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For the 100 years it\u2019s been in operation, the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio has been a repository for artwork by American masters, from preeminent 19th-century painters like Winslow Homer, to 20th-century realists like Edward Hopper and George Bellows, to pop artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So in 2000, when the museum opened its Beecher Center for Electronic Arts\u2014the first American museum dedicated solely to new media\u2014it hoped to be a similar storehouse for modern artists. Among the works on display: holograms from Jonathan Ross, lightpaintings from Stephen Knapp, and a sculpture by Nam June Paik, considered by many to be the father of video art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paik, a Korean expatriate, found a home in the avant-garde New York art scene of the 1960s. He was one of the first artists to use a camcorder to capture videos and invented a synthesizer to alter them. His works incorporated television screens that showed everything from eggs to fish to the cello, and even built the stringed instrument out of television screens and recruited a musician to play it.Paik can be found in the halls of the Smithsonian, the Whitney, and especially the Butler, where his \u201cArs Electronica\u201d project once featured 20 Panasonic TV screens, each displaying everything from sitcom scenes to a blue background with black lines appearing intermittently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But within a decade, a problem arose with the installation. One by one, the Panasonic screens started to burn out. The Butler was able to replace some of the 1993 cathode ray tubes through the miracle of eBay, but gradually those became harder to come by as well, and the museum was faced with a difficult decision: Do you put Paik\u2019s piece into mothballs or upgrade his technology?It wasn\u2019t as if the museum staff could simply ask Paik what his vision was. He died in 2006\u2014coincidentally, the same year Panasonic stopped making cathode ray tube televisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the end, museum director Lou Zona decided to continue to show the piece. \u201cWe put flat screens inside the casings,\u201d Zona says. \u201cAs a result, there\u2019s no curve, so when you stand to the side, you don\u2019t really appreciate what Nam June Paik did.\u201d In fact, if you look at the artwork from the side, it becomes evident that the flat screens were retrofitted into convex cases.Ars Electronica 2.0 may not have been exactly what Paik presented in 1994, says Zona, but the Butler tried to honor his vision as best as it could with the resources it had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMost modern art is born, it lives, and it passes on,\u201d Zona says. \u201cMuseums try to keep artwork alive.\u201d Zona is well aware of the existential implications that come with trying to do that. He\u2019s hardly alone. Over the past decade, the field of time-based media conservation has been growing\u2014because it has to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This year, two people will receive master\u2019s degrees in the curriculum from New York University. It might not seem like much, but they\u2019re the first with that type of specialization. Most time-based media conservators were trained in other media and ultimately fell into the field.Glenn Wharton, for example, was trained as a sculpture conservator before moving into time-based media at New York\u2019s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). He\u2019s now the professor of museum studies at NYU.\u201cThe first person was hired to do something like this in 2005,\u201d Wharton says. \u201cNow there are about a dozen. I think we need about 100. There\u2019s a huge need, and it\u2019s growing fast.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Artists have always tried to work on the cutting edge. Sculptors moved from stone to clay to metal alloys, from bronze to steel to aluminum. Painters like Vincent Van Gogh used new and innovative pigments in their paintings; sadly, those face preservation issues of their own, as they\u2019re prone to fading.And when electronic and performing media came along in the 20th century, artists picked up new tools and toys, from moving pictures to recordable and replayable sound. Time-based media also has roots in the 20th century idea of kinetic sculptures\u2014works with moving and potentially replaceable parts, exemplified by artists like Marcel Duchamp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Time-based media refers to any work of art with duration, be it a five-minute video or a three-day piece of performance art, as opposed to traditional art like paintings or sculptures, which have physical, but not necessarily temporal, dimensions. This art also uses consumer products, and thus reflects the changes in those products, which can come quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As magnetic tape became popular in home use, either for video or audio recording, it became popular for use by artists as well, Wharton says, as did the use of televisions. In 1950, 9 percent of American households had a TV set. Thirteen years later, less than 9 percent didn\u2019t <\/em>have one.By the 1970s, artists were starting to gravitate from tape to computers, and as computer technology advanced, they jumped from formats like CDs and DVDs to flash drives and portable hard drives. While the 20th century progressed, Wharton says, these artists started to work more conceptually, also artistic heirs to Duchamp, who is regarded as the father of conceptual art. \u201cThe idea became more important than the object,\u201d Wharton says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a result, some artwork is designed to be temporary\u2014displayed for a short period and then thrown away. And the creators are just transmitting their work through the best possible media available at the time.