Material Matters

"Of particular relevance are the practices associated with "variable media," or artworks that vary from one installation to the next-a broad category comprising installation art, performance art, and file-based art, the last including digital photography, digitized video art, and most digital art. (In museum circles, the phrase "variable media" has largely been replaced by the not-quite-synonymous term "time-based media," denoting works that change over time and are exhibited via media technologies ranging from speakers and televisions to slide, film, and digital projectors.)"

"As a co-chair of the Time-Based Media Working Group at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and then a curator at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum (formerly the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, an institution that played an iconic role in the emergence of time-based media in the 1970s), I had the great privilege of learning from many conservators about the various challenges of working within the framework of variability while imagining a future universe of the widest (and wildest) statistical improbabilities."

"These experts routinely contend with both practical and philosophical questions that shape the preservation of cultural heritage: How do we define the boundaries between asset, technical support, and documentation, or between the crucial and the incidental (in other words, what is worth saving and what cannot, or can, be modified)? How do we calculate the right amount of redundancy, given the associated expenses and risks? How do we balance the desire for something to be accessible with the need for someone to be responsible"

Conservators and archivists face urgent responsibilities in preserving variable and time-based media artworks amid threats to archival institutions. Variable media comprises installation, performance, and file-based art, including digital photography, digitized video, and most digital art. Time-based media denotes works that change over time and rely on media technologies such as speakers, televisions, slide, film, and digital projectors. Conservation practice requires imagining future technological contingencies and addressing practical and philosophical questions about what to preserve, how to document technical support, and how much redundancy to maintain given costs and risks. Preservation strategies must balance accessibility with clear custodial responsibility.

Read at Artforum