PROGRAM
13.45 Preservation of Software-based Art
Patricia Falcao, Time-based Media Conservator (Tate)
14.30 Software Aspect of Preserving Digital Art
Cemal Yılmaz, Faculty Member (Sabancı University)
15.45 From Collection To Repertoire
Dragan Espenschied, Preservation Director (Rhizome)
16.30 Q & A
*The Panel will be held in English with simultaneous translation to Turkish.
ABSTRACTS
Preservation of Software-based Art
Patricia Falcao - Time-based Media Conservator, Tate
Artworks with digital components started to make their way into the Tate Collection in the mid-90s. These were initially audio or video components, but since then digital components are part of almost all the time-based media artworks in our Art Collection. We categorise artworks that use the media of film, video, audio, software and performance as time-based media and Tate has had a section specialised in the conservation of these artworks since 1998. Over this period, Time-based Media Conservation has approached the preservation of these works as opportunities for research in the preservation of the different media. We have used the acquisition and display moments to develop our knowledge of the technical aspects of these works, to increase our understanding of the production processes and the different ways in which artists use the different media, the relation of the media to the artworks as well as the technologies available for preservation. All these aspects are essential to define the object of conservation, and to understand what needs to be preserved. In 2019 the Tate Collection owns over 600 artworks with digital components and we are acquiring about 30 new works per year. This trend is likely to increase, as is the number and type of technologies conservation will need to support. This paper will address these multiple aspects from the view of the Time-based Media Conservation Department at Tate, and we will discuss the strategies that we have put in place, and how we were able to develop them. This will highlight the importance of the research currently taking place both within Tate, with artists and their teams and with external experts on different fields.
Software Aspect of Preserving Digital Art
Cemal Yılmaz – Faculty Member, Sabancı University
In this talk, I will take a look at the problem of preserving software-based digital art from the perspective of software engineering and software-related technologies. I will start off with a quick introduction of the software and hardware stacks available on today’s general-purpose computing platforms and briefly discuss the sources of the technical issues regarding the preservation of software-related art. Next, I will demonstrate that some of the issues faced in this domain are the same with (or similar to) the ones we, as software engineers, face in our own projects, thus the same and similar solution approaches, which are often referred to as technical preservation, emulation, migration, cultivation, hibernation, and deprecation in the context of software preservation, can be leveraged. Then, I will argue that there are also some domain-specific technical issues waiting to be resolved, which may draw the attention of software and system researchers in both the academia and industry. Finally, I will conclude with some simple, yet quite practical and effective guidelines that can profoundly increase the chances of preserving digital art for the decades to come.
From Collection To Repertoire
Dragan Espenschied - Preservation Director, Rhizome
The preservation of net art requires an approach quite different from traditional objects, time based media, or conceptual art. With works located in between fine art and performance art, it is sometimes difficult to define what their boundaries are, in what technological and cultural context they need to exist, and how they can be historicized. Preservation Director Dragan Espenschied of Rhizome, a born-digital arts non-profit founded in 1996 on the internet, will introduce strategies and productive abstractions to handle the institution's ever-growing holdings of 2000+ net art pieces.
