Guest Lecture by Jessica Bushey Discussion of Projects

1. Week 4: Time-Based Media and Cultural Heritage Initiatives in Institutional Contexts: Questions of Mission and Constraint

2. Last Day: Visual Images & Text as Cultural Heritage: New Approaches to Documentation & Conservation • Guest Lecture by Jessica Bushey • Discussion of Projects

3. Today: • 1st part of class):lecture, planning coursework, study tips for quiz #1 • 2nd Part of Class: Guest Lecture by Leora Kornfeld about MetroCode as participatory conservation • Assigned readings: • Week 4 • Weeks 5-6

4. Lecture Outline • Traditions in cultural heritage preservation • Challenges of Digital Media, Variable or Time-based Media for Cultural Heritage Preservation Traditions

5. Recall: traditions--professional roles in Art Museums T= Can touch art 24 h a day without supervision (Twenty-four hours) D=may touch art during museum hours under supervision • Varied roles in art worlds (creators, curators, conservators, technicians, registrars, archivists, collectors, publics, etc…) • Arts institutions have mandates, codes of ethics, organizational structures that professional identities & constraints • BUT --International networks --disciplinary & trans-disciplinary collaboration that conflict with disciplinary & national traditions Name Red aura =may touch artworks

6. Museological mandates & records of Culture • symbolic culture • values, beliefs, ways of reasoning, style, tastes, values, meaning • material culture • “things”, techniques

7. Some key principles in Cultural Heritage Preservation • respect for • meaning of “object or artefact” • preservation of objects in collections (in perpetuity) • In art: respect for creator’s intent • In historic & cultural museums: community stakeholders (newer) • Reversible treatments to make it possible to return to original (authentic & integral) state • Debates: ownership and authority • Multiple meanings???

8. field (arts, sciences) status & meaning of the object type of use treatment conventions Variations in conservation approaches according to symbolic value, meaning Pressurized suits (Deep sea and Outer space) National Museum of Air & Space, Smithsonian Institution

9. Traditions (object preservation the case of artworks & cultural artefacts in museum contexts)

10. 20th c. notions of collecting “cultural things” • original object or artifact as authoritative, authentic, unchanging record “frozen in time” • authority or “aura” of creator (Walter Benjamin) • record of artists’ intention, act

11. Part 2: « Variable Media » Heritage : Preservation as Cultural Mediation & Creation “Preserving media is like preserving ice cream. Storage is a lousy strategy. You're better off getting ahold of the recipe." Jon Ippolito, Guggenheim • material culture in variable media cannot be preserved unchanged

12. New Strategies-Variable Media Approach Source: Guggenheim/Fondation Daniel Langlois Variable Media Initiative, 2002.

13. Migration • Ex. Artists’ video, audio (analog-digital)

14. Recall: Bill Viola clip (migration)

15. Color Panel v1.0.1, 2004. C code, altered Apple PowerBook G3 laptop, and acrylic. Color Panel v1.0, 1999. C code, altered Apple PowerBook 280c laptop, and acrylic. Courtesy of the artist and Sandra Gering Gallery Emulation (Seeing Double)

16. Re-interpretation • Morris and Carolee Schneemann performing Site at Stage 73, Surplus Dance Theater, New York, 1964. Photo by Peter Moore

17. Why? Challenges from New Technologies & Practices Ex. Ephemeral Materials ‘Flesh Dress…’ (Jana Sterbak)

18. New Ideas about what to collect Exhibition of Storefront Display covered with toxic dust from September 11, 2001, New York City. Source NYTimes, Aug. 25, 2006

19. Changing ideas about Performanceexample: Julie Laffin, Over, 1996

20. Rapid obsolescence of technologies: (Nam June Paik. TV Garden. 1974)

21. Nam June Paik, TV Garden, 2000 version

22. Precariousness of ‘New’ Technologies (variable media) as part of Cultural Heritage • Documentation & storage issues: institutional record-keeping & priorities • Technical, practical, ethical, economic, political & aesthetic issues

23. www.adaweb.walker.org Interactive works: example: ada’web, 1995-1998

24. Preservation and Presentation challenges • Physical installation components, hardware, custom software, feedback delay time, c perfomantive aspects • Multiple genres • Site-specific (Internet) • performative (interaction of viewers etc.)

25. Conservation & professional practices in the “museum field” • Archives & preservation of • Works • of equipment, replacement supplies & tools of creation (ex. software & hardware) • Documentation • techniques for record keeping & nomenclature of works & processes • Information on technical standards (industry) • Treatment experiences & standards for care

26. New Social Dynamics • Rethinking “creation-mediation-reception” process • diversification of participants in networks of collaboration • different perspectives, active agency, multiple registers of meaning • cultural, historic & artistic works as • lived experience • grounded practice • anticipation of change over time • emphasis on meaning-making process

27. Concluding Remarks (1) • Cultural heritage preservation NOT just about preservation of objects/material remains but still largely organized around material culture & documentation (even in the digital age) • Understanding new approaches to presentation and preservation of artistic & historical works vital for study of constitution of culture & social organization of artworlds now

28. Tensions in Mandates of cultural heritage institutions • New skills, communication “across’ disciplines? • Persistence of old organizational structures, values & practices in museum worlds • Interplay of personal and professional, private and public • “hot” & “cold” moments, “thick” description (C. Geertz)

29. Now: Discussion of coursework • Handout #4: short reports & term assignments • Sign up for class presentations • Handout #6 (mislabelled, should be #5): readings

30. Tips for Quiz #1 • Review readings & lecture topics • 1- Core ideas about culture, collecting & object preservation • theories of culture, cultural heritage • collecting “things” (different values according to meaning, different preservation traditions) • museums as an example of cultural heritage institutions • Sources: Hooper-Greenhill, Pye, Marontate, ICOM

31. 2-Core Ideas about cultural heritage conservation traditions (museums, archives, libraries) • Types of cultural heritage (tangible, intangible, material, symbolic) • Authenticity • Connections to creator & contexts in which cultural object or practice used • Integrity • Authorship & intention • Caring for collections (traditions, mandates & codes of ethics) • Minimal intervention • Reversibility of treatments • Original state • Creation, mediation, reception in communications about culture (participants: conservators, conservation scientists, technicians, curators, owners, collectors, publics, community stakeholders etc….) • Cultural heritage as communication • Sources: Hooper-Greenhill, Pye, Marontate, ICOM

32. 3-Digital Media & other forms of variable media in cultural heritage conservation • Digital works & digitization as challenges (including Time-based media (types), variable media) • Some new strategies (when storage not feasible): migration, emulation, re-interpretation, re-fabrication • Sources: Sterling, Ippolito, Stringari and readings about InterPARES2 & variable media network, Walton, Kimmelman, Van Wegan.

33. Break and return for Leora Kornfeld