Archiving, Collecting, Documenting and Conserving the Media Arts

Throughout the 20th century and certainly at an increasing pace since the 1960s, new art forms that feature technological components have been throwing traditional conservation and documentation practices into upheaval. These works of art are many and varied. They may be analog or digital, mechanical, and/or electronic; they are often multimedia based and include a variety of components, such as mechanical parts, software, electronic systems, varied electronic media formats, etc. Museums, which are charged with preserving and providing access to these works, often find themselves without adequate resources and must make do with methods and means that are poorly adapted to a growing number of artistic practices.

Guest Editors Jean Gagnon and Alain Depocas from the Daniel Langlois Foundation (Montreal) invite researchers, scholars, artists and others to submit articles for publication in a new special section in Leonardo concerned with documenting and conserving the media arts heritage. This new section is the journal's contribution to a larger research alliance bringing together museums, universities and organizations from Canada, the U.S.A. and Europe with funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Daniel Langlois Foundation.

For the next 3 years, this section in Leonardo will publish articles and reports arising out of the alliance's ongoing research. We wish to invite authors concerned about this constellation of problems to propose articles to Leonardo. We welcome articles under the following three programmatic headings:

- documentation
- cataloging
- conservation

Interested authors please contact:

Jean Gagnon and Alain Depocas
Leonardo Guest Editors
Fondation Daniel Langlois
Montrèal, Canada
E-mail: jgagnon@fondation-langlois.org;
adepocas@fondation-langlois.org.

Manuscripts should be submitted to the Leonardo Editorial office.