Report on a Think-Tank at the Whitney Museum of American Art, November 30, 2001
prepared for Creativity & Culture, The Rockefeller Foundation, May 2002
by Christiane Paul
Table of Contents
Introduction 3
I. Organization Profiles and General Value of a Database Network 4
II. Possible Collaboration between Organizations 6
III. Structures, Technology, Initiative Funding 7
Conclusion 8
Links 9
Think-tank for New Media Database Initiative
November 30, 2001
Introduction
On November 30, 2001, the Whitney Museum organized a small think-tank sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation in order to explore possibilities of joining existing organizational resources in the realm of new media art and net art into a searchable database and network.
As a medium that can not yet be supported by the traditional commercial models of the art world, new media art and interactive, net-based art, in particular, requires new solutions regarding its production, presentation, and maintenance. Museums and public art galleries have only recently started to embrace the emerging medium, and have to face challenges at the level of presentation, acquisition for the collection, maintenance as well as educational programming.
However, numerous not-for profit organizations on the community level have been dedicated to the advancement of new media art since its inception. They have already accumulated enormous resources in terms of archives of new media works, documentation, networks of creation, and research in the field. Combining these resources would by far exceed the collections or documentation currently available at any museum.
The Whitney Museum would be interested in supporting a strategic alliance between not-for profit new media organizations on a national level. This alliance could result in the creation of a database that exhibits and collects the organizations' efforts and information and makes them searchable to the public. The database would constitute a vast new media network and "virtual museum." While the initiative would not affect any single organization’s respective efforts, objectives and identity, this type of networked resource and exhibition space seems more appropriate for the medium than single museums' efforts to create virtual counterparts that mirror the structure of the existing museum world. The purpose of the proposed database would be twofold:
1. to exhibit and archive new media works and documentation and make them accessible to the new media community and larger public
2. to provide a network of resources that fosters artistic creation
The think-tank was a first step in assessing the value of and support for this alliance and creation of a database and included members of New York new media organizations.
Participants
Representatives of NYC non-profit organizations who attended the think-tank:
Wayne Ashley BAM
Kathy Brew Thundergulch
Barbara Hunt Artists Space http://www.artistsspace.org/
Carol Parkinson Harvestworks http://www.harvestworks.org/
Mary Beth Smalley Eyebeam Atelier http://www.eyebeam.org
Wolfgang Staehle The Thing http://bbs.thing.net
Carol Stakenas Creative Time http://www.creativetime.org
Helen Thorington Turbulence http://www.turbulence.org
Mark Tribe Rhizome http://www.rhizome.org
Sara Tucker Dia Center for the Arts http://www.diacenter.org
http://www.diacenter.org/rooftop/webproj/index.html
Martha Wilson Franklin Furnace http://www.franklinfurnace.org/
(While BAM had already decided to relinquish its new media initiative and the future of Thundergulch, the new media initiative of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, was uncertain after the events of September 11, we felt that the expertise of Wayne Ashley and Kathy Brew would be invaluable for the success of the think-tank.)
I. Organization Profiles and General Value of a Database Network
The first section of the think-tank focused on the existing resources of the organizations as well as the value of a database network and addressed the following questions:
Organization Profiles
Although all of the organizations that were present have an involvement with new media arts, their respective focus and mission varies, ranging from incubator / lab for art, science and technology (Eyebeam); grass-roots on-line community (Rhizome and Thing); public art (Creative Time); to more performance-oriented new media work (Franklin Furnace).
Some of the organizations already have various types of archives and databases.
Rhizome has an extensive archive including the textbase (archive of mailing list posts and discussions), artbase (archive of art objects), splash pages, as well as ephemera. Planned initiatives include a new media art calendar, hosting services, and distance learning. According to Mark Tribe, the organization is still in need of physical storage, a software archive, documentation as well as an xml metalayer for the archive (which Rhizome is currently working on in collaboration with V2).The archives of The Thing also include a multitude of projects as well as archived discussions.
Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center holds both a database of "Artist Data" and "Creative Contact!," a database featuring composers, visual artists who have participated in the organizations programs, invited artists and members. "Creative Contact!" consists of two sections: the Composer Contact! features information about the composer as well as sound excerpts from their compositions; the Visual Contact! consists of biographical information in conjunction with visual media documentation from each artist's portfolio.Franklin Furnace already organized two archiving projects that do not primarily focus on new media. "The Franklin Furnace Networked Digital Video Archive Prototype Project"–a collaboration with "The Studio for Digital Projects and Research" of New York University–is a testbed selection of works originally selected by Martha Wilson for "The History of the Future." NYU and FF are using these performance art works documented on video to solve digitization, cataloguing, vocabulary rights and marketing issues raised by their plan to make video documentation available on-line. Franklin Furnace Archive also received support (from New York Foundation for the Arts and the Cowles Charitable Trust) to develop a plan for "Archives of the Avant-Garde," which will survey the location, legal status, quantity and condition of archives of artists' groups that flourished during the 1970's, 80's and 90's in and around Lower Manhattan; and to create a Location Database that conforms to international cataloguing and electronic standards being developed by the Conceptual and Intermedia Art Online consortium and its institutional partners to serve as a model for other such efforts around the globe. FF’s "The Future of the Present" program, focused on new media art projects, is currently not archived in a similar way.