\u201cSome artists say, \u2018I don\u2019t care about the nostalgia, just the image,\u2019\u201d Wharton says. \u201cCan new technology express the work better?\u201dIt wasn\u2019t until the 1990s that museums like the Butler started acquiring time-based works like those by Paik; Jenny Holzer, who used LED lights to offer social commentary; and Bill Viola, who gravitated from kinetic sculptures to visual art using video recordings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The rise in time-based media had market influences, too, says J. Luca Ackerman, an associate conservator with the Better Image, a New York firm dedicated to photo conservation. Private collectors were taking an interest in time-based media\u2014in some instances as a cheaper alternative to more traditional works.\u201cTime-based media is the new kid on the block, so there\u2019s a cool factor,\u201d he says. \u201cBut people who are entering the art world find it cheaper to get into.\u201dAckerman notes that the \u201890s ushered in a migration from film to digital photos\u2014not necessarily time-based media, but posing some of the same issues with preservation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ironically, Ackerman says, the migration was helped along not by the inability to find film for photography, but finding paper for prints. \u201cEven 15 years ago, you could find 50 different types of black and white print paper in New York,\u201d he says. \u201cNow it\u2019s down to about seven.\u201dAckerman says more than 95 percent of photographers work digitally now, pushed into the medium first by the immolation of companies like Kodak and then by the ubiquity of smartphones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Media Conservation Lab, part of the Guggenheim\u2019s Conservation Department, provides the technical infrastructure to examine equipment and historic and contemporary media formats. \u201cThe art market started to accept digital prints as legitimate,\u201d he says. \u201cThat was a signal to the rest of the art world that there\u2019s a connoisseurship to it.\u201dBut even now, time-based works aren\u2019t collected as much, says Hannelore Roemich, a professor of conservation science at New York University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s still rather modest in price,\u201d she says. \u201cIn a few years, museums will have more prominent time-based media collections.\u201dPinning down a precise dollar amount, Roemich notes, is difficult. Most major auction houses don\u2019t even have a category for time-based media, and if works change hands, they usually do so directly from galleries or the artists themselves\u2014and then might not necessarily be publicly known.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the 21st century dawned, time-based media started to have problems with its technology, as was the case at the Butler. Computers continued to offer new operating systems. The digital cameras that supplanted film were then supplanted by bigger cameras.\u201cThere\u2019s this misconception that all digital photo files are the same,\u201d Ackerman says, \u201cbut digital photos could become archaic as file sizes get bigger. At some point, old digital photos won\u2019t be usable. We\u2019re constantly facing the idea of data migration.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The changes are starting to come even more quickly now, says Roemich, as computers and cameras keep bringing out new models with improvements to gain market share\u2014and indirectly, leave previous media behind.\u201cWe\u2019re always one step behind the artists, but we try to catch up,\u201d she says. \u201cTechnology changes so quickly that even five years from now, we might not be able to save some artwork because the hardware or software has changed. We\u2019re in a time machine. This is a current and accumulating problem. The urgency that we need to do something is less than 10 years old.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Art conservation used to be simpler. There\u2019s a reason etched in stone<\/em> has become shorthand for something that\u2019s remaining unchanged for eons. But even conservation of physical works has changed.One of the reasons the Butler was built was because its founder and namesake, Joseph Butler, sought a fireproof home for his work, and the museum continues to give consideration to lighting and climate control. (When Zona became director of the Butler in 1981, the museum wasn\u2019t even air-conditioned.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Roemich is a chemist by training, with a Ph.D. in organic chemistry and field and teaching experience in archaeology. She fell into the field of art conservation, which is the nexus of several disciplines, including chemistry, engineering, and art history. Time-based media adds other fields, like computer science.\u201cWhen artwork has a plug, a very different set of skills is needed to keep it going and keep it public,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even the concept of time-based media conservation itself can be an alien one to people trained to develop it, as Roemich discovered earlier this year when she hosted a multidisciplinary workshop between NYU\u2019s Institute of Fine Arts and its Tandon School of Engineering.\u201cThey\u2019re training engineers and people who will create time-based media, but when I talked about conservation, they said, \u2018And how do you spell that?\u2019 They didn\u2019t think of it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n At its earliest stages, time-based media conservation involved the hoarding of items like cathode ray tubes, old computers, and incandescent light bulbs. \u201cBut you can only stockpile so many items before you have to start thinking about what to do with it,\u201d Roemich says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The most vexing time-based media conservation issue may be software-based art. If an artist uses commercial software to create a work, the copyright to the software needs to be acquired, and the software must be monitored for updates to properly display the art. If artists generate their own software, conservators need the software\u2019s source code to recompile the work based on operating systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Additionally, any digital medium carries with it the possibility of corruption, which is concerning, says Ackerman.\u201cThere\u2019s no such thing as an archival digital print,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s a concerning push to replace materials with digital prints. They won\u2019t last more than five to 10 years, and people aren\u2019t investing enough in preservation. Digital prints are replacement, not preservation.\u201dWharton says digital art, like all other art, needs a safe repository. \u201cWe need a server, we need it backed up off site, and we need a high manner of integrity,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the file is uploaded on the server, says Wharton, he and his team create a checksum that will always represent that file\u2014an algorithm that spits out a string of characters that identifies the bitstream of the file, which can then be compared later against the file to check for any type of corruption. \u201cIt\u2019s standard in the computer industry,\u201d he says, \u201cbut now museums are doing it, too.\u201dThe checksum can be set up with an algorithm, and isn\u2019t particularly labor-intensive, Wharton says. Once it\u2019s set up, it can be done automatically any time a work of art is uploaded in a safe digital repository. But the process and the safeguards require the right type of person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll museums have some type of tech support,\u201d he says. \u201cBut IT people aren\u2019t trained to safeguard materials. You really need a combination of skills, including computer science and art preservation.\u201dBeyond the technical issues in archiving and safeguarding time-based media, there are also ethical implications.\u201cWe\u2019re no longer just fixing stuff,\u201d Ackerman says. \u201cWe\u2019re dealing with abstract concepts around reproduction. We\u2019re moving from physical treatment to stakeholder theory.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Given the combination of camera, paper, ink and printer, you\u2019re looking at potentially a million different combinations for one print, Ackerman says. And a piece of art can have a variety of stakeholders in addition to its creator, including people who are involved on a transactional level, like gallery representatives, auctioneers, insurance appraisers, buyers, and sellers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCollectors or museums may not know what they\u2019re doing when they buy this kind of artwork,\u201d Roemich says. \u201cDo you buy the idea? Do you buy the material? Can you transfer it? What are its defining properties? If the artist is still living, how much do they want it to change? How much is set in stone, and how much can the owner define it?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Optimally, Roemich says, those conversations are proactive, not reactive. But you never know when you have to deal with the work in the here and now.\u201cSometimes you have to migrate it to a different (operating) system,\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s a difficult decision, because you might lose the grounding of the artwork. If you know the technology is becoming obsolete, it\u2019s a team decision: the conservator, the curator, engineers, scientists.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the hallmarks of time-based media is the concept of variable art, a term that came into the art lexicon in the early 2000s and also poses its own ethical issues.\u201cEvery time the artwork is installed, it\u2019s going to be different,\u201d Wharton says. \u201cWhat\u2019s the variance? What kind of interpretive authority is the artist giving to the owner? We now talk about various iterations of the installations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That flexibility can be an asset in conservation efforts, says Roemich.\u201cTime-based media doesn\u2019t look the same everywhere,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s dependent on the exhibition and the interpretation more than traditional artwork. Owners, collectors, and museums should approach it in a playful way and try to account for the artist\u2019s intent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n