Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [Not recorded: Makes a few introductory remarks about the context of the roundtable as part of a larger ARC funded research project into the role of Australian media art in an international context, and also mentions the position paper that has been circulated to invited participants before the roundtable was convened.] So Oliver, over to you.<\/p>\n
Oliver Grau:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah, so this paper has developed over a longer time, actually. It was already discussed a little bit in previous meetings, at the Swiss Conferences, and then at the ISEA there was some discussion at the keynote.\u00a0 And now we have finally taken the chance and the time to make it now, and then present it to you guys here in order to discuss it.<\/p>\n
The general perception is, for those of us who are 10, 15, maybe even 20 years in this field, that we don\u2019t have appropriate research tools.\u00a0 And it was perceived by funding institutions and by cultural politicians in the beginning of the millennium and the end of the 20th century, that well, there\u2019s this new media art, and they need some help to document and to archive what was shown in these festivals, the outcomes of art schools, of exhibits, of new media art programs and conferences, and so on.<\/p>\n
But this funding so far has been mostly project based, so two years here, three years there.\u00a0 There were even longer projects like the Boltzmann Institute, which was called an institute, but it was only seven-year funding, and it even disappeared before.\u00a0 So most of these projects, these archives, these databases, our research tools, they are not updated any more, they are outdated, and some of them even disappeared from the web in the meantime.\u00a0 And there\u2019s no clear strategy, neither to preserve media art as we know \u2013 there are some key studies here and there, but there\u2019s no concerted international strategy \u2013 and there\u2019s also no concerted strategy for tool development in the humanities and in our field, in media arts histories.<\/p>\n
So I think we all know about this, and we can also talk about this.\u00a0 So then we can ask what can we do in order to change that.\u00a0 The\u00a0 idea of this White Paper which might become a declaration of this conference, and then could be publicised also, could be a kind of a communication, an outcome of this conference, where we have a clear message to the cultural politicians, the funding institutions and so on.\u00a0 So what can we do?\u00a0 We can look, for example, to the natural sciences, how they deal with their international issues \u2013 and media art is an international issue; it is the international art of our time.\u00a0 For example, in astronomy \u2013 and some people have talked with Roger Malina about this \u2013 in astronomy you have something called Virtual Observatories where a number of nations pay into a common fund, and then all these participating nations, they can use the data which the astronomers come up with this data, and they can collectively use that and they can also collectively build this up.\u00a0 Maybe something like that could be also a structure for media art histories.\u00a0 We might want to discuss that.\u00a0 And, well, I should end here at this point already.<\/p>\n
Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So maybe at this point, what I might do is just ask the invited participants just to very quickly identify yourselves and say who you are and where you\u2019re from, and then I think we\u2019ll continue.\u00a0 So maybe we\u2019ll start with Sean.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the list.\u00a0 Can you all see that, if I make it a bit bigger?<\/p>\n
Sean Cubitt:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m Sean Cubitt, and my involvement is mostly through the Rewind British Video Art History Project, which I\u2019d worked on\u00a0 with Steve Partridge here, and Rewind Italia, which we\u2019re currently launching, and with the AMAHA Group, the Australian Media Art History. I also helped Chair the Melbourne Media Art History Conference [RE:LIVE].\u00a0 But I suppose I\u2019m an end user in this scenario.<\/p>\n
Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thanks, Sean. Okay, we\u2019ll just move around, so Steve, even though your name\u2019s not up there.\u00a0 You\u2019re in the front row.<\/p>\n
Steve Partridge:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m Steve Partridge, and I initiated the Rewind project which concentrates on British video art.\u00a0 The interesting thing is that I started out talking about that with Sean when he was in residence, about 11, 12 years ago.\u00a0 Our ambition was quite big then; it was media art and not just video.\u00a0 And I actually then wrote the application with Jane Proctor, and we started off talking about electronic art.\u00a0 And of course, it became so huge.\u00a0 It was the panacea to all our problems here today.\u00a0 And we needed about \u00a320 million pounds.\u00a0 So in the end we narrowed it down, not because of nationalistic reasons but because of these sort of practical reasons.\u00a0 And we did the first project on British video.\u00a0 Took us about six years. It\u2019s expensive, I\u2019ll say that.<\/p>\n
Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Okay, we\u2019ll just keep moving around.\u00a0 So \u2026<\/p>\n
Frieder Nake:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My name is Frieder Nake, from Bremen, Germany.\u00a0 I have done some work in what then was called computer art.\u00a0 Other than that, I have not initiated anything.<\/p>\n
Stephen Jones:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Only the whole damn show!<\/p>\n
Frieder Nake:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But, I\u2019ve worked many years with a small group and with a limited amount of funding, and I\u2019ve been lucky enough to start a database on currently only \u201cearly\u201d digital art that, I hope, will survive at least me.<\/p>\n
Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s great, thanks, Frieder.\u00a0 We\u2019ll keep moving around.<\/p>\n
Martin Warnke:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My name is Martin Warnke from Luneburg, which is near Hamburg in Germany.\u00a0 And I\u2019m involved in the documentation of complex artefacts of mainly pieces of art by digital means, so by inventing pictorial footnotes to pictures.\u00a0 And this maybe could be of use, and whether from archiving complex video art as well.<\/p>\n
Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Do you mean pictorial, like tagging, pictorial tagging?<\/p>\n
Martin Warnke:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No, not tagging, just interlinking image details, as a footnote puts text to text, we put image details to image details.\u00a0 It may be useful.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know whether that\u2019s the reason why I\u2019m here.\u00a0 Anyway, I\u2019m interested in media art, and I\u2019ll have my observations to share with you, and I also find it very important that an archive has to be done.\u00a0 Having been in Linz this year, at ARS Electronica, there was a very big hole in, you know, interactive media art, there\u2019s no any longer an archive of that.\u00a0 So \u2026<\/p>\n
Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah, this is a big issue.\u00a0 Thank you.\u00a0 Moving on to Lanfranco.<\/p>\n
Lanfranco Aceti:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My name is Lanfranco Aceti.\u00a0 I am the Artistic Director for ISEA2011 Istanbul, and the Editor in Chief for the Leonardo Electronic Almanac.\u00a0 And I work at Goldsmiths and Sabanci University in Istanbul.\u00a0 What for me, the direction I\u2019m coming from, we have a big project called the Leonardo Electronic Almanac that we are placing on line, and it has been a huge struggle in order to move between the different platforms.\u00a0 And also, what we\u2019re doing is we\u2019re doing (with Vince Dziekan) a series of exhibitions online, using social platforms, but the exhibition is then materialised in real spaces.\u00a0 So there is this little issue of how to archive online, how to keep the presence online, and then how to actually disseminate the outputs in physical formats.<\/p>\n
Oliver Grau:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One more thing to add.\u00a0 Also, you may know that I was serving as the first Director of this conference series.\u00a0 And then we also developed the database with the Virtual Art Archive since \u201999, still ongoing.\u00a0 So I also hope that it will survive, maybe at least a little bit.\u00a0 Maybe not me, I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 And unfortunately I have to leave in one hour, so don\u2019t be surprised that I just leave.<\/p>\n
Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Oliver has a plane to catch, so thanks, Oliver.\u00a0 So we\u2019ll just keep going quickly, Paul?<\/p>\n
Paul Thomas:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m convening this with Ross, and I won\u2019t say much. I\u2019m at the College of Fine Art, University of New South Wales.<\/p>\n
Pip Laurenson: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So I\u2019m Pip Laurenson.\u00a0 I was head of Time-based Media Conservation at Tate. So I had the responsibility of a team of about six people for works that were accessioned into the collection in film, video, audio, slide and software-based works and performances.\u00a0 And then last year, I moved over to be the head of Collection Care Research.\u00a0 And I guess I\u2019m also here in the capacity of being one of the people being involved in Matters in Media Art, which is a small initiative with\u00a0MoMA<\/a>,\u00a0SFMOMA<\/a> and the Tate.\u00a0 The current phase is looking at software-based art, and also file-based storage.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thanks, Pip.<\/p>\n Darren Tofts:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m Darren Tofts from Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.\u00a0 Apart from being involved in the project that Ross talked about, that\u2019s ostensibly the focus of this seminar today to some extent, I\u2019ve been writing on Australian media arts since the early \u201890s, and I\u2019ve been making it my business \u2013 I\u2019m still only second to Stephen Jones \u2013 trying to collect the biggest assemblage of ephemera, because that\u2019s one thing that Stephen and I have talked about a lot.\u00a0 Once that stuff goes, a lot of memory about history goes.\u00a0 So I\u2019ll try and get there in the end and I hope can pip you over the line Stephen, but for the time being, I\u2019m happy to defer to you.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thanks very much, Darren.<\/p>\n Mike Stubbs:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Mike Stubbs, chair of the Rewire Conference for Media Arts History conference for this year.\u00a0 Chief executive of FACT, Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, where we will be going when the conference finishes tonight.\u00a0 A beneficiary of the Rewind Project. I\u2019m an early British artist working with video and have benefited from that, but I\u2019ve also got a small archive of digital content, the FACT Archive, which is kind of dormant, and under-resourced, like many, many archives.\u00a0 There\u2019s a whole load of them out there.\u00a0 They\u2019ve had great energies put into them, sometimes with three years\u2019 research funding, occasionally I\u2019ve had a dedicated worker to animate them.\u00a0 I\u2019ve also had a little to do with GAMA, the Gateway Archives of Media Art, which I think we need to mention in this context.\u00a0 And if anyone\u2019s a member of GAMA it\u2019d be great to hear from them actually.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 They\u2019re on our links on the blog, there\u2019s a whole lot of those resources there.\u00a0 Thanks, Mike.<\/p>\n Nina Czegledy:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I am and I was the curator for Canada which was \u2013 and I say \u2018was\u2019 because we have been supported for three years by Canadian Heritage to build up this database and archive of Canadian digital culture \u2013 but I think we share the fate of many other archives. But as soon as we have it up, they realised that Canadian Heritage, how expensive it is to maintain it, and it was shut down, so it\u2019s sitting on a shelf, sorry to say.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thanks, Nina.\u00a0 Max?<\/p>\n Maximilian Schich:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m Maximilian Schich.\u00a0 I\u2019m an art historian working with a bunch of physicists, aiming to understand the ecology of complex networks in art history, which is all kinds of relationships between objects, people, locations, time, arrangers, periods, events, documents, stuff like that.\u00a0 And I guess the reason why I\u2019m working with very different, disparate types of datasets, and what we learn from them is that we can have universal patterns in art history.\u00a0 But at the same time, I think it\u2019s utopian to think that something like a central service is possible, where you have the situation where we all work into one giant infrastructure.\u00a0 I think it would also take the fun out of the business though.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thanks, Max.\u00a0 I think we\u2019ll skip Vince [Dziekan] and go to Lisa.<\/p>\n Lisa Gye:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m Lisa Gye from Swinburne Institute, Swinburne University now, of Technology.\u00a0 I was one of the guiding facilitators of\u00a0Fiberculture<\/em>, some of you might know, is a large Australian-based internet artist\/academic\/research network, and we spent a lot of the 2000s trying to archive both new media education resources and research, and art and ideas, with no budget and pretty much on the back of people\u2019s goodwill.\u00a0 And most of that has now coalesced into the\u00a0Fiberculture Journal,<\/em> which continues to run, but I think, like most projects, started as a wonderfully utopian, open, interesting program and ended up as a kind of, yet another version of the kinds of things we all have to do in order to get tenure and get promoted, and the rest of it.\u00a0 So I would like to see that open up again and go for the utopian archive again.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thanks, Lisa.\u00a0 And lastly I think Stephen.<\/p>\n Stephen Jones:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m currently a visiting fellow at the School of Media Arts at CoFA, with Ross.\u00a0 That\u2019s only just happened recently.\u00a0 In 1998 I started doing a series of \u2013 we did a two-day symposium where we got eight of the major people producing various classes of new media, and gave them an hour each to talk about their work.\u00a0 And that turned into a \u2013 well, it didn\u2019t turn into anything, but eventually it turned into my thesis, or it sort of generated my thesis, which, thanks to certain people in the room, has turned into a book that Leonardo have recently published.\u00a0 I maintain a private archive of ephemera; I have the fortune to be at least partly a reasonably good engineer, and so I\u2019m also very much involved in the construction of artworks, and in the conservation of early video and things like that.\u00a0 So I have a very major collection of early Australian video, all of which is digitised.\u00a0 I have particular positions on that, which I\u2019m more than happy to talk about.\u00a0 I am becoming quite concerned about the apparent loss of much of the post-1985 new media, which is also something that needs to be discussed in some length, I think.\u00a0 But the fact that I maintain a private archive means that I can really \u2026 I\u2019m almost completely independent of any of the exigencies of the funding bodies and the academic environment, and things like that.\u00a0 It ain\u2019t easy, I don\u2019t live very well, but every now and then I have the great fortune to get some really good support.\u00a0 So I think that that\u2019s really been what\u2019s made it work for me.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Great, thanks, Stephen.