…
Best before / Use by … ?
BEST BEFORE / USE BY ...?Seminar on the preservation of analogue and digital carriers
Tuesday October 28, 2008 | 10.00 - 17.00
Screening room MuHKA_Media (Photo museum)
Waalse Kaai 47 – 2000 Antwerp
Belgium
Should you wear gloves when handling film? Is it best to store a videotape vertically or horizontally? Should you digitse vinyl-lp’s? How long does a CD-R last? What if the monitors of an installation artwork need replacing? Is there an optimal climate for the storage of a hard disk?
The preservation of media art is different from the preservation of other heritage because of the specificity of the carriers. In contrast to a painting, carriers do not show anything of their visual content, unless they are played on compatible playback machines. Many of these carriers (filmstrip, videotapes, vinyl disks, …) suffer a decrease in quality each time they are played. Besides this kind of tear and wear, carriers can also be affected by the obsolescence of their playback equipment. Factors like too high temperature, humidity, illumination, … speed up the aging process of analogue and digital media. Humidity can cause mold, heat deforms the container of the carrier.
But how can you prevent those things from happening? And what can you do in case the carrier has already been damaged? Will it still be possible to save the work? Although good preservation starts with easy and straightforward principles, practice shows that artists are not always familiar with the accurate guidelines. In the preservation of their analogue or digital media, they often do what they feel is best. The exchange of information resources and practical knowledge does not run smoothly because professionals and artists do not share a common knowledge platform. With this seminar, PACKED wants to present and disseminate this lacking knowledge by bringing media artists in contact with experts from the field.
Speakers: Jean-Pierre Sens (SuperSens), Ramon Coelho (Dutch Institute for Media Art / Montevideo), Filip Boudrez (eDAVID), Johan Favoreel (Music archive VRT), Els Vermang (LAb[au])
Click here to read the report of this event (including video lectures).
