Besser--NYU 4/11/02 1 Preserving New Media: Issues in Saving the Orphan/Ephemeral/Experimental Films of the Future Howard Besser UCLA School of Education & Information

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 2 Preserving New Media: Issues in Saving the Orphan/Ephemeral/Experimental Films of the Future- _ Highlights from my background _ The MIAP program –General comments –Specific area for research/teaching: Issues in Saving the Orphan/Ephemeral/Experimental Films of the Future

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 3 Highlights from my background _ Avant-garde _ Film Study--Berkeley & Paris _ ‘Pataphysics & thesis

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 4 LIS Graduate School _ Certificate Specializing in “Non-Print Media” _ Film Resources Information Group- _ Funding & managing projects- _ Authority on automation of film info- _ Panel that led to NCFVP-

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 5 Published books & Booklets

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 6 LIS Graduate School _ Certificate Specializing in “Non-Print Media” _ Film Resources Information Group _ Funding & managing projects _ Authority on automation of film info _ Panel that led to NCFVP

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 7 Conceiving, Spearheading, and Funding Big Groundbreaking Projects _ Berkeley Image DB (1985) [art images instead of film] _ Museum Educational Site Licensing Project--MESL ( )- _ Mellon-funded MESL evaluation ( ), $250K-

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 8 MESL Participants

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 9 MESL checkboxes

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 10 MESL browse1

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 11 MESL browse2

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 12 MESL tombstone

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 13 MESL/Mellon-Visual Resources

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 14 Other Art/Film Preservation Projects-

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 15 Getty’s Time & Bits (1998)

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 16 Studio Archivists (2000, 2001)

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 17 AMIA article (1992)

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 18 Other large funded projects _ NEH/DLF Making of America II ( ) $270K _ Web-based Instructional Support ( ) $270K _ UCLA/Pacific Bell Initiative for 21st Century Literacies ( ) $1M

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 19 My Strengths & Biases _ Conceiving and getting off the ground large-scale, collaborative, ground-breaking projects _ Focus on technological approaches to visual material _ Work on making archival material accessible through technology, interoperability, standards _ Bias towards non-bestseller content

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 20 My Impressions of MIAP Program- _ Caveats _ Strengths _ Cautions _ Ideas

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 21 Critical Pieces currently in MIAP program _ History/Contextualization _ Important underlying concepts (Collecting) _ GEH _ Working professionals teaching at GEH

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 22 Cautions- _ High Level Concerns- _ Small program size- _ Guard against the students identifying too closely with the GEH approach- _ Extend principles beyond film-

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 23 Cautions: High-level Concerns _ Treading the line btwn Academic & Professional _ Need to be inclusive & collaborative to pull this off well

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 24 Cautions: Small Program Size _ Necessary for apprenticeship, but problems with: –economic sustainability –maintaining diversity of students _ Possible answers –grow out courses around it, particularly in new media

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 25 Cautions: Guard against the students identifying too closely with the GEH approach _ Make sure that graduates will feel comfortable going into collections that take different approaches because they’re: –Smaller –Poorer –Have different collection scopes –Less film-centric –Not within museums

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 26 Cautions: Extend principles beyond film _ Core principles are similar for handling video, digital “stocks”, but students need to be able to distinguish where the principles differ and where they remain the same _ From an economic standpt, in future years, there will be more jobs handling non-film materials than materials on film stock

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 27 My suggestions _ Expand high-level concepts (what is work?) _ Strengthen understanding of underlying economics to filmmaking and distribution (as well as that of video and digital if you enter that arena) _ Enlarge the scope to include video, digital works, new media _ Leverage other GEH depts (Education, Collctn Mgmt) _ Increase the focus on info about the work- _ Play to your strengths-

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 28 Increase the focus on info about the work _ Collectn Mgmt info, preservation record-keeping, etc. _ Info that’s far less format-dependent, so skills in this area withstand the test of time _ An important growth area in an age where people demand higher levels of granularity in info about objects _ Also, research potential w/I this area where NYU can become int’l leader (library extending METS, repositories for shot-by-shot analysis, using semiology to develop preservation encoding schemes, …)

