[-empyre-] Games, histories and preservation

[Paul Brown]

There's a real problem here.  A couple of them in fact:

As far as the artworld goes (the state and commercial gallery system)  
the emulator may be interesting but is worthless since it's a copy.   
I know of Museums who have cassettes and floppies of games and  
artworks that are unplayable (in some cases they don't even know what  
system the media is for) but is precious (worthy of collecting)  
precisely because they are original artefacts.

But the second and more important problem is verisimilitude.  I've  
been working the the field of generative and computational time-based  
art since the early 70's - assembler code on long extinct  
minicomputers, etc...  My first real-time screen was 96 x 96 pixels  
(1-bit). Back then we just ran systems as hard as we could.  Although  
I can (and do) recreate the pieces from the concepts that drove them  
there is no way I can accurately remember all the intricacies of  
timing, (or peculiarities of the systems) etc... needed to make a  
full and credible version - it's always something new.  And it's  
almost impossible to get the same graphic quality of a home-brewed  
framebuffer driving a retired studio monitor circa 1974.

Tom DeFanti, who with Dan Sandin set up what I think was the first  
MFA in computational arts back in the 1970's (at U Illinois, Chicago)  
suggested that the only real solution was to record everything on  
video - because video has such a huge commercial investment and is  
fairly standardised there will always be a way to keep a recording  
alive.  He established the SIGGRAPH Video Review in 1979 and it  
remains a remarkable testament to his vision.  http:// 
www.siggraph.org/publications/video-review/SVR.html

So - emulators may be a good way of keeping a game or time-based  
artwork alive and "in play" but it will be some time i think before  
the museums will accept them as more than interesting forgeries with  
some possible "educational" potential.  And a key consideration here  
is that if the state mausoleums don't collect work it will never make  
it onto the historical record and die with the artist.

And an interesting comparison - at the Wired World show at the NMPFTV  
in Bradford (sadly now over and this is all i could find:  http:// 
www.metstudio.com/exhibition_designers/portfolio_wiredworlds.html -  
Tony Sweeney, now head of ACMI in Melbourne curated) they used  
emulators for the games section whereas for the original Game On (at  
the Barbican in London in 2002) they used mostly original consoles  
where they could.  My experience of both show is that at the barbican  
I tended to stand back at view the "whole" system nostalgically  
whereas at Wired World I couldn't wait to get my hands on (Asteroids  
on a 8 x 6 ft rear projection screen!!).  Maybe this is the  
difference between an Art Gallery (Barbican) and a Science Museum.

Paul

On 17 Mar 2008, at 11:34, Jason Nelson wrote:

> As for preservation. I've always found game emulators http:// 
> www.emulator-zone.com/
> as the ultimate form of preservation (for any digital work).
>
> Why are game emulators the ultimate for of digital preservation?
>
> The games from the 70s, 80s and 90s, as designed, are no longer  
> playable (unless you own old consoles and by chance they are still  
> working). And so there is that classic, change of hardware format  
> problem. There has been some porting now of the games to stand  
> alone devices or compilations for newer console systems. But really  
> the bulk of these games should have been lost to the changing  
> technologies.
>
> Instead, decentralized users, from around the globe, both  
> individually and in groups starting creating emulators for old  
> games, for a surprisingly wide range of console systems. They were  
> not doing this under the umbrella of a company or institution, they  
> were amateur coders who simply loved the games. There were also  
> lots of copies of the games out there,
> usually without working consoles.
>
> And now these games are preserved, not in the back room of a state  
> run library. But on
> the hard drives of thousands and thousand of individuals.
>
> So it would seem that game preservationists have a lot to learn  
> from 15 year olds and
> bit torrent enthusiasts.
>
> cheers, Jason Nelson
>
> Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile.  
> Try it now.
> _______________________________________________
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====
Paul Brown - based in OZ Dec 07 - Apr 08
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Visiting Professor - Sussex University
http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/ccnr/research/creativity.html
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