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TRANSCRIPT
Interactive Multimedia Installations: Towards a model for preservation
Sergio Canazza Antonio Rodà
Centro di Sonologia Computazionale (CSC) Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione
University of Padova
Federica Bressan
Department of Computer Science University of Verona
§ Valuable for the history of art and culture (and technology)
à not a fixed form but rather a time-varying system à the artifact does not coincide with the artwork
…where does art lie?
Interactive Multimedia Installations
§ Recent , diversified , complex , elusive phenomenon
§ Preservation is intended to grant unrestricted access to cultural materials, which must be made available “forever” – decades or centuries, or long enough to be concerned about the obsolescence of technology.
It’s about time: Research challenges in digital archiving and long-term preservation. Library of Congress, Washington DC (2002)
§ Who needs preservation? § Museums, art galleries, cultural institutions, theatres, etc.
§ What is the output of preservation? § An archive of IMIs, possibly shared among a network of
cultural/archival institutions
Preservation
Problems
1) IMIs are not a fixed form but rather time-varying systems
2) the artifact does not coincide with the artwork (“where does art lie?”)
3) IMIs have a very short Life Expectancy (LE)
4) IMIs are deeply interconnected with technology
à threat of obsolescence (HW, SW, file formats, programming languages)
5) interaction (intrinsic and extrinsic)
6) absence of score/notation
Problems with current preservation practices
1) according to the cataloguing standards, documents are classified by homogeneous typologies
§ as a consequence, multi-media assemblies are forcedly dismembered
§ and the information about the relation between the parts is very often lost à the documentary unity is violated
2) lack of methods to represent and to preserve complex digital objects including the relation among their parts
§ interaction is an additional element of complexity
§ objects are made static for preservation
3) financial support for preservation…
Approaches to preservation
§ A good model for preservation should support different objectives of preservation: 1. support (future) scholarly studies § historical § philological § musicological analyses
2. enable (future) re-installation § replication / re-instantiation § re-interpretation
3. archiving (conservative approach)
Approaches to preservation
§ A good model for preservation should allow different approaches to the fruition of the preserved object: 1. documental 2. aesthetical (re-create the experience, i.e., feel it again) 3. sociological (what the installation meant to the people
of the era, how it was perceived) 4. reconstructive (replicate the work as faithfully as
possible)
§ The preservation of IMIs can benefit from the methodologies and the tools of other areas of preservation: e.g., audio documents
Preservation
§ So what do we preserve? § Information and knowledge (high-level semantics)
à the model underlying the process …and all useful information
§ Involving the artists (authors) is essential
§ Proposed model § a multi-layer approach § each layer has a different aim § layers (i.e., their contents) might overlap § layers are not necessarily sequential
Preservation
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum
and Pacific Film Archive (VARIABLE MEDIA
NETWORK)
§ Two forms of preservation: § Static – records are created once and not altered § Dynamic – records keep changing
§ Two types of layers:
§ Physical vs. Logical
§ Four layers: bits, data, record, experience
Preservation
Level 1: BITS
The multi-level approach
§ WHAT § each part of the original installation that can be directly
preserved (digital and physical objects)
§ HOW § the data are kept in the original format (the problem of their
interpretation is dealt with in the next level) § the risk of introducing alterations must be avoided § it requires metadata and refreshing
§ PHYSICAL, STATIC
Life expectancy 5 to 10 years
?
Level 1: BITS
Level 2: DATA
§ WHAT § technical notes, comments and useful information about the
realization of the installation (algorithms and models)
§ HOW § may require new design languages § includes high-level descriptions of algorithms and models § no special attention is paid to the original context
§ PHYSICAL, DYNAMIC
Life expectancy up to 30 years
The multi-level approach
Level 1: BITS
Level 2: DATA
Level 3: RECORD
The multi-level approach
§ WHAT § any element that has been modified or updated with respect
to the original installation (reinterpretation of the patches, information about the context, etc.)
§ HOW § alterations are tolerated, if not necessary (e.g., migration to
new software environments) § STATIC, LOGICAL
Life expectancy 10 to 20 years
Level 1: BITS
Level 2: DATA
Level 3: RECORD
Level 4: EXPERIENCE
The multi-level approach
§ WHAT § any document that bears witness to some aspect of the installation
§ HOW § keeps track of the history of the installation § may require emulators or old computers § the artwork can be encoded using symbolic notation
Life expectancy over 30 years
§ LOGICAL, DYNAMIC
§ Selection of installations by Carlo De Pirro (1956-2008)
§ Self-funded project of the Centro di Sonologia Computazionale (CSC) of the University of Padova
§ CAPIRE: CArlo de Pirro: Restoring an Experience (2009-)
§ http://csc.dei.unipd.it/depirro/
§ Case studies 1. Piazza Pinocchio 2. Caos delle sfere
Case studies
Carlo De Pirro
Piazza Pinocchio: la casetta delle immagini
§ Neuchâtel (CH), EXPO 2002 § From May to October 2002 § Multimedia exhibition § Realization:
§ Carlo De Pirro § Roberto Masiero § Sergio Canazza (CSC) § Antonio Rodà (CSC)
Piazza Pinocchio: la casetta delle immagini
§ Artificial “island” (platform of 80x30 m) dedicated to Artificial
Intelligence and Robotics
§ Artistic installations inspired by the tale of Pinocchio
§ Casetta delle immagini (“magic room”)
§ Concept § the visitors’ full body movements is captured by cameras § the data is processed with mapping strategies § expressive content is sent to multimedia output (AV)
§ Software used for video processing: Eyesweb
§ Preservation § BITS: preservation copies of the documents related to the installation
have been created (software, text, audio, video, ...)
§ DATA: the algorithms and the models have been described
§ RECORD: the patches have been migrated to a new environment
§ EXPERIENCE: interviews to the authors and to the people involved
Piazza Pinocchio: la casetta delle immagini
§ Biennial of the Young Artists of Europe and of the Mediterranean, Rome (1999)
§ Realization: § Carlo De Pirro § Nicola Orio (CSC) § Paolo Cogo (CSC)
§ Concept § a gaming machine (an electronic pinball) controls an automatic
performance played on a Disklavier § avoid the one-to-one mapping between silver ball and objects hit à
sonic feedback related to the player’s performance
Caos delle Sfere: anche tu pianista con 500 lire
§ Preservation § BITS: (a) creation of preservation copies of the software and of
the music sequences; (b) digitization of the electric scheme of the acquisition board
§ DATA: documentation of the algorithms § RECORD: definition of a new system that does not work with the
parallel port and with the proprietary compiler originally used
§ EXPERIENCE: detailed documentation: (a) on how the installation has been adapted in the many different venues it has been exhibited at; (b) on the pinball restoration.
Caos delle Sfere: anche tu pianista con 500 lire
§ A new paradigm in the preservation of cultural heritage? § embodied approach to the study of music cognition +
corporeal and non-verbal articulations
§ “Capturing Dance Movements, Intensities and Embodied Experiences” Research project at IPEM, University of Gent (2012-)
What’s next
