1st Edition
Conservation of Time-Based Media Art
Conservation of Time-based Media Art is the first book to take stock of the current practices and conceptual frameworks that define the emerging field of time-based media conservation, which focuses on contemporary artworks that contain video, audio, film, slides or software components.
Written and compiled by a diverse group of time-based media practitioners around the world, including conservators, curators, registrars and technicians among others, this volume offers a comprehensive survey of specialized practices that have developed around the collection, preservation and display of time-based media art. Divided into 23 chapters with contributions from 36 authors and 85 additional voices, the narrative of this book provides both an overview and detailed guidance on critical topics, including the acquisition, examination, documentation and installation of time-based media art; cross-medium and medium-specific treatment approaches and methods; the registration, storage, and management of digital and physical artwork components; collection surveys and project advocacy; lab infrastructures, staffing and the institutional implementation of time-based media conservation.
Conservation of Time-based Media Art serves as a critical resource for conservation students and for a diverse professional audience who engage with time-based media art, including conservation practitioners and other collection caretakers, curators, art historians, collectors, gallerists, artists, scholars and academics.
Part 1: Caring for Time-based Media Art; 1. Implementing Time-based Media Art Conservation in Museum Practice - Joanna Phillips; 2. Theories of Time-based Media Art Conservation: From Ontologies to Ecologies - Renée van de Vall; 3. A Roundtable: Curatorial Perspectives on Collecting Time-based Media Art - Annet Dekker in conversation with Karen Archey, Ulanda Blair, Sarah Cook, Ana Gonçalves Magalhães, Sabine Himmelsbach, Kelani Nichole, Christiane Paul and Henna Paunu; 4. Institutional Assessments and Collection Surveys for Time-based Media Conservation - Lia Kramer, Alexandra Nichols, Mollie Anderson, Nora Kennedy, Lorena Ramírez López, and Glenn Wharton; 5. Outside the Institution: Crossing the Boundaries of Communities and Disciplines to Preserve Time-based Media - Mona Jimenez, Kristin MacDonough and Martha Singer; 6. The Role of Advocacy in Media Conservation - Jim Coddington; Part 2: Building a Workplace; 7. Building a Time-based Media Conservation Lab: A Survey and Practical Guide, from Minimum Requirements to Dream Lab - Kate Lewis; 8. Digital Storage for Artworks: Theory and Practice - Amy Brost; 9. Staffing and Training in Time-based Media Conservation - Louise Lawson; 10. A Roundtable: Implementing Cross-Departmental Workflows at SFMOMA - Martina Haidvogl in conversation with Michelle Barger, Joshua Churchill, Steve Dye, Rudolf Frieling, Mark Hellar, Jill Sterrett, Grace T. Weiss, Layna White, and Tanya Zimbardo; Part 3: Cross-medium Practices in Time-based Media Conservation; 11. Documentation as an Acquisition and Collection Tool for Time-based Media Artworks - Patricia Falcão, Ana Ribeiro, and Francesca Colussi; 12. Inventory and Database Registration of Time-based Media Art - Martina Haidvogl and Linda Leckart; 13. Digital Preservation and the Information Package - Nicole Martin; 14. Disk imaging as a back-up tool for digital objects - Eddy Colloton, Jonathan Farbowitz, and Caroline Gil Rodríquez; 15. Managing and Storing Artwork Equipment in Time-based Media Art - Duncan Harvey; 16. The Installation of Time-based Media Artworks - Tom Cullen; 17. A Roundtable: Collaborating with Media Artists to Preserve their Art - Joanna Phillips and Deena Engel in conversation with Lauren Cornell, Mark Hellar, Diego Mellado, Steven Sacks, Lena Stringari, Siebren Versteeg and Gaby Wijers; Part 4: Medium-specific Practices in Time-based Media Conservation; 18. Caring for Analog and Digital Video Art - Agathe Jarczyk and Peter Oleksik; 19. Sound in Time-based Media Art - Chris McDonald; 20. Caring for Analog and Digital Film-based Art - John Klacsmann with a contribution by Julian Antos; 21. Caring for Slide-based Artworks - Jeffrey Warda; 22. Caring for Software- and Computer-based Art - Deena Engel, Tom Ensom, Patricia Falcão , and Joanna Phillips; 23. A Word about Performance Art - Hélia Marçal.
Biography
Deena Engel, Clinical Professor Emerita of the Department of Computer Science at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University, focuses her research on contemporary art. The winner of four teaching awards, she has experience teaching undergraduate computer science courses on web and database technologies, as well as Digital Humanities courses for graduate students. Deena is the Co-Director along with Prof. Glenn Wharton of the Artist Archives Initiative and she also works with major museums on projects which address the challenges involved in the conservation of time-based media art. She has an M.A. from SUNY-Binghamton in Comparative Literature and Literary Translation and an M.S. in Computer Science from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. She is currently pursuing a PhD at the Bard Graduate Center in New York City.
Joanna Phillips is a Time-based Media Conservator and Director of the Düsseldorf Conservation Center in Germany. She was previously the Senior Conservator of Time-based Media at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (2008-2019), where she launched the first media conservation lab in a US museum, implemented time-based media conservation practices and headed the Conserving Computer-based Art (CCBA) initiative. She co-founded the AIC conference series TechFocus and lectures and publishes on TBM topics internationally. As a researcher in the Swiss project AktiveArchive, she co-authored the Compendium of Image Errors in Analog Video (2013). Phillips earned her M.A. in Paintings Conservation from the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, Germany (2002).