<\/p>\n Sean Cubitt:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There are actually two other speakers, Kuljit Chuhan and Andy Williamson.<\/p>\n Kuljit Chuhan:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My name is Kuljit Chuhan, or Kooj. I\u2019m a digital media artist, and a filmmaker and cultural producer and activist.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been working for about 25 years around issues to do with migration and race.\u00a0 And I\u2019m also involved in a group as a leading member, a founding member, called Virtual Migrants, which is a digital media group based in Manchester.\u00a0 For some years I\u2019ve been working around museology and museum-based work, not specifically around digital media at all, but particularly around collective memory and democracy and museology, with a woman called Bernadette Lynch, who some people here may have heard of, who\u2019s done some quite leading work in the UK at least, round democracy and museology.<\/p>\n I originally wasn\u2019t sure whether I was really qualified to be on the roundtable, and Sean nudged me and said, \u201cLook, I think it would be really good to have your perspective\u201d.\u00a0 And I think that was because I think when we talk about international archiving, then I think we\u2019re \u2013 you know, in the concept of digital media, and the progress of digital media generally \u2013 I\u2019m probably one of the darkest coloured skins in the entire conference.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been struggling to find anybody else, to be honest \u2013 I feel I\u2019m a little bit \u00a0on my own here.\u00a0 So I think there are issues which I think are rarely addressed in terms of representation.\u00a0 And also, as to what is art, digital media art, and what isn\u2019t, in terms of cultural aesthetic practice in countries that are outside the West, if you like, and also within digital divides and cultural divides within Western countries, in terms of race.\u00a0 And I think that those are underexplored and not really tacked on very well.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure whether we\u2019re able to even scrape the surface of these issues.\u00a0 But I think that\u2019s why Sean was particularly interested to have my contribution, even though I don\u2019t feel an expert in that.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t know if anybody is.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thanks very much, Kooj, welcome.\u00a0 So there are a lot of other people in the room who are experts in the field.\u00a0 But there are a few more people who are formally invited.\u00a0 I just wanted to ask, Andy and then \u2026<\/p>\n Andy Williamson:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah, Hi.\u00a0 Andy Williamson.\u00a0 I\u2019m a little bit of a fox in the henhouse here.\u00a0 My background is I\u2019m a digital strategist and researcher, and my area of interest and, I guess, some expertise, is around the democratisation of knowledge and information.\u00a0 And particularly open government, open publishing systems, looking at really the relationship between taxonomies and folksonomies the availability of knowledge, how democratic systems are inherently closed and inaccessible, and how open knowledge prises them open.\u00a0 So I guess my interest in this, and my reason for being invited here is the knowledge that I\u2019ve got around making information accessible, looking at large collections of data, looking at metadata, metadata standards, that kind of thing.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Wendy [Coones]?\u00a0 No?\u00a0 Sean, was there anyone else?\u00a0 There are lots of people in the room.\u00a0 For the purposes of trying to move along, and especially because Oliver has a plane to catch, can I suggest that we have a number of orders of business.\u00a0 The real purpose of the roundtable is to have this general discussion about how we can work together more internationally. Just in the introductions that we\u2019ve heard, we\u2019ve already touched on many of the issues that we\u2019re dealing with in our own areas.\u00a0 But before we move into that discussion, one of the things that we did want to do is to get your feedback on this position paper that we\u2019ve written.\u00a0 And one of the things that we\u2019d like to do is to present that to the plenary tomorrow, and for this to be a kind of declaration that comes out of the Rewire Conference.\u00a0 So, shall we do that, \u00a0have a look at that document?<\/p>\n So some people have already seen this document \u2014 all of the invited participants have seen it.\u00a0 But perhaps, can people read this, or is it worth actually going through?<\/p>\n Darren Tofts:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I think if you highlight the main points, it would help.<\/p>\n Sara Diamond:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yes, maybe you can also blow up the size of the text?<\/p>\n Howard Besser :\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Can you put the URL back up there?<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So the URL is blogs.unsw.edu.au\/amaha [LAUGHTER] \u2026 forget all the rest of it.\u00a0 You just have to go up to there, up to AMAHA, Australian Media Arts History Archive.\u00a0 Okay, so I will go back to reading the \u2026<\/p>\n Mike Stubbs:\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I want to intervene.\u00a0 Can I suggest, I think that probably everybody in the room has got a very strong sensation that there\u2019s a need, yeah, and that this paper outlines very well why there\u2019s a need, and what we should do, yeah?\u00a0 What can we do in this room together \u2013 there\u2019s some amazing people in the room \u2014 time\u2019s short, I\u2019m going to have to leave not long after Oliver. We\u2019ve got together a conference of world-leading experts in our field.\u00a0 So in terms of an objective for the meeting, it would be great if there was some general agreement this is a good thing to do, and then perhaps we could brainstorm some of the ways in which we could do it.\u00a0 And obviously in terms of the range of strategies as to whether it\u2019s achievable, or to say that currently, the world economy is broke, yeah, and it\u2019s a waste of time to fundraise for it, we\u2019ve got to just do it ourselves: that\u2019s strategy A. Or strategy B: we\u2019re going to actually lobby our politicians within our own respective national countries, and lead this into a much bigger kind of coalition of forces.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yep, so does anyone have any objections to Mike\u2019s proposal?<\/p>\n Sara Diamond:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Can you just tell us high level what the proposal is?<\/p>\n Sean Cubitt:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I think the central one is, one, two, three, four \u2013 fifth paragraph down: \u201cTherefore it is essential to establish some kind of international institution, network, that can guarantee the persistence of archives and other knowledge bases that we have, to make use of network collaborations.\u201d\u00a0 Basically it\u2019s a proposal to set up something in some kind of institution to be discussed.<\/p>\n Andy Williamson:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m quite interested in that word \u2018institution\u2019 actually, because we\u2019re talking about organisations and networks, and suddenly we\u2019re using the word \u2018institution\u2019.\u00a0 And for me, institution means a particular body in a particular point.\u00a0 So I just wonder whether that was deliberate or whether it\u2019s accidental that you\u2019re talking about institution rather than network?<\/p>\n Oliver Grau:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No, this can be discussed, of course.\u00a0 It\u2019s not thought that there should be a \u2013 it can be also \u2013 that there should be one \u2018house\u2019 where this institution could be, something like the Virtual Observatory, which is a virtual institution which connects many existing archives, for example, which also need funding, of course.\u00a0 It could be anything, and this could be discussed.\u00a0 But to keep it a little bit neutral, so that we can change the policy later, whether we are successful with this first idea at this stage.<\/p>\n Howard Besser:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It seems to me that we could have almost a sliding scale on this, that we can call for something that is more institutionally based, however we want to call that, but we can also start to work on something that is just a set of links on a particular web page, that will at least build momentum while we\u2019re waiting for funding, or for someone to jump up to being a curator of this.<\/p>\n Lisa Gye:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Can I jump in there and say as the person maintaining that set of links for many years for\u00a0Fiberculture<\/em>, they\u2019re not just links.\u00a0 There\u2019s this embedded labour, unnoticed and unrewarded labour, that goes with that, and I think that we have to acknowledge that.\u00a0 And we have to say \u2013 look, I was happy to continue to do it, and I still am happy to continue to do it, and I\u2019m sure many others are too \u2013 but we need to be clear about the fact that that labour is, even if it\u2019s volunteer labour, it\u2019s really valuable, and invite people to give that labour to us, rather than \u2026 Because otherwise, I think that\u2019s where these things break down, that people do all this work and then feel unappreciated because nobody recognises that it is work.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Got lots of hands going up.\u00a0 So Stephen and then Sarah, and then \u2026<\/p>\n Stephen Jones:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Your comment and your comment undercut each other, but I understand the basis of both.\u00a0 It strikes me that the original reason for building the World Wide Web was to solve precisely this problem.\u00a0 Only it was called science and physics, it wasn\u2019t called media art.\u00a0 Same process structurally.\u00a0 So it seems to me that if we were to simply adopt that low level behaviour of each node looking after its own construction of linkages to all the other nodes, then we actually have what we\u2019re looking for.\u00a0 And it really basically then requires a couple of mirrored servers in a few locations so that you don\u2019t get \u2013 if somebody blows up \u2014 you can still get back to it.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So that\u2019s a great idea.\u00a0 Pip, and then over to Sarah.<\/p>\n Pip Laurenson:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I just wanted to step back a minute, because I think there\u2019s something that we\u2019ve been engaged in which I think is relevant to this discussion, and I think it\u2019s important we don\u2019t leap to imagining the solution before we\u2019ve really understood what the problem is.\u00a0 And we\u2019ve had this in a microcosm, working with three institutions: one which spoke the language of large-scale digital repositories and imagining what that would look like for art works; and my institution which felt extremely pragmatic, and we like to work with little elements that can be updated quite nimbly and maybe fit together but aren\u2019t dependent.\u00a0 So a big systems approach to the sort of rather pragmatic have-a-go, build-it-up sort of approach.\u00a0 And those two cultures in the same sort of institution \u2013 so, I mean, the translation that needed to go on between understanding the language of the media archives, museum conservation for fine art, you know, and where we all fit on that, has actually proved much more about the issue than the technological problem or the how-do-we-talk-to-each-other problem.\u00a0 It\u2019s about translation, you know, all that in effect.<\/p>\n Stephen Jones:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That is how you talk to each other.<\/p>\n Pip Laurenson:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That is talking to each other, sorry.\u00a0 That was the \u2026<\/p>\n Stephen Jones:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What you\u2019re asking is the talking-to-each-other question.<\/p>\n Pip Laurenson:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah, so that was the wrong way.\u00a0 How do we link is not the issue.\u00a0 It\u2019s how do we understand what we\u2019re talking about and where we fit\u2026<\/p>\n Stephen Jones:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What we\u2019re saying\u2026<\/p>\n Pip Laurenson:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2026 within that, that I think has been extraordinary, given that we\u2019re institutions who work together for years, and this has been a real struggle.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sara?\u00a0 Sorry, for the people that haven\u2019t introduced themselves \u2013 I forgot to say this before \u2013 if you could just say who you are and where you\u2019re from, because we do have a lot of people who are representing institutions.<\/p>\n Sara Diamond:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So, Sara Diamond, I\u2019m the President of an institution, OCAD University, but I also was the Director of Banff New Media Institute for years.\u00a0 And I\u2019m the co-PI on a really extensive data visualisation network, and PI on a new project which will be a kind of interdisciplinary data warehouse and analysis network.\u00a0 So coming at it in part from an institutional perspective, but also very much from the Canadian experience which is Banff.\u00a0 You know, we\u2019ve essentially lost \u2013 almost lost \u2013 another media archive, which is a digital media archive, we lost the Langlois <\/strong>Foundation Archive.\u00a0 And I\u2019m underscoring this for a reason, and it\u2019s going to come back in some form or another.\u00a0 The Banff New Media Institute Digital Archive, which is massive, half of it was lost by the institution, and the other half has been recently saved, but it is very temporary in terms of its stability.\u00a0 And my concern is how to work to create enough institutional valance or mirroring in order to build a kind of robustness end-to-end project that we commit to.\u00a0 Because a huge amount of effort went into Langlois <\/strong>Archive and a lot of trust.\u00a0 And I really \u2013 I agree with the mirroring piece, and building the cloud, and having servers that are internationally distributed, but I think there\u2019s an architecture piece to this that is really going to be critical, as well as the commitment to work across cultures which Pip talked about.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thank you.\u00a0 Andy, did you want to make a comment on that?<\/p>\n Andy Williamson:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah, I just thought some of those initial \u2013 just creating links, I think is incredibly naive.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t work.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t work because people move on and get fed up. People don\u2019t talk.\u00a0 And you\u2019ve got to step right back.\u00a0 And this talk about mirroring and servers, it\u2019s a no-brainer.\u00a0 You don\u2019t have to have that conversation.\u00a0 You can do that in five minutes flat.\u00a0 Amazon cloud, done.\u00a0 It\u2019s a technical solution.\u00a0 You\u2019ve got to understand first of all, why do you want to do this?\u00a0 Why do you want to create any kind of networked set of archives?\u00a0 What\u2019s the value proposition for doing it?\u00a0 And for me, a big part of that is interoperability.\u00a0 You\u2019ve got to be able to curate these collections.\u00a0 And to do that, you\u2019ve got to step right away from the let\u2019s-dive-in-and-do-it, and start at the metadata level of how do you classify what it is you\u2019ve got.\u00a0 How do you rate, rank, sort, interrelate what you\u2019ve got?\u00a0 None of those are technical issues.\u00a0 Those are all human communication issues.\u00a0 You\u2019ve got to step right away from the digital and then look at, well, okay, how do these things get maintained?\u00a0 They get maintained here, here, here and here, by a person who\u2019ll do it for a year and move on.\u00a0 So how do you make them sustainable?\u00a0 And that\u2019s about crowd sourcing and looking at the value of the network.\u00a0 It\u2019s about creating a network of nodes, but being able to link them together.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Great, I think we\u2019ve got Martin over here, and then up the back.<\/p>\n Martin Warnke:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My first question would be what we would understand of media arts, since I come to the conclusion that in a way it came to an end, let\u2019s say momentarily, that would make archiving much easier.<\/p>\n Male speaker: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I disagree but \u2026<\/p>\n Martin Warnke:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So from my point of view it\u2019s an historic phenomenon you would have to archive.\u00a0 I would propose that.\u00a0 But then if you do that, we should have a look at where the centres of gravity are that conserve and make accessible conventional art, 2D, say, painting or whatever.\u00a0 And it\u2019s hard enough to maintain that even in the international realm.\u00a0 So I think the best strategy would be to flock to these centres of gravity, to underpin them with even more valuable material, because they are the ones that are least to fail.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Okay, so Darko, and then Max.<\/p>\n Darko Fritz: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Just a short comment I want to say first.\u00a0 There was a conference organised by Frieder Nake a few years ago in Bremen about these problems of metadata and combining across different databases \u2026 there is also data, some documents \u2026 and Pip will know more about that.<\/p>\n So what I\u2019d like to say about the paper, and I didn\u2019t read it completely, but I think it\u2019s important to underline, if everybody agreeds upon it, that the outputs of the results of the institution umbrella network being proposed will be free of charge.\u00a0 And I think it\u2019s essential to underline that because people \u2026 it\u2019s not implicit if you don\u2019t underline it.\u00a0 To be very straight up and to the point, the output should be free of charge; anybody can use it without any kind of a log-in that costs something, whatever, systems they are present at the moment.\u00a0 In this knowledge distribution \u2026\u00a0 As well, on the second part of that, somehow to be clever about the copyright issue, to not propose like Copyleft or Creative Commons, like not to promote one issue, but to reflect that there will be copyright issues that will need to be judged on a case by case basis, or something like that, considered within the context of such outputs.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I think we\u2019ll just go to Max.<\/p>\n Max Schich:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Pretty interesting.\u00a0 I have two attachment points.\u00a0 One is if there is no profit involved or no cost, then it\u2019s all about managing a non-profit organisation, like in the kind of, how Peter Brooker describes it, right.\u00a0 So how do you run a mega church, how do you run the Catholic Church?\u00a0 That\u2019s what we are doing, right?<\/p>\n Stephen Jones:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s a profit organisation. [LAUGHTER]<\/p>\n Max Schich:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But we have a lot of people working for free for them.<\/p>\n Stephen Jones:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I know, but it\u2019s still a high profit organisation!<\/p>\n Max Schich:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But that\u2019s the point.\u00a0 If you want to have a product which doesn\u2019t cost anything, then you have to actually basically create the apparatus \u00a0and the people who actually contribute without getting anything back.\u00a0 And so that\u2019s question one.\u00a0 The other thing is Jeffrey West gave a very nice talk at Google recently about, ironically, \u201cWill Google Survive?\u201d\u00a0 And he was talking about biological systems, and so basically the key take-home message of that talk was: any system that wants to survive needs to hierarchicise.\u00a0 And so our bodies are the best example: we have the hierarchical blood stream, we have the hierarchical nervous system; a lot of things in our body are actually hierarchical, and modular.\u00a0 And that kind of thing is also true for institutions.\u00a0 The basic example is the Vatican, which is a hierarchical institution.\u00a0 Now, if you have a company which starts out like Google, which is very flat, and now you want to sustain it, and you want to keep it for 30 years, does it go the way like Microsoft? Yes or no?\u00a0 And the answer he has was, either it goes bust or it becomes hierarchicised.<\/p>\n And so the question is, how can we merge that with our notion that we all want to be independent actors, have our own understanding of media art, have our own understanding of whatever, but at the same time basically make it sustainable.\u00a0 And if you look at the projects which basically we all cite as the keystones of being the best examples of open source whatsoever \u2014 the Apache Foundation, very hierarchical, Wikipedia, very hierarchical.\u00a0 And in fact you always have these kind of structures.\u00a0 And the question is how do we create that structure and nevertheless basically have the freedom to not basically crystallise into something where we basically can only work with classics.\u00a0 So we have Nam Jun Paik who\u2019s also a media artidt, so he can be there, but all this messy stuff which doesn\u2019t fit my data model can\u2019t be there.\u00a0 So that\u2019s something we have to work out, I think, and the question is, what\u2019s the hierarchy?\u00a0 How can that be maintained and who would be on top?<\/p>\n Andy Williamson:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Is it \u2018hierarchy\u2019 or \u2018hive\u2019?<\/p>\n Stephen Jones:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s \u2018heterarchy\u2019 not \u2018hierarchy\u2019 for a start.<\/p>\n Lisa Gye:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The whole question of hierarchy came up with\u00a0Fibreculture<\/em>, because it kept hierarchicising \u2013 is that a word?\u00a0 Probably not. And people kept trying to flatten it down.\u00a0 So another metaphor we could think about that I think is actually quite apt and hasn\u2019t been fully adapted to, is the organised criminal network, which is not a hierarchy. [LAUGHTER]<\/p>\n An organised criminal network is extraordinarily effective in running drugs or arms or whatever, but remains a network.\u00a0 So how does it do that?\u00a0 [GENERAL CONVERSATION AND LAUGHTER]<\/p>\n I\u2019m not sure that it is.\u00a0 I think you\u2019ll find if you look at the structure of criminal networks, one of the reasons they\u2019re so successful is that they are able to, in the same way that the internet can, displace resources in such a way that they\u2019re not easy to keep track of.\u00a0 And so the thing that drives them is that they have very clear goals.\u00a0 They know what they want.\u00a0 And I think that gets back to what we were talking about before: what is this for?\u00a0 What is its purpose?\u00a0 And is it just to preserve, or is it to leverage?\u00a0 What is its purpose?\u00a0 And if people are clear and agreed, then we have a criminal network that we can go with.<\/p>\n Darren Tofts: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So the word \u2018heat\u2019 would have a very different meaning then? [LAUGHTER]<\/p>\n Max Schich: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There is a counter-example.\u00a0 There is a sociological study about organised crime in this very famous\u00a0Freakonomics<\/em> book, where basically he brings evidence for the fact that the whole drug market is organised like a supermarket.\u00a0 So basically you have these kind of distributed franchises, and internally they actually work like supermarkets. So you have a guy at the top who does the bookkeeping and all of the stuff like in the supermarket.\u00a0 The only difference is that the cashier can be shot at the street corner.<\/p>\n Lisa Gye:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I think it depends on the lens you\u2019re looking at the research through.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen quite contrary research as well, so I guess, yeah.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Can I just bring it back.\u00a0 Oliver wants to say something.<\/p>\n Oliver Grau:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I think some of this discussion now goes really deep into what should this institution look like, or this network of institutions.\u00a0 This would be something we can \u2014 in part two of this meeting \u2014 discuss and brainstorm, etc.\u00a0 Part number one, I would still opt to go back to this white paper.\u00a0 And this paper transports for the first time \u2013 and we should remember that to our culture politicians, etc \u2013 that we are losing media arts. Some of them still don\u2019t know; they think it\u2019s still there. They don\u2019t know that we are even losing the documentation, and that we don\u2019t have an appropriate research structure for the humanities in the 21st century.\u00a0 So this is for many politicians and many institutions even, it is news.\u00a0 And so if we can bring this across, number one.\u00a0 And number two, then okay, and they want something, they need an appropriate funding, which is also comparable with arts, and historic arts \u2013 paintings, sculptures, prints, film, archives, etc.\u00a0 So this would be already a big step forward for the field, if we could bring this across.\u00a0 And then, as you said, campaigning after this is supported by the field and by the conference and by you and by the conference, then we can have maybe one month or so where we get all the signatures from institutions like ZKM, OCAD, others in Australia, etc. And then we can have this one pager, with as many as signatures as we can get.\u00a0 And then we can go to the national funding institutions and to the politicians, and say, \u201cThis is the problem, it\u2019s an international problem, and please do something\u201d.\u00a0 And where we can do something individually, or where we can do something in each nation, or if we can do something together, that\u2019s great. But I think the first point would be that we bring this problem across.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I think just in terms of a point of order as to where we\u2019re going, and going back to Mike\u2019s point, and Oliver\u2019s point, I think can we just generally agree that, yes, we need some kind of meta organisation that lobbies for all these things that we\u2019re expressing here?\u00a0 No? [LAUGHTER]<\/p>\n Katja Kwastek:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I have two objections.\u00a0 First is the first sentence, \u2026 \u201cthe<\/em> art of our time\u201d.\u00a0 I think if you want to put that outside the media arts community, it\u2019s an important art form of our time, but it\u2019s definitely not \u201cthe<\/em> art of our time\u201d.\u00a0 There\u2019s lots of other important contemporary art things.\u00a0 So I wouldn\u2019t let that go outside. Even if it\u2019s a political statement, still I think it\u2019s too much.<\/p>\n And then I think it\u2019s important \u2013 my name is Katja Kwastek, I\u2019ve been the Vice Director\u00a0 of the Boltzmann Institute, and I\u2019m working on the aesthetics of interaction.\u00a0 And that\u2019s also my point, that I think media art is often \u201cinstallative\u201d and there\u2019s artefacts and things, and we have to make sure not to reduce media art only to things that can be digitised.\u00a0 So of course this is another thing, that\u2019s not online archive issue, but preservation has to somewhere come up, even if it\u2019s another issue.\u00a0 We have to make sure, that\u2019s not the solution for the whole media art, but there has to be institutions like the ZKM or whatever, who really try to preserve.\u00a0 All we can say is we can\u2019t preserve media art, and that\u2019s why we have to document it. It\u2019s not my opinion, but maybe \u2026<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Okay, good point.\u00a0 Sean?<\/p>\n Sean Cubitt:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There\u2019s a lot of this which we threw together pretty swiftly, and I think, yeah, I\u2019m safe in saying we got a bit carried away.\u00a0 I think at the heart of it is we also cut out, because we were putting more detail than was useful, some reflections on two things: one was the question Martin mentioned before, of what is media art?\u00a0 And we loosely went along with that, and I think I can paraphrase it there: it\u2019s probably film, video, electronics, and digital, probably robotics, and very probably bio\/nano and other kind of art\/science collaborations with no really fixed borders.\u00a0 In particular, because maybe in big countries like Canada. The UK or the US, it\u2019s feasible to think about these things as separate, and separate scenes even, in the smaller countries like Australia and New Zealand \u2013 and I think it seems in many cases true in Canada \u2013 people work across these forms, the institutions migrate between them, and so on and so forth.\u00a0 So that was one issue, and I think it\u2019s really important to bear in mind because that could be different in \u2013 you know, one institution that\u2019s a member or one researcher or one artist\u2019s work doesn\u2019t need to define the entire project, but it should be reasonably open house.<\/p>\n The second was the idea of an association.\u00a0 We ended up using \u2018institution\u2019.\u00a0 I can\u2019t remember why.\u00a0 But I think something like an association or assemblage if you want to be very contemporary, [LAUGHTER] or a loose aggregation of individual researchers and artists who have no particular institutional kind of appontment, individual scholars, academics, et cetera, who might have an institutional home but are not really able to call an institution in with them; and then institutions who we hope to target and get particular curators or departments involved.<\/p>\n So what we\u2019re thinking of is an institution which can act as a focus for activism around these areas.\u00a0 In certain cases there are national, cultural policies that we would need to agitate in, just to say something like artist\u2019s film is worth noticing.\u00a0 Sad to say that for many years artists have been ignored by the British institutions, for example, both the Film Institute and the Arts Council.\u00a0 There are all sorts of odd and quirky things that happen in each country.\u00a0 What would be nice to have would be an association that provides key contacts in any geographical or generic area, and also has the weight of an international body who can pile in and help on local issues, and also that can prise open critical issues for archives, such as the absence of indigenous people or migrants in most archival projects as they have grown over the last 200 years or so.\u00a0 [Mobile phone ringing]\u00a0 We have also a problem of my mobile phone.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thanks Sean.\u00a0 There\u2019s lots of people wanting to say something.\u00a0 Alessandro.<\/p>\n Alessandro Ludovico:\u00a0 Briefly, I\u2019m editor in chief of\u00a0Neural Magazine<\/em>, since 18 years, and as for building the Neural archive, there are only two things really related to the statement which I would like to know if they could be clarified or not.\u00a0 One is I understand this umbrella of different organisations.\u00a0 But what these different organisation would build would be a shared common resource, international one.\u00a0 I mean, I don\u2019t know, I haven\u2019t read the paper, but I think that that should also be clearly stated.\u00a0 And another thing should be related to the many cases \u2013 one was mentioned by Sara before about what has been lost.\u00a0 I would also state that the people who are building this kind of research should take responsibility of them, in terms of kind of personal responsibility, as small institutions or as an act of what they are doing, in order to guarantee the preservation of what they are doing in the long term, eventually with somebody else in the same umbrella organisation taking over this kind of responsibility.\u00a0 I think that would be also a statement that should be included in the paper.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thanks, Alessandro.<\/p>\n Lanfranco Aceti:\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There was actually something about I loved about Mike and Oliver and Sean in a way connected, which is probably (I\u2019m obsessed), but it\u2019s money: it\u2019s the sustainability part of all of this.\u00a0 And I\u2019m probably going to be criticised for this, for what I\u2019m going to be saying, but you know, take it with a pinch of salt.<\/p>\n Darren Tofts:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Speak into the microphone, Lanfranco. [LAUGHTER]<\/p>\n Lanfranco Aceti:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yes, I just feel that this is another academic endeavour directed to academic institutions with, you know, very little hope of making big change.\u00a0 And I\u2019m actually \u2013 I have been thinking, and I\u2019m trying to think about ways of making money, of producing revenues. And crowd sourcing is not going to work.\u00a0 And it\u2019s not going to work because people are fed up with being exploited, don\u2019t have time, and will have less time, to dedicate to all kinds of different sorts of projects.\u00a0 The volunteers are extremely complicated to manage.\u00a0 So in a way, I think what we should be addressing is how these organisations are going to be supporting institutions to create funding, how it\u2019s going to be acting as a criminal network \u2013 I\u2019m Italian, so I know a few things about that \u2013 in order to make money, in order to push and to use all the different\u00a0 synergies between people.\u00a0 And my guess is that if we start looking at it in a different way, between all the people that are present here, that we could share resources first \u2013 as Alessandro was saying \u2013 and we could have a common shared structure that is already in place so nobody has to reinvent the wheel.\u00a0 Two, there should be a branding strategy to, let\u2019s use the word \u2018attack\u2019 big international corporations.\u00a0 And I know that, for example, in Istanbul there is something coming up which is a centre for new media arts with a big investment in that arena.\u00a0 And there are other things that are happening in other cities around the world, like Singapore.\u00a0 You know, they are mainly towards the East, there are European grants, et cetera.\u00a0 So what I feel is that probably we should have more of a CEO kind of approach that is focusing more on marketing, money, sustainability.\u00a0 And also we have to think seriously if it\u2019s possible to keep an open system.\u00a0 And actually what I receive in my correspondence with many people is writers complaining that they do not get a percentage of, you know, of the work or the writing that they produce, that you sell at the magazine, but they don\u2019t have anything that comes to them, the designers that are working for free, et cetera.\u00a0 So I believe that the issue of sustainability is actually a very, very important issue.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It is, it\u2019s huge.\u00a0 Okay, Pip, and then ten more people.<\/p>\n Pip Laurenson:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ll be really quick.\u00a0 Because there seems to me to be quite a lot of confusion about what \u2013 I mean I actually like the idea of a sort of umbrella advocacy organisation.\u00a0 That sounds to me more realistic than the uber archive.\u00a0 The other thing is that I don\u2019t do archives.\u00a0 What I do is the conservation of the art work, and you have to recognise that that\u2019s two different ambitions.\u00a0 And then I just want to mention the experience of PrestoPRIME, which is a European-funded body which is funded for the preservation of broadcast archives, and assumes \u2013 when I think of them, I tend to think big, Italian, large amounts of money, broadcast archive kind of thing.\u00a0 And they have a huge amount of money and we are boutique operations.\u00a0 But, I guess, and there we go back to the issue of scale, because \u2013 and this is where relevance comes in, which goes back to your value piece \u2013 is what I desperately need is tools that\u00a0 me and my six colleagues can use to do what we need to do with our collections, which are not the Library of Congress.\u00a0 It\u2019s a small amount of works that I want to do well.\u00a0 And so I think the advocacy framework to enable bits of funding for those sorts of projects or to bring people together to deliver those tools to the community actually might be quite interesting.\u00a0 [Multiple voices]<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In fact, part of the background for the particular research project that we\u2019re involved in is connected into those bigger initiatives around e-research and collaborations nationally and internationally, and so on.\u00a0 So I think right at the back, Morten and then \u2026<\/p>\n Morten S\u00f8ndergaard:\u00a0 Morten S\u00f8ndergaard, and I\u2019m from Copenhagen and I\u2019m Head of Research at the major Danish media art archive called LARtM where I\u2019m head of research, of what\u2019s called the unheard avant garde\u00a0 archive, which is really the \u2026 media art. \u00a0\u00a0I just want to put in two pragmatic points.\u00a0 One is, it\u2019s actually \u2013 you mentioned it a little bit, Lanfranco, and you may not be popular saying this, but actually the major cultural heritage media partners seek some kind of systematic and some kind of partnership with those kinds of organisations.\u00a0 We just did that with our archive in Denmark.\u00a0 I don\u2019t say that it will survive because of that, but the Danish publishers \u2013 public broadcast company, that\u2019s the Danish BBC \u2013 are trying to work out the financial and technical platform for the archive.\u00a0 And when you have that, then you can move on to actually do what we\u2019re actually discussing the content and how to build this umbrella of different archives, to sustain the individual archive.\u00a0 Yeah, so that was just \u2026<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thanks, Morten.\u00a0 And then right at the back.<\/p>\n Baruch Gottlieb: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I am Baruch Gottlieb the digital archivist at the Transmediale, and also working on the digital contents aggregator for the Europeana Project.\u00a0 And the Europeana Project, for those who know, is an umbrella organisation with 30 members, arts institutions, which do not share content directly, but it provides little thumbnails and little descriptions of the works that are in there.\u00a0 And it\u2019s very highly oriented around meta-tagging and descriptors, and this is the only way to get that many people to work together with all their different systems which have already been doing archiving for 50 years.\u00a0 Anyway, one thing I\u2019d like to see included into this, more of a motivation is just to strengthen the message that it\u2019s the cultural heritage; the media art is coalescing a lot of knowledge, a lot of cultural knowledge, and that researchers of various kinds, not only artists, art students and art researchers, but all kinds of sociological research, it has an educational value.\u00a0 The last thing is that I don\u2019t see any libraries mentioned here in the thing.\u00a0 I think they\u2019re a natural partner to this project.\u00a0 And why libraries? They also charge fees, by the way, and you can get fees back if you like.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thanks very much.\u00a0 Howard,\u00a0 just jump in.<\/p>\n Howard Besser:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m Howard Besser, I\u2019m Director of a Masters degree program in preservation and archiving of film, video and new media. [LAUGHTER] Two main points: one to follow up on something that Sean said.\u00a0 If this document is going to go to people outside our own community, I think it is important to have examples of what we mean \u2013 you know, film, video, electronic art \u2013 but have those in such a way that it goes\u00a0da, da, da<\/em>, so it\u2019s not circumscribed.\u00a0 But other people are just not going to understand what we\u2019re talking about.\u00a0 Second, as we go round the room, I feel like the blind man and the elephant who is, like, feeling the trunk and thinking it\u2019s a snake, and feeling the legs and thinking it\u2019s something else.\u00a0 People are talking about totally different things.\u00a0 Some people are talking about a massive archive that either aggregates or somehow encompasses every collection of every type of archived material out there.\u00a0 Frankly, that\u2019s not going to happen in any time in the next five years.\u00a0 That\u2019s a huge undertaking.\u00a0 Other people are talking about how to make money off of this thing; other people are talking about just a clearing house.\u00a0 So I\u2019d like us to maybe focus on what we\u2019re talking about that is doable.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been involved in a lot of international projects. If you start out trying to do this massive thing, we\u2019re not going to get anywhere.\u00a0 If we\u2019re \u2013 again, going back to my first statement which just got totally blown into something that I didn\u2019t mean it to be blown into \u2013 if we\u2019re talking about a clearing house, the first steps that we need to do is to gather the information about those of us in this room, what we do, what we\u2019re interested in, what kind of collections we know about, what kinds of threats there are, that that is the first kind of stage, and that\u2019s a more doable \u2013 it\u2019s a more fundable \u2013 but it\u2019s also doable without a significant amount of funding.<\/p>\n So the idea of being able to start jumping in, maybe have, you know\u2014let me throw out a straw man\u2014concretely, we just list six different things that we know we might want; we have three or four people sign up for each of those; we circulate an email list and we can actually have this kind of decentralised setup: Okay, here\u2019s information about the collections we know about; here\u2019s information about the tools; here\u2019s information about the research; and here are all the people who are interested in it who need to communicate.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thanks, Howard.\u00a0 Paul will be next.<\/p>\n Paul Sermon:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m Paul Sermon, I\u2019ve a worked as a media artist for 20 years.\u00a0 My work is archived on a number of different digital archives, including the Langlois Foundation and the Media Arts Histories network.\u00a0 I\u2019ve also got a collection of my own work.\u00a0 I keep them on as documentation of my own work.\u00a0 Talking about ephemera, I have lots of ephemera, in my pockets as well, but I have it everywhere, and I have lots of things that document my work and archive it.\u00a0 But really none of it documents my work, none of it archives my work.\u00a0 What archives my work is when I meet somebody and they say to me, I saw a piece of work of yours, and they tell me all about it, what they did, and what their experiences were like.\u00a0 That documents my work.\u00a0 It\u2019s those stories.\u00a0 It\u2019s just storytelling that documents what I do.\u00a0 And I wonder how do we archive storytelling?\u00a0 [Multiple voices]<\/p>\n Sean Cubitt: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One answer to that is that the critics, myself included, have been very relaxed about actually giving an accurate physical description of the experience of an artwork.\u00a0 And I think that\u2019s one of the\u2026 that\u2019s the sort of practice I would like to try and endorse and encourage, because that\u2019s precisely what\u2019s missing.\u00a0 And we can get this \u2026<\/p>\n Andy Williamson:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s what keeps it open, it\u2019s what makes it alive. Otherwise it becomes a dead archive of things that are just there.\u00a0 They\u2019re there to just be there.<\/p>\n Howard Besser:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We look at the practice of interviewing people just after they\u2019ve seen the work, and talk to them about what did they see in the work, and just collect an aggregate of those.<\/p>\n Max Schich:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So what you\u2019re saying is part of \u2013 what you\u2019re saying is that there should be different aspects, right, and I think it should totally also have this aspect of like \u2013 you know, the Palm computer was wired up and there was no software in there to preserve it, right, so that is another aspect.\u00a0 But, I think \u2013 can you scroll down to this key thing.\u00a0 If this document can be something, I think first and foremost it can be the first page of a funding application in a sense.\u00a0 And then your things would be like what is branching out.<\/p>\n And then I think there\u2019s two things missing: one is the big question; and the other thing is the big gap.\u00a0 So the big gap is actually pretty obvious because that\u2019s obviously the missing stuff, that we are losing artworks, right.\u00a0 So basically \u2026<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s the top paragraph.<\/p>\n Max Schich:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Exactly, but basically that is the key thing.\u00a0 But then the question is \u2013 and I think that\u2019s the reason why we debate it so hard here, but we\u2019re not going to find a solution in this discussion \u2013 is the first sentence:\u00a0 \u201cTherefore it is essential to establish an international contribution that can guarantee \u2026\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 So it\u2019s totally not clear what can guarantee the persistence of these valuable resources.\u00a0 And that\u2019s actually the thing we should actually work on.\u00a0 And I think it\u2019s viable in a sense if you think \u2013 I mean, one could think along the lines of, say, an IP project at the Framework Program of the European Union, where you have a bunch of partners and they basically work together systematically \u2013 and that\u2019s obviously something we have to come up with \u2013 to actually solve that question, and say, \u201cOkay, these are the solutions, and there are probably multiple solutions, which will actually sustain the persistence of these valuable resources\u201d.\u00a0 And there can be something like an association, there can be something like something like a key for a scientific paper. But if the artist can just shoot their stuff in, and then get preserved by being cited and whatever, and more documented and whatever.\u00a0 But that\u2019s something that\u2019s totally not clear now, and I think we have to come up with that.<\/p>\n And there is one initiative I\u2019d like to point to.\u00a0 The social sciences are currently working on an application for a so-called flagship program in the European Union, which is for \u20ac1 billion euros over 10 years, and they made it into the last, into the top eight.\u00a0 Obviously the other guys are great scientists and astronomers, and whatever.\u00a0 So there is some chance that actually the social scientists will have \u20ac1 billion euros over ten years.\u00a0 And it\u2019s very interesting to think about what kind of goals they might come up with.\u00a0 One thing is the whole earth simulator.\u00a0 Like simulating 6 billion people, what are they doing?\u00a0 Phone calling, travelling, having \u2018flu, whatever.\u00a0 And at the same time, you can have something like a crisis monitor, right, which would obviously make sense.\u00a0 When there is a war springing up somewhere, right, you can see by the activity pattern, and can you model that?\u00a0 And the question is, can we do something like that?\u00a0 What are the multiple goals?\u00a0 Doesn\u2019t mean we need a whole arts simulator, but what are the things we can do about it?<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Just to bring this back.\u00a0 So really, this document is meant to be a very simple call for some kind of umbrella association that brings us all together in some way.\u00a0 And it needs work, which I think we\u2019re all acknowledging that.