Both the Dia Center for the Arts and Turbulence have an archive of projects that have been commissioned by the respective organizations over the years.
Eyebeam Atelier is documenting the projects created during its artist-in-residence program and is currently working on creating "wet board"–an Artist Contact Database.
Both Creative Time and Artists Space have been involved in the commissioning and presentation of new media art projects but do not have a database of documentation.
Value of a Database Network
The discussion made obvious that there is a general interest in a shared database network and that it would be of value to the organizations. However, none of them felt that they would have the time and funding to organize this initiative by themselves. Apart from funding for the creation and implementation of a database network, some of the organizations also need funding to digitize their archives, make them available on-line, and compatible with a database.
Helen Thorington raised the question whether a Webring would be sufficient to achieve the goal of a network but it became obvious that a sound infrastructure and more sophisticated database structure would be needed in order to achieve the goal of a shared and searchable network.
Participants also discussed how the database initiative would position itself in relation to already existing networks such as NAMAC (National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture) or CIAO (Conceptual and Intermedia Arts Online). While everyone felt that it would be important to work and be compatible with existing and planned networks such as NAMAC, CIAO and VAN (spearheaded by the Walker Arts Center), the previous organizations are broader in their focus and membership and less focused on new media arts per se. NAMAC includes member organizations dedicated to encouraging film, video, audio and online/multimedia arts while CIAO consists of institutions dedicated to creating networked access to resources on the broad theme of conceptual and other non-traditional intermedia art.
There seemed to be a general consensus that there would be a value to a more focused network, consisting of not-for-profit organization and focused specifically on digital art. A main argument against bringing larger institutions on board as members was that at this point in time, institutions are involved in critical discourse on digital art but not fully ready to present and support the work on a continuous basis.
Profile of Existing Associations:
NAMAC — National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture
http://www.namac.org/
The National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC) is a nonprofit association composed of diverse member organizations who are dedicated to encouraging film, video, audio and online/multimedia arts, and to promoting the cultural contributions of individual media artists.NAMAC's regional and national members collectively provide a wide range of support services for independent media, including media education, production, exhibition, distribution, collection building, preservation, criticism and advocacy. NAMAC’s member organizations include media arts centers, production facilities, university-based programs, museums, film festivals, media distributors, film archives, multimedia developers, community access TV stations and individuals working in the field. Combined, the membership of these organizations totals around 400,000 artists and other media professionals.
CIAO (Conceptual and Intermedia Arts Online)
http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/ciao/
Conceptual & Intermedia Arts Online (Project CIAO) is a collaborative project between 9 institutions to create networked access to educational and scholarly material on the broad theme of conceptual and other non-traditional intermedia art such as digital art, performance art, installation works, artist books, and correspondence works.CIAO proposes to 1) develop a searchable, accessible and educational knowledge-base dedicated to conceptual & intermedia art as represented by the collections and scholarship contributed by project partners, and 2) explore a model by which museums and organizations can use technological standards to create lasting, precise, and internetworked access to collections of any type.
II. Possible Collaboration between Organizations
The second part of the think-tank concentrated on the issues surrounding possible collaboration between the organizations, addressing the following questions:
The discussion centered on the models for collaboration that could arise from the database network and would exceed the basic goal of providing a network of resources. Since the focus, mission, and activities of the respective organizations vary substantially, it quickly became obvious that there should not be a monolithic approach to a collaborative network.
The participants unanimously favored an organic development of collaborations as opposed to a forced attempt to collaborate on projects and structures. At the same time, it was obvious that the organizations hold various assets and resources that would be of high value to each other. The respective resources and needs included exhibition space (Eyebeam, Artists Space), production facilities (Harvestworks), technical infrastructure (Rhizome, Thing), infrastructure for presentation in public spaces (Creative Time) as well as various areas of expertise.
In addition, the participants felt that the structure of an official network and consortium might be helpful in raising funding for collaborative efforts. Some participants suggested that a collaboration with more technically oriented labs or research institutions, such as MIT or NYU’s Center for Advanced Technology (CAT) also might be helpful.