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 29 Play to your strengths _ Other repositories in NYC (Anthology, MOMA, Lincoln Cntr, Kitchen,...) & important vendors (VidPix) _ Departmental strengths in independent and avant-garde works (and NYC as vibrant cntr for these) _ Academic rigor for examining and deconstructing underlying concepts (why collect? what is a work? ) _ NYU Library strength in Preservation & in digital metadata _ Incorporate dept strengths to bring new research to aid in in preservation (ie. Semiological analysis to construct encoding standards that will persist over time) _ Collaborate w/NYC groups working on similar issues (from IMAP to Guggenheim to Mellon)

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 30 Why focus on the Orphan/Ephemeral/Experimental Films ? _ These types of films are both more interesting and more in peril _ Best-sellers will be taken care of (for better or worse) because of market potential _ These pose more interesting research questions _ You’re not USC

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 31 Future Orphan/Ephemeral/Experimental Films will not be on film stock _ Economics is making film stock and editing increasingly out of reach for independent filmmakers _ Focus is on newer creation formats (video, digital, multimedia) _ And digital distribution channels appear to make it easier to get to audiences

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 32 In the future, most interesting works will involve digital technology _ “Once computers become married with film, the form becomes promiscuous, and that can bring about new ways of making movies that the studios can’t control.” -Francis Coppola LA Times, April 7, 2002 Press Play to Access the Future

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 33 Now is excellent time to get involved in Digital Preservation. In past year: _ NSF retreat on digital preservation research agenda _ CLIR international meeting _ CDL Preservation Repository _ OCLC/RLG Working Group on Preservation Metadata

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 34 Other Digital Preservation Activities-  LC Natl Dig Info Infrastructure & Preservation  InterPARES  Emulation Projects  E-Journal Archiving  ERPANET

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 35 LC’s National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program _ Authorized Dec 2000 _ LC, Dept of Commerce, NARA, White House Office of Sci & Tech Policy _ with help from CLIR, NLM, NAL, OCLC, RLG _ Ongoing collab process _ Commissioned papers on preserving: the Web, periodicals, digital sound, E-Books, Digital TV, Digital Video

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 36 InterPARES International Research on Permanent Authentication Records in Electronic Systems _ Ongoing international archival world project examining how to make electronically-generated records last over time _ Developing the theoretical and methodological knowledge needed, then will formulate model policies, strategies, and standards _ Next year will be extended to include images and rich media

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 37 Emulation Projects _ CAMiLEON (Michigan/Leeds) _ NEDLIB

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 38 E-Journal Archiving _ Issues –License, don’t own; may not be even able to obtain right to make archival copy –Increasingly no paper back-up at all –Usually we don’t have the important redundancy factor _ Mellon funded projects (2001) –Yale, Harvard, Penn working w/individual publishers –Cornell, NYPL--specific disciplines –MIT exploring characteristics that change (dynamic)\ –Stanford--archiving software tools

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 39 Electronic Resource Preservation and Access NETwork (ERPANET) _ Best practices and skills development for digital preservation of cultural heritage and scientific objects _ 3 year project launched Nov 2001; 1.2 million Euros

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 40 NEA 2001 grant to BAVC for $150,000 _ “To support development and dissemination of a DVD that contains a curriculum for the preservation of electronic art. The DVD will feature a preservation overview; discussions with conservators, artists, curators and technicians; a curriculum to train professionals in the field and project case studies to conserve electronic art.”

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 41 Digital Preservation now has high profile _ Lots of money available _ Interesting research questions _ Communities begin to work together _ Very little yet done with challenging material like moving images and electronic art _ NYU could become leader in this arena

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 42 My research into Digital Preservation

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 43 Preserving New Media: What’s the problem & What can we do about it? _ The Problem: Maintaining Accessibility to a Work over time _ New Products and New Expectations necessitate New Paradigms _ The Easy Part of the Problem: Physical storage devices & hardware players _ The Hard Part of the Problem: File Formats _ Problems with Many Types of Digital Works Today _ Special Characteristics of Electronic Works _ What is the Work? _ Some approaches to solutions

