Preserving the Immaterial
Guggenheim, NY, March 30-31, 2001
www.guggenheim.org/variablemedia

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This just in: Bits die, browsers fail, computers age, plug-ins drop out,
and artificial languages become extinct. Those museums adding conceptual
and new media art to their collections now have more to worry about than
finding enough acid-free boxes and white gloves to preserve the objects
in their possession. With their Variable Media initiative, the
Guggenheim museum is making an ambitious effort to tackle the
conservation issues associated with "ephemeral" works. At the center of
the initiative is the museum's advisory group, consisting of several
prestigious artists, curators, and archivists/conservators, cultivated
to discuss the challenges associated with collecting, storing, and re-
presenting such work. 24 of these consultants spoke at the recent
Preserving the Immaterial Conference, an event which many present
referred to as "historic."

The aim of the conference was to outline a strategy for proceeding, both
with the museum's initiative and with developing a larger conservatory
gameplan. Yet, putting good intentions aside, the issues and strategies
unearthed were quite problematic. At stake is the relationship of the
artist to both curators and audience members.

The conference was essentially a polyphonic dialogue around eight case
studies: reviews of the issues associated with collecting, preserving,
and re-presenting pieces now in the museum's holdings. The issue of
collecting–holding–is the first in a series of philosophical thorns in
the side of "Variable Media." The Guggenheim owns several "conceptual"
artworks, including conference cover-boy Felix Gonzalez-Torres's candy
spill, "Untitled (Public Opinion)," which consists of 700 pounds of
individually-wrapped black licorice candies spilled into various
dimensions. The "problem" with Gonzalez-Torres's piece is that museum-
goers are encouraged to remove candy from the spill. To show the piece
again, new candies must be specially made to spill. This has not proven
easy in previous bookings of the piece.

The candy spill was likened to other installations, performances, net
art works, and experimental films in that they all have degrees of
"variance" (hence the term "variable" media). Yet, it is this
similarity, this variability, which points to an actual materiality. Not
only has the Guggenheim paid for and "collected" these pieces, they have
also made efforts to "store" them, if only in the form of a diagram or
score for the execution and design of the piece. The statement
"dimensions variable" assumes a spatial presence of some sort, as does
the model of museum spectatorship (visitors standing before a work of
art, be it "live" or online). The only element in the geriatric care of
aging art which might be endowed with an immateriality is the artist's
intentions.

All conference participants seemed to agree that the lifespan of works
created in variable media is significantly shorter than, say, that of an
oil painting. In his opening keynote, writer Bruce Sterling compared an
iMac to a Van Gogh, saying that both are susceptible to many of the same
threats (moisture, light, heat, microbes, etc.), though one would throw
out an old iMac while they'd attempt to "restore" a Van Gogh. In the
case of a work of art, however, throwing out the website with the iWater
seems implausible, if only to the museum who paid $80,000 dollars for
the right to exhibit it exclusively. In fact, the Guggenheim now
suggests that artists consider translating analog work to digital
formats (i.e. film to video, a live performance to a digital recording,
and so on).

So, not surprisingly, the Guggenheim's strategy for preserving so-called
ephemeral works involves attempting to capture and preserve artists's
intent. This difficult effort revolves around a questionnaire, developed
by Guggenheim Assistant Curator Jon Ippolito and team, which asks
artists about present-tense parameters for displaying a piece, and their
vision for the future of the work. In the present, the questions address
installation, performance, interactivity, reproduction, duplication,
encoding, and networking. Future concerns include storage, emulation,
migration, and reinterpretation.

The former are fairly straight-forward, pinpointing desirable lighting
conditions, prop availability, server demands, etc; meanwhile, the
latter evoke a host of philosophical problems. Most of these problems
stem from the museum's distinction between "reproduction" and
"duplication." The Guggenheim considers a "reproduction" a copy of an
original which is not lesser in quality than the original, whereas a
"duplication" is a copy which is lesser in quality. A new candy spill is
presumed to be of the same quality, if the same quantity and type of
materials are used, whereas a film-to-video transfer would be lesser in
quality due to a resulting loss of detail. But then how does that
accommodate artists like Ken Jacobs, who relies on the abstraction
inherent in the process of duplication? Should he identify a degree zero
of abstraction, a final stopping point before he reaches his own
entropic state? And what good does reproduction, sans loss of quality,
do Mark Napier if the plug-ins, browsers, and platform required to view
his "Net Flag" are deceased? Must the art work die with its medium?

Realizing these problems, the Guggenheim has proposed that works not
only be emulated, but also "migrated" to new hardware. Using the example
of a Flavin fluorescent light installation, Ippolito suggests that such
migration would consist in "upgrading its equipment and source material
to the current version of these technologies." Flavin's installation
might then look and feel like fluorescent light, but in fact be halogen.
This takes us to the root of the problem: interpretation. Does halogen
have the same cultural, economic, technological, and personal
connotations that fluorescent did in the 1960's? If not, then the
migration of the installation is actually a re-interpretation.

The Guggenheim admits that re-interpretation should not occur without
warrant, but expects that, in filling out their questionnaire, some
artists will allow for and indeed lay out parameters for the future re-
interpretation of their work. The relevant questions, however, simply
pertain to the "behaviors relevant to the work," which are being
interpreted in the present context, and there seems to be no indication
that the museum is able to predict the future.–To know how a flat
plasma screen will hold or re-interpret a work created for a 1970's
television or a 1990's desktop monitor. At present, then, it appears
invariably inevitable that the artists' intentions must then expire with
the variable media in which they created their work… An unfortunate
(im)material reality.