RAM (Random Access Memory) SEGMENT I — shift from a permanent state of saving to a permanent state of transmission :: June 25-26, 2011; 5:00 - 10:00 pm :: MicaMocaProject, Lindower Str. 22, 13347 Berlin.

RAM travels back and forth in time finding artistic, technical, theoretical, psychological, sociological, philosophical, political, retrospective and futuristic approaches. RAM applies them to the growing collection and overlays of materialized data.

RAM creates an environment using reconfiguration, memory testing, visualization, research, transforming, transmitting and linking stored data information. Continue reading

Upgrade! Paris: Anne Laforet — on the occasion of the publication of Le netart au musée - Stratégies de conservation des œuvres en ligne (Questions Théoriques) :: June 5, 2011; 6:00 pm :: Les Douches, 5 rue Legouvré, 75010 Paris.

With some museums acquiring net art works in the recent years, issues of preservation and exhibition have arisen. On the one hand, the digital materials of these works are fragile and continually on the verge of obsolescence. On the other hand, these works have to be online and activated by their audience to be full works of art. Preservation is both related to the material dimension of the artwork but also is a dialog with the artist and the museum. Continue reading

Virtueel Platform Research: Archiving the Digital by Annet Dekker and Rachel Somers-Miles (download the PDF):

In this Virtueel Platform Research, Virtueel Platform takes the online software art repository Runme.org, the internet based-art commissioning and exhibition platform Turbulence.org, and the electronic art preservation research project AktiveArchive as cases for exploring the different ways organisations deal with the preservation of software and internet-based artworks. The main question we raised was: how does the structure of an arts organisation relate to the issues it faces, and the possible strategies and solutions it uses when attempting to deal with the preservation and archiving of software and internet-based art?

Additional questions that were raised were: does the organisational structure lead to specific strategies, and how do these influence the development of a methodology for caring for born digital artworks? Continue reading

East of Borneo: A Collaborative Art Journal and Multimedia Archive edited by Thomas Lawson:

The launch of East of Borneo marks the convergence of two very distinct lines of thought. What is the nature, and the future, of art magazines? And how might we give form to the sprawling history of art in Los Angeles, a form that can be generative and productive, not merely descriptive or fancifully speculative?

Launched in October 2010, East of Borneo is a collaborative online art journal and multimedia archive that offers a new way to research and present the various histories of contemporary art. Its hybrid form — which publishes newly commissioned art writing within a larger context of user generated material — reflects an editorial process of thinking through the delights and constraints of printed magazines, and fully considering the transcendent possibilities of online publishing today. Continue reading

SON[I]A #116: Interview with Kenneth Goldsmith (17′48”) — poet, university professor, and founder and main editor of Ubuweb, the Internet’s largest archive of artistic avant-garde material. An underground project that has no institutional backing or budget of any kind, Ubuweb is an influential repository that is as exhaustive as it is personal, reflecting the preferences, quirks and obsessions of its creator.

SON[I]A talks to Goldsmith about the origins, ideas and operation of Ubuweb:
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The Digital Oblivion. Substance and Ethics in the Conservation of Computer-Based Art — 
International symposium :: November 4-5, 2010; 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
 :: ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Lorenzstrasse 19, 76135 Karlsruhe, Germany.

As part of the three-year EU-funded research project digital art conservation, this international symposium aims to investigate the future of our digital cultural memory, focusing in particular on the preservation of computer-based art.

For a couple of decades now, digitalisation has allowed the content of cultural memory to be more easily processed and circulated. However, the preservation of digitalised contents is fundamentally conditioned by the need to adapt to an ever more rapid sequence of new technical systems. Continue reading

September 2010 on -empyre- Archiving New Media Art: Ephemerality and/or Sustainability :: Moderated by Renate Ferro (US) and Tim Murray (US) with Taxonomedia: Vanina Hofman & Consuelo Rozo (Argentina/ Colombia/ Spain), Ricardo Dal Farra (Argentina/Canada), Jon Ippolito (US), Mona Jimenez (US), Claudia Kozak (Argentina), Gariela Previdillo (Brazil), Lluis Roqué.

What are the challenges to archiving new media art? Is the new media archive sustainable or undermined by obsolete softwares and technologies? Does the ephemerality new media and electronic art preclude archiving, if not challenge the very notion of the archive? How might archival efforts bear traces of the politics of institutions, patrons, and strategies of inclusion? Continue reading

Plausible Artworlds: Pad.ma — Potluck and Skype Conversation :: August 17, 2010; 6:00 - 8:00 pm :: skype “basekamp” and/ or 723 Chestnut St, 2nd floor, Philadelphia, PA.

The Pad.ma project is a result of the efforts of oil21.org from Berlin, the Alternative Law Forum from Bangalore, and three organizations from Mumbai: Majlis, Point of View and Chitrakarkhana/CAMP.

Pad.ma, short for Public Access Digital Media Archive, is an interpretative web-based video archive, which works primarily with footage rather than “finished” films. Pad.ma provides access to material that is easily lost in the editing process as well as in the filmmaking economy, and in changes of scale brought about by digital technology. Continue reading

David Rokeby, Very Nervous System (1983-) Documentary Collection — From the Introduction by Caitlin Jones and Lizzie Muller: [...] “This artwork is a particularly interesting case study for the Indeterminate Archive for two reasons. Firstly, it offers an unmatched demonstration of the importance of experience in media art. Very Nervous System is, as many audience members pointed out in our interviews with them, essentially an empty room until someone walks in and activates it. It is a work that is brought into being very literally through experience.

Secondly, it is a seminal work in the history of media art, with a lifespan of more than 28 years. Its celebrity and longevity pose some particularly interesting questions about documentation and contextualisation of media artworks over time and through change. Continue reading

Conservar, Documentar, Archivar - Encuentros de conservación de arte electrónico y digital (Conserving, Documenting, Archiving - meetings of electronic & digital art conservation) :: September 1, 2, 3, 6, 2010 :: Cultural Centre of Spain at Buenos Aires (CCEBA) + Telefónica Foundation + Latin-American Art Museum of Buenos Aires (Malba).

In this year’s meeting we are proposing topics similar with those covered during the first seminar organized by Taxonomedia (i.e., Conserving electronic art: what to preserve and how to preserve it?). This time, we will revisit those thematic areas that were proved to have major importance in the context of the first event: digitalization, documentation, storage of art-works/art-pieces, and information access. Continue reading