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 44 The Problem: Maintaining Accessibility to a Work over time _ Preservation techniques for Physical artifacts do NOT address the problem of preserving digital works _ Need to shift from preserving Physical Artifact to preserving disembodied content

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 45 Digital Cinema is not like canvas paintings _ In the future these may include –Moving image materials –Multimedia –Interactive programs –Computer generated art _ These works share some common characteristics with other “strange” works like –Performance Art –Conceptual Art –Site-specific installations –Experiential Art

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 46 Thinking of the Future (1/2) _ Screens will be different resolutions and different aspect ratios _ CRTs won’t exist _ A decade or 2 from now, today’s user interfaces will look like arrow-key navigation looks like today

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 47 Thinking of the Future (2/2) _ Today’s streaming media are small windows, slow speeds _ As bandwidth increases, viewers will expect higher quality streams _ Artists may need to consider how they’ll be able to deliver higher-bandwidth streams –Delivery Derivatives vs. Masters encoded w/standards –May also want to re-edit the piece to take advantage of changes in technology, viewer expectations, society-

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 48 New products & Shifts in user expectations _ VCR led to user expectation of time-shifting, which in turn created market for video-on-demand and cinema multiplexes with staggered times _ WWW will further increase expectation of immediacy, as well as: –viewing massive amounts of related materials –viewing material in fragmented ways _ DVDs are even further increasing need for ancillary materials, as well as for interactivity and viewing fragments

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 49 Key Paradigm Shifts for Museums/Archives (also implications for artists) _ From archiving completed whole works to asset mgmt of both component parts of works and ancillary materials related to the work _ From preserving a physical artifact to saving a digital work that has no tangible embodiment

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 50 Component Parts & Ancillary Materials _ Edit decision list _ Out-takes _ Special effects _ Initial casting calls _ Sketches of sets _ Interviews _ Scripts... _ If the Archivists don’t act to save these, their role will be marginalized. Need to poractively seek out material that may be routinely tossed out. _ These materials may become important for either re-issuing the piece in a later version, or for future curators trying to understand the artist’s intention enough to re-display the piece when all the software used is no longer available.

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 51 The Easy Part of the Problem: Physical storage devices & hardware players

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 52 Analog - EIAJ 30

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 53 Analog - U-Matic

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 54 Analog - VHS & Betacam

Besser--NYU 4/11/ mm video

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 56 Digital -128M Optical

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 57 Digital - Optical R/W

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 58 Digital - DAT

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 59 Digital - Syquest

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 60 Digital - Zip 100

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 61 Digital - Writeable CD-ROM (650M)

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 62 Edison

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 63 Early Wax

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 64 The Hard Part of the Problem: File Formats _ even with text like Wordstar & Word

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 65 Problems with Many Types of Digital Works Today-  Disappearing Information  The Viewing Problem  The Scrambling Problem  The Inter-relation Problem  The Custodial Problem  The Translation Problem

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 66 The Viewing Problem  Digital Info requires a whole infrastructure to view it  Each piece of that infrastructure is changing at an incredibly rapid rate  How can we ever hope to deal with all the permutations and combinations

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 67 The Inter-relation Problem  -Info is increasingly inter-related to other info  -How do we make our own Info persist when it points to and integrates with Info owned by others?  -What is the boundary of a set of information (or even of a digital object)?

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 68 The Translation Problem  Content translated into new delivery devices changes meaning – -A photo vs. a painting – -If Info is produced originally in digital form in one encoded format, will it be the same when translated into another format? – Behaviors

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 69 Conceptual Approaches to Digital Preservation _ Refreshing always necessary due to volatility of physical strata –Impact on evidential value _ Migration -- advantages & disadvantages _ Emulation -- advantages & disadvantages

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 70 Groups Working on the Big Problem  CPA Task Force  Getty “Time & Bits” Conference & Follow-ups-  Emulation experiments in US and Europe  NEDLIB, CURL, Michigan  Internet Archive  Long Now

