Pixel und Zeile zu Frame: Baukasten zu einer Theorie der Medienerhaltung

With the discovery of moving pictures around 1880, a paradigm change took place that decisively altered human perception. With the advent of electronic images, the separation between information carriers and image carriers was consummated in a radical way during the second half of the 20th century – we assume this to be a paradigm change as important as that of 120 years ago. Because, as a result of a delay in knowledge, electronic images today are all too generously labelled ‘digital’, but fail to be explained by that designation, a formal classification into analogue and digital, hardware and software appears indispensable both for understanding and for preserving this type of media (art). This reveals that it is not at all the case that we simply live in the digital age and from now on can pass on our cultural artefacts without loss. Quite the contrary: abandoning the originals – and in media art, this just happens to include
also the display devices with their techno-cultural specificities – is threatening to bring about a knowledge surrogate very soon, right under our nose so to speak, encouraging a precarious relationship between action and history. In this sense, the text is also intended as a critique of the ‘Variable Media Initiative’ which – paradoxically, with regard to art being passed on on a very long-term basis – threatens to abandon the material basis of a number of contemporary works of art. The independence of information carriers and display devices has led to specialised sensitivities, making it extremely difficult to bring together works in their entirety.

Read the full article. Language: German.