16 October 2007, Argos Brussels. Co-production with PACKED
Chris Vastenhoud (PACKED)
Alain Depocas
Agathe Jarczyk
Christoph Blase
Synthese written by Barbara Dierickx
Yesterday the Media Matters seminar was held at argos. This seminar was organised by Packed (Platform Archiving en Conservering van Kunstcreaties op elektronische en digitale draggers) in co-production with argos. The speakers and audience were welcomed by Chris Vastenhoud, coordinator at Packed, who gave a short introduction on the organisation. Packed wishes to develop a suitable solution in Flanders for the preservation of new media art, offering a platform for the exchange of information on the topic. This would lead eventually to the creation of a center of expertise, where research can be held in various domains such as annotation and metadata, storage, distribution, preservation, rights procurement and theory. The working of Packed has an international perspective and is also involved in conservation projects on European level and the Getty-based Art and Architecture Thesaurus.
The next speaker was Alain Depocas, Director for the Centre for Research and Documentation (CR+D) of the Daniel Langlois Foundation and research leader with DOCAM, an international alliance investigating the documentation and preservation of the digital art heritage. DOCAM is considered a ‘follow-up’ of the Variable Media Network, where Depocas was also a coordinator. At Media Matters, he lectured about DOCAM’s completed projects, how they work and what will be happening in the future. DOCAM tries to convince people of the urgency of doing something about new media conservation, by educating a new generation of future researchers. Their approach is multi-focussed and directed towards cataloguing and terminology as well as pedagogical activities. The latter is achieved by the organization of seminars on PhD level, the ‘Techwatch’ tool and active research and publication made by the students themselves. Depocas mentioned other DOCAM-tools like a French/English glossary; consisting of words that frequent the DOCAM publications, and the ‘Technology Resources Directory’; a search engine that displays relevant URL’s in fields like video and mixed media. Participants in the DOCAM project are either university- or museum linked and they have ‘researchers in residence’ for a specific period of time; these people can share their interest and working methods with other DOCAM participants. DOCAM works through various case-studies; their researchers have backgrounds in (amongst others) computer science or art history – a mere theoretical research programme would lead to segregation instead of combined perspectives which can be found in these case studies. Depocas highlighted some case studies that were presented at the ‘Seeing Double’ exhibition. At this event, new media works were presented in their original and restored version so visitors could trie to find a ‘difference’ between them.
Agathe Jarczyck studied the preservation and restoration of modern materials and media at the University of Applied Science in Bern, where she specialized in the preservation and management of video art. Since 2002 she works as a restaurateur for videocompany.ch, a Swiss organization focusing on the archiving, production and post-production of video art. Videocompany does not have its own video art collection but holds regular exhibits. Jarczyck spoke about the ‘Compendium of Image Perturbation in Analogue Video’, a project by AktiveArchive. There are still far more questions relating to preservation of video art than adequate answers, thus questions were posed: “Is this the only copy; where was the collection stored so far; how is this cassette labeled; is it intact or does it have any loose parts, dust, dirt on it; does it have an edge curl …”. As Jarczyck pointed out, everything starts with the playing device. At videocompany, U-Matic tape cleaners and time base correctors are often used instruments. Since not every device of every tape is the same, the technical chain of transfers is left in the hands of specialists. Even monitors are not all the same; a monitor for evaluating a video signal should have an ‘underscan’ mode. Even the wiring in between technical instruments can be of importance while restoring a video tape. Jarczyck also discussed the relation between retouching and ethics. When retouching happens in a bad way, it can destroy the authenticity of the work (cf. the same process in paintings). To avoid this, both the original work (analogue tape) and the new version should be stored in order to ‘undo’ wrong corrections. Videocompany uses a ‘MAZ-Karte’ or recording sheet on which they bescribe every possible aspect of the tape that comes in. To conclude, Agathe Jarczyck discussed the difference in handling between tapes that come out of acces storage versus archival storage. Some key features, such as acclimatization time, should be considered when pulling a tape out of the archive instead of an immediate playback without any further consideration.
The last speaker of the day, Christoph Blase, has led the ‘Laboratory for antiquated video systems’ of the ZKM (Centre for Art & Media) in Karlsruhe since 2004, where scientific and art-historically founded methods are developed to preserve obsolete video formats, restore them and adapt them to new technologies. His presentation gave us an insight (literally) into his ‘Labor’, and he illustrated the way ZKM works with some video footage from their collection. The ZKM holds around 300 videodevices, for playing and/or recording from ’60 – ’80 in its collection. Nearly every tape that comes in can only be played on a particular (historical) device, and in order not to destroy the tape right away, a database system is set up first containing all possible details about the tape itself. After cleansing and running the tape through a TBC, an uncompressed copy is realized. Blase illustrated that one hour of video tape can be equal to 80 GB in data: this poses a storage problem. These films are therefore stored on LTO3 devices, which are kept in one of the three storage facilities at ZKM. The videomaster is also converted into MPEG2 format and stored onto a server; this way it becomes very easy and accessible to watch the tape without damaging it and/or make a preview DVD of it. Some examples of work that has been (re)stored at ZKM was (illegally) captured footage of a Claude Chabrol press conferention, an artist video from ’70 and a partial interview with Marcel Broodthaerts. The last example Blase had brought along was about an early video ‘happening’: in December ’70, people at a gathering saw themselves on a television screen for the first time because they were simultaneously being taped and than played back again from a van. At this time, ZKM is rebuilding this original setting again for an exhibition project, contrasting the ‘old’ experience with ‘new’ people, and showing the original tape next to the new installation.