ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION:
NEW MEDIA AS TOMORROW’S OLD MEDIA
Saturday, March 28, 1998, 1:30 - 2:45 p.m.

Presenters: CARL GOODMAN, Curator of Digital Media, The American Museum of the Moving Image EDWARD EARL, recently joined AMMI, formerly of the California Museum of Photography and the University of California, Riverside. By: Claude Meyer

Carl Goodman began the presentation by noting that many years from now it will be interesting to look at work produced today, the infancy of digital media. He offered some background about the Museum of the Moving image noting that their collection of digital work does not attempt to be comprehensive, but rather is informed/guided by the work that they exhibit. Goodman’s view is that the work preserved today may not survive artistically, but it will be interesting because of where it will lead us. For more about the museum visit www.ammi.org

In the course of the Museum’s acquisitions, they began to acquire digital parts of other media’s end products, for example digital sound tracks or special effects. Goodman also noted that many other art forms, for example paintings, are being digitized and made available on the Web.

One example of the Museum’s work was to highlight the work of computer game enthusiasts who have re- created encoders to play old video games on new machines. Goodman’s example was an Atari game from 1979, ASTEROIDS. As an aside he noted that a 14.4 modem takes about 3 seconds to load the entire Asteroids game. Goodman emphasized that the Museum is making a serious effort to acquire work of historical importance and that they are attempting to not duplicate work being done by others.

He also underscored the Museum’s commitment to accessibility and noted that in all cases the institutional makes arrangements with the materials’ copyright owners. He cited an example of an art site, http://www.jodi.org which does not let users capture the material in order to keep the work dynamic. Goodman’s position is that the Museum helps as a filter because there is so much work available.

AMMI is seeking to build the archive but is not in a position to pay for the work. Thus far they have convinced many owners to let them have it for free. Many are happy to do so because it extends the life of work that would otherwise be lost. To hook up with other archives contact Goodman at cgoodman@ammi.org.

Edward Earl, Goodman’s colleague at AMMI underscore the difficulty of capturing dynamic materials. He pointed out the difference between url and purl (permanent uniform resource locator) and suggested a visit to http://www.purl.net. Other sites were the dead media project and the internet archive. Ghostsites by Steve Baldwin looks for sites that have not been touched for at least a couple of years, literally a site graveyard. You can also look at afterlife.org. Both Goodman and Earl noted the interest of this material from an archivist’s point of view. In ten years, twenty years, what voices will we hear?

Archiving the work of individual artists was also discussed although the issue was too broad for the length of this session. How work is preserved and re-presented is ever a problem. One of the participants noted that a major institution recently mounted a show with little more than a disk and some notes from the artist.

In the early days of film a tremendous amount of history was lost. We are at the same moment in digital media. How we view work in the future depends on the how we save the materials now.