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 71 Special Characteristics of Electronic Works _ What Really is the Work?- _ Disappearing software _ Enormous number of elements can, at times, be very important to preserve (randomness, interactivity, pacing, color, format, original artifact, elements used to construct the artifact) _ Pieces and Boundaries _ Recontextualization (Postmodernism)--which rendition to save? _ Dynamic & Lack of Fixity (evolving works) _ Historical context _ Difficulty of authentication over time

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 72 What Really is the Work?-

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 73 LeWitt: Wall Drawing 340

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 74 Installing LeWitt

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 75 LeWitt Install Directions

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 76 ECI - Imagespace (early 80s)

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 77 ECI - Hole in Space (both)

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 78 ECI - 84-locations

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 79 ECI - 84-Community Memory

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 80 ECI - 84-kids

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 81 ECI - 84-MOCA

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 82 ECI - 84-Annotating Video

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 83 ECI - Avatars & Humans

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 84 ECI - Avatar Stage

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 85 Video Technology to Make the Head Spin (NYT 3/2/00)

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 86 Special Characteristics of Electronic Works (again) _ What Really is the Work?- _ Disappearing software _ Enormous number of elements can, at times, be very important to preserve (randomness, interactivity, pacing, color, format, original artifact, elements used to construct the artifact) _ Pieces and Boundaries _ Recontextualization (Postmodernism)--which rendition to save? _ Dynamic & Lack of Fixity (evolving works) _ Historical context _ Difficulty of authentication over time

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 87 Pieces of the General Solution (1/2)  -We need to insist upon clearly readable standardized ways for digital objects to self- identify their formats  -We should discourage scrambling  -We need to better understand information inter-relates to other Info, and what constitutes “boundaries” of Info objects

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 88 Pieces of the General Solution (2/2)  -People and organizations wishing to make information persist need guidelines of how to go about doing it  -We need to better understand how translating from one storage or display format to another affects the meaning of a work  -We need to save the “behaviors” of a digital object, not just it’s “contents”

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 89 Metadata & Standards can be the first line of defense  Can tell you – where the file is (if you can’t find the file) – where more info about the file is (if you have the file but most other metadata has become separated) – what the file format is – what the compression scheme is – what application program and version is needed for the file

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 90 From the technological point of view: Standards offer the best hope of overcoming Impediments _ Easier to maintain a single set of standards over long periods of time _ Puts your institution in the same large boat with lots of other institutions who will face obsolescence and migration problems periodically throughout the future

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 91 What can we do specific to New Media? _ Works themselves may no longer even exist; in many cases, what we can save amounts to forensic evidence _ Enormous number of elements can, at times, be very important to preserve (pacing, original artifact, elements used to construct the artifact) _ Too complex to save every one of these aspects for every type of material _ Importance of saving pieces, representations, and documentation _ Involve the artists to capture their intentions _ Importance of Standards _ Familiarize ourselves with recent conservation developments (Guggenheim’s Variable Media, Who Knows?, TechArcheology, Tate, IMAP)-

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 92 Standards for encoding artists intentions (group efforts) _ Guggenheim’s Variable Media project _ Artists Interviews Project, Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage , Modern Art: Who Cares ( _ TechArcheology: A Symposium on Installation Preservation (SFMOMA) _ IMAP

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 93 Authors Intentions: Kendall Example

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 94 Standards for encoding artists intentions (possible ways to proceed) _ initially probably a few fixed fields and a lengthy open field (similar to Technical Imaging Standards for “reformatting intention” _ should identify certain types of info that should be only for museum personnel, some for general public viewing, and others unknown

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 95 Things that can be done _ Save documentation about the work and its context _ Save interviews with readers/viewers about the experience _ Construct repositories that save software, works, hardware, and engage in ongoing emulation _ Encode authors intentions- _ Adhere to non-proprietary software/standards as much as possible-

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 96 Tensions around Standards Follow Standards (No Owl, Hypercard, DHTML, Flash, …) _ innovative, new functions

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 97 Structural Metadata Standards for Encoding Multimedia- _ SMIL _ MPEG 4

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 98 Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) _ For repurposing and reuse in different ways _ Use XML to reference various pieces in different ways _ Supported by Realmedia but not Microsoft or Macromedia

