Crowdsourcing Preservation: The Variable Media Questionnaire 3.0

Jon Ippolito © DOCAM 2010

Jour 1, Session 4 Jon Ippolito (University of Maine, Orono)   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.

Jon Ippolito is an artist, writer and curator born in Berkeley, California in 1962 who turned to making art after failing as an astrophysicist. After applying for what he thought was a position as a museum guard, Jon was hired in the curatorial department of the Guggenheim, New York, where in 1993 he curated Virtual Reality: An Emerging Medium and subsequent exhibitions that explore the intersection of contemporary art and new media. In 2002 Jon joined the faculty of the University of Maine's New Media Department, where with Joline Blais he co-founded Still Water, a lab devoted to studying and building creative networks. His writing on the cultural and aesthetic implications of new media has appeared in The Washington Post, Art Journal and numerous art magazines.

Link:

• Forging the Future: https://forging-the-future.net/