian. 23 July 2002. Http://www.guardian.
co.uk/culture/2002/jul/23/artsfeatures. Last access: 25 July 2012.
Sutton, Gloria. “taxonomies, definitions, archives, etc.” New-Media-Curating Discussion List. 7 September 2004 – http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/new-media-curating.
html.
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
Epilogue
Julia Noordegraaf and Ariane Noël de Tilly
During the fall of 2007, the Stedelijk Museum CS in Amsterdam presented the
exhibition Andy Warhol. Other Voices, Other Rooms.1 Curated by Eva Meyer-Hermann, the exhibition put forward the great variety of media Warhol used in
his career such as film, photography, video, sound, graphic design, painting,
and printmaking. Divided in three main sections – Cosmos, Filmscape, and
TV-Scape – the exhibition shed light on artworks within Warhol’s oeuvre that
were not yet widely known by the public: his films and videotapes. The section
Cosmos was conceived as an inventory of all the media and themes Warhol had
worked with. The artworks in that section – drawings, paintings, Polaroids,
postcards, LP sleeves, and so on – were spread out on 28 different pillars. The
section TV-Scape comprised the 42 television episodes that Andy Warhol made
for New York TV companies and for MTV between 1979 and 1987, and a series
of unknown video pieces dating from the 1960s and 1970s. Finally, the section Filmscape was subdivided in four spaces named Screen Tests, Films, Silver
Clouds, and Theatre. A first room was dedicated to the presentation of the artist’s Screen Tests, a series of short films the artist had made by asking his peers
as well as strangers to pose, sitting as still as possible, until the three-minute
reel used for the shooting ran out. In order to extend the duration of the Screen
Tests, Warhol decided to project them at 16 frames per second rather than at
24 frames per second, and the films ended up being four minutes long each.
The next room of the section Filmscape featured 19 films, all of which were
projected simultaneously (see Fig. 11.1 in color section). On the back wall of
that space, a large window the size of a projection screen opened up onto the
room where the Silver Clouds – floating balloons of helium – were presented.
Ultimately, when the visitors left that exhibition space, they could walk to the
theater where eight other of Warhol’s films were projected in a two-day cycle.
These films had not been integrated in the Filmscape room of the exhibition
E P I lo G U E
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408 |
because the curator decided their dramatic structure required that they be
shown from start to finish, rather than as a loop.
The setup of this exhibition positioned the films and television works as
a logical extension of the themes and issues such as portraiture, celebrity,
repetition, seriality, and the multiplication of images that Warhol explored
in his better-known paintings, drawings, and sculptures. In that sense, the
exhibition illustrates how media art has become more firmly situated within
art history in recent years. Ironically, it may have been the renewed interest
in film and video by visual artists from the 1990s that led to a rediscovery and
revaluation of Warhol’s time-based artworks, as well as those by other artists
and experimental filmmakers in the 1960s and 1970s. Like many of the artists
discussed in this book, Warhol used the mediums of film and video in ways
that challenge the conventions and cultural impact of the media related to
them (cinema and television, respectively), thus provoking new ways of viewing and interacting with these media. For example, his films lack the clear
structure of mainstream narrative films, instead simply observing the members of the group of people that hung around his studio. The Screen Tests, with
their almost non-moving subjects and slowed-down projection speed, expose
film’s paradoxical relation to time (capturing reality in still photographs
that, because of the movement of the filmstrip in the projector at 24 frames
a second, create the illusion of movement), thus puncturing the suspension
of disbelief that characterizes traditional cinematic spectatorship. Yet while
the works refer thematically in many ways to the ontology of film, in order to
be projected, they had to be transferred to non-film carriers and another projection system.2 Both in its overview of the way Warhol employed time-based
media in his artistic production and its design and technical setup, the exhibition Andy Warhol. Other Voices, Other Rooms epitomizes many of the issues
discussed in this book and thus serves as a suitable anchor for its conclusion.
MIGRATION AS AN EXHIBITION STRATEGy
For the making of his films, Andy Warhol had used 16mm-film reels, and in the
case of his videotapes, 1-inch reel-to-reel and ½-inch reel-to-reel. Considering
the ephemerality of these carriers, and also to facilitate their looped presentation, in the exhibition Andy Warhol. Other Voices, Other Rooms, the films were
transferred to high definition video files (HDD) and the videotapes were migrated to digital video files (DVD). Various texts in this book discuss the advantages
and disadvantages of such migrations. One of the reasons to support presenting the films on a digitized format is that it enabled them to be shown continuously, and also, simultaneously – thus allowing a comparison between the
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
films. Considering that film projectors make more noise than video projectors,
the simultaneous projection of 19 films was only possible with the use of video
projectors.3 However, if a step is skipped during the migration process, there
are consequences for the aesthetic appearance of a work. In this specific case,
the video images projected had not been de-interlaced.
The feature of interlaced images is specific to the video format. Both analogue and digital video images are built up from horizontal lines. Every 1/25th
of a second, a complete image is written on the screen starting at the upper
left-hand corner up to the lower right-hand corner. This is done in two steps.
First the uneven lines are drawn: from line 1 to 599. This is called the upper
field. Second, the lower field, consisting of the even lines 2 to 600, is generated. There is thus a 1/50th of a second time lag between the two layers, but this
time lag is invisible to the human eye. This manner of generating images is
called “interlacing.”4
When a film needs to be transferred to video format, a digital scan of the
work provides the best image quality. In the specific case of the films shown
in Andy Warhol. Other Voices, Other Rooms, the films had been previously transferred to an analogue video format. In order to avoid the highly expensive costs
of digitizing the original films, the digitization was based on earlier analogue
video transfers. However, when an analogue video is transferred to a digital format, the digital formats record the two fields described above simultaneously.