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 99 MPEG 4 _ Object-oriented _ Very low level of granularity (even objects vs backgrounds) _ Scaleable bandwidth use _ Binary Format for Scenes (BIFS) borrows concepts from VRML

Besser--NYU 4/11/ Saving Ancillary Materials

Besser--NYU 4/11/ Concluding Remarks _ Use Standards wherever possible _ Be aggressive about asset mgmt -- saving component parts and ancillary materials _ Both Artist and Museum should develop an institution-wide plan for saving electronic works –Refreshing and either migration or emulation –Standard encoding schemes –What is the work? And prioritize what needs to be saved –Save ancillary materials and records

Besser--NYU 4/11/ Howard Besser UCLA School of Education & Information Preserving New Media: Issues in Saving the Orphan/Ephemeral/Experimental Films of the Future

Besser--NYU 4/11/ Augst/Luddy

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 104

Besser--NYU 4/11/ Not just saving the Work, but also saving Conservation info about the Work

Besser--NYU 4/11/ Condition Report UK National Trust

Besser--NYU 4/11/ Annotated Image Mississippi State, Heather Gray

Besser--NYU 4/11/ Polarizws Image Mississippi State, Heather Gray

Besser--NYU 4/11/ X-Ray Investigating the Renaissance--Portrait of a Man, Fogg Museum

Besser--NYU 4/11/ Underdrawing Investigating the Renaissance--Last Judgment, Fogg Museum

Besser--NYU 4/11/ Cross-section Investigating the Renaissance--Last Judgment, Fogg Museum

Besser--NYU 4/11/ Recent Digital Preservation Activities Howard Besser UCLA School of Education & Information

Besser--NYU 4/11/ Preservation Repositories: Open Archival Info System Model  High-level reference model describing submission, organization and management, and continuing access  Conceptual framework for different organizations to share discussions with a common language  Producers, consumers, management, actual repository  SIP, DIP, AIP  AIP consists of data objects plus representation info (Content, Preservation Description, Packaging, Descriptive)  Originally developed for Space Science community

Besser--NYU 4/11/ Preservation Repositories: Projects based on OAIS Model  CEDARS  NEDLIB  Pandora  CDL  OCLC/RLG Working Group on Preservation Metadata, Attributes of a Trusted Digital Repository, August 2001-

Besser--NYU 4/11/ OCLC/RLG Digital Repository Attributes _ Administrative responsibility _ Organizational viability _ Financial sustainability _ Technological suitability _ System security _ Procedural accountability

Besser--NYU 4/11/ OCLC/RLG Selected Recommendations _ Policies, Certification processes, Risk management, Persistent ID, Migration/Emulation experiments _ Stakeholders meet to decide how to describe what is in a dig repository _ Examine special properties of particular classes of digital objects _ Technical standards for exchange and interoperability btwn repositories _ Develop projects and case studies _ Copyright issues

Besser--NYU 4/11/ Preservation Metadata  OCLC/RLG Working Group on Preservation Metadata, Preservation Metadata for Digital Objects: A Review of the State of the Art, January  OCLC/RLG Working Group on Preservation Metadata, A Recommendation for Content Information, October 2001

Besser--NYU 4/11/ Persistent Naming  URNs  Handles  PURLs  Re-directs

Besser--NYU 4/11/ More Technical Issues _ Complexity of formats (storage & compression) _ Synchronicity between media/streams _ Persistent Ids- _ Website mgmt-

Besser--NYU 4/11/ Persistent IDs--the Problem _ Need to separate work ID from work location _ URNs probably won’t be ready until 2003 _ Becomes a business process issue when one organization maintains the resource and another organization references it (ie. licensed from vendors or managed by separate administrative structures)

Besser--NYU 4/11/ More Persistent IDs --the Approach for today _ PURLs _ Handles _ HTTP redirects _ And worry about costs now and conversion costs when URNs become feasible

Besser--NYU 4/11/ Website Management More issues with referencing IDs _ References for mirror sites _ References for back-up sites when main site is down or bottle-necked _ References for off-site copies and archival copies