User:Max Dovey/Thematic Seminar/Testing the shelf life MD

Week 1 Testing the shelf life - Annette Decker 24/09/2013 Trimester 1

a bit about Annette - Currently doing a phd in conservation & Documentation of internet art at Goldsmiths university, UK. worked on Multivideo core - foundation for art in public space virtual platform impakt festival moo exhibitions in Eindhoven (fat lab)

_ Ignor Stromajer a famous net artists deletes his history of online based work. This act causes conversation and discussion about preservation of work on internet and the lifespan of digital art (a lot of the work had ceased to function due to browser upgrades etc). The Pompidou famously asked him for a hard copy of his work which he gave them on CD rom , this is now defunct, but the institution still own the 'authentic copy'.

Digital degradation starts to occur when the speed of tech development expires digital art that is reliant on a systematic / networked context to operate and be experienced.

ARCHIVE AGENDAS

Archives are dubious in many ways national archives are set out to 'archive everything' with an honest appearance (state run - people assume this is the basis of authenticity / records. all archives although appear as platonic, neutral, objective and systematic are all based on subjective selection of what is deemed important at the time.

ARCHIVE TODAY

Adapting the terms 'original' and 'reproduction' in a world where everything is a copy. formation, use, implication. post prism view of the archive - We encounter a difference between state/institutional public archives and private (online) archives. The public or state archive is often celebrated, trusted as providing records of history of the facts.

Private archives of digital services in a post prism age are now viewed with scepticism , as our data constitutes archives that serve the digital economy.

"We are living in a library of libraries" Foucaut establishing the possibility of what can and cannot be said, " how do we record what is never said" reversing the methodologies of archives to record everything, lets record the invisible. is that even possible any more?

"There is no political power without control of the archive,if not memory' Derrida (archive fever) Derrida looks at the archive as the formation of collective memory that is a discourse that maintains power hierarchies. Derrida introduces the idea that the archive as memory produces new knowledge and is not static, it is a flowing discourse as people retrieve information this is then adapted, rethought and shared. archive storage > static memory > a productive process

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  The first networked library

The Mundaneum - Paul Otlet (1920s) the first attempt to create a relative centre for all knowledge to be accessed remotely. although only successful in concept Google have now backed a museum in Belgium to display this initial attempt for an archive for everything (aka internet) article Mnemosyne - atlas - Aby Warburg created art from editing and combining artefacts.

Lynn Hersham talks to Michael Shanks "evidence always remains' - trying to reconstruct events via records via autonomous agents. what is the definitive record of an event? there never is one. the politics of presence. We are never completely invisible because we will always be traced and recorded. Article

ASSESSMENT each 2 weeks 2 of us will analyse a text and then present to the class. end of year we shall work on documenting 2nd years work that engage with the subject of the archive.

REFERENCE/ READING MATERIAL

Archeology of knowledge - Michael foucaut Derrida (archive fever) 'The enduring ephemeral, or the future is a memory' Wendy Chun (2008) critical enquiry 35.1 article Michael Shanks in conversation with Lynn Hershman.

Week 2

annotations on 'The Task of the Translator' and 'A Work of art from a work of art' by Becky Edmonds The Task of the Translator

A theory that looks for other things in translation than the reproduction of meaning. Translation of a text is a documentation, an interoperated representation of an original. The Translator is in a privileged position where the process of their work cannot be measured by most audiences (knowing the difference between the original and the translation) Translation is the beginning of the original's afterlife, a new definition in a different discourse. Translations carry the promise of an eternal afterlife (like art works)

Successful translations can heighten the original - unlike reproductions that can offer erode value o the original. "Even words with a fixed meaning can undergo a maturing process" The audience that interprets the language changes . It is only in relation to the intended object or meaning that two words ever mean the same thing, there is subjeive difference in each different language. Good translations require the translator to creatively gain an understanding of authors intention that often defies the language constraints (of the relation coming from the same object definition) Letting go the language rules so the translation gives voice to the intent of the author. (The translator is granted a creative, privileged position) However the translator comes from the wrong position - trying to conform something to their language - is against the agenda of the original. The text is unconditionally translatable. The interlinear version of the scriptures is the prototype or ideal of all Translations.

In A work of art from a work of art by BECKY EDMONDS Becky Edmonds is a dance choreographer filmmaker and has developed a methodology and technical approach to distinguish her work from other forms of visual documentation.

"Documentation requires as much creativity as the original production"

artists talk about capturing the event when making documentation of live works. This hints at seizing a fragment of the original , however in the attempt to record the event accurately the videos actually degrade the original. see "what the good of a history if it degrades the quality of the art' (1988) by Daniel Nagrin.

Becky goes onto to highlight the shortcomings of video documentation, calling it the gap. within this gap the documenter should creatively explore the gap between the original and the fallings of the visual documentation. She attempts to create a documentation based on view experience , doing in camera editing so her experience as audience member is truthfully recorded. She focuses on the patterns in the work.

The act of the documenter should not be a scribe or translator but to explode that gap between art and documentation. To make the documentation part of the live event and not an add on.

In my own work i make creative acts from the archive (documentation) of peoples lives. user data is generated by people to broadcast/ perform, the data is the residue that i reinterpret.