Please excuse cross-postings. We are happy to announce that we have moved the
symposium to a larger venue, and have re-opened registration!


Archiving the Arts: addressing preservation in the creative process

Saturday, October 13, 2012

9:00 AM–5:00 PM

PLEASE NOTE NEW LOCATION!

Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Film Center

36 East 8th Street

The Bernie Brillstein Theater, 1st Floor, Room 101

Presented by:
Association of Moving Image Archivists Student Chapter at New York University
and Independent Media Arts Preservation (IMAP)
Archiving the Arts unlocks dialogue concerning preventive preservation, the
creative process, and where the two concepts intersect.


Unlike corporate or policy-based content, independent media art evolves and is
often born from fleeting processes, creative approaches, and undocumented
methods. Its unique development deserves to be addressed by both its makers and
those who fight for its welfare after creation.



Our primary goal is to straddle an antiquated divide. Instead of finite
responsibilities dictated by title, archivists and artists must learn to work
collaboratively in the complex independent media environment. Join us on October
13 as we bridge the gap!



Registration Fee: $15.00

Students with valid ID: $9.00



Register at:



http://www.imappreserve.org/join/membership.html



Questions:



Kathryn Gronsbell via [log in to unmask]

Jeff Martin via [log in to unmask]





Archiving the Arts is part of New York Archives Week, which is organized by the
Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York. www.nycarchivists.org.





9:00 AM        Registration Opens



9:45 AM        Welcome



Jeff Martin - Executive Director, IMAP



Kathryn Gronsbell - Moving Image Archiving & Preservation, NYU and President,
AMIA @ NYU







10:00 AM      Preventive Preservation

Moderated by Seth Anderson - Digital Preservation Consultant, AudioVisual
Preservation Solutions







Collaborative Curation: Designing for Preservation



Ben Fino-Radin - Digital Conservator, Rhizome at the New Museum



In the collection and preservation of born digital works, often the most
effective methods of preservation are enabled by decisions made by the artist
during the creative process. This presentation will explore cases of
born-digital works from the collection of the Rhizome ArtBase, that were
designed in a manner that affords effective and unobtrusive collection and
preservation, as well as new modes of institutional collaboration with the
creators of web platforms employed by artists.



Partnering to Promote Best Practices to Preserve Independent Media Art



Michele L. Wozny - PEAR Writing Studios



Media artists and artist-run centres across Canada are actively strategizing how
best to develop partnerships between funders and stakeholders, including
archives, distributors and collectors, in order to promote long-term access and
thereby stimulate the preservation of independent media artworks. This
presentation will explore recommendations for such a life-cycle model that
involve AMAAS (Alberta Media Art Alliance Society), AFA (Alberta Foundation for
the Arts) and the Provincial Archives of Alberta.



ArtLog: an online participative archive facilitating artists to self document
their artistic process



Yvonne Desmond - Dublin Institute for Technology



The presentation will discuss the elements of artistic process and the
possibilities for documentation. The development of the archive is also a means
of averting the threat to the loss of trace evidence of artistic process
inherent in the mass adoption of technology in the 21st century.





11:00 AM Technically Speaking: The Archivist, the Artist, and the Digital Realm



Architecting the World's First Fine Art Digital Conservation Repository at the

Museum of Modern Art



Kara Van Malssen, Senior Consultant, AudioVisual Preservation Solutions



Digital artworks are uniquely complex, often having multiple dependencies, such
as operating systems, software, libraries, programming languages, and various
types of hardware.  Artists write custom software, create custom hardware, and
use ephemeral online data sources.  Even seemingly simple works, such as single
channel video, depend on specific video and audio codecs for playback.
 Recognizing the requirements associated with the long-term conservation of
these works, the Museum of Modern Art is developing a flexible, dedicated
environment for digital collections management, the first of its kind in the
world.  This presentation will discuss work to date on the repository, next
steps, and future plans.







Intangible Interactivity: Tracing the History of an Art/Tech Program

1979-Present



Matt Epler and Kate Watson - Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), Tisch

School of the Arts, NYU



A summary of the genesis and ongoing efforts to archive thesis projects at the
nation's pioneering program in technology and media art. Housing almost every
imaginable format of media, the collection represents a unique look at how
technology has developed alongside culture and economy in the past 3+ decades,
with an emphasis on experimentation and alternative use.