\u00a0 The second reason why we\u2019re all here is that we\u2019re all involved in a range of projects ourselves, and so the question is how can we collaborate and work together, whether it\u2019s at the level of linked data or sharing resources, or all of the rest of it.\u00a0 So I just wanted to bring us back to those two.\u00a0 Pip and then Sara.<\/p>\n Pip Laurenson:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I just wanted just to go back \u2013 I sort of agree, but I think the interesting thing that is missing in here, which is why is art not included in all the other archives \u2013 why isn\u2019t it covered already?\u00a0 You know, there are big archives.\u00a0 Why isn\u2019t it covered? \u00a0God, we\u2019re funding you Europeana,\u00a0 for goodness sake, what\u2019s different?\u00a0 And I think that actually is a really tricky thing to articulate, and I think if we could articulate why all these people who are completely comfortable running large digital repositories, then get hit with the reality of an artwork like our friend and colleague here, and go, Whoa, this was actually a lot trickier than we ever thought.\u00a0 And I think that\u2019s what would be really a special value case, and news case, within the funding applications.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sara and then Kooj, and then there are another ten people.<\/p>\n Sara Diamond:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I just think the value proposition is slightly misguided and I think it needs to be reframed. I think the value proposition is too narrow and it needs to be reframed.\u00a0 And I did enjoy your remarks about research capacity, \u00a0but if we\u2019re really narrowing our nutritive resource as something that essentially serves a historic community, and an existing very narrow community \u2013 some would argue it\u2019s a dead community \u2013 or a set of scholars studying a dead community \u2013 I myself would question my own institution\u2019s investment of significant resources in.\u00a0 So I think it has to be reframed: it has to be reframed as the need for a resource that serves scholarship across a wide range of disciplines; it serves curatorial practices, and it serves popular media and access.\u00a0 And then it becomes something that you can take to a framework, you can take to an international centre of excellence in various contexts.\u00a0 But it also serves the local communities.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s really narrow.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thanks, Sara.\u00a0 Kooj?<\/p>\n Kuljit Chuhan:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah, when are the museums and heritage institutions and galleries and film archives, many of the ones that I\u2019ve been in touch with at some point in the last 10, 15 years have realised that their collections have been very partial, and have misrepresented histories, misrepresented communities, and have gone \u2013 and I\u2019ve started to invest in trying to change their priorities, trying to acquire material that previously they thought wasn\u2019t there, and trying to include that in their collections.\u00a0 Also, some material is not possible, I mean, if we\u2019re looking at, for instance, the history of Africa.\u00a0 A lot of material that\u2019s available now is artefacts that were collected by colonialists.\u00a0 A lot of the indigenous stuff was destroyed because of the instability of those communities.<\/p>\n And I think that it feels to me that there is a kind of opportunity here, if we\u2019re trying to look at things afresh, to do things differently to the way heritage in the broader sense, in film archives and so on, have been done before.\u00a0 And I just wanted to say one other thing, that myself and Mike were at a conference, a day symposium a few weeks ago, and somebody had a very interesting story about theatre in the UK.\u00a0 And a lot of students have imagined that there really hadn\u2019t been any black leading theatrical productions or writers and directors in particular.\u00a0 And in actual fact, some research has been done, and there were.\u00a0 And it\u2019s obviously in the relative minority, but in proportion to the number that were there, the number that are represented is almost nil, or near nil.\u00a0 And so we have this picture of there being activity that may be less in certain groups than there is for other groups, for the dominant group in the UK \u2013 white English people \u2013 but even what is there is being suppressed.\u00a0 And so you have black kids and white kids growing up with this idea that actually, you know, this doesn\u2019t go on, these communities aren\u2019t particularly able to do this.<\/p>\n Now, to me, you know, I think there\u2019s not only an opportunity to do things differently if we\u2019re doing something that\u2019s slightly afresh.\u00a0 But also we could go one further and actually make a kind of big statement and actually say that we\u2019re going to invest in trying to research and look at underrepresented areas.\u00a0 Now, that, unfortunately, doesn\u2019t happen naturally.\u00a0 It\u2019s not just going to happen.\u00a0 It will require effort and will require critical thinking, as well as investment, to try and uproot that, which is what all the other institutions who have kind of tried to redress the imbalance have done. And for somebody like myself, if those kind of things don\u2019t happen, then I\u2019m out of the room really, because to me it\u2019s that important.\u00a0 Okay.\u00a0 And I, at the moment, I don\u2019t know whether anybody else has got any views on it, but if I don\u2019t hear anybody talking about it, to me it\u2019s like, well, maybe it\u2019s not important to anybody.<\/p>\n Doug Dodds:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I should introduce myself.\u00a0 I\u2019m Doug Dodds, I\u2019m a senior curator at the V&A in London.\u00a0 Just two things actually. \u00a0First of all, we\u2019ve been collecting early computer-generated, computer-assisted works in the Prints, Drawings and Paintings collection which is where I\u2019m based.\u00a0 I just wanted to pick up on previous speakers.\u00a0 We\u2019ve also systematically been going through our collections and identifying works that have some relationship with black history, and making sure that that information goes into our database.\u00a0 So we\u2019re doing what we can to rectify that.\u00a0 But I really wanted to go back to some of the discussion that took place earlier about what this whole thing is about, what we\u2019re trying to put together here.\u00a0 And one of the things that strikes me, and I work in a big museum environment where we have \u2013 we don\u2019t just have media stuff, we have architecture and we have graphic design and we have furniture and we have all these other types of products as well.\u00a0 So firstly interoperability is really important, at a technical level, sharing data, but also sort of at an intellectual level, being able to engage with people who are involved in related fields but not the same field that you happen to be in.<\/p>\n So there\u2019s a whole range of issues that we\u2019ve been talking about here, and one of the things as we\u2019ve been talking that strikes me about it is that other groups like us have their own gatherings that they recognise as the focal point for their discussions.\u00a0 So architectural historians, for example, all get together on an annual basis or a bi-annual basis, and people pay subs to a group.\u00a0 And the same model operates in other areas.\u00a0 Graphic design, for example, graphic arts.\u00a0 I\u2019m sitting here thinking why isn\u2019t there an equivalent group.\u00a0 Because if there was an equivalent group with that sort of broad brush approach to it, then the kinds of more detailed things that we\u2019ve all been talking about might actually begin to happen.\u00a0 And in fact there\u2019s a hell of a different discussions going on here.\u00a0 I\u2019m sitting here thinking if there was a subgroup on this and a subgroup on that, and a subgroup on the other, then we might actually get things done.\u00a0\u00a0 But when we jumble the whole thing up the way we have done, then we\u2019re not going to get very much done at all.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve also been sitting here thinking about the architecture, different layers to it.\u00a0 You know, and there are different layers to what we\u2019ve been talking about.\u00a0 There\u2019s the pure data level that some of us kind of engage with; there\u2019s at the top level, like political aspects to it.\u00a0 So we just need to tease these things out a bit more before we\u2019re going to be able to go forward on a common basis, I think.<\/p>\n Max Schich: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A quick comment on this. I was very surprised recently. I was looking at structured data in Wikipedia, and I found out that in certain areas German Wikipedia editors are way more prone to put information which you also find in other Wikipedias into structured form.\u00a0 That means the German Wikipedia, DBpedia, the structured extract of Wikipedia, is heavily biased towards German-speaking and Anglo Saxon-speaking areas.\u00a0 So now you can say it\u2019s discrimination against the black view, or African people.\u00a0 It\u2019s simply not on the radar of these people, because it\u2019s not in their \u2013 at least in Germany, it\u2019s not on their daily kind of radar, right, they don\u2019t see it.\u00a0 It\u2019s just like you could say they discriminate against the US, except for New York and Los Angeles, because they don\u2019t know any other cities, right.\u00a0 So it\u2019s just how you pick your example.\u00a0 The question is if we find out there is some under-represented areas \u2013 and that could be African art, it could be knowledge about tourist sites in China and the US for Germans \u2014 which is not necessarily cultural discrimination \u2014 how can we lift it up, how can we point it out?\u00a0 Because I think it\u2019s necessary to point out a gap and then fill it, right.\u00a0 But I think this kind of discussion is very dangerous always going back and forth between the two extreme arguments, where Noam Chomsky says there is only good and bad science, I don\u2019t believe in this kind of racial segregation; on the other hand, obviously if you live in the US, you see there is racial segregation and there is people discriminated against.\u00a0 So there is almost no natural science led by black people, right.\u00a0 Which is not because they\u2019re bad scientists, it\u2019s just they\u2019re neither pulled nor pushed.\u00a0 Right?\u00a0 So I think it\u2019s an important problem which you raise, but we cannot simply state that the guys who collect the data are discriminating against them, because that was not the case, and I think it is not the case.\u00a0 It\u2019s not like the regular German Wikipedia editor is racist and doesn\u2019t put in \u2013 I don\u2019t know \u2013 notable historic African facts, right.\u00a0 It\u2019s just not on the German radar.\u00a0 That\u2019s the point.<\/p>\n Kuljit Chuhan:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah, but that one example, does that mean that you think that there is no institutional methods of discrimination that take place in lots of different ways?\u00a0 Do you think it\u2019s all down to accidental systems that are \u2026<\/p>\n Max Schich: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s both. There are patterns which emerge from local actors, and then these patterns are enforced, where it\u2019s just like if you look what\u2019s going on in the former Yugoslavia, there are certain things which are raised, and then somebody draws a line around it, and then the line is enforced, even though there might be overlap.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sorry, there are a couple of people wanting to say something.\u00a0 Ernest?<\/p>\n Ernest Edmonds:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ernest Edmonds, University of Technology Sydney and the Leonardo Transactions.\u00a0 I really wanted to pick up on Paul\u2019s comments which I hope we don\u2019t lose, and it relates to what Pip said.\u00a0 I mean, what\u2019s missing in a way is, \u201cWhy, what\u2019s the problem?\u201d\u00a0 And a thing that we\u2019ve been working on for about ten years in Sydney is looking at interactive art from the point of view of audience\/participant experience.\u00a0 And I think experience and engagement is the big issue.\u00a0 And we\u2019ve been developing research methods in how to do this, and I really feel it\u2019s very important we shouldn\u2019t be alone doing this. Everyone should be doing this.\u00a0 And one of the things we need to do is to focus on how do we record, find out, in fact, in a rigorous way about participant experience of interactive art.\u00a0 And that\u2019s one of the key things we need to be archiving.\u00a0 That\u2019s half the problem, that the object isn\u2019t really very interesting.\u00a0 It\u2019s the experience that we want to archive.<\/p>\n Anna Blecker: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My name is Anna Blecker, I\u2019m from Holland, involved in both policy side as well as the practical side of preserving and archiving.\u00a0 I\u2019d like to go back to the call that\u2019s out now, the letter.\u00a0 And what I really miss here is the urgency for policy-makers to take this on.\u00a0 And as the situation, as most of you probably know, in Holland is quite severe, everything is cut.\u00a0 They\u2019re not really waiting for these kinds of calls. \u00a0And I really think we should look for other ways of making ourselves sustainable.\u00a0 And I know crowd sourcing is really difficult, but I also think \u2013 and that also comes back in a way to the way of how to capture experiences \u2013 we really should go to our publics as well as to our artists, and really try to hear those voices and make them part of our work.\u00a0 And that way it will be more dispersed and more distributed, and hopefully more sustainable in the end, as well.\u00a0 And I really think we should think about newer models of how to sustain our archives.<\/p>\n Kuljit Chuhan: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This is just a point to do the stuff that Paul was saying originally in the previous session this morning, which Mike was chairing.\u00a0 I raised a question about the cultural use of digital art, really.\u00a0 There were some examples where somebody had got some screenshots off a virtual environment, and one of the questions was, \u201cWell, when I\u2019m playing games, for example, if I want a certain screenshot which is one of the most important parts of the game, it takes about three or four hours for me to get onto the level so that I can get that screenshot.\u00a0 But for somebody to \u2013 all the archive stills are always from the early part of the game where you don\u2019t actually get that environment.\u201d\u00a0 And Beryl Grey made a point that there was a research project which was to do with an oral history of using digital art \u2013 I don\u2019t know if she had a particular link for that, so I don\u2019t know if you remember or not \u2013 but anyway, that was quite interesting.\u00a0 But I just wanted to reflect on some of the work that I\u2019ve done in museums.\u00a0 With the Manchester Museum we did a project called Collective Conversations which is continuing, and that was modelled very roughly on something that the Natural History Museum are doing, which is where they have a number of discussions with members of the public around particular artefacts in the museum.\u00a0 And those are videoed and webcast and archived.\u00a0 So they\u2019ve got a huge archive, so they do two or three a day.\u00a0 And basically we developed conversations around artefacts in the Manchester Museum that were self-run with participants in a particular context.\u00a0 Then the British Museum got hold of the idea and expanded it.\u00a0 And then later on they talked to Radio 4 who produced a series called\u00a0History Through One Hundred Objects<\/em>, which some people in the room have probably heard of.\u00a0 So that\u2019s a kind of interesting idea, and it\u2019s based on the idea that any object or digital media artefact doesn\u2019t really have any meaning.\u00a0 What gives it its meaning is how it\u2019s used.