The consequence of this is that the time lag between the upper and lower field
become visible. This resulting visual distortion can be removed through the
process of de-interlacing, a method involving the removal of one of the fields
and the duplication of the other to substitute for the field removed.5 Since
this method of de-interlacing was not applied in the digitization of the analogue video transfers of Warhol’s films, the lines remained visible, especially
to those who are more sensitive to the effects of the digitization of analogue
videos on the quality of the image. This case demonstrates the consequences
of obsolete technologies and migration strategies discussed throughout this
book.
FILM AND TV: SwITCHING PLACES
The exhibition Andy Warhol. Other Voices, Other Rooms stood out from other
monographic exhibitions on the work of Warhol held in the last decade
because of its focus on lesser-known works by the artist – his films and videotapes – but also because of the manner in which the artworks were presented.
For instance, the choice of presenting 19 films simultaneously in the same
space was audacious, but also technically challenging. It created, as this sec-
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410 |
tion of the exhibition was called, a Filmscape. In a way, this setup appeared to
transform the entire space into one installation, almost a work of art in itself.
However, in the exhibition catalogue, curator Eva Meyer-Hermann argued:
“This presentation is neither pure documentation nor work of art: it does not
fully conform to any usual expectations yet it has something of everything”
(Meyer-Hermann, 2007: 139).
Showing many of Warhol’s films in proximity to one another had the
advantage of making the films enter into dialogue with one another, but
it also had a distracting effect: the attention of the visitors was fragmented
and distributed over space and time. The fact that each projection screen was
accompanied by a numeric clock displaying the remaining time of the screening, invited visitors to stay, move on, or return, thus further stimulating their
flânerie-like spectatorship of the films. In this sense, the Filmscape was characterized by the distracted, fragmented viewing position that is usually associated with watching television in a private home (see Caldwell, 1995). In contrast,
the television works shown in the TV-Scape had to be viewed and listened to
in isolation, seated on a star-shaped stool in front of one of the monitors with
a set of headphones for the sound, positioning the visitor in the fixed viewing
position normally associated with the cinema theater (see Fig. 11.2 in color
section).6 The choice of presentation in this exhibition was very Warholesque
in that the artist himself experimented widely with the presentation of his
films in the 1960s. For instance, the expanded cinema production Exploring
Plastic Inevitable was presented in several locations between 1966 and 1967
and was a complex project in which Warhol’s films were only one of the elements. This production included, among other things, film projections, slide
projections, strobe lights, and sets by the Velvet Underground and Nico (Fig.
1.3).7 The presentation format chosen at the Stedelijk Museum CS demonstrates that there is not one perfect manner of exhibiting Warhol’s films, but
several, and some of them are more experimental than others.
TIME TRAVELING
Warhol was fundamentally concerned with the “now” of his time; thematically as well as formally, his works are very much about the present. In that
sense the exhibition Andy Warhol: Other Voices, Other Rooms raised the wider
question of how to exhibit works that refer to a past present. The exhibition
gave the films a new presence, by transferring them to a contemporary, digital
video format and by showing them in the kind of screen-scape so characteristic for contemporary urban screen culture (see Verhoeff, 2012). The digital
clocks beside each of the films, counting down to their ending, emphasized
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
the visitors’ situatedness in the here and now. The TV-Scape, with its isolated,
fixed viewing and listening position, invited a concentrated experience of
the television work that it did not have when originally broadcast, removing
it from the flow and liveness of television and inscribing it in the history of
Warhol’s oeuvre and in wider art and media history. The complex relation of
this exhibition to time is nicely illustrated by the work Time Capsule 61, exhibited in the Cosmos section: a cardboard box in which Warhol put all the knickknacks and memorabilia that he found relevant at the time. He knew that in
due time people would open these boxes and would try to discover a seemingly
logical order to its contents (Hofmans, 2007). In that sense, the upside-down
Time Capsule 61 in the exhibition is a nice metaphor for the fact that preserving and exhibiting media art always entails interpretation, choices, and the
acceptance of a certain degree of change.
Seen from an archaeological perspective, the coexistence of various mediums, formats, and exhibition techniques and styles is not something to be
avoided, but a way to make the past experiential in the present. In that sense,
preservationists and curators of media art facing obsolete technologies have
a certain freedom in determining preservation and exhibition strategies,
ranging from the repair or replacement of contemporary technologies to
more radical reconstructions. As pointed out throughout this book, such an
approach requires that the preservationist and curator respect the artwork’s
logic, distinguishing between the work’s core – those elements considered
crucial to its identity – and its appearance, artistic concept, and historical context – elements which might be susceptible to change over time. Additionally,
it requires extensive and multilayered modes of documentation, so that future
preservationists and curators can make new, well-informed decisions about
the appearance and functionality of a work. And the special nature of media
art, situated between art, media, and popular culture, also requires a type of
archiving that documents not only the technologies used, but also the cultural
practices related to them.
Andy Warhol, besides having been a highly influential 20th-century artist,
can retrospectively also serve as a model for such a preservationist/curator. In
the creation and exhibition of his film installation Outer and Inner Space (1965)
Warhol combined these roles in interesting ways. Outer and Inner Space is a
portrait of Edie Sedgwick, filmed while watching a prerecorded videotape of
herself playing on a monitor next to her. Since in the video recording Sedgwick
faces left, the film appears to show Edie having a conversation with herself.
Thematically the work reflects on the relation between film and video, with
the making of the video inviting the making of the film, rather than the other
way around. At the same time, and ironically, the fact that Warhol recorded
the video registration on film ensured its survival – the original Norelco vide-
E P I lo G U E
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otapes can no longer be played back (Angell, 2002). The work also refers to
many other core themes in Warhol’s work related to celebrity, media attention, and the multiplication of images – themes still relevant to our presentday media-saturated world. Finally, Warhol experimented with the exhibition
of this work, alternating between cinema theater screenings and gallery projections, either with a single screen or with a double one – the latter turning
Edie’s double portrait into a quadruple one (as in the Stedelijk Museum CS
exhibition). In that sense, Warhol serves as a model for any preservationist
or curator ready to take up the challenges posed by preserving and exhibiting
media art.
