From: Daniel Palmer <e@danielpalmer.com> Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au> To: empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au Subject: [-empyre-] Re: variable media intitiative Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 13:22:49 +1000
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
_______________________________________________ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre