[spectre] VS: VIDEO ART\e-monitor 16

Sun May 25 00:02:30 CEST 2003

VIDEO ART\e-monitor No. 16 - THE DANISH VIDEO ART DATA BANK

May 25, 2003

Content:

1.	Two new books about preservation of video art and variable media art
2.	Correct web address
3.	Preservation of video, Part 6: Emulation as a preservation
strategy - Part A

1  Two new books about preservation of video art and variable media art

De houdbaarheit van videokunst. The sustainability of video art
edited by Gaby Wijers, Evert Rodrigo & Ramon Coelho (a) has just been
published by The Dutch Foundation for the Conservation of Modern Art.

The second book is Permanence through change: The Variable Media
Approach / La permanence par le changement: L'approache des mŽdias
variable edited by Alain Depocas, Jon Ippolito & Caitlin Jones (b) is
published jointly by Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA and La
fondation Daniel Langlois pour l'art, la science et la technologie,
MontrŽal, Canada.

The two books are different - although similar in the way that they
are reports. The Dutch book is a report of the research about
conservation of video art tapes started by Montevideo/Time Based Art
as a pilot project in 1998 (c), leading to Project Preservation Video
Art and the preservation on digital Betacam of an impressive amount
of video art works. The American/Canadian book  is a result of (and
in that sense a report from) the conference on variable media at the
Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2001 (d).

Apart from the really amazing list of already preserved video art
works the part in the dutch book about "Project  Preservation of
video art" is an interesting and valuable contribution in the
discussion of video preservation. I especially noticed the emphasise
on contact with the artists and the development of model contracts
which in you might say some way are equivalent to the Guggenheim
Variable Media Questionnaire - and added to this the development of a
documentation model which I find very important. The book also
explain the preservation methods and technique used in the
"transcibtion" of the video art works to digital Betacam.

The bilingual American/Canadian book is published as part of a
research partnership on variable media between the Daniel Langlois
Foundation and the Guggenheim Museum under the supervision of Alain
Depocas, Director of the Foundation's Centre for Research and
Documentation, Jon Ippolito, the associate curator of media arts at
the Guggenheim Museum, and Caitlin Jones, a Foundation fellow working
to preserve variable media at the Guggenheim. The book contains the
proceedings of the conference held at the Guggenheim in New York in
the spring of 2001 as well as texts by such authors as Bruce
Sterling, Jon Ippolito, John Handhardt, Steve Dietz and Nancy
Spector. It presents viewpoints, methods and case studies concerning
the preservation of artwork created using non-traditional material,
tools and technologies. Among the works explored are Nam June Paik's
TV Garden, Meg Webster's Stick Spiral, Ken Jacobs' Bitemporal Vision:
The Sea, Felix Gonzalez-Torres' Public Opinion, Grahame Weinbren and
Roberta Friedman's The Erl King, and Mark Napier's net.flag.

A Web site, *www.variablemedia.net*, has also been created to inform
people interested in the variable media concept. The site offers not
only the book Permanence Through Change: The Variable Media Approach
in PDF format but also available are texts outlining the main aspects
of the concept as well as full transcripts and video excerpts from
the 2001 conference. In addition, video interviews with artists and
answers to a questionnaire on variable media will later be added.

Notes:

(a) Gaby Wijers, Evert Rodrigo, Ramon Coelho (edit): De houdbaarheid
van videokunst. The sustainability of video art, Stichting Behoud
Moderne Kunst, Amsterdam, 2003, ISBN 90-807675-1-4

(b) Alain Depocas, Jon Ippolito & Caitlin Jones (edit): Permanence
Through Change: The Variable Media Approach / La permanence par le
changement: L'approche des mŽdias variables, Guggenheim Museum
Publications, NY, USA & La fondation Daniel Langlois pour l'art, la
science et la technologie, Montreal, Canada, 2003, ISBN 0-99684693-2-9

(c) See VIDEO ART\e-monitor No.2:
<http://www.videoart.suite.dk/e-monitor/newsletter-2.htm>www.videoart.suite.dk/e-monitor/newsletter-2.htm
and No. 3:
<http://www.videoart.suite.dk/e-monitor/newsletter-3.htm>www.videoart.suite.dk/e-monitor/newsletter-3.htm

(d) See VIDEO ART\e-monitor No. 5:
<http://www.videoart.suite.dk/e-monitor/newsletter-5.htm>www.videoart.suite.dk/e-monitor/newsletter-5.htm

2. CORRECTION of new web adress

The web address on our new web site about media art preservation in
VIDEO ART\e-monitor 15 was not correct, because we forgot to add .dk
in the end.