412 |
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
NOTES
1
Andy Warhol: Other Voices, Other Rooms, 12 October 2007-14 January 2008. Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum CS. In the years that followed, the exhibition traveled to
other venues such as the Moderna Museet Stockholm, the Hayward Gallery in
London, and the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio.
2
Similarly, the TV works, recorded on videotape for broadcasting purposes, were
shown in this exhibition as DVDs on television monitors.
3
Electrostatic speakers by the Finnish firm Panphonics were also used to focus the
sound in a specific place in space. For details on this sound system, see the Panphonics website: http://www.panphonics.com/solutions/museums-exhibitionsdirectional-audio-solution. Last access 5 July 2012.
4
The authors would like to thank Gert Hoogeveen, Head of Audiovisuals at the
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, for his time and for generously answering their
| 413
technical questions.
5
The consequence of this method is a reduction by half of the image information, causing a considerable blurring of the images, but there are ways to compensate for this.
6
For a detailed analysis of the way this exhibition relates to cinematic spectatorship see Hesselberth (2012: 35-63).
7
Ronald Nameth’s film Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1967), which
documents some of the performances of this production, was screened in the
introductory room at the Stedelijk Museum CS exhibition.
REFERENCES
Angell, Callie. “Doubling the Screen. Andy Warhol’s Outer and Inner Space.” Millennium Film Journal 38 (2002): 19-33. Available online – http://www.mfj-online.org/
journalPages/MFJ38/angell.html. Last access on 12 July 2012.
Caldwell, John. Televisuality. Style, Crisis, and Authority in American Television. New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995.
Hesselberth, Pepita. Cinematic Chronotopes. Affective Encounters in Space-Time. University of Amsterdam, Ph.D. diss., 2012.
Hofmans, Daniëlle. “Andy Warhol. Other Voices, Other Rooms.” De Witte Raaf 22
(2007) 130: 11.
Meyer-Hermann, Eva. “Other Voices, Other Rooms. Filmscape,” in Andy Warhol. A
Guide to 706 Items in 2 Hours 56 Minutes, edited by Eva Meyer-Hermann, 134-139.
Amsterdam/Stockholm/Rotterdam: Stedelijk Museum/Moderna Museet/NAi
Publishers, 2007.
Verhoeff, Nanna. Mobile Screens. The Visual Regime of Navigation. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012.
E P I lo G U E
list of CoNtributors
C L AU D I A D ’ A LO N ZO is a Ph.D. student in Audiovisual Studies: Cinema, Music
and Communication at the University of Udine.
A R I E A LT E N A is archive editor at V2_, organizer of the Sonic Acts festival and
author on new media, art, internet-culture, media-theory and literature.
is Head of the Collection, Conservation, Registrar
Department at the MAXXI Art /MAXXI National Museum of 21st Century Arts,
Rome.
A L E S SA N D R A B A R B U TO
L AU R A B A R R EC A is Research Fellow at the University of Palermo. She holds a
Ph.D. and a Post-doc in the Conservation and Documentation of New Media
Art.
E L E N A B I S E R N A holds a Ph.D. in Audiovisual Studies from the University of
Udine and works as a researcher in the field of sound and contemporary art.
A L E S SA N D RO B O R D I N A is Postdoctoral Fellow in Methodologies and Techniques for Media Art Conservation, Restoration, Access, and Dissemination at
the University of Udine.
R E N AT E B U SC H M A N N
is director of the IMAI – inter media art institute.
T E R E SA C A S T RO is Associate Professor of Film Theory and Visual Studies at the
Université Sorbonne nouvelle – Paris 3.
| 415
is a curator and Reader at the University of Sunderland where
she co-founded and co-edits CRUMB, the online resource for curators of new
media art www.crumbweb.org.
SA R A H CO O K
is an independent curator and Ph.D. researcher in Cultural
Studies at Goldsmiths University, London.
ANNET DEKKER
is Professor of the Theory of Visual Forms at the Université
Sorbonne nouvelle – Paris 3.
P H I L I P P E DU B O I S
is Head of “Medienzentrum” at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Hildesheim, Germany.
J Ü RG E N E N G E
is Associate Professor of Film Theory and Aesthetics at the
Université Sorbonne nouvelle – Paris 3.
T É R É SA FAU CO N
416 |
is Professor of Film Studies in the Institute for Theater,
Film, and Media Studies at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main.
VINZENZ HEDIGER
S T É P H A N I E - E M M A N U E L L E LO U I S
is a Ph.D. candidate at the École des Hautes
études en Sciences sociales and the Institut d’histoire du temps présent
(IHTP-CNRS).
is Head of Collection Care Research at Tate and holds a Ph.D.
in the care and management of time-based media works of art from University
College London.
P I P L AU R E N SO N
B A R B A R A L E M A Î T R E is Associate Professor of Theory and Aesthetics of Static
and Time-based Images at the Université Sorbonne nouvelle – Paris 3.
is Professor of Digital Conservation at Bern University of the Arts,
Switzerland.
TA B E A LU R K
DA R I O M A RC H I O R I is Associate Professor of History of Film Forms at the Université Lyon 2 Lumière.
is Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of
Art History, Visual Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia.
A R I A N E N O Ë L D E T I L LY
is Professor of Heritage and Digital Culture in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Amsterdam.
J U L I A N O O R D EG R A A F
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
holds an M.A. degree in Art History from the University of
Milan and is Assistant Conservator in the Time-based Media Department at
Tate Gallery, London.
I O L A N DA R AT T I
COS E T TA G . SA B A
is Associate Professor of Film Analysis and Audiovisual Practices in Media Art at the University of Udine.
M I RCO SA N T I is Postdoctoral Fellow in the Restoration of Small Gauge Films
and Obsolete Formats at the University of Udine and co-founder of Home
Movies.
S E N TA S I E W E RT is Professor of Film Studies (ad interim) in the Media Studies
Department at Ruhr-University Bochum.
