Variable Media Network

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VARIABLE MEDIA NETWORK

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We need artists—their information, their support, and above all their creativity—to outwit oblivion and obsolescence.

!!– Jon Ippolito,

Associate Curator of Media Arts, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

+ DEFINITION

■ An initiative by creators, museum and media consultants based from the Gugenheim Museum’s efforts to preserve its vast collection of multi-media art

■ A proposal based on identifying ways that creative works may outlast their original medium utilizing unconventional strategies or approaches

■ VMN is recognized for its ground-breaking methodology, which seeks to define acceptable levels of change within any given art object and documents ways in which a sculpture, installation, or conceptual work may be altered (or not) for the sake of preservation without losing that work’s essential meaning.

+ WHAT ARE VARIABLE MEDIA?

■ These are works of art in ephemeral or non-traditional formats, including digital (audio-visual and internet) and biological media, performances and installations.

+ WHAT ARE VARIABLE MEDIA?

Video Ephemera and Audio Ephemera

“Printed ephemera gave way to audio and video ephemera in the twentieth century. ... These present even more of a preservation problem than printed materials. Although seldom made available for libraries, when videotapes are acquired for archival preservation they are found to be made on low quality tape, poorly processed, and damaged from abuse by users.”

!Source: http://www.ephemerasociety.org/articles/lla-phillips.html

http://www.ephemerasociety.org/articles/lla-phillips.html

+ The Challenge of Variable Media: the need for a tool for preservation

■ The physical fragility of film, the changes in broadcast media, the interactive experience of the Internet, the expansion of digital media: a rapidly transforming, mutating media environment challenges us as we seek to maintain a fundamental intention—preserving the integrity of an artwork.

- John G. Hanhardt, Senior Curator of Film and Media Arts, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

■ Because these works don’t self-record, self-document, or exist in a stable medium, preservation is an interpretive act.

- Richard Rinehart, Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive

■ We need innovative tools for documenting, discovering, and defending culture born at the turn of the millennium from the ravages of obsolescence and obscurity.

- Forging the Future

+ Obsolescence

“In case of equipment obsolescence, the Walker may find it necessary to replace vintage equipment with newer components. If this can be done in a discreet manner (i.e., bypassing original equipment), is this acceptable to the artist?”

!- Steve Dietz, Curator of New Media, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis on the center’s formal acquisitions policy

+ Digital Decay

■ The system doesn’t really work, it can’t be fixed, no one understands it, no one is in charge of it, it can’t be lived without, and it gets worse every year.

!■ - Stewart Brand, Clock of the Long

Now (1999)

+ Essence of the Work of Art

■ When an artwork is restored we attempt to reconcile the change with what we know about the meaning of the work.

!- Carol Stringari, Senior Conservator, Contemporary Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

+ Integrity in reproduction and preservation: the fundamental intention

■ How does one choose an appropriate format for migration and still retain the integrity of the original?

!- Carol Stringari, Senior Conservator, Contemporary Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

+THE VARIABLE MEDIA PARADIGM

+What is the goal of the initiative? The variable media paradigm encourages creators to define their work independently from medium so that the work can be translated once its current medium is obsolete. This requires creators to envision acceptable forms their work might take in new mediums, and to pass on guidelines for recasting work in a new form once the original has expired. !

Source: http://www.variablemedia.net/e/index.html

!The Variable Media Network aims to establish a process and means to address artworks created across a variety of media and materials, to determine protocols and initiatives that will bring a flexible approach to the preservation of a range of creative practices. A key aspect of the Variable Media Network is the notion of training conservators or specialized personnel to deal with complex issues within the museum environment. !

Source: Permanece Through Change: The Variable Media Approach by the Gugenheim Museum

+METHODS AND TOOLS

+ Variable Media Questionnaire: the Key Element

• First developed in 2000 by Jon Ippolito, associate curator at the Guggenheim Museum, is an interactive form linked to a larger database, which is designed to capture behavioral information about digital, performative, and other variable media artworks upon their acquisition by a museum.

