[spectre] VIDEOART\e-monitor 17 - rpt. 404 Object not Found

[Torben Søborg]

VIDEO ART\e-monitor 17 -  THE DANISH VIDEO ART DATA BANK

June  26, 2003



Content: The 404 Object Not Found Congress organised by hARTware, Dortmund
         1. Introduction
         2. Impressions from the Congress - Thursday, 19 June
         3. Friday, 20 June
         4. Saturday, 21 June
         5. Sunday, 22 June
         6. Strategic Paper
         7.Thanks to hARTware



  1. Introduction

When THE DANISH VIDEO ART DATA BANK - for practical reasons: problems
with some of the old U-matic tapes in the archives - became
interested in conservation and restoration of analogue video tapes
this was not an issue touched upon in Denmark - and even outside
Denmark in Europe only now and then.

Of course you had Montevideo and the impressive and important pioneer
work on tape preservation they did and still do - and to some extent
also Argos in Brussels (1). I am certain there have been other
initiatives but these are - unfortunately - not come to a broader /
international knowledge outside a narrow circle and /or in the
country of the initiative. As an example you may mention the
research-project by   hARTware in Dortmund, Germany (2) (3). Today
you find many more concerned about preservation and initiatives on
preservation of not only video but also other types of
variable/unstable media art and this could only be welcomed.

  Just recently the hARTware group in Dortmund took initiative to
organise the "404 Object Not Found" - an international congress
concerning the production, presentation and preservation of media
arts, June 19-22, 2003, in Dortmund, Germany.

THE DANISH VIDEO ART DATA BANK was invited to attend the congress.
From Denmark came also Marianne Bech, director of Museum of
Contemporary Art in Roskilde but odd enough no one from the other
Scandinavian countries.

The congress was attended by a wide range of people: museum people,
media scientists, media art critics, people from different
departments of universities, different video and media art
organisations and foundations, video- and media art festival
organisers, conservators and restaurateurs, curators and also some
artists - all in all around 120 people. This was not the "usual"
festival people/friends I usually meet at activities around in Europe
but I found it rewarding to meet knew categories - all interested in
one way or the other in video and media art. And it was rather
surprising to see how fast these different categories became a
"homogeneous crowd" and how easy all took active part in the
discussions.

  Iris Dressler, Hans-Dieter Christ and the people from hARTware had
done a magnificent job organising the congress with a program of
lectures/papers, introductions, presentation of case studies, work
groups, statements, and discussions.

  As far as I know this is the first time that an event of this type -
concentrating on presentation and preservation of media arts, and
with this broad aspect of participants - has been organised in
Europe,  . and not surprisingly the congress raised more questions
than gave solutions, but   you got lots of valuable inputs and I am
sure that the questions and inputs for most of the participants will
form the basis for subsequent thoughts, reflections and initiatives,
and I am quite sure, that many contacts were established in all
directions which be valuable in the future.

  I will not try here to give cover the congress but just give a short
account /personal impressions - also because a "congress-reader" with
all the papers and statements later on will be published on the
Internet.


  2. Impressions from the Congress - Thursday, 19 June

The congress opened with a paper by Hans Dieter Huber, Statliche
Akademie der Bildenden KŸnste, Stuttgart, called "From point to point
or from production to presentation to preservation of media art".
What does it mean to present media art today, he asked and
illustrated it with two examples:
a. Eija-Lisa Ahtila's instructional manual for the video installation
"The House Tale"  - something were very specified, other things (like
the brand of the DVD-players and the surface of the big screens) were
not. It means both variable and invariable parts.
b. Bruce Nauman's "Shadow Puppet and Instructed Mime" where the heads
made by Nauman could not be replaced but where he accepted to replace
the original U-matic players with DVD-players to "restate / reperfom"
the original installation from 1990.

Concerning the problems and issues of preservation of digital media
art he found that you had to ask and answer or reach a consensus to
the following questions:
a. What should be preserved?
b. Why should it be preserved?
c.How should it be preserved?
d. Who should preserve it?


  3.  Friday, 20 June

As introduction to the following work groups the next day,
Friday, started with presentation of three case studies and a paper
concerning installative works of media art, a case study about net
and software based art and a case study concerning archives and
documentation.

