Fifth international Summit on the documentation and conservation of the media arts heritage

The fifth DOCAM Summit took place on March 4 and 5, 2010, at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM) in collaboration with Hexagram UQAM. The two days of the public conference were held at the Agora du Cœur des sciences.

View the Summit's program

Day 1, Session 1

Alain Depocas (CR+D, Daniel Langlois Foundation)

This panel will deal with the role of technological history in the teaching of art history. Panelists will answer a number of questions: How important is a specifically technical knowledge to an understanding of art history? What kind of resources are needed to effectively communicate, to students, the relationship between the history of technologies and the history of artworks? What pedagogical strategies have proved most successful for imparting an understanding of technological history to students of art history? What lessons may we take from DOCAM’s efforts in this direction? Is the DOCAM Technological Timeline a possible resource for teachers of art?

* Please note that this presentation was given in French but has been dubbed in English

Day 1, Session 1

Mona Jimenez (Moving Image Archiving and Preservation, New York University)

When developing strategies for the preservation of media art works, students must understand and incorporate artists’ working methods, including the technologies employed. Learning about custom-made devices designed by artists and engineers, such as video synthesizers used to make 1970s video art, can expand students’ understanding of theory, practice and context. In addition, the study of technological devices allows students to draw parallels between the care and preservation of machines used for creation and those necessary for exhibition. Teaching students how to keep machines “alive” necessitates interdisciplinary research, within and outside of the field of conservation.

Day 1, Session 1

Sylvie Lacerte (independent curator, Montréal)

An instructor in the DOCAM Seminar at UQÀM (2007, Ph.D. in Art Theory and Practices; 2009, Masters in Museology) and at McGill (2008, graduate and post-graduate programs in the Art History and Communications Studies Department), Sylvie Lacerte will present a summary of the interdisciplinary and interuniversity body of teaching offered as a pilot project for four consecutive years as part of the DOCAM research initiative. She will focus on the issues and challenges of integrating the teaching of these subjects on a permanent basis into graduate programs at Montreal universities (visual and media arts, museology, library science/information science).

* Please note that this presentation was given in French but has been dubbed in English

Day 1, Session 1

Jean Gagnon (independent curator, Montréal)

How important is the knowledge and comprehension of technological evolution and history for the museum curator? I intend to address this question as there is a trend in museums for non medium-specific curating, especially in contemporary art. The argument goes that “after modernism” we do not need to segregate curatorial fields based on medium specificity. But the question is not really about the modernist approach of medium specificity, but one of accurate historical knowledge that take into account the materiality and historicity of works of art...

* Please note that this presentation was given in French but has been dubbed in English

Alain Depocas (CR+D, Daniel Langlois Foundation)

Mona Jimenez (Moving Image Archiving and Preservation, New York University)

Sylvie Lacerte (independent curator, Montréal)

Jean Gagnon (independent curator, Montréal)

Day 1, Session 2

Madeleine Lafaille (Canadian Heritage Information Network)

Anne-Marie Zeppetelli (Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal)

Cindy Veilleux (DOCAM)

Respondent: Sandra Fauconnier (Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam)

This presentation summarizes the research conducted by the DOCAM Research Alliance Cataloguing and Structure Committee, with particular emphasis on the results achieved. The content and functioning of DOCAM’s Cataloguing Guide for New Media Collections is also included.

* Please note that this presentation was partially given in French but has been dubbed in English

Madeleine Lafaille (Canadian Heritage Information Network)

Anne-Marie Zeppetelli (Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal)

Cindy Veilleux (DOCAM)

Respondant: Sandra Fauconnier (Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam)

Day 1, Session 2

The work of the Terminology Committee was to list and model relationships expressing the vocabulary and ideas of DOCAM. The result is the Glossaurus...

* Please note that this presentation was partially given in French but has been dubbed in English

James M. Turner (EBSI, Université de Montréal)

Claire Nigay (DOCAM)

Corina MacDonald (DOCAM)

Ann Butler (Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson)

Respondant: Sandra Fauconnier (Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam)

Jour 1, Session 3

Alain Depocas (CR+D, Daniel Langlois Foundation)

Andrea Kuchembuck (DOCAM)

The DOCAM Documentary Model puts forth a framework for structuring the "Digital Documentation File" which gathers, organizes and makes accessible documentation produced by different agents during the Life Cycle of a media artwork. The Model presents itself as a visual interface that illustrates the relations between the documents, their producers, the different stages of the artwork's Life Cycle as well as its successive iterations and its components.

* Please note that this presentation was partially given in French but has been dubbed in English

Day 1, Session 3

The presentation addresses the problem of documentation and accessibility of ephemeral artworks from a simulative perspective. The simulative approach proposes a documentation based upon a formalization of the control aspects and a concrete realization of the aural and visual perception through a virtual reality based installation. The artwork technology and the individual contents are recreated in virtual terms; then, the time-based development of the artwork is accounted for by a control score. We have applied the simulative approach to a paradigmatic case of a complex multimedia artwork, Le Corbusier’s Poème électronique, the very first multimedia installation of the electronic era.