The correct web address is:
<http://www.mediaart-preservation.dk>http://www.mediaart-preservation.dk

3. Preservation of Video, Part 6: Emulation as a preservation strategy - Part A

The days of the video tapes are numbered. The evolution is going
quicker and quicker. Go to any supermarket selling "videos" and it is
becoming more and more difficult to find the film you want on video.
They are all on DVD today.

  Many artists already skip the "old-fashioned" tape technique -
especially if they want to create interactive media art installations
and/or web-based or web-independent works but also with
"straight-forward" works.

Video and media art in the future will be stored not on magnetic tape
but on digital discs so we should already now face the problem: how
to preserve this digital information for the future?

The problem is stated very clearly by Jeff Rosenberg when he points
out that "There is a yet no viable long-term strategy to ensure that
digital information is readable in the future" and go on to say that
"Digital documents are vulnerable to loss via decay and obsolescence
of the media on which they are stored, and they become inaccessible
and unreadable when the software needed to interpret them, or the
hardware on which that software runs, becomes obsolete and is lost."
(1)

We have already touched upon the obsolescence problem with
video/media art on magnetic tapes. The problem is a double problem:
First because different types of the magnetic tapes are becoming or
are already obsolescence - take for example many of the old open real
tapes or cassette tapes like Philips 2000 and now it is said that
Sony will stop manufacturing U-matic tapes. Second because also the
hardware to run the tapes on, the tape machines and the monitors, are
becoming or are already obsolescence because they are not
manufactured any more and the know-how and spare parts to repair them
are disappearing.  Third because computers used in may video
installation to program the "behaviour" of the installation may
become obsolete  not only regarding the software program used but
also the type of computer itself. This is  - as accounted for in the
American-Canadian book reviewed above (2) - already a problem with
The Erl King, an interactive video installation by Grahame Weinbren
and Roberta Friedman from 1982-85, using Pascal MT+ program with the
minimal CP/M operating system on a primitive Zilog Z-80 personal
computer with a touch screen and a custom-built interface to multiple
laser discs.

Most often the works on the old tapes have been "preserved" by
migration: copying them onto newer type of tapes (for example from
open reel tapes to U-matic and from U-matic to Betacam) but it could
be - and has been - argued that migration do somehow make it possible
to still see the work but it is not a real preservation of the
original because in the copying process you have inherent a loss to
some degree of the original information - for every time you copy you
start a decay process. Migration can't preserve the original.
Migration can provide future access to the art work but not to the
original

With the digital stored information you don't have the same problem:
a copy, we are told, is exactly  the same as the original - so you
might say that you don't have an original and a copy but two
originals!?

But this is a truth with modifications! It is only true if you copy
the digital stored information on the same hardware platform and with
the same original application software as the original and in a way
so the bit stream is not changed, corrupted by compression
inadvertent transformation, imperfect copying with bit loss, etc.

The emulation technique has been suggested as a way to solve this.
Emulation as a preservation strategy has mainly been discussed in
connection with preserving digital texts and still making them
readable when facing the problems in the future of obsolete software
(and also obsolete hardware).

In the passage about the "Guggenheim initiative" we referred to
"emulation" in relation to "migration" and reinterpretation" (3):

To emulate an artwork is to devise a way of "imitating" the original
look by completely different means ("imitating" an analogue video
work on digital video or DVD and so on). This could however be
inconsistent with the artist's intent.

To migrate an artwork involves upgrading equipment and source
material. The analogue LB Umatic videotape and player could be
upgraded to an analogue HG Umatic or Betacam tape/player. The major
disadvantage of migration is that the original appearances of the
artwork will probably change on its new medium - see the discussion
(raised by Montevideo) about the moral question..
The most radical preservation strategy is to reinterpret the work
each time it is re-created. This would mean to ask what contemporary
medium would have the metaphoric value of the original medium. This
would not always be possible and it is a dangerous technique when not
warranted by the artist.
Although emulation as a preservation strategy in the first instant
has been used when the preservation problems involved computers it
can of course be used to the substitution or refabrication of the
components of any artwork. It will in the future when video is
totally an digital technique and if you preserve the old analogue
video tapes to digital carriers also be an important strategy
concerning preservation of video art.