\u00a0 And so we realised that the ultimate end of that would become a museum of conversations, rather a museum of actual stills or artefacts.\u00a0 So I think there are moves already in other areas of heritage and archiving which are going in that direction.\u00a0 But there are ways to develop that in a kind of semi user-generated or facilitated manner as well.<\/p>\n Andy Williamson:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I just wanted to pick up one point about the lack of cultural history.\u00a0 One of the exciting things about the conversation here is if you can create a shared model for archiving in metadata and recording, you remove the elitism from the process.\u00a0 And the reason for that white Anglo Saxon dominance is the elitism of the institution who recorded the history.\u00a0 So I think one of the big values in this is you take away some of that old-fashioned rigid academic \u2013 and I use that in a quite formal sense \u2013 power-broking hegemony of the taxonomies of knowledge and how we record and share knowledge.\u00a0 And you introduce the opportunity to record a number of different forms of knowledge which the old systems have dismissed as unimportant or irrelevant because they basically filter.\u00a0 So I think metadata \u2013 metadata as I understand it, creates that space for open systems \u2013 that means anybody can record and can record in a way that can feed into a bigger system.\u00a0 And that system isn\u2019t being controlled.\u00a0 It\u2019s much more democratised.\u00a0 So I think in the conversation about opening up archives across institutions, across organisations, across countries and across cultures, you automatically democratise the knowledge.<\/p>\n Max Schich: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But that\u2019s not true.\u00a0 If you measure how people actually do this, \u00a0then if you get a broader system, what actually happens is that the really popular stuff becomes even more popular. People talk more about\u00a0Mona Lisa<\/em> and less about the variety.<\/p>\n Andy Williamson:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s a different issue.\u00a0 That\u2019s about the propagation and the aggregation of information, not recording it.<\/p>\n Max Schich: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But the causality between open system and democracy is just a myth.\u00a0 There\u2019s no evidence.<\/p>\n Andy Williamson:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No, it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n Max Schich: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There\u2019s no evidence.<\/p>\n Andy Williamson:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There\u2019s a difference between a myth and no evidence. [LAUGHTER]<\/p>\n Lisa Gye:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That point \u2013 quite a few of these points also touch on education, because of course all of this is vital \u2013 I mean, who are we presenting this for?\u00a0 Obviously we\u2019re not presenting it for ourselves because we\u2019ve experienced it.\u00a0 We preserve it for people to come, and they\u2019re the people that need to be educated.\u00a0 I\u2019ve often had that experience with students \u2013 you send them to see an art work and they go, I didn\u2019t know people made stuff like this.\u00a0 And so they\u2019re the people we have to think about as well, in terms of how do we develop educational resources around these materials to ensure that people continue to teach it.<\/p>\n But I want to go back to\u00a0 Lanfranco\u2019s idea as well, that is where is the money going to come from, and how is this conversation going to continue?\u00a0 Because clearly nothing will be resolved here.\u00a0 So is there going to be a mechanism for this conversation to go on so that \u2013 you know, these are really vital questions.<\/p>\n Lanfranco Aceti:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One of the things that has come to my mind while everybody was talking is everyone is using a different system. For example, Pip is using a system, Doug is also using a different system.\u00a0 And some of these systems are \u2013 and I\u2019m speaking about archival systems \u2013 some of these actually, you know, could possibly be a first step to have some sort of access entry and speak with a department of engineering, and try to find out what are the issues in the archival process, and think about something that is easy to be implemented, it\u2019s friendly for the curators or the operators, so it suits a small-scale but it can be easily scaled up.\u00a0 So it would be a question of looking at what is available on the market, if it\u2019s open source or not, how much does it cost.\u00a0 So probably what I\u2019m trying to suggest is to get more into possibly the practicality itself of the archival.\u00a0 And then we could start doing it on a very small budget as an institution or a collaboration, and then look for possibilities of funding, and then, you know, transform it, and it could even become a new proprietary\u00a0 software system.\u00a0 So, I\u2019m much more of a, you know, let\u2019s get out there, let\u2019s do the stuff, let\u2019s put the energy together and let\u2019s try to solve things.\u00a0 That\u2019s my approach.\u00a0 And these are the things that I have taken up from these discussions. So some of you will receive an email from me and say, Okay, let\u2019s see how we can move on.\u00a0 I\u2019m thinking about the department of computing at Goldsmiths, for example, they would be interested.\u00a0 We could find somebody else, some other departments, and try with a small bid, nationally, in different nations.\u00a0 If we get together with Denmark, there is Holland, you know, there is Italy, there is Turkey, so you have already \u2013 if we apply to each single national group for a grant of \u20ac50,000 euros, for example, just to have seed money and to move on, that\u2019s already \u2013 if we get two of them, or if we get one, we\u2019re well off.\u00a0 And then we can look at a larger bid, and a larger structure, and move things on.<\/p>\n Paul Thomas: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My thought would be that this conversation is going to continue whether we continue it or not.\u00a0 So the question is, do we want to be players in the continuation of this conversation?\u00a0 So it\u2019s going keep happening. Do we want to try and work towards some sort of resolution so we don\u2019t keep on having to have it, so all the wonderful things you might want to do with your life, you can get on and do.\u00a0 And it seems to me that media art \u2026<\/p>\n Lisa Gye: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No, you can get on and do, Paul.<\/p>\n Paul Thomas:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But it seems to me that media art has done a number of different things in its experimentation, and some of these things get lost, and some of these things didn\u2019t work, and didn\u2019t happen. But we need to have some sort of reflective, conscious understanding of sharing of this information, even if it\u2019s just as a memory or a discussion that this thing happened.<\/p>\n Lisa Gye:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 At this point could we suggest that some kind of list serve gets set up to continue this dialogue?<\/p>\n Ross Harley: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I think these are great practical, pragmatic outcomes that can come out of this\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 meeting, and again just to reiterate what Paul\u2019s saying, we\u2019re not trying to solve all these problems today; we\u2019re trying to put people in the room who are actually already actively working on these problems.\u00a0 And I know that it\u2019s hard for us to stay focused, but the question is, what kind of organisational structure can we propose that will allow us to work together.\u00a0 Whether we have to seek funds or whether we do it with precarious labour and crowd-sourcing, they\u2019re other questions.<\/p>\n Morten S\u00f8ndergaard: Just a very small remark.\u00a0 Are you aware of CHAOS \u2013 not chaos per se, it\u2019s not a \u2026 – It\u2019s Cultural Heritage Archive Organisation System?\u00a0 You know that?\u00a0 Because that\u2019s a major European initiative, and this is the thing that the unreal avant garde is hooked up on, through this broadcast company, which was a huge revelation suddenly.\u00a0 You know, it felt like sailing into a harbour, then you could actually start being \u2026 . Before that it was all strategy, right.\u00a0 But I agree with Lanfranco completely, I think that this is \u2026<\/p>\n Ross Harley: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah, we can probably \u2013 because I\u2019m not sure I do agree with that actually.\u00a0 But we could come back to that.\u00a0 So Martin, then Pip and then \u2026<\/p>\n Martin Warnke:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s just my problem, but I\u2019m losing focus the last half hour.\u00a0 So the question for me is, do we try to vote and hope \u00a0and invent an institution from the scratch to solve all the problems, or are we heading for a manifesto which is not necessarily the end of all discussions.\u00a0 I think this should be a pragmatic decision we should take, and that would steer our contributions and discussions.<\/p>\n Paul Sermon: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I think you\u2019re trying to rush this a little bit.\u00a0 I appreciate that you you\u2019ve brought this together, but I think I\u2019m hearing some really interesting things coming from this room about what it is we\u2019re trying to do.\u00a0 And I think you\u2019re pushing to get us to kind of say, Go with it.\u00a0 And I\u2019m not sure \u2013 I for one am not ready to do that just yet.\u00a0 Yeah, keep talking.\u00a0 And I think actually, you know, when you say we\u2019re not here for ourselves, I think we are actually.\u00a0 I think we are, because I think what we\u2019re desperate for is just to say it\u2019s there.\u00a0 My work is in the Hall of Fame.\u00a0 But actually, all this stuff, I mean, if it\u2019s going to be different from what you can find on YouTube or Vimeo, or somewhere else, then fine.\u00a0 But if it\u2019s not, then I think it\u2019s a question of whether it\u2019s \u2013 well, how worthwhile is it?<\/p>\n Female speaker: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Museum, Amsterdam.\u00a0 And I work in Collections and Research now for two years, and what I found when I came there \u2013 as the museum has been closed for seven years \u2013 is an organisation completely focused on the back end of conservation and preservation.\u00a0 And we have a very hybrid collection so not only media arts.\u00a0 And for me, the focus would definitely be also on going out there with question-driven, content-driven, not only focusing on conservation per se, because it takes up so much money, specially at a time with budget cuts and everything.\u00a0 It\u2019s highly relevant, but only I think question-based, and looking at the urgency of what kind of questions do we have and stories do we have to tell.\u00a0 So that was just one remark, and I of course fully embrace this, but still I have my doubts.<\/p>\n In the Netherlands we have this organisation, Contemporary Art, Who Cares?\u00a0 It\u2019s a very good, I think, symposium or conference each year or each other year where everybody shares their knowledge and expertise on media art presentation and on \u2026<\/p>\n Pip Laurenson:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s actually a one-off \u2026<\/p>\n Howard Becker: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It was once, just once.<\/p>\n Pip Laurenson:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2026 that was the response from a European-funded project.\u00a0 Now, the first one was Modern Art, Who Cares?\u00a0 But the important thing to know \u2026<\/p>\n Howard Besser: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yes, and ten years later, it\u2019s Contemporary Art \u2026<\/p>\n Pip Laurenson:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2026 is that the organisation was exactly that kind of funded European project that resulted in that.\u00a0 Just for those who were going for that model.<\/p>\n Female speaker:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yes, that\u2019s exactly what I wanted to say. \u00a0Please, let\u2019s think of that, because I like the idea it was formulated over there, and I think in a symposium, and a structure that we can meet up and talk to each other and focus on that.\u00a0 Because I don\u2019t believe in any big system.<\/p>\n Pip Laurenson:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Well, think of that maybe as a three-year funded multi-site international research project that then you come and say where you\u2019ve got to.\u00a0 I mean, I think it\u2019s really important that we have money to do some of the work as well, you know.<\/p>\n Female speaker:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah, then we should work \u2026 go for it and then, you know, present it at a conference like that.<\/p>\n Howard Besser:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 At the risk of alienating some people \u2026<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Off you go, that\u2019s okay. [LAUGHTER]<\/p>\n Howard Besser:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2026 okay, I don\u2019t understand the advantage of trying to make one big archival search system.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I don\u2019t think anyone is suggesting that.<\/p>\n Howard Besser:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Or even to make things so compatible that one can search across all of these systems.\u00a0 The cost of doing that is probably in the millions of euros and requires cooperation from every one of those entities that is managing that.\u00a0 How difficult is it if we, for researchers here, to have a list of all the places you would have to look and then just go and do individual searches?\u00a0 Is that worth the millions of euros?\u00a0 And furthermore, in any case, there are literally hundreds of other sites that have a few of these, a few of those, that would never participate in something like this.\u00a0 The\u00a0 libraries, the archives, the special collections.\u00a0 So in any case, someone would never be able to search everything across one try.<\/p>\n Martin Warnke:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Two possibilities. \u00a0If we don\u2019t aggregate to some central point or some portal that manages the searches, we end up with Google, which is fine.\u00a0 But does another job than, say, some sort of organised metadata with access to good material.\u00a0 We have this problem I think in every nation\u2026<\/p>\n Pip Laurenson: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Look, guys, this is a subcommittee for overall ambitions of this group.\u00a0 I think we should just remember that we\u2019ve got lots of different things, and what is the central organising thing \u2013 although I don\u2019t know, Sara, were you saying you didn\u2019t want this to be focused on media art?\u00a0 Because if it\u2019s \u2026<\/p>\n Sara Diamond:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No, I said we should be absolutely focused on media art.\u00a0 But the framing device around it I think it has to be very radically different than it currently is.\u00a0 Because, you know, the Transmediale Intervention is right, because it\u2019s very much about creating a resource that\u2019s verification, for advocacy as you said, but also for multidisciplinary access into our very narrow field.<\/p>\n Pip Laurenson:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Right, okay, portals in, yeah.<\/p>\n Sara Diamond:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So I think the rationale really, even in the first instance, has to shift.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Mike, did you want to have a last word?<\/p>\n Mike Stubbs:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I don\u2019t think I can say anything that wouldn\u2019t last at least 30 minutes.\u00a0 But it\u2019d be great if the group could resolve a short statement we could bring to the plenary session at the end of the conference.