Networked media obviously imply and rely on collaboration and all of the organizations present have been engaged in collaborative efforts. It became obvious that the proposed database / network would not per se constitute a new model for innovation in new media arts but that the process of creating a more formal structure for a network, sharing resources and expanding the network on a national level, would in itself contribute to fostering artistic creativity.
III. Structures, Technology, Initiative Funding
The third section of the think-tank explored possibilities for structuring and implementing a shared database, focusing on the following questions:
Database Structure and Technology
It was concluded that a basic structure for this initiative would be a database of all the existing new media works, documentation, and textual archives gathered by the organizations. The database would allow for a simple search by keyword and advanced searches. Possibilities of filtering would include by artist, title, work, medium, technology, date etc.
Another feature of the database could be a calendar combining all the member organizations’ programming. There also could be a contact database, expanding on the existing ones at Harvestworks and Eyebeam, which would be a resource for researchers in the field and for artists to find collaborators / programmers who are knowledgeable in a specific area (although participants agreed that the latter connections are usually made through evolving personal contact and technical discussions on mailing lists.)
It was agreed that the database would need to be open source, distributed, translatable, and compatible with other databases being developed at the time. This effort would obviously require certain standards for metadata, which are interpretative. It was suggested that there would need to be a continuous dialogue with other organizations developing standards for metadata conversations, such as CIAO–which provides information on putting together an "EAD-Encoded Finding Aid for Museum or Archival Collections"–or OMA (Open Meta Archive, http://oma.sourceforge.net/).
The discussion also brought up issues of preservation, which obviously are of concern to any organization, institution, or consortium involved in archiving work. The development of standards for preservation currently is a much-discussed topic, and efforts in this respect would again require a continuous dialogue with organizations and institutions that are involved in the creation of preservation standards. Among these are CIAO’s "Archiving the Avant Garde: Documenting and Preserving Variable Media Art" (http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/ciao/avant_garde.html); and the Guggenheim’s "Variable Media Initiative" (http://www.guggenheim.org/variablemedia/), which pairs artists with museum and media consultants to provoke comparison of artworks created in ephemeral mediums. The initiative aims to define each of these case studies in terms of medium-independent behaviors and to identify artist-approved strategies for preserving artwork with the help of an interactive questionnaire.
Initiative Funding
Various participants pointed out that funders of new media art are usually more focused on the production of work and tend to put their resources towards commissions rather than the creation of networks or archiving and preservation. It was suggested to approach only funders whose mission includes the support of such a structure or who are dedicated to archiving and preservation in particular.
Possible revenue models for the network were also discussed, although all of the participants were aware that these models are experimental and most attempts to implement them haven’t proven to be successful. The organization of new media events (with a reasonable admission charge) through the combining of resources of the respective organizations was considered one of the more successful approaches. Consulting and offering services was considered less successful, partly because of the difficulty of competing with the prices of commercial service providers. None of the participants was in favor of charging minimal fees for access to the database and its resources, which would contradict the idea of open networks and the philosophy of free information space.
Possibilities for Implementation
Several members of the group (Wolfgang Staehle and Mark Tribe, in particular) suggested that the easiest and most effective way of building the basic structure for the database and network would be to use existing structures, such as the Open Meta Archive (OMA). Rather than officially joining an overseas consortium, the approach would be to use the existing archive’s structure for implementation and build a platform for collaboration and exchange that could be continuously expanded. This approach seemed to have major advantages over a slow process of developing one’s own database structure and trying to make it compatible with all other current endeavors–a process that could easily lead to administrative inertia.
There was a general agreement that, considering the organizations’ respective resources and focus, it wouldn’t be desirable to create a bureaucratic superstructure to develop a database network but that the structure should rather be built from the bottom up. During the start-up phase where the database network wouldn’t engage in complex collaborations, initiatives and organizations of events, one person (with basic office space–desk, computer, phone line) would be sufficient to maintain daily business, such as maintenance, correspondence and general promotion.
Next steps for the initiative would be further meetings to discuss the procedure of implementation in more detail (and possibly with more participants) and to raise funding for implementation and a basic infrastructure.
Conclusion
Based on the discussions during the think-tank, a shared database and network for non-profit organizations in the realm of new media art would be a valuable initiative:
The participants in the think-tank seemed to be in favor of having an institution such as the Whitney spearhead and organize the initiative since their respective time and resources are limited.
Links
CIAO (Conceptual and Intermedia Arts Online) http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/ciao/
NAMAC — National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture http://www.namac.org/
OMA (Open Meta Archive) http://oma.sourceforge.net
Variable Media Initiative http://www.guggenheim.org/variablemedia/