{"id":5877,"title":"Issues in Physical Preservation Panel","kind":"book","url":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/node/5877","version":"58a68bf188d58c7c0aa73b96a53cbed92f8daadda9f57d7856219680f80213d6","modified":"2026-09-15T19:02:02.3735929+00:00","credits":[],"authorKeys":[],"subjects":[],"metadata":[{"label":"Publication type","value":"Web Article","url":null}],"citations":{"page":"\u0022Issues in Physical Preservation Panel.\u0022 Video History Project, Experimental Television Center, 2026. https://www.videohistoryproject.org/node/5877.","publication":"Issues in Physical Preservation Panel.","risUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/citation/5877.ris"},"links":[{"label":"Looking Back/Looking Forward: A Symposium on Electronic Media Preservation","url":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/looking-backlooking-forward","relationship":"record body link","contentType":null}],"sections":[{"name":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"characters":91466}],"content":{"section":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"text":"Looking Back/Looking Forward: A Symposium on Electronic Media Preservation: contents Presentors: Luke Hones (Artists Television Access), Jon Selsey (Bay Area Video Coalition), Heather Weaver (BAVC) and Kacey Koeberer (BAVC) Kacey Koeberer Jon Selsey Luke Hones and Jon Selsey SHERRY MILLER HOCKING: I just want to welcome you, first of all, and thank you all for coming. We really appreciate the patience you\u2019ve shown as we\u2019ve tried to reschedule this meeting, originally scheduled to be held in Buffalo last fall. We rescheduled, of course, because of September eleventh. So thank you for your understanding. I want to thank our funders, the New York State Council on the Arts, specifically Debby Silverfine, who is the Deputy Director of Visual Arts at the Council; also, Karen Helmerson, with us today, who is the director of the Electronic Media and Film Program there. I want to thank them not only because of their support for this particular symposium, but also because of their support over the years for preservation activities. I think they have shown remarkable foresight, figuring out early on that this was something that needed to be addressed. I also want to thank our supporters and our partners, IMAP, Independent Media Arts Preservation, under the direction now of Dara Meyers-Kingsley, and their steering committee and board. IMAP has agreed to help us to put up the results of this symposium on the TV Center\u2019s History Website. I thank BAVC for not only their support for this symposium, but their assistance with the development by Luke Hones of \u201CReel to Real\u201D, and which is also up on the Video History Website, under the preservation area. Thanks to Mercer Media and Bill Seery, who will host a small reception after today\u2019s proceedings. I want to give a big thank-you to David Jones, from Dave Jones Design, who has helped me enormously with the website, and will help me again to get the transcripts up on the website. Thanks to DCTV for hosting this event, and to Mona and to Luke for all their work. So thanks again for coming. Catherine Martinez, from DCTV, will now say a few words. CATHERINE MARTINEZ: Yeah, I just wanted to welcome everyone to DCTV [and] specifically to our cyberstudio here. We\u2019ll be taping much of the event, I understand. We also have a cyber-studio show every Monday night, so if anyone is in the neighborhood and wants to come down and see how the whole studio works \u2014 there\u2019s an interactive component, performance, and a documentary. If you\u2019re interested in the programs at DCTV, we have our new issue of \u201CScanlines\u201D out and I wanted you all to take a copy before you leave. Thanks. MONA JIMENEZ: I was just talking to Kate Horsfield, and we were reminiscing about how we were in New York a couple years ago and we said, \u201CWe\u2019ve got to figure out how to get more tapes remastered. How BAVC did it, and how Luke set up that remastering center in the beginning?\u201D And we said, \u201CWell, you\u2019d need to get together around a couple decks and talk about it.\u201D So that is how this started, a conversation. Then as soon as I spoke with Sherry, we had a full-fledged program! So we\u2019ve expanded beyond that first \u201Clet\u2019s have a discussion around an AV deck.\u201D As a result, the spirit of this symposium is really a working group as opposed to those of us who happen to be at the front of the room giving information to those of you who happen to be sitting over here. Basically, what we\u2019re trying to do is not just hear and learn about, for instance, the BAVC model, but to come out of here with some idea about what needs to be done next: what research needs to be done? What questions need to be answered? What projects could be started to help move this whole issue along--to get more work remastered, highest quality, lowest cost? Although we\u2019re focusing mostly on analog video tomorrow we\u2019ll be talking about Capturing Related Histories. We wish we could be talking more about audio today, too, because that\u2019s a big component. So I would encourage you to think broadly, even though we\u2019re mostly focusing on analog video today. At the end of every part of the program, we will try to ask, \u201CWhat out of this can we capture, in terms of what we need to do research about, or what questions we need to answer?\u201D and then come up with some pretty specific next steps. In addition, there are many different levels of technical expertise in this room, and you may need to rely on each other to clarify things that are said--as opposed to us continually going over the minutiae about basic technical questions. LUKE HONES: Good afternoon, my name is Luke Hones. I\u2019m from out in San Francisco. I work for Artists\u2019 Television Access now but at the time that I was working with Bay Area Video Coalition. As Jon and Heather and I were talking about this session back in San Francisco, one of the images we came up with is when we discuss what it is we did, it\u2019s sort of like describing to someone what it\u2019s like going to the moon. It\u2019s a very detailed process, and it takes a lot of perseverance to set up the kind of center we did. But it\u2019s also like you have the background of the Wright brothers. In some ways, we were always searching for more information--for some way of learning more about what it was we were doing. When I got into video, three-quarter inch U-matic was the format that everyone was using. I never saw a half-inch open reel deck until 1994, when I started doing transfers. The first transfers we did were test transfers; so we learned the systems before we started doing transfers for