You could talk about hardware-for hardware emulation if you
substitute or refabricate the equipment or material of an artwork,
about software-for-software emulation when a program emulates another
kind of software, and about software-for-hardware emulation when new
software impersonates old hardware and you simulate a program's
original hardware environment on a machine that it was not intended
to run it

If you want a meticulous explanation of emulation as a preservation
technique you should go to texts by Jeff Rosenberg (4) (5). If you
prefer - first - to get "emulation in a nutshell" then go to a text
by David Holdsworth and Paul Wheatley (6).

In the following Part II we shall try to explain emulation as a
preservation technique for media art (drawing heavily on both Jeff
Rothenberg and Richard Rinehart). We will try to relate emulation not
only to digital media art but also to tapes and discuss it also in
relation to the moral and copyright questions we already have touched
upon.

Torben Soeborg

NB: This text is still "under way". It is not finiesh yet and may be
subject to editing and changes!

Notes:

(1) From "Executive summary" in Jeff Rosenberg: Avoiding
Technological Quicksand: Finding a viable Technical Foundation for
digital Preservation", CLIR, January 1998,
<http://www.clir.org/pubs/report/rothenberg/preface.html>www.clir.org/pubs/report/rothenberg/preface.html

(2) Jeff Rothenberg: "Grahame Weinbren and Roberta Friedman, The Erl
King, 1982-85, p. 100-107, in: Alain Depocas, Jon Ippolito & Caitlin
Jones (edit): Permanence Through Change: The Variable Media Approach
/ La permanence par le changement: L'approche des mŽdias variables,
Guggenheim Museum Publications, NY, USA & La fondation Daniel
Langlois pour l'art, la science et la technologie, Montreal, Canada,
2003, ISBN 0-99684693-2-9

(3) VIDEO ART\e-monitor No. 5:
<http://www.videoart.suite.dk/e-monitor/newsletter-5.htm>www.videoart.suite.dk/e-monitor/newsletter-5.htm

(4) Jeff Rosenberg: Avoiding Technological Quicksand: Finding a
viable Technical Foundation for digital Preservation", CLIR, January
1998,
<http://www.clir.org/pubs/report/rothenberg/preface.html>www.clir.org/pubs/report/rothenberg/preface.html

(5) Jeff Rosenberg: Digital Information Lasts Forever - Or Five
Years, Whichever Comes First, October 2001,
<http://www.amibusiness.com/dps/rothenberg_arma_pdf>www.amibusiness.com/dps/rothenberg_arma_pdf

(6) David Holdsworth and Paul Wheatley: Emulation, Preservation and
Abstraction, CAMiLEON Project, University of Leeds, without date,
<http://129.11.152.25/CAMiLEON//dh/ep5.html>http://129.11.152.25/CAMiLEON//dh/ep5.html

   THE DANISH VIDEO ART DATA BANK is a non-profit agency for promoting
Danish video art outside Denmark

  The VIDEO ART\e-monitor is an e-mail edition of the former printed
newsletter "monitor". Both were and are published with irrugular
intervals - "monitor" from 1985-86 up to no. 48 in december 2000 and
"VIDEO ART\e-monitor" since February 2001. Editor:  Torben Soeborg
(<mailto:soeborg at inet-uni2.dk>soeborg at inet-uni2.dk ).

  You can find the earlier editions of VIDEO ART\e-monitor on
<http://www.videoart.dk/e-monitor>www.videoart.dk/e-monitor . If you
want to  receive VIDEO ART\e-monitor (free) send an e-mail to
<mailto:soeborg at inet.uni2>soeborg at inet.uni2

  THE DANISH VIDEO ART DATA BANK
Themstrupvej 36, Dk-4690 Haslev
Denmark
tel: +45-56.31.21.21
<mailto:soeborg at inet.uni2.dk>soeborg at inet.uni2.dk
<http://www.videoart.suite.dk>http://www.videoart.suite.dk  +
<http://www.mediaart-preservation.dk>www.mediaart-preservation.dk