11:45 AM      Lunch



1:15 PM        Discussion Forum - Selections from the Studio to the Archive



This session will serve as the basis for an upcoming IMAP workshop on issues
raised at Archiving the Arts. We invite you to an informal, open-format
discussion addressing preservation in the creative process. Presenters and
attendees will tackle issues encountered by professionals and amateurs on both
sides of the content divide. Special guests to be announced.











2:30 PM        Audiovisual Documentation of Transitory Works



Moderated by Erica Titkemeyer - Moving Image Archiving & Preservation, NYU



Archives and the afterlife of ephemeral works of art



Megan McShea - Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Art



Traces of ephemeral arts sometimes surface in surprising ways in the archival
repository.  McShea will share a few examples of archival audiovisual media and
other documentation of ephemeral art forms from the pre-digital era, and use
those examples as a jumping-off point for a discussion of the variety and
qualities of art documentation that may exist for artworks that no longer exist,
at least in the form in which they were initially presented by the artist.  How
can the creators and keepers of these records, including artists and other
documentarians, ensure that it will persist into the future?







Creating Something Out of Nothing - documenting the short-lived on a shoestring



Paul Bryan - photographer/videographer/artist, art studio owner



Jason Flowers - photographer/videographer/sound artist



Holly Stevens - art historian/archivist



What are the best practices for documenting transitory or ephemeral works of
art?  This discussion will focus on practical solutions to identifying and
preserving transitory, interactive, ephemeral or site-specific works of art.





Capturing a New York Minute



Aliee Chan/Bettina Katie Warshaw-Writers/Performers



The cast and creative partners of the FringeNYC 2012 show Aliee & Bettina’s

(sort of) Grown-Up Sleepover discuss the climate of off-off Broadway theatrical
community members in relation to self-preservation and the idea of ‘the archive’
in the performance community.





4:00 PM        Create / Restore / Migrate / Preserve - Media Arts Theories and

Practice





Before I Got My Eye Put Out: The Cynthia Maughan Archive



Jonathan Furmanski, Associate Conservator for audiovisual materials at the Getty

Research Institute



Between 1973 and 1980 the artist Cynthia Maughan (b. 1949) created upwards of
three hundred discrete video works, most no longer than a few minutes each.
 While she was included in several high profile exhibitions of the 1970s, only a
few of these works exist outside of her personal archive now housed at the Getty
Research Institute.  An examination of this remarkable and quirky artist will
introduce topics ranging from tape degradation, transfer techniques, cataloging
and metadata protocols for digital access to file based video storage, the
mourning rituals of small twigs, explaining incarceration to cats and the
probability of miniature skeletons made from toothpicks.





Practicing Preservation For and With Video Artists



Desiree Leary , Media Art Collection Manager at Electronic Arts Intermix

<http://www.eai.org/index.htm>



For the past four decades Electronic Arts Intermix has fostered the creation,
exhibition, distribution and preservation of media art. Over the years EAI has
has preserved several key works of media art including the works of Carolee

Schneemann, Lawrence Weiner, Vito Acconci, Bruce Nauman, and Joan Jonas. This
presentation will discuss EAI’s current preservation practices and projects,
which include restoring the work of Tony Ramos, revising EAI’s Media Art

Resource Guide and efforts to help artists become more aware of best practices
in preserving their work.







An Artist’s Perspective



Peter d’Agostino - Professor of Film and Media Arts, Temple University,

Philadelphia



This presentation explores the process of creating new work and reviews
exhibition, distribution, and archival preservation methodologies. D’Agostino
will review projects from the 1970s to 2010s including: The Walk Series

(1973-74) video ’documentation / performances’ of walks in San Francisco;CHUNG:

Still Another Meaning (1977) a photo / text / video installation; coming &
going: PARIS [Metro], a film / video / text installation (1978); and, video /
web projects (1973- 2012) on www.peterdagostino.com

<http://www.peterdagostino.com/>





5:00 PM        Farewell and adjourn


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