clients. The summer of 1994 was learning about half-inch open reel for us. We tried to find some good literature from the period when half-inch open reels were the current technology. In my paper, I mention one that I think was particularly useful to me, and that\u2019s by Charles Bensinger. It\u2019s called The Video Guide. We also got some information from NASA on different cleaning machines. An issue that was being dealt with in another discipline was all of the data tapes that people were using to keep data had to be cleaned, so we looked into what people used to exercise and maintain their data tapes. We talked to everyone we could who used to work with half-inch open reel, and a lot of our first contact was with the folks at Video Ant Farm, with Chip Lord and Star Sutherland --basically, all the collectives around San Francisco during the seventies. After gathering that information, we felt it was something we could do, and we had to take a chance. So we started looking into it, asking around to different funders to see if they\u2019d be interested. What I\u2019m going to talk about is not only our cleaning process, but how we came about deciding what cleaning process we would use. It was the first one we chose to use because it seemed like it would offer the most success for the most number of tapes. But at the same time, part of us would love to experiment with other processes. If you\u2019ve visited the website, this will sound familiar. The first cleaning process for any tape, of course, is no cleaning. Any time you have an opportunity not to run a tape through a tape path and just transfer it that would be fantastic. But that\u2019s not really a choice we had with half-inch open reel. Any time we would try and run a tape that hadn\u2019t been cleaned yet, either it would stick in the machine \u2014 and the machines are very hard to come by, and very hard to repair \u2014 or it would start playing and then basically, material off of the tape would start collecting on the heads; and eventually, all you would see is snow, you wouldn\u2019t see the image anymore. So for us, not cleaning the half-inch open reels didn\u2019t seem like a viable alternative. I got a call one day from a fellow from Emerson University. Somehow, he\u2019d gotten my name, and he was describing how he set up a reel in his bathtub and was running it through some solution, and that\u2019s how he was cleaning his tapes. He said he\u2019d had some success, but he couldn\u2019t really play the tapes back after one time. I heard about other people who were doing sort of a washing process. We didn\u2019t try that, just because it seemed a little risky. It sounds like there may have been some folks in New York who were using different washing processes, and it would be great to hear about those in more detail. The other thing that we heard about from engineers at 3M and from engineers at Ampex, as well as from folks who were doing audio preservation, is the idea of baking tapes. When I talked to the folks at 3M and Ampex, their idea was they put it in an oven at, like, a hundred and twenty degrees, or some low temperature. I think Ampex would put it in for three days, and 3M would only put it in for eight or ten hours. Then they\u2019d try transferring the tapes. They said that was pretty successful for them \u2014 except they also said that they couldn\u2019t play the tapes back again. They could only play them once. So we veered away from that idea. The one we decided to go with was one documented in BAVC\u2019s magazine of the seventies and eighties called \u201CVideo Networks.\u201D We had a professor at San Francisco Art Instituted, Sharon Grace, contact a company called Recortec. Recortec created the data cleaning machines, and she had worked with them to modify a machine so it would work with half-inch open reel videotapes. She\u2019d clean the tapes, and she had used the copies of those tapes for a presentation that she did at the Art Institute. With that idea, and because Recortec was so close, we contacted them and started doing tests with their organization, using this cleaning machine. HONES: The machine has two reels, the source reel and the takeup reel. The first module that it goes through are these two little spools, like thread spools, expect what they have on them is like cleaning tape. Actually, I think there\u2019re four spools that the tape passes through. While the tape is passing through them, the two sides of the tape rub up against the cleaning tape. The dirt might collect there, but these spools actually continue to spin during the whole process. And so essentially, the tape is always touching against a clean piece of cleaning tape. Next there\u2019s a burnishing sapphire \u2014 a lot of times they call it a sapphire blade \u2014 that the tape passes over and burnishes. What I think is the coolest part of this system is there\u2019s this big old chamber that the tape goes into, and it kind of hangs down as it\u2019s coming off of these reels. What\u2019s different about this cleaning machine versus a videotape machine is on a videotape machine, the takeup reel is dragging the tape over the tape path. On this cleaning machine the reels are spinning independently \u2014 they\u2019re going the same speed. What this vacuum chamber does is it makes sure that, though there are some variations in the speed, the tape that bounces up and down in here and stays even. For the most part, there\u2019s very little tension in this tape path. It\u2019s funny; I saw this machine working for probably a year, year and a half, until I got a chance to actually clean on it. That\u2019s when I realized how cool this chamber was. On the other side of the chamber are these slotted grids. I guess the best way to think about them is it\u2019s like an electric razor, and there\u2019s a vacuum behind it. And I know it\u2019s probably a little kinder to tapes than an electric razor would be, but similar to that. Then any debris that may come off in this area is basically sucked out by a vacuum that\u2019s behind those modules. I like that there\u2019s vacuuming going on through here; but I love that there\u2019s no tension. I like that these cleaning tapes are constantly moving, so the grit doesn\u2019t build up. We decided to go with the Recortec machine, because they were so handy to us; they were right down the street. I\u2019d also read, in the NASA book, about BOW Industries doing cleaning machines, and at least one other person was documented. But Recortec was one of their preferred providers as well, so it seemed like a good bet. When we first started working with them, Recor","offset":0,"nextOffset":12000,"totalCharacters":91466,"complete":false},"rightsUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/terms-service"}