Dear Regina, Jim, Jaka, all -
I have been following the empyre discussions all along with much interest -
and, too, was saddened to hear about the death of Ana Maria -
but so glad to see an effort by all of her fellow artists to see what can be
done about bringing her work together for posterity!
Regina and I have had some discussions about Preservation and Archiving -
especially in the light of the wonderful Project Attic (Regina and Reiner
Strasser) - and I want to thank them for keeping the preservation issue in the
foreground - it's important for our community to solve this problem in a way
that respects the important aspects of our art.
As some of you may know, ELO began a project almost two years ago called PAD
(Preservation, Archiving, and Dissemination). the PAD project was
envisioned as
a way to begin the process of saving e-lit and new media work into the future.
Much of our early effort was investigation and research by a group of writers,
programmers, librarians, scholars, curatorial experts, and publishers to see
what practices existed and what needed to be done. Our conclusion was that we
needed to build a comprehensive network of libraries and
organizations to house
the archive (much digital preservation work is being undertaken, but
not much of
it takes into account the specific demands of multi-media electronic
work). We
also needed to begin to set up practices to retreive older works
and guidelines
for future work. Although we had hoped to secure the (sizable) funding to
accomplish this all at once, it now looks as though ELO does not
have the proper
institutional grounding to do this alone - so we are working on
sections of the
problem, hoping to build a wider network as a basis for support and funding.
The process of collecting and curating Ana Maria's work will provide a very
important example for all of us. I do hope that one individual who has access
to the files and knows the work will take up the task of doing this
right away -
and I would like to be kept current on how the job proceeds, the kinds of
problems that arise, and what solutions are reached. Even if PAD succeeds in
establishing a central repository and some sort of emulation system that will
allow continued access to older softwares, the initial task of collecting and
organizing the work is best attended to by the author or a close associate.
Right now, the most important thing is to gather as much work as possible
together and begin an archive that includes these features:
1. Copies of all electronic works saved on CD ROM (regardless of platform -
that may have to be worked out later) -
but documented by a word.doc that lets future archivers know what
platform, what
kind of machine it was meant to run on, etc.
2. Any hard copy articles and photos that can be gathered.
3. "Reading Experience" documents from readers and/or audiences. (explaining
how they reacted to the work)
4. Raw data files of text, sound, image that might be associated
with the work
(these can be critical in "re-building" works).
5. Video that might exist of the work on display or being accessed
on computer.
6. Author's statements or notes about the how and why of a piece.
7. Screen shots of each work.
In general, museums like to have three copies of all works - so if
you can, when
you begin to make an archive, save three copies.
Just a start here - but I would like to assist in any way possible with the
archive that will be constructed for Ana Maria - and help other writers and
artists who wish to prepare archives of their work. Noah
Wardrip-Fruin and Nick
Montfort have written a booklet for PAD outlining some practices for making
material accessible longer; this will be released in the next few
months, and we
would encourage all of you to help us circulate these suggestions!
Always, Margie Luesebrink