You had to chose to attend one out of four work groups, which was
rather difficult because you really wanted to attend them all. I
chose the work group about archives and documentation.
Caitlin Jones, Guggenheim and Alain Depocas, fondation Daniel
Langlois presented  the Variable Media Network and a Beta version of
the Variable Media Questionaire which I referred to in VIDEO
ART\e-monitor no. 5 and 13 (4). I find this questionnaire very
interesting and helpful to "map" the intention of the artist
conserning the future of her/his art work and what the
museums/archives/collections  can allow themselves to do with the art
work. Johannes Gfeller, conservator from Bern, talked about Active
Archives. Sandra Thomas/Alexandra Wessel, 235Media, Cologne,
presented the coming MKA / MedienKunstArchive (5) - a quite
impressive Net-based archive which I hope to write a bit more about
later.  It will be interesting to compare it with another project on
the Internet by just the same name: MKA / Medien Kunst Archiv from
Vienna (6) and with the coming Medien Kunst Netz / Media Art Net from
ZKM, Karlsruhe.

  Late Friday afternoon the artist Antoni Muntadas talked about
different presentations of his exhibition "On Translation" (one of
them shown at Museum am Ostwall Dortmund) and Ute Vorkoeper, German
art historian, presented a paper about "Translation and Transmission
Ongoing" about recreating the late Anna Oppermann's non-electronic
media art installation as an example of certain problems of
documentation and re-construction.


4. Saturday, 21 June

Saturday started with the paper "The End of Media Art (as we know
it)" by the Dutch media art critic Josephine Bosma. To her it often
seemed as if media art has both benefited and suffered from creating
and controlling its own sanctuaries. An "open" media space not only
challenges the art world, but it also challenges the media art world.
It gives both a shared space, a space which turns out not to be
specific to either of them.

The next two papers concerned Emulation. Tilman BaumgŠrtel, German
media scientist, pointed out - and demonstrated how the emulation
technique started as an "underground movement" to make it possible to
play your old Commandor and Artari computer games on modern PC and
Apple computers. Jeff Rothenberg, the American computer science
researcher and world-known expert on any aspect of emulation, called
his paper "Digital Art Will Last Forever - Or Five Years, Whichever
Comes First". How will future generations be able to experience our
digital art since standards alone cannot preserve digital artefacts
in usable form for very long, and migration converts them to new
forms, rather than preserving them?, he asked, and gave a very
interesting overview, attempting to provide insight into the
fundamental nature of digital artefacts in order to show why
preserving them is so difficult. He also explained and demonstrated
emulation techniques and discussed the advantages and limitations of
the various solutions that have been proposed so far. I will
certainly come back to this subject (and Jeff Rothenberg) again in a
later VIDEO ART\e-monitor.

Saturday afternoon you had three new work groups. I regret that I did
not choose the work group " "under construction" presentation of
current projects" because this - among other projects - presented the
research project "Capturing Unstable Media" starting from March 2003
and initiated by theV2 Organisation in Rotterdam. It's a very
interesting research project supported by the Dutch Mondriaan
Foundation and the Canadian Fondation Daniel Langlois pour l'art,
science et la technologie, MontrŽal. The projectwill be on the issue
of capturing unstable media art and preserving it in a
medium-independent way. I have been told that you quite soon will be
able to see something about the project on the Internet (7), so I
hope also to come back to this later. It could be interesting to
compare it with the 235Media project "MKA / MedienKunstArchive" (6)
and "MKA / Medien Kunst Archiv Wien" (7) and the coming "Medien Kunst
Netz / Media Art Net" Project by ZKM, Karlsruhe.
Saturday closed with a panel discussion on the theme "Infrastructures
for media art: What has been realized, what is missing?"  between Pip
Laurenson, Tate Modern, Alain Depocas, fondation Daniel Lnglois,
Johannes Gfeller, Bern, Hans Dieter Huber, Stuttgard, Heiner
Holtappels, Montevideo and  - not least - the audience. Just one note
from this discussion: It is important to explain, that if you buy
variable/unstable media art works you also consequently have an
obligation to the conservation and restoration of these art works.


  5. Sunday, 22 June

The congress closed Sunday with a "Letter of Intent" which I will
come back to when it is available in writing. Instead I will quote
from "A Strategic Paper" drawn up just before the congress (Dortmund,
June 18th, 2003) by hARTware, Iris Dressler, Hans-Dieter Christ and
Kurt Eichler, under the heading: "New artistic forms require new
forms of funding. Media Art and the demands for a changing cultural
policy" because the paper partly put up some questions that could be
asked in all countries partly aim at co-operation.