WA N DA S T R AU V E N is Associate Professor of Film Studies in the Media Studies
Department at the University of Amsterdam.
is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Faculty of Arts and Social
Sciences at Maastricht University.
V I V I A N VA N SA A Z E
S I M O N E V E N T U R I N I is Assistant Professor and scientific coordinator of the
La Camera Ottica Film and Video Restoration laboratory at the University of
Udine.
is a researcher at the University of Film and Television “Konrad
Wolf” Potsdam-Babelsberg.
C H R I S WA H L
is Head of Collections, Preservation, and Related Research at the
Netherlands Media Art Institute (NIMk) Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
G A BY W I J E R S
l I S T o F Co N T R I B U To R S
| 417
iNdeX
A
Ataman, Kutlug 37
Abandon Normal Devices Festival (AND)
Atlas Group 106
393
audio installation 16, 124, 177
Abramovic, Marina 32, 44, 348, 349
August-Dormeuil, Renaud 51
Acconci, Vito 33, 37, 46, 55, 225
Averty, Jean-Christoph 41
Adamczyk, Piotr 165, 166, 191
Avraamov, Arseny 211
Adams, Matt 151, 153-156, 187
Ader, Bas Jan 44, 55
B
Adorno, Theodor 85, 86, 89, 95-97, 141,
Bal, Mieke 63
146
Baldessari, John 377
Adrian, Robert 51
Banff Center 97, 154, 397, 402, 403
Ahtila, Eija-Liisa 35, 213, 316, 323
Barber, George 39, 55
Aitken, Doug 36, 55, 316, 323, 364, 365,
Barchilon, José 60
385
Bargellini, Piero/Pierfrancesco 139, 210
Akerman, Chantal 316
Barney, Matthew 101, 102, 119, 348
Aktive Archive 114, 248
Barry, Judith 36, 48
Alexeieff, Alexandre 206, 209
Barthes, Roland 44, 55, 129, 144-146,
Alternativ Television 39
328
Angell, Callie 342, 358, 360, 412, 413
Bartholl, Aram 355, 356, 359, 360
Anger, Kenneth 205
Baruchello, Gianfranco 106
Ant Farm 39, 40
Baumgärtel, Tilman 27, 55
Anthology Film Archive 28
Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb 24, 81,
App art 233
82, 84, 97
Arnold, Martin 43, 106, 207, 245, 320
Bausch, Pina 31
Ars Electronica 192, 341, 359, 393, 396
Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC) 162,
Art by Telephone 377
Ashley-Smith, Jonathan 283, 297
299
Bell Labs 11
| 419
Bellour, Raymond 12, 19, 46, 54, 55, 90,
British Film Institute (BFI) 297, 298,
366
96, 97, 325, 363, 383, 385
Benford, Steve 166, 191, 402, 403
Broodthaers, Marcel 214
Benglis, Lynda 46
Brus, Günther 30
Benjamin, Walter 64, 75, 85, 97, 324,
Bruszewski, Wojciech 44, 54
362, 363, 385
Burch, Noël 62, 68, 76, 336, 340
Benning, Sadie 46
Burden, Chris 32, 42, 45, 221, 311
Bergson, Henri 368, 383
Burgin, Christine 370, 373, 383, 384
Beuler, Alfred 228
Burke, Edmund 24, 83
Beuys, Joseph 32, 33, 219, 222, 347
Burnham, Scott 399, 403
Biggs, Simon 223
Bustamante, Sergio 311
Birnbaum, Dara 39, 45, 48, 358
420 |
Birri, Fernando 206
C
Bismuth, Pierre 316, 319
Cage, John 28, 52, 328, 358, 372
Björk 140, 349, 351
Cahen, Robert 42
Blame, Steve 348, 358
Calle, Sophie 106
Blast Theory 16, 124, 149-158, 166-168,
Campus, Peter 34, 41, 219, 344, 345, 361
187, 189, 195
Bloch, Ernst 93
Blue, James 331
Blümlinger, Christa 42, 43, 55
Capturing Unstable Media 114, 160,
192, 303
Capturing Unstable Media Conceptual
Model (CMCM) 160, 163-165, 167
Boltanski, Christian 106
Carels, Edwin 66, 76
Bolter, Jay David 25, 54, 55, 69, 76, 90,
Cassagnau, Pascale 313, 325
97, 118
Bonitzer, Pascal 336, 340
Castorf, Frank 31, 57
Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, see
Bonvicini, Monica 349, 359
Zentrum für Kunst und Medien –
born digital 13, 19, 110, 113, 179, 192,
Karlsruhe (ZKM)
194, 216, 298
Boulez, Pierre 328
Centre Pompidou 120, 230, 311, 313,
316, 320, 324, 359
Bourdieu, Pierre 145, 146, 314
Chevrier, Jean-François 338, 340
Bournigault, Rebecca 46
Christie, Ian 62, 76
Bourriaud, Nicolas 91, 97, 103, 105-107,
Cinémathèque française 310, 326, 327,
114, 118, 138, 146, 172
339, 341
Bowker, Geoffrey 167, 189
Claerbout, David 36
Braderman, Joan 48
Coleman, James 287
Brakhage, Stan 68, 205, 207, 210
computer-based art/artworks/
Brambilla, Marco 43
installations 11, 14, 16, 123, 161,
Brandi, Cesare 114, 118, 181, 191
162, 193, 228, 230, 234, 235, 238,
Breer, Robert 205
248, 250, 270, 271, 274, 279, 281,
Briet, Suzanne 150, 167, 168, 191
295
Conrad, Tony 208, 331
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
Conway, Paul 217, 249
display equipment, see playback/display
equipment
Cook, Sarah 12, 13, 17, 19, 163, 297,
298, 305, 381, 384, 385, 389, 390.