• Encourages creators to identify their works of art to be independent from medium but rather define their works according to behaviours of functional components

• Helps by recording opinions on how to preserve creative works when their current medium becomes obsolete

• Not a set of rules • Allows users to compare multiple viewpoints on the same artwork • These qualifications make the variable media kernel less a set of commandments

carved in stone than a matrix of preferences rendered in a fluid digital form, the better to be shared freely among art makers and preservationists.

+ Variable Media Questionnaire: the Key Element

http://variablemediaquestionnaire.net/demo/

http://variablemediaquestionnaire.net/demo/

+ Variable Media Questionnaire: Goals

• To specifically define ‘what it is’ and ‘what is needed’ when the museum is acquiring a work of this kind !

• To assist artists and museum professionals in understanding which attributes of an artwork may change and how best to make those changes when future re-creations necessitate them

+ Variable Media Questionnaire: Behaviors

!Jan Dibbets A White Wall, 1971. Photo collage

!John F. Simon, Jr. Color Panel v. 1.0, 1999. Digital sculpture

Contained Covers glazing; coating; support/structure/mounting; frame; acceptable change in surface.


Felix Gonzalez-Torres Untitled (Public Opinion), 1991. Interactive installation

Nam June Paik TV Garden, 1974. Video installation

Installed Covers space; boundary; access; lighting; sound; security; base/s; distribution of elements; display equipment for inert elements; architectural placement; equipment visibility.


Robert Morris Site, 1964. Performance

Meg Webster Stick Spiral, 1986. Installation

Performed Covers props; set; costumes; performers; number of performers; format of instructions; instructions apply to…; documentation of new performances; audience location; boundary; synchronization of performance.



Mark Napier Net Flag, 2001. Web site

Interactive Covers user input; interaction mechanism; maintenance.


Stan Douglas Der Sandmann, 1995. Film installation

Robert Smithson Hotel Palenque, 1969. Slide installation

Reproduced Covers relationship to artist master; location of master; status of master; acceptable fabricators and vendors; acceptable submasters or exhibition copy; permission to create submaster; fate of exhibition copy; permission to compress/digitize.



Jenny Holzer Untitled (Selections from Truisms, ...), 1989. Electronic installation.

Duplicable Covers inert material; physical attributes of inert material; authorized fabricators and vendors; materials duplicated according to…; electronic equipment and hardware; fate of exhibition copies.



Jenny Holzer Untitled (Selections from Truisms, ...), 1989. Electronic installation.

Encoded Covers screen resolution; color palette; external data source; fonts; source openness.



Networked Covers exhibition context; external data sources; non-standard protocol; minimum bandwidth; network model.

+ Variable Media Questionnaire: Strategies

■ Storage • To store the work would be—in the metaphoric sense—to prevent simultaneous

exhibitions. There is one copy and everyone accesses that one copy, which is possible with the Internet.

■ Emulation • To emulate the work might be to take advantage of unequal distribution of Internet access;

different sites get different readership. Seeing Double

■ Migration • To migrate, or bring the work up to date, might be to give a clone of a project but to keep

all of the changes and additions made to the work.

■ Reinterpretation • To reinterpret the artwork might mean using a data loop to create and then force integrity

between two clones.

http://www.variablemedia.net/e/seeingdouble/index.html

+ Forging the Future: New Tools for Variable Media Preservation

!!A consortium of museums and cultural heritage organizations dedicated to exploring, developing, and sharing new vocabularies and tools for cultural preservation

!Source: http://forging-the-future.net/

http://forging-the-future.net/

+ Forging the Future: The three practical and complementary tools:

!■ Franklin Furnace Database

(FFDB) • Designed for cataloging variable

media artworks and events contained in small to midsize collections of presenting arts organizations


!■ Digital Asset Management

Database (DAMD) • Manages digital metadata that is

directly relational to all the tools


!■ Variable Media Questionnaire

(VMQ) • Contains data and metadata

necessary to migrate, re-create, and preserve cataloged variable media objects


!■ Additional tools: • Media Art Notation System

(MANS) This is designed to facilitate interchange between the three Forging the Future tools as well as the related products of third party researchers.