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thanks, Mike.<\/p>\n Max Schich:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One little comment, the systems question.\u00a0 I think, yes, it is about a lot of other things except for the system. But there are two standards which are so dominant that we cannot ignore them.\u00a0 One is HTML and Google, and the other one is the Semantic Web.\u00a0 If you want to say \u2018X is an artwork done by Y\u2019, you can state that in a machine-readable form in a very easy way, as a semantic triple in RDF, or whatever are the languages.\u00a0 Just put it out, use your own data model, whatever.\u00a0 Other people will take care of doing the rest of the stuff, because like the data model and all the aggregation and stuff can be done by data scientists, which is actually also a group of people that should be taken in, if you collect data, because we\u2019re interested in how to analyse the stuff, right.\u00a0 And one interesting thing about the big system which was for 30 years the goal of cultural informatics, in a sense, one interesting thing is if you have these kind of systems that actually cover a number of things, then you find out the single curators use the same data model but they all understand it in a different way.\u00a0 So basically that\u2019s not something which needs to be solved.\u00a0 Not everybody needs to understand the same data model in the same way, but actually we want to find out how people understand the world.\u00a0 And that means, if they use the same data model or not, we want to measure how do they understand this, how do they understand this.\u00a0 But there are some notions, like, for example, \u2018Author X wrote book Y\u2019, that\u2019s so trivial, it\u2019s so easy to actually just use a double link to state that, right.\u00a0 So there shouldn\u2019t be any discussion about these kind of simple things, right.<\/p>\n Pip Laurenson:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Right, but it\u2019s still a subcommittee of the bigger problem.\u00a0 I\u2019m not saying it\u2019s not really important work, and it may have a lot of synergies with all sorts of other groups that are grappling with that issue.<\/p>\n Kuljit Chuhan:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We need to bring together these kinds of challenges, and work out who\u2019s going to go away and work on it.<\/p>\n Sara Diamond:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m just trying to see where there seems to be some unity in the room, and there does seem to be further need for an advocacy group that can facilitate funding through support for each other for individual projects.\u00a0 There does seem to be some agreement about the need for at least a kind of metadata structure where we can find collections, you know.\u00a0 And that means knowing what exists.\u00a0 I think many of us even in the field don\u2019t know what exists.\u00a0 But those are sort of lower-hanging fruits, so to speak.\u00a0 And I think the third is, there\u2019s a really valuable discussion about the nature of the kind of research that needs to be done in order to give birth to a larger project, and the kind of research questions that even that aggregate archives would allow.\u00a0 So I mean, those are the pieces that I\u2019m seeing.\u00a0 And I think there is a general will to \u2013 I know I\u2019m speaking from my own position \u2013 but to frame this as a resource that has, not as a crisis resource.\u00a0 I think there\u2019s a problem when groups at the margin put forward projects like this with a kind of set of alarm bells going off, because it\u2019s perceived as extremely self-serving \u2013 as opposed to saying, you know, there\u2019s this incredible resource that\u2019s needed for science, scholarship, engineering, humanities, social sciences, absolutely for the cultural space for institutions.\u00a0 This is a set of objectives that will help to preserve it.\u00a0 And it will serve our community to build up for the wider community.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We\u2019re lucky we recorded that, Sara.\u00a0 I think that was very focused.<\/p>\n Sean Cubitt:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 May I check in with a couple things \u2013 just to add one or two other things.\u00a0 One is about the \u2013 something Lisa said about the part of the audience for this \u2013 Sara\u2019s quite correct \u2013 has to be something recognisable to policy makers.\u00a0 But what Lisa\u2019s suggesting is it\u2019s also something that\u2019s recognisable to most of the people in the room, at least certainly those involved in education, which is about future audiences, and future makers and future enjoyers of this kind of practice.\u00a0 One of the things that strikes me about the debate around meta-tagging and the risks of folksonomies, for example, is that they can be either normative, which I think is a bigger risk, that people all agree that the more people you get, the more they all tend to agree that the important issues are the author, the date and the title.\u00a0 And that the less interesting thing is about the appearance of let\u2019s say African figures in Hogarth.\u00a0 It\u2019s only in the last little while that you would think of adding that kind of data, the sort of data that Martin\u2019s project I believe is looking for, that kind of iconographic data.<\/p>\n My research at present is largely about environmental footprints of various works and practices.\u00a0 And that\u2019s not stuff we saw data about.\u00a0 The problem is the archive is that we don\u2019t know what people are going to be interested in the future.\u00a0 So the thing is, you need to collate as much information as you possibly can, qualitative research as well as quantitative research.\u00a0 That, I think, is a really, really interesting challenge.<\/p>\n Pip Laurenson:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And perhaps keep the art works as well?\u00a0 Not throw your hundred objects out?<\/p>\n Sean Cubitt:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Which I think all of us know is a very specific challenge.\u00a0 The Palm was an example of that. \u00a0We know that the work designed for a 5 inch floppy or for that matter an oscilloscope is going to be increasingly difficult.<\/p>\n Lisa Gye:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This group can\u2019t do that but it can teach people how to do that.\u00a0 So rather than this group being about doing that job which you\u2019re obviously doing really well, it\u2019s about how does the next person come along and do it? What can they learn from you and what can you learn from the other people doing it?<\/p>\n Sean Cubitt:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A little organisational point about the symposium concept, this is the fourth or fifth \u2026<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Fourth.<\/p>\n Sean Cubitt:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2026 Media Art History Conference, so some of us have been around this scene since 2005, and the Banff Conference that Sara hosted.\u00a0 It\u2019s really interesting how the conversation has changed, but also how some of the things remain the same.\u00a0 It\u2019s wonderful that we\u2019ve almost not had one of the most bitterly argued conversations at Banff which was about cannon formation, the idea that we should list the 40 or 50 most important works and concentrate on preserving and go on from there.\u00a0 You can guess which side of the argument I was on.\u00a0 But those are really interesting debates.\u00a0 I think personally that the time is here to set up a loose association, associated in particular with this symposia which we already have as a successful, an increasingly successful, place where researchers, practitioners, curators and archivists are able to come together to discuss materials, to try and make a bridge between them.\u00a0 Because at present we meet every two years and relatively little happens on an international level, except at these events.\u00a0 So my suggestion is this is actually\u2026<\/p>\n Darren Tofts:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But that bridge-making, Sean, you picked up the idea of nomenclature, and I\u2019m hearing a lot of the time here that we\u2019re sort of discussing a software project or something.\u00a0 The idea of social capital around storytelling, and folksonomy has been used, heritage, the kind of social investment in this is something that nomenclature is very important.\u00a0 So we\u2019ve got to be careful about how we describe what we\u2019re doing, what discourses we\u2019re using.\u00a0 Even if we want to use one that is problematic, at least we\u2019re signalling what that is.\u00a0 And for me, the software one, the idea of exclusion, the idea of those kind of issues, are kind of key but they all come back to a kind of social capital in the project.<\/p>\n Max Schich:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For the guys who were invited, we got another text from\u00a0Humanities Quarterly<\/em>, and I think that\u2019s exactly raising that point, where he was talking about cyber infrastructure all the time and basically not really making a difference between cyber and regular infrastructure, or whatever.\u00a0 But that\u2019s also this kind of thing, you always have the feeling, Oh, my god, there has to be some database, or whatever, but you don\u2019t really need it, right.\u00a0 I mean, you can do immediately archive on paper with a pen, right, in a sense.<\/p>\n Pip Laurenson:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I just want to go back to this \u2018loose organisation\u2019 because I think from just \u2013 one of the interesting things about being here is that we\u2019re \u2013 it\u2019s about desperately needing the permeability of discussions between the academic institutions, the museums, the archives, the media arts organisations, the practitioners, the artists, because we are completely dependent on the programmers and the artists\u2019 works that we collect.\u00a0 They are serious collaborators in terms of being able to understand what we\u2019re trying to preserve and do it.\u00a0 So I think the proposal on the floor is really interesting because I don\u2019t think we have that as an organisation yet.\u00a0 We might have a number of different ones that belong to those constituencies, but an organisation that actually sets out to create those collaborations between those types of \u2013 I can\u2019t think of the word \u2013 constituents, I guess \u2013 would be really valuable.\u00a0 Yeah.<\/p>\n Baruch Gottlieb : \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah, I\u2019d just like to bring it back to the document again, and say, like, okay, we\u2019re talking about an advocacy situation where we\u2019re trying to coalesce needs and direct them towards supports, right?\u00a0 And that we, alluding to Mike\u2019s last wishes \u2013 I mean before he left [LAUGHTER] \u2013 come up with something that we can sign, or something that we can agree on by the end of the conference.\u00a0 Maybe, I don\u2019t know, it\u2019s too late to put it as a Wiki, but maybe we can all email somebody our addendum or whatever, and then whoever wants to sign can sign.\u00a0 I mean, we can also think about a Media Arts History Working Group or some title for what we will be as an assembly.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I think that\u2019s a great \u2026<\/p>\n Baruch Gottlieb:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s important to take responsibility on this policy.<\/p>\n Max Schich:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But you can be part of the group without agreeing on the documents, right?<\/p>\n Baruch Gottlieb:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Oh yeah.<\/p>\n Max Schich:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Because that\u2019s a point, right.\u00a0 If you want to discuss something that you don\u2019t agree on, then \u2026<\/p>\n Lanfranco Acetti:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I don\u2019t agree, but I\u2019m still going to be in it.<\/p>\n Martin Warnke:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Strongly disagree?<\/p>\n Max Schich:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But you know what I mean.<\/p>\n Lanfranco Acetti:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No, I\u2019m teasing, I was just, you know.\u00a0 I\u2019m concentrating about the failure of the European Union in these days.\u00a0 [LAUGHTER]<\/p>\n Nina Weinhart: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if you have this saying in English, to put the saddle on the wrong end of the horse?<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No, but its good, we should! [LAUGHTER]<\/p>\n Nina Weinhart: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I think there is so much discussion about creating another organisation, or what type of organisation it is, but there were hardly any ideas what to do differently this time with this organisation, or either focusing on what the individual problems are.\u00a0 And I think, talking with so many friends around here who all have some tiny projects or ideas, and work on that.\u00a0 I have this little allergy against institutions, where a talk can take two hours and in the end it\u2019s just more confusion.\u00a0 And I\u2019ve always been seeing these five or six friends here, where there are almost quite precise things to discuss, and it would be such a nice opportunity to really discuss these things, instead of where does the next institution sit and who\u2019s going to be the director.\u00a0 [LAUGHTER] So I hope it\u2019s not provocative because I enjoy this conversation.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No, I absolutely agree.<\/p>\n Nina Czegledy: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So I just would like to ask after all this, what are you going to say at the planning session?<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Well, I\u2019m thinking about that.\u00a0 [LAUGHTER] I\u2019m thinking that the document we\u2019ve got needs more work.\u00a0 Given the time \u2013 so it\u2019s 4 o\u2019clock now; we\u2019re scheduled till 4.30 if people still have the energy \u2013 is it worth\u00a0 trying to collaboratively now write something?\u00a0 There\u2019s part of me that just goes, don\u2019t even suggest it.\u00a0 [LAUGHTER] And then there\u2019s another part of me that thinks, well, maybe there\u2019s this document which has got \u2013 in general there\u2019s some support for it but it needs to be reworked, and that needs time, and we probably need to do that outside of this particular framework.\u00a0 What do people think?<\/p>\n Lisa Gye:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Is there some way to do that and maintain the momentum?\u00a0 Because momentum is a big thing, and I think that\u2019s what Mike was getting at, and Oliver as well, that don\u2019t lose the momentum by not having something to say tomorrow other than, \u201cWe\u2019re working on a document, we\u2019ll get back to you\u201d.\u00a0 Is there a phrase or \u2026<\/p>\n Howard Besser:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I kind of think that this document is good enough to take it back to the entire group tomorrow and to say, \u201cIn concept, do we endorse this?\u00a0 The details will be morphed a little bit, but in concept, do we endorse this?\u201d<\/p>\n Wendy Coones:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And maybe even just highlighting some of the phrases that say, \u201cThese are the points that are in contest: the word \u2018institution\u2019, the word \u2018out of our time\u2019.\u00a0 These are going to be in discussion in the future, but the general layout is okay.\u201d<\/p>\n Sean Cubitt:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I think we could probably that \u00a0some of those words just cut out, easy.\u00a0 And I think we should also agree that some terms go in: \u2018advocacy\u2019 and \u2018collaboration\u2019 seem to be the most important terms; and Sara\u2019s idea of the kind of broader constituency to which the work that this group undertakes is addressed to.\u00a0 So as well as to ourselves and to the technicians, archivists, et cetera, it\u2019s also going to be something that we can actually send to a policy body with some hope of getting some money.