Curation Mastication Preservation

There is a lot of talk at the moment about curation and preservation of media art works. If you logged on to the New Media Curating list or Empyre, or checked their archives for January 2005, you would see ample discussion on the subject. It appears that suddenly, artists and curators are considering the longer-term implications of archiving and curating (in the context of historical consideration) of their artwork. Not that artists (particularly those working in digitalis) haven't been above hosting their own works and acting as personal archivists, and Furtherfield itself is just one such site that hosts archives of new media art works.

A seminar bringing together individuals from organisations such as the Guggenheim in New York and Art Research Communication, the Edinburgh based company developing new media projects took place on Saturday the 29th of January 2005. A joint venture between Vivid, the new media art organisation in Birmingham and the University of Central England, invited speakers were Caitlin Jones, Martijn Stevens, Chris Byrne, Andy Webster with Jon Bird (giving a combined presentation) and Sarah Cook.

First to speak was Caitlin Jones from the Guggenheim, who chose to discuss issues of curation from the vantage point of the Variablemedia project, the Guggenheim's attempt to preserve digital works of yesteryears. Caitlin's paradigm that she works within is formed by considering the way in which Performance artists document and re-enact their work. The impermanence of live performances and how we might capture this in some way provides opportunity for thinking at the very least about what we might have to deal with to ensure continued appreciation of the work.

The Musealisation of Digital Art, the project that Martijn Stevens is involved in, offers a chance to consider how work that may be primarily web based, or at least exist within some virtual context, be shown within the bricks and mortar environment of the traditional gallery. When net.Art works are created within the home environment and most often are viewed either in the same environment or often in the work place, how do galleries propose to deal with this dichotomy?

My own feelings are that a rift exists (despite attempts to create the illusion of this being otherwise) between traditional galleries and their on-line counterparts. Just as many .Com companies came to realise that you couldn't base your business on the same models that real world businesses operated within, so it is that real world galleries have to begin to understand that they may try to capture the fleeting moment of the digital art work, but they're only ever going to be playing catch-up with the internet. New business models need to be thought out for this type of gallery, if the traditional galleries wish to be a part of it.

With a break of sixty minutes, mid-session, attendees were given the chance to enjoy lunch and spend some time having informal discussions. In a room off to the side of the main seminar room, Jon Bird and Andy Webster's Tabular Rasa video was playing. It could be argued that lunch is one of the most important parts of attending seminars. As much for the chance to get to know fellow attendees, as it is to have one to one chats with the speakers.

When Chris Byrne took his turn at the alter of digital confession, he chose to sit down. Can't say I blame him. Chris chose to open his talk with a video tale about a caller trying to "buy" a piece of the Internet, in terms of real estate purchasing. The video raised a laugh amongst the audience, setting a good tone for his talk. What Chris explored was ideas about location of art works and location sensitive issues around curating new media work. Chris works mainly in Scotland. Separating his work from that addressed by Martijn Stevens, Byrne tries to understand how physical works change context with location. Showing examples of work that have occupied everything from small churches in remote fishing villages - with a satellite uplink that was on such a small incline to the earth's surface, that if someone parked their car nearby, they blocked the signal - to media labs placed in landscapes across the Scottish plains that housed artists.

Andy Webster and Jon Bird make a good double act. I mean that in a positive way. Acting against each other in a performance that mirrored the very process of curation that they were telling us about. There are many different types of presenters and different ways of talking about subjects. The best are often like this one. Webster and Bird have taken a very experimental approach to developing models for curating. When trying to separate a selection of artists' films for projection onto cityscapes, they chose to rely on Andy Webster's experience working with Artificial Intelligence and the algorithms used for some simple decision making processes. An interesting solution to a difficult problem. And probably one of the few 'creative' methods of curating a project that has been used for some time. Some discussion on the subject revealed that people felt the process was somehow 'wrong' and inaccurate, but perhaps this is because Bird and Webster have captured the essence of what many curators like to think of as an intangible process and one based on years of curatorial engagement.

Sarah Cook is co-editor of CRUMB (Curatorial Resource for Upstart Media Bliss) the website and discussion forum for new media research. Her talk looked at re-enactments, particularly the work of Nina Pope & Karen Guthrie, who have taken part in historical re-enactments to gain an understanding of how we bring past artistic endeavors into contemporary curatorial concerns. Nicely book-ending the seminar against Caitlin Jones' talk about updating historical digital media works. Cook wondered what of the original work might be made present if we re-create the projects in modern terms. Stepping away from purely digital works, she wondered how technology might help mediate artwork re-enactments. As part of this discussion she gave a preview of the projects being developed at FACT for an upcoming summer exhibition.

The difficult job of chairing the discussions fell to Helen Cadwallader of the Arts Council England. Never an easy job to chair discussions around these issues, as there is always a varying number of viewpoints for every attendee. Good chair-people manage to allow the flow of the discussion to move outwards from the papers' main issues and into the concerns that have arisen within the minds of the audience. As part of her opening speech, Helen talked about the 'state-of-the-art' at present.
So, how far did the speakers go in solving the problems of new media preservation and curation? Of course, the answer is that there isn't ever going to be one satisfactory solution or methodology, only differing schools of thought. I cannot help wondering also, if the whole point of digital art is the ephemerality of it? Maybe we aren't creating works that will live on forever or at least into the next century? Like Performance art, perhaps the best place for historical contextualizing of art works, is from the memories of the observers. But of course, none of us really wants to believe that, myself included.

This talk was the final one in a series that Vivid and UCE have presented, with a range of speakers from Brian Duffy and his Modified Toy Orchestra to Electronic Literature within the context of Space. The complete archive of papers and transcripts of discussions arising from the presentations will be published some time in 2005 by Article Press.

Thanks to Kaye Winwood and Sian Evans at Vivid for her help in writing this article.