6. Strategic Paper

The "Strategic paper" starts with some general observations on the
subject. Among other things they point at the problem that "The
presentation of media art is, in general, complicated and demands
from the institutions involved not only specialised technical
equipment, but also specialised know-how. Additionally, media art -
and especially internet and software art - is difficult to position
in the art-market, due to the fact that it consciously makes use of
readily accessible and free methods of distribution and presentation.
Thus making a contribution to the process of art democracy, cultural
participation and inclusion. In a traditional culture context these
aims are acknowledged as worthy of public funding".

The letter states that "whereas, in the sector of film, funding for
production is a matter of course, it is rarely acknowledged for media
art. In addition to classical funding for individual artists - such
as the reimbursement of travelling expenses, bursaries, catalogue
funding, or art purchases - media art requires budgets for production
costs." And goes on to say that  "In front of this backdrop existing
funding concepts and stipulations for financing must be reconsidered
and, if necessary, extended. The Following questions are posed:

  -    Through which national and European measures can cities and
municipalities be supported in the establishment of long-term
infrastructures or institutions for the development of media art?
-   Is it necessary and sensible, for media art to be funded as a
separately alongside fine art and film within the existing funding
structures. Thus taking into account the specific production and
presentation              requirements of this art form?
-  Which measures have development potential and which structures are
necessary for encouraging private foundations and sponsors to invest
in the future of media art?
-  Through which marketing strategy can media art be established
within the art-market?
-  Which strategies can anchor the perceptionm of media art as an
incubator and "soft asset" within the information and communications
industries?
-  What possibilities are there, on an international and European
basis, for the financial support of media art development through
business funding or through research and educational funding?
-  With which funding models can institutions be given incentive to
include complicated media art presentations in their programmes?
-  Which funding forms are necessary for media art in terms of conservation?"


  7. Thanks to hARTware
I think we should compliment and thank the hARTware group for the
initiative and the extremely well organised congress. I am sure that
the group will follow up on the initiative and the questions and
thoughts this congress has given raise to.

Torben Soeborg



  Notes:
(1)   Montevideo: www.montevideo.nl   - Argos: www.argosarts.org
(2)
<http://www.hartware-projekte.de>http://www.hartware-projekte.de +
congress: www.404project.net
(3)   The limited knowledge may be - dear Iris and Hans Dieter - that
your in it self brilliant name hARTware if you see it isolated and
without the emphasize of A, R and T as in the web address
www.hartware-projekte.de too easy is mixed up with hardware and
something with computers machines etc.
(4)   VIDEO ART\e-monitor No 5 and No. 13: www.videoart.suite.dk/e-monitor
(5)   You can find information about 235Media on www.235media.com .
The pilot project MKA / MedienKunstArchive will later on be available
through the Internet.
(6)   MKA / Medien Kunst Archiv Wien: www.medienkunstarchiv.at/mka/ .
The goal of MKA Wien is archiving media art, and developing related
theory and mediation of this art on the Internet
(7)   Try to look at
<http://labv2.nl/projects/capturing.html>http://labv2.nl/projects/capturing.html
later on



  THE DANISH VIDEO ART DATA BANK is a non-profit agency for promoting
Danish video art outside Denmark

  The VIDEO ART\e-monitor is an e-mail edition of the former printed
newsletter "monitor". Both were and are published with irregular
intervals - "monitor" from 1985-86 up to no. 48 in December 2000 and
"VIDEO ART\e-monitor" since February 2001. Editor:   Torben Soeborg
(soeborg at inet-uni2.dk ).

  You can find the earlier editions of VIDEO ART\e-monitor on
www.videoart.dk/e-monitor . If you want to  receive VIDEO
ART\e-monitor (free) send an e-mail to
<mailto:soeborg at inet.uni2>soeborg at inet.uni2

THE DANISH VIDEO ART DATA BANK
Themstrupvej 36, Dk-4690 Haslev
Denmark
tel: +45-56.31.21.21
soeborg at inet.uni2.dk
<http://videoart.suite.dk>http://videoart.suite.dk
<http://www.medieaart-preservation.dk>http://www.medieaart-preservation.dk
<http://www.videoart-archives.dk>http://www.videoart-archives.dk