Looking Back/Looking Forward: A Symposium on Electronic Media Preservation

Related records

• Agenda Preservation

  Looking Back/Looking Forward: A Symposium on Electronic Media Preservation convened May 31–June 1, 2002 at Downtown Community Television Center with a reception at MercerMedia. Organized by the Experimental Television Center with IMAP and Bay Area Video Coalition and funded by the NYS Council on the Arts Electronic Media and Film Program, the program covered physical preservation and remastering (including 1/2” open reel workflows), economics, media formats, collection assessment and documentation of artists’ instruments and ephemera, with presentations by Luke Hones, Heather Weaver, Kacey Koeberer, Mona Jimenez and Sarah Stauderman.

• Introduction Preservation

  Looking Back/Looking Forward is a symposium on electronic media preservation organized by the Experimental Television Center; it invited 58 artists, conservators, media arts staff and technical experts and is an activity of the Center’s Video History Project (begun 1994). The Video History Website (launched 2000) hosts nine interrelated databases with about 3,500 records and a Bibliography of over 1,000 entries. The Preservation area includes the commissioned papers Video Preservation and Reel to Real; Bay Area Video Coalition, with NEA funding, will produce a DVD due end of 2002.

• What's Next? An Open Discussion Preservation

  Open discussion facilitated by Dara Meyers-Kingsley (IMAP) and Luke Hones (Artists Television Access) at the Experimental Television Center symposium Looking Back/Looking Forward: A Symposium on Electronic Media Preservation, held May 31–June 1, 2002. Participants from BAVC, IMAP, EAI, Eastman House, NAMAC, DV Labs and others discussed tape-format preservation (Beta SP, Digital8, DV), documentation and cataloguing (pilot union catalogue, IMAP LISTSERV), technical approaches (non-invasive duplication, cleaning, manuals), ethics and conservation, online distribution/streaming and training and funding models.

• Images from Looking Back/Looking Forward Preservation

  Looking Back/Looking Forward is a photographic record of a symposium on electronic media preservation held May 31 and June 1, 2002; the page presents images and captions from the event. Participants and subjects identified include Tony Bannon; Barbara London; Joel Chadabe; Steina and Woody Vasulka; Dan Summer; Elizabeth Weatherford; Pip Laurenson; Luke Hones; Bill Etra; Gerald O?Grady; Jean Gagnon; Karen Helmerson; Kate Horsfield; Debby Silverfine; Carole Lazio; Rachael Melman; Jim Hubbard; Kenneth Schlesinger; Mercer Media; Bill Seery; Robin Schanzenbach; and Arthur Tsuchiya.

• Assessing a Collection for Preservation Preservation

  Sarah Stauderman of the Smithsonian Institution presented an adapted Society of American Archivists matrix for prioritizing videotape collections at the Looking Back/Looking Forward symposium (May 31–June 1, 2002). She outlined a survey form with parts for identification, value assessment and risk assessment, illustrated by 1972 half-inch reel-to-reel panda research tapes; scoring combined institution value, access, legal custody, physical condition and obsolescence to produce reformatting priorities. Participants discussed formats (reel, U-matic, VHS, BetaCam, digital), cataloguing, shared custodial responsibilities and projects such as IMAP and the AMIA Moving Image Gateway.

• Economics of Physical Preservation Panel Preservation

  Panel at the Experimental Television Center symposium (Looking Back/Looking Forward: May 31–June 1, 2002) addressed the economics of physical preservation with speakers Kate Horsfield (Video Data Bank), Kim Tomczak and Lisa Steele (V Tape), John Thomson (Electronic Arts Intermix), Kacey Koeberer (BAVC) and Bill Seery (Mercer Media). Presenters reported collection sizes and formats—Video Data Bank ~5,000 tapes with 2,365 needing preservation and 175 archived; V Tape ~4,200 titles by 900 artists—and discussed transfer workflows, equipment, cataloguing, research, estate planning, training and funding constraints including NEA and foundation grants and specific 2001 mastering volumes and costs at BAVC.