Djurberg, Nathalie 101, 103
392, 393, 399, 402, 403
Documentation and Conservation of the
Corbijn, Anton 348, 359
Media Arts Heritage (DOCAM) 12,
Cornell, Joseph 42, 106, 207
114, 117, 165, 195, 238, 248, 270,
298
Courant, Gérard 214
Cunningham, Chris 348, 359
dokumenta 313
Cuoghi, Roberto 16, 124, 176, 177, 180
Douglas, Stan 11, 35, 41, 106, 316, 323
Curatorial Resource for Upstart Media
Draeger, Christoph 40
Bliss (CRUMB) 17, 19, 390, 399,
Dubois, Philippe 17, 94, 309-311, 326,
335, 337, 340, 342, 346, 358, 361,
400, 402, 403
362
Curtius, Ernst Robert 71
Duchamp, Marcel 11, 45, 90, 92, 93, 328
| 421
D
Durand, Régis 313
Daney, Serge 339, 340, 365, 385
Durant, Sam 106
Daniels, Dieter 13, 19, 25, 27, 34, 42, 56,
Dutch Electronic Art Festival (DEAF)
353, 355, 392
119, 230, 250, 340
Davis, Douglas 38, 54, 222, 380
Dykstra, Steven 182, 187, 192
De Broin, Michel 394
De Kerckhove, Derrick 201, 250
E
De Marinis, Paul 65
EdCine 266, 293, 298
De Nijs, Marnix 355, 359, 360, 361
Edmunds, Becky 156, 188
Dean, Tacita 11, 102, 103, 106, 316
Eggeling, Viking 211
Debord, Guy 52, 89, 97
Egoyan, Etom 316
Deichtorhallen Hamburg 347, 349, 358
Elsaesser, Thomas 24, 50, 56, 59, 61,
Deleuze, Gilles 93, 98, 119, 368, 385
Deren, Maya 204, 206, 208, 249
Descartes, René 127, 128, 134, 146
Desvallées, André 329, 330 340
Deutsch, Gustav 106, 207,
63, 64, 72, 73, 75-77, 106, 119, 120,
346, 360
emulation 17, 111, 114-116, 168, 235239, 241, 243, 244, 248, 249, 254,
268, 272
Devaux, Fréderique 214
Encyclopedia Pictura 349
Dibbets, Jan 41
Epstein, Jean 363, 385
Diebner, Hans 279
Ernst, Wolfgang 24, 67, 68, 73, 77, 78,
Dietz, Steve 396, 397, 403
101, 105, 110, 112, 119, 332, 333,
digital art/artworks 11, 20, 25, 54, 55,
340
57, 97, 102, 164, 192, 193, 197, 249-
Esposito, Bruna 16, 124, 185, 186
251, 270, 271, 298, 302, 393, 398
Europeana 109, 118, 293
Dilthey, Wilhelm 138
Dion, Mark 106
INDEX
Gehr, Ernie 207
F
Farocki, Harun 16, 50, 56, 76, 124, 130,
133, 135, 136, 140, 141, 143-146
Genette, Gérard 107, 108, 120, 132, 146
Gerstner, Karl 228
Farr, Ju Row 151, 154, 187
Gerz, Jochen 44, 45, 46
Faure, Élie 365, 385
Gianikian, Yervant 106, 316, 320
Fehr, Michael 106
Gilette, Frank 34, 38
Feingold, Ken 65
Gillick, Liam 106, 170, 189
Feldmann, Hans Peter 106, 119
Ginsberg, Alexandra Daisy 394
FIAF archives 61, 64, 68, 75, 293, 297,
Gioli, Paolo 203, 206
339, 340
Girardet, Christoph 43, 106, 320
Fibicher, Bernhard 337, 338, 340
Global Village 38
film-based art/artworks/installations
Godard, Jean-Luc 43, 46, 83, 139, 215,
311, 312, 316, 320, 322, 326, 329,
254, 288
330, 339, 348
Fischinger, Oskar 35, 209, 211, 347
422 |
Fleisch, Thorsten 207, 210
Gondry, Michel 349, 359
Fluxus 23, 28, 93
Gonzales-Foerster, Dominique 170, 189
Forgács, Péter 15, 106
Gonzales-Torres, Félix 103
Forging the Future 159, 188
Goodman, Nelson 34, 90, 96, 98, 195
Foster, Hal 103, 104, 106, 111, 119, 139,
Gordon, Douglas 15, 42, 43, 44, 106,
141, 207, 208, 213, 219, 245, 316,
146. 172, 192, 207, 249
318, 349, 359
Foucart, Julien 337, 340
Foucault, Michel 14, 24, 60, 68, 69, 70,
Graham, Beryl 12, 13, 19, 381, 384, 385,
390, 398, 402, 403
72-74, 76-78, 84, 98, 104, 106, 120
Fouchard, Olivier 210
Graham, Dan 45, 50,
Foundation for the Conservation of
Graham, Rodney 26
Contemporary Art (SBMK) 268,
Greenaway, Peter 46, 215, 316
294, 298, 299
Greenberg, Clement 84, 96, 98
Frampton, Hollis 331
Grifi, Alberto 106, 256, 295
Franke, Herbert 228, 230, 250
Griffith, D.W. 133, 141, 144
Fraser, Andrea 106
Groys, Boris 26, 56
Freud, Sigmund 71, 119, 129, 145, 146
Grusin, Richard 25, 55, 69, 76, 90, 97,
118
Froese, Dieter 51
Guattari, Félix 93, 98, 368, 385
G
Guggenheim Museum 19, 32, 119, 192,
347, 350, 358, 386
Gadamer, Hans-Georg 138
Galloway, Kit 222
Gunning, Tom 61-63, 71, 72, 77, 202,
250
Gamarra, Sandra 289
Garaicoa, Carlos 285, 296
Gartenberg, Jon 265, 299
H
Gaudreault, André 61, 62, 77
Haacke, Hans 229
Geers, Kendell 43
Hagener, Malte 61, 62, 77
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
Hahn, Alexander 230
