The case for documenting user experience as part preservation strategy for Internet-based art
AICCM Bulletin 42.1
Internet-based art is deeply embedded in the online behaviours, customs and traditions that are constantly emerging through user interaction and engagement. As such, user experience should be considered a fundamental aspect of the artwork in need of considered documentation. This paper provides a historical overview of Internet-based art, that presents the broader socio-cultural aspects of Internet-based art, as experienced by the user. This paper argues that Internet-based art requires the same conservation considerations as more accepted aspects of time-based media art documentation: source-code analysis, materials and equipment lists, variability and artists’ intent. By documenting user experience, it enables opportunities to navigate the culturally-embedded principles of Internet culture and contemporary technological standards that may be lost if preservation strategies utilise a more material/code specific preservation strategy. Highlighting experience as a necessary pillar of the identity of Internet-based art, in conjunction with other widely accepted aspects of time-based media art documentation approaches, it allows for a richer picture and understanding of defining qualities of works, whilst providing further evidentiary activation into preservation approaches.
Putting the 'Culture' in Cultural Materials
The conservation profession has shifted its focus from a scientific rationalisation of stable fixed cultural value embedded in materiality towards a more culturally engaged fluid model. This paper discusses the theoretical background underpinning this shift which necessitates a re-framing of cultural material as temporal agent that shifts meaning through time and contexts. This shift raises questions around authenticity that are consolidated by considering cultural identity in the Deleuzian term of a simulacra. By having no authentic original to refer itself we reject classical ideas of authenticity in favour of authentic alliances which place responsibility on the conservator to properly engage with the cultural components of the cultural heritage field.
The Limitations of the 10 Agents of Deterioration: The Need for a Community Focused Approach to Conservation
The 10 agents of deterioration create a framework conservators can use to achieve a good overview of potential causes of material damage to heritage collections but little room for assessment of intangible damage. This paper argues a community-focused, slow-conservation approach is required for comprehensive preventive conservation and risk-assessment approach. It looks at examples of functional heritage objects and conceptually loaded contemporary art to show a need for community involvement in the decision-making process. It shows a purposeful and community integrated approach results in a more sustainable conservation due to the benefits afforded by engagement with local community and people.
Creating Space: Mandawuy Yunupingu’s both ways teaching as embodied by Yothu Yindi
Mandawuy Yunupingu used the both ways method of education to incorporate Yolngu cultural teachings alongside Western methods at Yirrkala school. Both ways teaching breaks down the hegemonic dominance of western discourse and places Indigenous epistemologies as equal. This paper looks at the both ways methodology as used in Yunupingu’s rock group Yothu Yindi to raise the platform of Yolngu culture to a mainstream audience. By placing Indigenous modes of thinking in a mainstream spot light, the Yothu Yindi create a space for Indigenous people to take ownership of their cultural identity.
The Keith Haring Mural: Professional Codes of Practice in Light of Media Scrutiny
Keith Haring’s 1984 mural, known as the Keith Haring Mural, has been the subject of much debate in the early part of this decade. After seemingly been forgotten during the 1990s and early 2000s wide spread media attention about its future called into question the legitimacy of conservation professionals and their approach to modern and contemporary art works (Peniston-Bird 2016). This article examines two conservation treatments, Andrew Thorn’s in 1996 and Antonio Rava’s in 2013, and shows the materials, methodology and decision-making processes undertaken by the two conservators and how, despite wide-spread public pressure to repaint the mural, a more cautious conservation approach was taken that adhered to professional codes of practice in order to maintain the significance and integrity of Haring’s work.