<\/p>\n Max Schich:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And I also vote that we put in the gap and the question.\u00a0 Because then the institution issues is out of the room.\u00a0 Because we could put that in a question, if that is the thing which is going to sustain the persistence.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Can I suggest then that maybe we just have a couple of volunteers from this meeting to actually stay back after school [LAUGHTER] and to write that paragraph?\u00a0 I was going to volunteer Sean and myself as original writers of that draft document.\u00a0 Who else would be interested in helping to draft that?<\/p>\n Lisa Gye:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I volunteer Darren, because he\u2019s quite good with words.<\/p>\n Sean Cubitt:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He is, I\u2019ve noticed that.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Was there anyone else who would be \u2013 okay.\u00a0 So I think it\u2019s easier to do that rather \u2013 if we go into the document now, it\u2019s just \u2026<\/p>\n Sean Cubitt:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Not to be \u2026 now that I know what my homework is.\u00a0 I thought some of the discussion around meta-tagging and taxonomies was actually beginning to fire off.\u00a0 And are there others of you who\u2019d like to meet and talk about that for ten minutes to see if there\u2019s enough common interest to keep your conversation going?<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So what I wanted to say, as far as point of order is concerned, it\u2019s 4 o\u2019clock, there are other sessions that some people may or may not have to or want to go to. We\u2019ve got the room till 4.30 or longer.\u00a0 How do we feel about continuing our conversation for another half hour, or whatever we feel like?<\/p>\n Darko Fritz:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When is the time for signing something?\u00a0 Are we going to sign something or not?<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So the proposal is that we will take into account all of this feedback, we\u2019ll reword that document as something that can be presented in the plenary tomorrow as something that could just be endorsed by Rewire 20 \u2026<\/p>\n Alessandro Ludovico: Yeah, but I think that at this point it\u2019s not trivial.\u00a0 We are able to rewrite it and to rework it, and tomorrow everybody who\u2019s here or has been here, would want to personally, I mean, undersign it, would be a bolder statement.\u00a0 It would be endorsed by a community more than just by the more abstract, by a conference.<\/p>\n Nina Czegledy:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s what I have to say, that the momentum is really important.\u00a0 Back in 2004, at ISEA we created a group of us, the Helsinki Agenda, and this was presented to the European Culture or Ministers Conference, or something, and quoted many times, and it was done right there.\u00a0 That was good.<\/p>\n Lisa Gye:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And is there going to be an email list?<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah, I think we need to do that.\u00a0 One of the things I was thinking actually is that we should get everyone\u2019s email so we\u2019ve got a list of names.\u00a0 Maybe one practical thing, I might just get that list, and Paul, maybe we might just take that off the door and circulate it, so we\u2019ve got all of your names and emails.\u00a0 I know that\u2019s something that Nina does in her workshops and it\u2019s great.\u00a0 So I think we should form some kind of list.<\/p>\n Sean Cubitt: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We also have presumably a list of the participants of the conference, so we should be able to send \u2026 so we can just mail everybody, say, as an electronic document and you can sign it.<\/p>\n Pip Laurenson:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Can I just ask, if we\u2019re thinking \u2013 and I don\u2019t think it always has to have a director \u2013 but if we\u2019re talking about an international network \u2013 and I was struggling with what the word is, and I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s \u2018longevity\u2019 or something \u2013 anyway, the International Network for Something of Media Art, which is to do with the continuation, supporting \u2013 I don\u2019t want to use the word \u2018preservation\u2019 or \u2018conservation\u2019 or \u2018archiving\u2019 or any of those, but there\u2019s some other word that needs to go in there \u2013 then I guess the important thing is that if we explore the feasibility in what it would actually take to create that sort of body, then the next step is this whole permeating these different areas so that it goes to the museum people through their list serve, it goes to \u2026<\/p>\n Multiple voices:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah.<\/p>\n Pip Laurenson:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2026 is that, structurally, is that what we feel is the shape of what we\u2019re moving towards?\u00a0 Or are we going for \u2013 is that the first step?\u00a0 And then we start looking for collaborations for the funding, for the practical elements?\u00a0 Because although I sort of jumped on the thing about Contemporary Art, Who Cares, because the interesting thing about that is that those activities came out of the fact that the International Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art was set up, and then that went to Europe and got money.\u00a0\u00a0 You know, it\u2019s, just on a very structural shape.<\/p>\n Lisa Gye:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It could be the Future of Media Art; rather looking back it\u2019s looking forward to the future of media art?<\/p>\n Howard Besser:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I think it\u2019s a mistake to start circulating this to wider communities unless we have some place for them to respond to.\u00a0 You know, we need to have a committee or a mail box or a website, or something, before we start circulating it because otherwise it goes out to the museum community and they say, Oh, yeah, this is good.\u00a0 Well, what do I do about it?\u201d\u00a0 You know, we have to have something more concrete.<\/p>\n Sean Cubitt: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I think once we get an agreement in principle, we can start filling in some of the gaps.\u00a0 If we try to invent not only the manifesto but also write the constitution at the same time, we might not get out of here before teatime.<\/p>\n Paul Thomas:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 At 5.20 we\u2019re all going to march down to FACT [LAUGHTER]<\/p>\n Max Schich:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But isn\u2019t that also like a key mission which could actually drive\u00a0 the momentum, so basically creating this place where you can actually post something, right?\u00a0 Because if you send it out to the museum community, and it comes back, maybe somebody, whatever, has some difficult to preserve art work, right, and then, they say, okay, there is a community; I\u2019ll send it there.\u00a0 What will you do with that, for example?\u00a0 And that would create a conversation which would be ongoing, right.<\/p>\n Paul Thomas:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sean made an interesting point about the Media Art History happening every two years.\u00a0 But we also have ISEA, and we\u2019re going to have ISEA next year and the year \u2013 so there are a number of these events that could become the nodal structure for sharing information as well, that keep the community, as it were.<\/p>\n Sean Cubitt:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And there are undoubtedly, and there are already panels at other specialist conferences in art history or cinema or media studies and \u2026<\/p>\n Paul Thomas:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But it just gives us a way to keep the conversation jumping to the next event, and therefore if there is a kind of manifesto or organisation, it then can be linked in the same way that ISEA \u2013 Nina\u2019s been linking education as a construct in electronic art in all the different electronic events, and kept that alive as an ongoing discourse.\u00a0 And we haven\u2019t created a manifesto, but that\u2019s next.<\/p>\n Wendy Coones:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I would suggest \u2013 I\u2019m Wendy Coones, working with the Database of Virtual Art and Media Histories Archive \u2013 is that the conversation that we\u2019re having now, other disciplines have had a similar conversation before us.\u00a0 And so it might be also appropriate that those of us who have contacts with people from other disciplines, that we do some interviews, or just ask them, people who were working with genome projects, or people that were working on the astronomy project, \u201cHow did you guys go about it?\u00a0 Did you set up an association first and get a post office box where people could send things to?\u201d\u00a0 Or was it just all understood that there were a couple of people?\u00a0 And see how they were doing that, because there are already, particularly in the natural sciences, these larger structures that have been set up.\u00a0 And Max you can say something \u2026<\/p>\n Max Schich:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There is a very nice kind of parallel to that.\u00a0 Molecular biology has this thing called KEGG, which is about molecular pathways.\u00a0 And everybody uses it, and it\u2019s always the community, right, always it\u2019s the thing you have to buy, whatever \u2013 don\u2019t know the precise modalities.\u00a0 But one of the key aspects of it is people download it and then they append it with information they have generated themselves. So basically they get it as a standard, and then they change it.\u00a0 And so basically it seems to be the fate of every standard in biology.\u00a0 So it\u2019s this kind of toothbrush kind of thing: everybody wants to have one, but everybody wants to have their own, right.\u00a0 And that\u2019s something we have to live with,\u00a0 I guess, and that\u2019s something we need to embed there.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So Paul\u2019s saying he thinks we should wind it up.<\/p>\n Paul Thomas:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t trying to \u2026 [LAUGHTER] \u2026 the time to actually write the thing up might be a good time to start to get the groups.\u00a0 And Sean suggested a meta-data discussion which could happen in the caf\u00e9 somewhere.<\/p>\n Alessandro Ludovico: I\u2019m particularly keen of this signing thing tomorrow.\u00a0 What I mean is, when we end up with the manifesto and we print it out, we were just passing around in order to be signed by all the people, how we will do it?<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah, I\u2019m not sure how we will do that.<\/p>\n Lanfranco Acetti: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Send electronic signatures.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Somebody mentioned it, there is a list of all the delegates, right.<\/p>\n Paul Thomas: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This could just be an in-house thing that we\u2019re doing now, and this could be done that this will be ready at a certain time and posted outside on the front when you come in to register, and then you can sign it.\u00a0 We\u2019ll leave it with Omar, and Omar will have it there for you to sign it.<\/p>\n Max Schich:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Can\u2019t you do it electronically?\u00a0 Because there\u2019s people who will be there, and not there any more.<\/p>\n Paul Thomas:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah, of course we could do that.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I think it needs to be done electronically as well.\u00a0 And it raises the whole fundamental question of what is this thing that we\u2019re talking about creating, and then how do we manage that, not just in physical meetings, but on-line and virtually.<\/p>\n Morten S\u00f8ndergaard:\u00a0 I\u2019m just thinking of the word \u2018infrastructure\u2019.\u00a0 I mean, that\u2019s the idea of, basically the running idea behind this project, but we did an infrastructure that kind of umbrellas a number of institutions just in Denmark, that\u2019s just to make ten different institutions and artistic spaces as well work together.\u00a0 So the term we use was \u2018infrastructure\u2019.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It really is very much about linking infrastructure that currently exists, we want to address the problems that all of us have in terms of the sustainability of these projects which are all in dire straights really.<\/p>\n Lisa Gye:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Isn\u2019t that an exoskeleton rather than an infrastructure?<\/p>\n Darren Tofts:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah, maybe.<\/p>\n Lisa Gye:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s like a protection and something to adhere to.<\/p>\n Sean Cubitt:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s incredibly invertebrate of you.<\/p>\n Lisa Gye:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thank you.<\/p>\n Sean Cubitt: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I have a draft statement.\u00a0 Short is good.\u00a0 \u201cGiven the challenge of the imminent lost of digital heritage, we propose \u2013 this conference proposes, or something \u2013 to establish an international association of media art histories and futures to promote advocacy and collaboration, to disseminate best practice and to debate new challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I know we said we weren\u2019t going to do this, but I am getting the feeling that the energy is like we\u2019re wrapping up.\u00a0 Why don\u2019t we in fact try and do this statement now.\u00a0 Those of you who are going, \u201cOh, my god, he said he wasn\u2019t going to do that\u201d, I think float away \u2026 but I think can we agree to do that, and let\u2019s get this statement?\u00a0 So Sean, can you \u2026<\/p>\n Howard Becker:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If you\u2019re going to leave, sign \u2013 put your email address on this before you leave.<\/p>\n Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yes, make sure you sign the document. So I think some people are going to be taking us up on that.\u00a0 So thanks very much everyone for coming along.\u00a0 We do hope that this is the beginning of something much longer and larger.\u00a0 Some of us are already working on these projects together, so we\u2019ll be continuing to work together.\u00a0 And thanks very much especially to all of the invited participants for coming along.\u00a0 So can we just thank them in the usual way.\u00a0 [APPLAUSE]<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ross Harley:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [Not recorded: Makes a few introductory remarks about the context of the roundtable as part of a larger ARC funded research project into the role of Australian media art in an international context, and also mentions the position paper that has been circulated to invited participants before the roundtable was convened.] So Oliver, … Continue reading “RE:WIRE Roundtable Transcript”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":0,"parent":12,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-325","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/amaha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/amaha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/amaha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/amaha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/amaha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/amaha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":327,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/amaha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/325\/revisions\/327"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/amaha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/amaha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}