installation art 13, 17, 23, 25, 45, 57, 109,
111, 118, 164, 191, 194, 294, 299,
Hall, David 37, 39, 41, 221
342, 345, 361, 372, 387
Hatoum, Mona 46, 49
Haustein, Lydia 33, 37, 40, 44, 45, 47-49,
Institut National de L’Audiovisuel (INA)
42
56
Heartfield, John 207
Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA)
152
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 82, 85,
95, 96, 98, 127, 128, 131, 137, 144,
inter media art institute (imai) –
Dusseldorf 376, 378-381, 384
147
Heidegger, Martin 87, 129, 138, 147
interactive art/artworks/projects/
Helle, Herman 40
installations 14, 25, 102, 108, 109,
Helliwell, Ian 207, 214, 215
131, 132, 151, 152, 159, 223, 230,
Hentschläger, Kurt 394
247, 274, 275, 279, 344, 353, 354,
Hershman, Lynn 40, 47, 65
356, 357, 390
Hertz, Garnet 63, 66, 68, 77
| 423
International Network for the
Higgins, Dick 28, 31, 98
Conservation of Contemporary Art
Hill, Gary 20, 45, 55, 213, 218, 219, 284
(INCCA) 12, 182, 190, 270, 295, 296,
299, 301
Hiller, Susan 106
Hirsch, Eric Donald Jr. 138
Information 377, 393, 402
Hirschhorn, Thomas 106
International Organization for
Standardization (ISO) 263, 293, 299
Hirst, Damien 348
Hoberman, Perry 65
Internet-based art/artworks 17, 162, 289
Honegger, Gottfried 228
Ippolito, Jon 12, 19, 114, 119, 159, 165,
174, 190, 192, 193, 295, 375, 386
Horkheimer, Max 89, 97
Hotel Modern 40
ISEA 392, 396, 402
Huhtamo, Erkki 24, 64, 65, 66, 71, 72,
Isou, Isidore 209, 210
75, 76, 78
Iwai, Toshio 65
Husserl, Edmund 83
Huyghe, Pierre 12, 16, 43, 44, 103, 106,
J
107, 118, 124, 170-172, 189, 191,
Jaar, Alfredo 16, 184, 185
193, 316, 319, 321, 322
Jacobs, Ken 68, 106, 207, 212
Jameson, Frederic 42, 56, 96, 98, 103,
120
I
Image Permanence Institute (IPI) 259,
Jarman, Derek 52
263, 292, 297, 299, 302
Jiménez, José 114, 120, 199
Imal – Brussels 236
Jolliffe, Daniel 74, 76
INCCA, see International Network for the
Joly, Dom 74
Conservation of Contemporary Art
Inside Installations 20, 109, 114, 117,
Jonas, Joan 32, 47
Jonze, Spike 348, 359
118, 190, 191, 249, 252, 294, 295,
Julesz, Bela 228
299, 300, 303
Julien, Isaac 213, 349
INDEX
K
Lemaître, Maurice 208, 210, 213
Kagel, Mauricio 90
Lemieux, Karl 210
Kant, Immanuel 24, 82-84, 98, 127, 144
Leonard, Zoe 49
Kanwar, Amar 102, 117
Lepage, Robert 31
Kaprow, Allan 31, 41
Letterists 211
Kasprzak, Michelle 392, 403
Levine, Les 33
Keiller, Patrick 366-369, 386
Lewis, Mark 94, 97, 316, 320, 337, 338,
340
Kentridge, William 134, 145, 348
424 |
Kiarostami, Abbas 41, 216, 316
Lialina, Olia 392, 393, 403
Kikauka, Laura 394
Lillemose, Jacob 398
Kittler, Friedrich 68, 75, 78
Lind, Maria 170-172, 189, 193
Klier, Michael 51
Lippard, Lucy R. 377
Kluitenberg, Eric 64, 75
Living Theater 91
Knoebel, Imi 41, 219
Lockhart, Sharon 41
Korot, Beryl 35
London Film Maker’s Cooperative 28,
35
Kozyra, Katarzyna 49
Kracauer, Siegfried 85, 98, 364, 386
Longo, Robert 311
Krauss, Rosalind 46, 57, 93, 96, 98, 108,
Lorenz, Alexander 40, 55
120, 202, 251, 287, 299
Lovink, Geert 67, 68, 73, 78
Kreiss, Marcus 51, 52
Lucier, Mary 37
Kren, Kurt 30
Lumière (brothers) 50, 75, 94, 132, 133,
136, 140, 144, 208, 212, 337, 338
Kubatta, Ulrike 394
Kubota, Shigeko 27, 45, 46
Lye, Len 204, 207, 209, 211
Kuntzel, Thierry 96, 362, 386
Lynch, David 50, 215, 348
Kwon, Miwon 372, 384, 386
M
Maciunas, George 28, 32
L
Laboratori La Camera Ottica 255, 256,
258, 269, 295
Mahè, Yves-Marie 210
Maire, Julien 65, 66, 76
Lacan, Jacques 129, 147
Manglano-Ovalle, Iñigo 36
Lafontaine, Marie-Jo 36, 37
Mannoni, Laurent 64, 75, 339, 341
Laib, Wolfgang 311, 324
Manovich, Lev 96, 98, 331, 333, 334, 341
Landow, George 203
Marclay, Christian 43
Langlois, Henri 326, 329, 339
Marin, Louis 369, 386
Langoth, Michael 380
Marker, Chris 46, 316, 320
Laurenson, Pip 12, 13, 17, 20, 187, 193,
Markopoulos, Gregory 205
237, 238, 251, 271, 282-290, 296,
Maté, Rudolf 318
300, 302, 374, 375, 386
Matisse, Henri 92, 311
Le Grice, Malcolm 35, 208, 213
Léger, Fernand 11, 206
Leidloff, Gabriele 39, 40
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
