MUSEUMS STRATEGIES
digital art and preservation
Being
able to experiment digital works of art few years after they were
created can be a challenge: computers and other materials may be out of
order, the code composing can be unreadable by more recent machines…
Museums strategies
Sometimes we can’t see or hear anything anymore. And even if the works
of art don’t depend on a technical device of their own as for certain
installations, they are fragile and have a limited life span, and
therefore need a constant attention. Even if there are a lot of
approaches allowing to make those works of art perennial, at least
partially, the fact that there is no magical solution in works of art
preservation limited (at least until now) the broadcasting of digital
arts in public and private collections.
And yet, in France and abroad, museums and art centers purchase works
of art, collectors buy from specialized galleries or artists. The art
market, just like pieces of writing on art, from critics, art
historians or journalists, participate to the attribution of the value
to the works of art, and are therefore involved in the preservation of
digital works of art (which will be the subject of another article in
another MCD issue). Artists do what they can for their works to be
accessible, the preservation being intrinsically linked to the
presentation of the work to the audience.
This first article about the preservation of digital arts examines the
museums strategies so that the works of art that they acquire can be
shown in a short, mid and long term. Each generation of works of art
questions the museum organization, notably the way it treats the works
of art. The use of everyday material by artists from the 20th century
forced museum to think differently their way to present and preserve
them. Technological works of art are a new step that forces to
reconsider the exhibition practices, and to re-interrogate older works
of art through this prism.
Variable media
The variable media approach is the most sophisticated museum strategy
to apprehend digital works of art. Jon Ippolito (artists, teacher and
then curator at the Guggenheim museum) originated it. The work or art
is not defined by its medium anymore, in order for it to be able to
evolve, to be re-created, for example, when its original medium will
have become obsolete. Each work of art is individually considered, more
like a score than like a finished and static object. The expression
“variable media” allows to point our digital works of art, as well as
all forms of contemporary art based on the process, and not on the
object anymore, like conceptual art, land art, minimal art,
performances…
To preserve the works of art of the American artist Dan Flavin, the
Guggenheim museum had to purchase a stock of red neon tubes that were
about to be recalled. It is from this example, from the excessive side
of this decision, of its part of absurdity, that Jon Ippolito started
to think about an alternative. He saw in it the limits of a
preservation principally based on the replacement of faulty parts.
For example, it is possible to replace the red neon tube by a halogen
light bulb of the same colour, and to recreate the external aspect of
the work. But, the artist bought his neon tubes at the supermarket and
the colour was not necessarily his priority. When the time to exhibit
the work of art comes again, the question to know whether it is
necessary to be faithful to the artist’s intention and therefore chose
to give priority to the variety of neon available appears, without
taking into account the colour of the light type of the neon tube, or
if it is necessary to be faithful to the aspect of the work of art when
it was exhibited, and may be if there’s a need to adapt the work of art
to the technologies contemporary to the exhibition. Jon Ippolito asked
himself who owned the decision.
It’s even more complicated in the case of Dan Flavin, who died. The
reflection of Jon Ippolito found an echo in the Fondation Daniel
Langlois pour l’art, la science et la technologie à Montréal that
associated to his researches. Following the reflection on variable
media, the Fondation Langlois launched the DOCAM (Documentation and
preservation of the heritage of mediaarts) project of which results
will be published by the end of 2009.
Data storage
With the approach of variable media, the institution communicate with
the artist in order to understand better his intention, the
characteristics of the work of art, if the artist wants or not the
original form of his work to vary or to be translated in a new media
once its original media will have expired. Specificities of the works
of art with digital elements are taken into account when the time comes
to determinate the way the work of art will be preserved by the museum
which is purchasing it. The artist needs to decide, which is new and
change the relationship between the artist and the museum. Now museum
even include the choice of the artist in their contracts.
Four strategies are available: the exact storage of the data, the
migration from a support to the other, the emulation and the
re-interpretation. The latter is the original contribution of the
variable media in order to be able to free oneself from the physical
and technological aspect of a work. The storage is the most classical
solution, consisting in storing works of art on digital support. The
work of art will disappear when its materials or data will have become
obsolete. The migration implies the update from a support to the other.
There is a migration when a file is converted into a new format, or
when a more recent version is saved. The migration can lead to the
change of appearance of a work of art, for example if some
functionalities disappear from a version to another of a software.
The emulation consists in recreating the appearance of the work of art
(with a different source code). Keeping the computers on which were
created the works of art is not conceivable on the long term, but
emulating them on a software is possible, following for instance the
example of old videogames with which it’s however possible to play on
recent computers. For that matter the Guggenheim museum offered in 2004
the exhibition Seeing Double : emulation in theory and practice where
original works of art were presented (Jodi, Cory Arcangel, Mary
Flanagan, as well as Robert Morris and Nam June Paik) next to emulated
versions. The occasion to notice the aspect or behavior differences
between the works of art.
Re-interpretation
The re-interpretation, a more radical strategy, consists in
re-interpreting the work of art for each update, to recreate a work of
art, faithful to the artist’s intention, but which can be very
different from the original. It is the most “risky” strategy, but it
also allows the museum to change its role in relation to the works of
art. To quote Jon Ippolito, as eccentric as the idea can appear to
traditional collection practices, [this vision of the preservation]
offers an alternative to those of which conception of the work of art
goes further than its manifestation in a particular form. And it helps
us to imagine the museum like an incubator for living, changing works
of art, rather than a mausoleum for dead works of art.
The approach of variable media is therefore an idea to make the way art
is shown and transmitted evolve. Its setting takes time to the few (and
rare) institutions that adopted it. Other institutional initiative
exist, but are often subtended by preoccupations linked to collections
of art video of the museums that originated them and to the particular
problems that are resulting from it; problems as complex as those of
the digital arts, but different.
Anne Laforet
DOCAM : www.docam.ca
Variable Media Network : www.variablemedia.net
Seeing Double: www.variablemedia.net/f/seeingdouble/
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