!■ Additional tools: • Metaserver

In place of a centralized archive, the Forging the Future alliance is building a "metaserver" that points to instances of particular works as they transition from one version, medium, or context to the next.


■ Additional tools: • VocabWiki

The Vocabulary Resource for Descriptive Cataloging of New Media Art This merges vocabularies developed by two arts organizations, Franklin Furnace and Rhizome, to describe new media artworks. The database is comprised of terms defined specifically for the description of performance and ephemeral installation art. !http://forging-the-future.net/vocabwiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

http://www.franklinfurnace.org/

http://www.rhizome.org/

http://forging-the-future.net/vocabwiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

+ Forging the Future: Online Presentation

+ The Role of Artists and Conservators in Variable Media Preservation

It’s up to artists to describe their work using these characteristics and effects based from the Variable Media Questionnaire, which tomorrow’s curators and restorers must respect and reproduce.

!Source: The Guggenheim Museum and the Daniel Langlois Foundation Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present / Institute For Long Duration Performance Art

http://www.fondation-langlois.org/html/e/page.php?NumPage=98

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J75bEjp_f0&feature=related

+CASE STUDIES

+ The need for practices and emulation experiments:

Case studies helped explore and further expand the Variable Media concept. Among the works examined were a video installation by Nam June Paik, a film performance by Ken Jacobs, a photo collage by Jan Dibbets, an interactive installation by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and an on-line work by Mark Napiers.

+WHO ARE THE MEMBERS OF VMN?

+ Members of VMN

• Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York • www.guggenheim.org/variablemedia • The most ambitious and widely known

preservation project undertaken by the Guggenheim Museum is its Variable Media Initiative, a nontraditional, new preservation strategy that emerged in 1999 from the museum’s efforts to preserve media-based and performative works in its permanent collection, and which later spawned the Variable Media Network (VMN).

• Guggenheim’s Film and Media Arts Program’s goal: to engage the museum as a critical and intellectual space able to embrace diverse histories of the moving image while responding to new developments within artistic practice globally.

+ Members of VMN

• The Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology, Montreal • www.fondation-langlois.org • Founded in 1997 the Daniel Langlois

Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology is a private, charitable organisation with an international scope.

• In 2002, the Daniel Langlois Foundation teamed up with the Guggenheim Museum to develop and further promote the variable media concept. One aim of this partnership is to forge an international network of organizations with a common goal of devising useful methods and tools. To this end, several projects, events and publications have been or will be launched.

http://www.fondation-langlois.org

+ Members of VMN

• Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archives • www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/ciao/avant_garde.html/art.berkeley.edu

• Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc., New York • www.franklinfurnace.org

• Performance Art Festival+Archives, Cleveland • www.performance-art.org

• Rhizome.org, New York • www.rhizome.org rhizome.org/artbase/report.htm • rhizome.org/artbase/policy.htm

• Walker Art Center, Minneapolis • www.walkerart.org adaweb.walkerart.org

+ VMN Timeline• 1998

• VM concept was developed by Ippolito

• 1999 • VM Network

• 2001 • Preserving the Immaterial, a conference on VM by the Gugenheim Museum, New York

• 2002 • Daniel Langlois Foundation teamed up with the Gugenheim to develop and further promote the VMC • The Foundation created a research fellowship • A website was created along with an experimental database

• 2003 • A book, Permanence Through Change, which based from the VM conference, was published

• 2004 • March 19 – May 16: Seeing Double exhibition • May 8: Echoes of Art symposium

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Thank You.

Variable Media Network

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