Matters in Media Art (MMA) 161-164,
189, 247, 251, 270, 289, 295, 301
Mauri, Fabio 106
MAXXI Rome 181-186, 190, 191
Museum of Contemporary Art – Antwerp
(M HKA) 239, 240, 248
McCall, Anthony 37, 215, 316, 343, 345,
349, 361
Museum of Contemporary Art – North
Miami (MOCA) 175
McLaren, Norman 204, 207, 211
McLuhan, Marshall 69, 70, 78, 85, 86,
Museum of Contemporary Art – Taipe
(MOCA) 354
89, 96, 98, 138, 377, 384, 386
McQueen, Steve 43, 316, 323
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) 29, 36,
52, 55-57, 161, 189, 251, 289, 294,
Media Art Notation System (MANS)
301, 316, 377, 386, 402
162-164
Media Matters 109, 114, 189
Musser, Charles 61
Megert, Franziska 380
Meigh-Andrews, Chris 28, 54, 57, 223,
251
N
Naimark, Michael 65
Mekas, Jonas 28, 46, 205
Nake, Frieder 228, 249
Méliès, Georges 90, 94, 349, 363
Nauman, Bruce 33, 44, 50-52, 283, 349
Michaud, Philippe-Alain 311, 324
Nees, Georg 228
migration 111-116, 234, 236, 237, 239,
Neshat, Shirin 45, 108, 359
244, 247, 266-268, 272, 274, 283,
net art 11, 13, 19, 25, 27, 55, 85, 93, 94,
288, 309, 314, 331, 374, 408, 409
97, 105, 106, 108, 111, 119, 232, 251,
Mik, Aernout 36, 56
276, 301, 340, 352, 357, 393, 396,
Minkowski, John 331, 332, 334, 341
Mitchell, Katie 31, 54, 57
400
Netherlands Media Art Institute (NIMk)
Moffatt, Tracey 49
109, 125, 235, 236, 246, 248, 252,
Moholy-Nagy, László 206, 207, 211, 212,
245
269, 294
Neubauer, Barbel 207
Montañez Ortiz, Raphaël 43
Neuhaus, Max 55, 310, 370-375, 383-387
Monteiro, João César 52
New Art Trust 161, 289
Montevideo/TBA Gallery 125, 242, 252,
new media art 17-19, 25-27, 58, 164,
294
174, 183, 189, 353, 356, 389-397,
Moorman, Charlotte 222
399, 400, 402-404
Morissey, Paul 31
Newman, Barnett 311
Morrison, Bill 320
Nico 31, 410
Morse, Margaret 35, 57
Noll, Michael 228
MTV 32, 347, 348, 358, 407
NRW Forum Dusseldorf 347, 358
Mühl, Otto 30, 46
Müller, Matthias 43, 106, 320
O
multi-media installation/platform 77,
O’Grady, Gerald 351
86, 109, 403
O’Neill, Paul 389, 398, 404
Muntadas, Antonio 36
O’Shea, John 394
Musée national d’art moderne 311
OASIS 333, 339
Museo Del Novecento 176
Obrist, Hans-Ulrich 119, 389
INDEX
| 425
Odenbach, Marcel 34, 39, 49, 52
Poschardt, Ulf 348, 361
Odin Teatret 91
PrestoCenter Foundation 109, 293
Oertli, Christophe 363
Pugliese, Marina 177, 191, 194
Oldendorf, Rainer 316, 323
Open Archival Information System
(OAIS) 278, 299
R
Raad, Waalid 106
Oppenheim, David 137,
Raaijmakers, Dick 356
Oppenheim, Dennis 32, 377
Rabinowitz, Sherrie 222
Optic Nerve 38
Rancière, Jacques 84, 96, 97, 99, 199
Otlet, Paul 150, 194
Rauschenberg, Robert 30
Oursler, Tony 33, 45, 219, 297
Ray, Man 206, 207
Raysse, Martial 46
426 |
P
Razutis, Al 139, 207, 320
PACKED vzw 235, 236, 246, 248, 297,
Reble, Jürgen 210
302, 303
Paik, Nam June 11, 23, 27-29, 32, 37,
Reitz, Edgar 35, 36, 57, 213, 214
Rhizome 393, 403
38, 41, 52, 54, 65, 141, 218, 219, 222,
Rhodes, Lis 37, 211
225, 226, 344, 345, 347, 358
Ricci Lucchi, Angela 106, 316, 320
Païni, Dominique 12, 20, 253, 302, 310,
311, 325-330, 339-341
Panofsky, Erwin 105, 120, 129-131, 144,
145, 147
Parfait, Françoise 27, 30, 31, 33-35, 38-
Richards, Catherine 65
Richter, Hans 206, 211, 347
Rickli, Hannes 52, 56
Ricoeur, Paul 104-106, 120
Rinehart, Richard 162, 194, 270, 302,
399, 404
43, 46, 51, 52, 54, 57, 107, 120, 313,
325, 344, 361
Parikka, Jussi 63, 64, 66, 67, 75, 77, 78,
295, 302
Parreno, Philippe 12, 16, 103, 106, 124,
170-172, 189, 193, 316
Rist, Pipilotti 49, 51, 316, 323, 348
Robbins, Al 37
Rocha, Glauber 213
Roche, François 107
Rodchenko, Alexander 207
People’s Video Theater 38
Roger, Scott 394
Perriault, Jacques 64
Roman, Mathilde 35, 57
Perry, David 211
Rosenbach, Ulrike 33, 39, 48
Pezold, Friederike 47
Rosenberg, Harold 84, 99
Pfenninger, Rudolph 211
Rosler, Martha 48
Pflumm, Daniel 39
Royoux, Jean-Christophe 313
Picasso, Pablo 92, 311
Ruhm, Constanze 322
PixelAche 392, 402
Ruttmann, Walter 52, 210, 211, 347
playback/display equipment 16, 235,
238, 246, 259, 376
S
Pohflepp, Sascha 394
Sala, Anri 45
Pollock, Jackson 141