Day 1, Session 3

Felicity Tayler (Artexte, Montréal)

Tomasz Neugebauer (Concordia University, Montréal)

Artexte is investigating the potential for an open access platform, such as EPrints, to provide a subject-specific repository for a community of publishers in the visual and media arts, including museums, artist-run centers, public galleries and independent researchers, writers and artists. We present the case study of Artexte’s metadata requirements within the context of an open access repository of self-archived media arts documentation...

Alain Depocas (CR+D, Daniel Langlois Foundation)

Andrea Kuchembuck (DOCAM)

Vincenzo Lombardo (CIRMA, Università di Torino, Turin)

Felicity Tayler (Artexte, Montréal)

Tomasz Neugebauer (Concordia University, Montréal)

Day 1, Session 4

Sylvie Lacerte (commissaire indépendante, Montréal)

Sylvie Lacerte will speak about the reflection process and steps that led her to organize an exhibition of the archives of Vera Frenkel, which were the subject of a case study during the DOCAM research project. As curator, Ms. Lacerte will present an overview of the work methodology deployed during her research at the Queen’s University Archives, where the Frenkel fonds are housed. She will also emphasize the impact that working in close collaboration with Frenkel has had on successfully preparing to exhibit the archives of this exceptional artist, who stands as a new media pioneer in Canada and abroad.

* Please note that this presentation was given in French but has been dubbed in English

Day 1, Session 4

Jour 1, Session 4

One focus of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Media.Art.Research. was the research and documentation of interactive artworks. Interactive art denotes a broad and controversial spectrum of artistic concepts that have to be approached from a variety of perspectives, to do justice to the importance of different possible manifestations and experiences of the interaction process. The goal was to develop a differentiated vocabulary for the description, comparison and analysis of interactive artworks as well as to pursue exemplary case studies of individual works. This presentation will discuss several approaches to the documentation and analysis of interactive art, including a survey of the Ars Electronica holdings and case studies of Tmemas 'Manual Input Station' and Blast Theory's 'Rider Spoke'.

Jour 1, Session 4

Gone are the days when conservation meant manila folders and obscure academic journals. Rescuing new media art from oblivion will require a large and connected community. This approach is embodied in the third and latest version of the Variable Media Questionnaire, unveiled for the first time at this conference. This Questionnaire makes it easy to compare differing viewpoints on the same artwork, or similar problems affecting different artworks. While anyone can access the VMQ as a free Web service, its data can also appear alongside collection records of separate institutions, thanks to a "Metaserver" that ties together dispersed databases.

Day 2, Session 5

Reflecting on the knowledge acquired through the case study approach that the DOCAM Conservation/Preservation Committee adopted, some principles and concepts appear quite specific to the preservation issues of time-based media artworks. For these works, the paradigm of authenticity operates as it defines itself in relation to the work’s integrity to be maintained...

* Please note that this presentation was given in French but has been dubbed in English

Day 2, Session 6

Day 2, Session 6

Day 2, Session 6

Julie Gilman (Faculty of Fine Arts, University College Ghent)

This presentation describes conservation strategies for ephemeral art with foodstuffs within an interdisciplinary approach by analyzing case studies. The purpose is to analyze and to question the complexity of the context in which those artworks are created as well as the diversity in production methods and in the significance of the foodstuffs and techniques used...

* Please note that this presentation was given in French but has been dubbed in English

Day 2, Session 6

Richard Gagnier (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts)
Jill Sterrett (SFMOMA, San Francisco)
Mark Hellar (Hellar Studios LLC, San Francisco)
Glenn Wharton (MoMA, New York)
Julie Gilman (Faculty of Fine Arts, University College Ghent)
Hanna Hölling (University of Amsterdam)

Day 2, Session 7

Day 2, Session 7

PACKED presents the research project it is conducting between 2009 and 2011 in collaboration with the Netherlands Media Art Institute in Amsterdam, MuHKA, and S.M.A.K. The aim of this project is to improve the long-term preservation of works threatened with the obsolescence of equipment essential to their exhibition. In its first phase, the research has focused on video works, with the second phase targeting works featuring computer components...

* Please note that this presentation was given in French but has been dubbed in English

Day 2, Session 7

Martina Pfenninger (Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna)

Agathe Jarczyk (Atelier für Videokonservierung, Berne)

Day 2, Session 8

Day 2, Session 8

Day 2, Session 8

Day 2, Session 8

This presentation focuses on the work of Philippe Ménard, notably the development of Synchoros, a gestural electroacoustic musical instrument, which was the subject of a DOCAM case study. Deployed over some 20 years from 1981 forward and via a range of software and material technology, Synchoros represents a rich journey of collaborations and remarkably cohesive implementations that have had an impact here and abroad...

* Please note that this presentation was given in French but has been dubbed in English

Harrison W. Inefuku (University of British Columbia, Vancouver)
Ricardo Dal Farra (Concordia University, Montréal)
Daisy Abbott (Digital Design Studio, Glasgow School of Art)
Simon-Pierre Gourd (École des médias, Université du Québec à Montréal)
Will Straw (McGill University)

Mot de clôture

Alain Depocas (CR+D, Daniel Langlois Foundation)

* Please note that this presentation was given in French but has been dubbed in English