[-empyre-] Re: variable media intitiative

[Daniel Palmer <e@danielpalmer.com>]

Dear Empyre people

Enjoying these '2004' discussions (if rather passively, as literally in 
the last days of a PhD...)

Many of these archiving issues are pertinent to the field of 
photography as well, of course. Last year we ran an interesting forum 
at Centre for Contemporary Photography (Melbourne) on the preservation 
of 'digital photography' and implications for collecting (while it was 
quite 'technical', if anyone is interested, I would be happy to send a 
transcript if you email me at CCP: danielpalmer@ccp.org.au)

I am surprised that nobody has so far mentioned the so-called 'Variable 
Media Network' (and Initiative) - http://www.variablemedia.net  - or 
have I just missed this? Driven by Jon Ippolito from the Guggenheim and 
published with the Daniel Langlois foundation a couple of years back, 
it makes for interesting reading, in its attempt to abandon the idea of 
'the medium':

"Centered on an artwork's creator rather than its medium, the variable 
media paradigm asks artists themselves, rather than just technicians, 
to imagine ways to outwit the obsolescence that often besets 
technological art forms. This approach proposes that the best way to 
preserve artworks in ephemeral formats, from stick spirals to video 
installations to Web sites, is to encourage artists to describe them in 
a medium-independent way, so as to help translate them into new mediums 
once their current medium becomes obsolete. To date, the Guggenheim has 
engaged artists ranging from Ken Jacobs and Meg Webster to Nam June 
Paik and Mark Napier in case studies intended to test whether their 
works' integrity can survive such creative translations. To assist 
artists in making the difficult choices required to extend an artwork's 
life span beyond their own, the Guggenheim has developed a 
questionnaire that is unlike any protocol hitherto proposed for 
cataloguing or preserving artworks. It requires artists to define their 
work according to behaviors like "performed" or "networked" rather than 
in medium-dependent terms like film or video. The variable media 
paradigm also asks artists to choose the most appropriate strategy for 
dealing with the inevitable slippage that results from translating to 
new mediums: storage, emulation, migration, or reinterpretation."

PDF available here: www.variablemedia.net/pdf/Permanence.pdf

I'd be interested to know whether other organisations are adopting 
similar frameworks, and how artists on this list feel about the VMI 
approach?

Best
Daniel