Schad, Christian 207
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
Scher, Julia 51
St. James, Marty 220
Schiller, Friedrich 82
Staehle, Wolfgang 51, 52
Schlegel, August Wilhelm von 82
Starr, Georgina 44
Schneemann, Carolee 32
Stedelijk Museum 18, 125, 248, 407,
410, 412, 413
Schneider, Ira 29, 33, 34, 37-39, 58, 384
Schrader, Paul 154
Stella, Frank 311
Schum, Gerry 41, 245, 378, 385
Sterling, Bruce 64
Schumacher, Herbert 34
Sternberger, Dolf 64
Scott, Jill 65
Stiegler, Bernard 87
Scott, Ridley 322, 348, 358
Straschnoy, Axel 394
Sedgwick, Edie 29, 342, 411
Streuli, Beat 51
Seijdel, Jorinde 199, 242, 252
Studio Azzurro 223
Serra, Richard 41, 372, 377
Szeeman, Harald 389
SFMOMA 161, 162, 251, 301
| 427
Shamberg, Michael 38
T
Sharits, Paul 208, 212, 331, 332
T.R. Uthco 38, 40
Shaw, Jeffrey 65
Tajiri, Rea 42
Sherwin, Guy 211, 215
Tambellini, Aldo 90, 137, 207
Sholpo, Evgeny 211
Tan, Fiona 15, 54, 106, 119, 120, 220
Shorin, Alexander 211
Tandavanitj, Nick 151, 158, 187
Short Film Festival Oberhausen 349,
Tate 17, 20, 56, 57, 107, 161, 162, 188,
350
Siegelaub, Seth 377
189, 193, 236, 251, 282-290, 296,
297, 300, 301, 386
Sieverding, Katharina 46
Tate Modern 175, 284, 285, 337, 390
Silo, le 130, 132, 135, 140, 143
Taylor-Wood, Sam 316, 323, 337
Simpson, Lorna 49
Tayou, Pascale Marthine 101, 108
slide-based art/artworks/installations
The Medium is the Medium 41, 137
11, 13, 287
The Museum System (TMS) 173, 174
Smith, Harry 205, 207
The Thing 393
Snow, Michael 36, 85, 139, 206, 207, 316
Theys, Frank 235, 239, 240, 248, 251
Software 229, 393, 402
Thirache, Marcel 207
software art/artworks/installations 13,
Tiravanija, Rirkrit 103, 190
105, 108, 110, 275, 283, 286, 288,
Toderi, Grazia 177
289, 298
transcodification 24, 112, 113, 115
Sontag, Susan 138, 147
Transmediale 359, 396, 402
Sorin, Pierrick 49
Trockel, Rosemarie 48
Spielmann, Yvonne 30, 32, 35, 40, 42,
Tscherkassky, Peter 203, 207, 208, 249,
43, 45, 58
320
Spinello, Barry 211
Turrell, James 38
Spinhoven van Oosten, Bill 235, 241-
TV as a Creative Medium 29, 33, 378
243, 248, 249
TVTV 38
INDEX
U
W
Uecker, Günther 377
Wagner, Richard 93
Ulay 32, 44
Wallinger, Mark 52
Warburg, Aby 73, 140, 143
Warhol, Andy 11, 18, 29, 31, 52, 90, 92,
V
230, 245, 294, 342, 343, 345, 348,
V2_ Organisation, Institute for the
358, 360, 407-413
Unstable Media 160, 161, 163, 188,
192, 295, 303, 310, 352-357, 359-361
Warner, Leo 31
VALIE EXPORT 30, 32, 34, 47, 54, 65, 358
Wearing, Gillian 40
Van Abbemuseum 12, 124, 170, 172,
Web-based art/artworks 17, 110, 242,
289, 392
174, 175, 189, 190, 193
Van der Beek, Wim 172, 194
Wegman, William 41
Van der Keuken, Johan 316
Weibel, Peter 30, 33, 50, 54, 55, 65, 97,
99, 331, 332, 341, 358, 361, 380, 385
Van Mastrigt, Jeroen 167, 194
428 |
Van Sant, Gus 318
Welby, Chris 210
Vanderbeek, Stan 35
Weynants, Thomas 73
Varda, Agnès 316
White, Norman 394
Variable Media Network (VMN) 12, 159,
Whitman, Robert 35
160, 162, 165, 295
Variable Media Questionnaire (VMQ)
159-161, 164, 165, 167, 188
Vasulka, Steina 30, 65, 225, 226, 331,
341
Vasulka, Woody 30, 65, 225, 226, 252,
331-333, 341
Whitney Biennial 393, 402
Whitney brothers 211
Wilke, Hannah 48
Wilkie, Fiona 156, 157, 195
Wilson, Anne 220
Winget, Megan 164, 168, 188, 189, 195
Winter, Joe 394
Vaughan, Dai 68
Wodiczko, Krzystof 219
Velvet Underground 31, 410
Wooster Group 31
Venice Biennale 107, 117, 118, 119, 177,
World Wide Video Festival 393
295, 313, 389, 402, 403
Wunderbar 391
Veronesi, Luigi 212
Vertov, Dziga 143, 207, 362
Y
Veyre, Gabriel 132, 144
Youngblood, Gene 54, 58, 96, 99
Video Free America 38
YouTube 46, 61, 347, 350, 358, 378
Videofreex 38
Viola, Bill 41, 44, 45, 225, 283, 284, 348
Z
Virilio, Paul 39, 58
Zentrum für Kunst und Medien –
Virtual Platform 270
virtualization 89, 235-237, 241, 248
Vom Bruch, Klaus 39, 358
Vostell, Wolf 28, 29, 31, 38, 39, 98, 218,
344, 345, 347
PRESERVING AND EXHIBITING MEDIA ART
Karlsruhe (ZKM) 54, 98, 230, 236,
248, 252, 269, 309, 331-333, 341
Zielinski, Siegfried 24, 62, 64, 65, 69-71,
79
Žižek, Slavoj 138