REFRESH SUMMIT Session on databases
A subjective report by Jon Ippolito on the database session of the REFRESH
summit, 2 Oct 2005. Apologies for misspellings, etc.
existing projects
Alain
We are starting from the presumption that people
have seen the database presentations 2 days ago, in which we presented the
variable media and Langlois initiatives.
Existing media art databases
Asian database consortium
10 countries in Asia
Based in Hong Kong
Russian media arts database
Croatian database of historical media art (mentioned by Darko Fritz)
Balkans media arts database
SSHRC database of Canada
CACHe (Charlie Gere)
Early computer art
CRUMB (Sarah Cook)
Apart from listserve, uses exhibitions as trigger for documentation
Uses exhibition history--including ephemera
Installation photos
Floorplans
Invites others to collaborate
m-cult (Mina Tarkka)
Archiving Nordic art
Semantic Web annotations of video
Talking with V2
Roger Malina
Note that there are existing consortia between these databases.
Mina Tarkka collaborating with V2
Sylvia Borda
Yes to wikipedia model
Franklin Furnace
Problems
Definition of media art
Johannes Goebel
What is the definition of the media works we are considering? How do you
draw the line?
Eg, algorithmic opera
Media etc determined by computer
How do you preserve music v. other formats
Lucia Santaella
"Media" are all those means of communication than appear after
the industrial revolution
Photography included
Music include
[Jon: cf biotech art]]
Maureen Nappi
"Computation in artwork" would be a good criterion
Frieder Nake
Johannes Goebel's question is justified.
Abraham Mole's answer to what is art: "What you find in the
museums"
What would be features, descriptors, and functions beyond the traditional
kind of putting something in a database--regardless of what you consider media
art. It doesn't matter if someone questions it.
The challenge is not a 200-feature vector for each work and an interface,
but a dynamic system that enables these databases to grow in the number of
elements they collect.
Jasia Reichardt
Importance of archiving ephemera
Collects ephemera
Doesn't consider what's good or bad
More important than books, because books consist of someone's opinion about
ephemera
So ephemera is the primary source
Everyone is talking about archives that can be found on the Web, but not
all archives are virtual.
Sean Cubitt
Temporal dimension
Since dimension of radio
Not looking at photography
Broad spectrum
Not just electronic
Film practice (Frampton)
Electro-acoustic music
Don't know what future researchers will be interested in
Someone estimated 5 billion hours of exposed film and video, much less than
1% is archived
We don't know what future researchers will want to see, but we have to make
choices -> canon
Archiving documentation v. preservation
Genco GŸlan
Archiving v. preserving
Museums of natural history
Kill a deer, then stuff it and put it in museum so it looks like a deer
Instead of killing deer and putting salmon in jars, find ways to keep
artists living in these environments
Support independent organizations
Wendy Coones
Archiving v. preservation: different
Who needs the archive? What info do they need?
Scenography
Jasia
Thinking about the appearance of the screen:
Scale is irrelevant--we can read dimensions but it's not
There is no dust--we don't have a system whereby the old information would
look paler.
This is OK for now, but when everyone looks at the screen all day long, we
are losing information. We have to worry about time-based ephemera as well as
time-based art.
Johannes
Speaking for content producers, I think the lack of proper
documentation--eg, in my case, algorithmic performances that require specific
operating systems etc. You should decide how you want it, and then speak to the
curators and the artists, tell them what you need. Best if you can integrate it
into the production process.
DVD has not been used to document multi-angle views of performance, but
this is a pragmatic tool. [Jon: cf Stuart Marrs' DVD for timpanists.]
How do you document software, eg OS 9 once Classic disappears. At ZKM we
had to pay one Spanish researcher a whole year to port NEXT to OSX.
Interoperability
Roger Malina
20 or 30 different archiving projects going on, but if I want to research
Moholy-Nage it's a goddamned mess. The same thing happened in the astrophysics
community. So all the existing archives put together a "virtual
observatory," with consistent standards, where I can find all my research
in one place.
The Virtual Observatory is not centralized, it's totally distributed.
Sean
Task: how to list existing databases?
Task: how to interoperate?
Frieder asked if it was legit, but we should look at its feasibility as
well as its legitimacy
Task: How to build new databases?
I'm doing this
How design for interoperability
Funding and responsibility
Gunalan Nadarajan
In our anxiety to do archives, we ask what and how and who, but not why.
Ask those who have archives why they are doing it--then ask ourselves why we
are bothered about this, and then plan a course of action.
Rudolf Frieling
If we talk about archiving, we also talk about a person and a hard
drive--not just information. Who is responsible for these documents?
If we talk about databases, that is a different issues. As a person who has
over 10 years of dealing with this stuff, I can say that you can't just do it
on the side. You need funds, or you rely on a community-based system: as Jon
said, let those who have an interest do the work.
Johannes Goebel
Has archived music for long time. If we want an overarching meta-archive,
depends on funding. So assume the why is OK, but how do we make them more
accessible.
Rick
I agree we need standards, funding, staff.
Sylvia Borda
This group should look at the integrity of information. Maybe we should
look to UNESCO for funding, because it's a global issue. Besides our interests,
we have to think laterally, looking at other groups that deal with
conservation, who would bring a different scientific understanding to the
table.
CCI
AIC
Electronic Media group
CHIN
Individual artists (Moholy-Nage) v. entire discipline
Mondrian Foundation
Rick
Many folks from the Variable Media Network have presented at AIC, EMG, and
other "lateral venues."
Frieder Nake
Many artists and archivists don't know what they have down in their
basements. We may in this discussion fall into a trap of the absolute ubiquity,
because those who do media art are fluid, and they tend to believe the
archiving of those things must be as fluid, and I think that's wrong.
Instead: we need standardization and personnel. This is localized in a
museum, but in this context we are talking about globalization. However, I
think globalization is bound to fail, because as soon as a standard exists, an
artist will find a different paradigm.
Michael Naimark: "That's our job!"
UNESCO funds would be better used in a poor country. Or we can accept that
this ambition is misplaced.
Johannes
It's all about money. Give anyone in this room $5M dollars, they'd be able
to do it.
[Jon: there have been many examples of million-dollar projects that died:
VAN, the Pompidou system.]
General needs
Meta search engine
Doug Kahn
How about a "Dogpile"-like search engine that could search
through all these databases.
And/or, a tool for researchers to help them write the histories.
Locations of oral histories
Grant getting for writers
Annick Bureaud
Easy tool to know who is doing what around the world?
NORMA
Group in France doing a conference in 2007 or 2008?
Rick Rinehart
We need critics and historians to help us decide what's important to
remember.
Regardless of definition of new media art, we should create systems that
interoperate with as many other databases as possible, even Etruscan potsherds,
so as to situate new media in history.
We should report back in 2 years about what we've been working on.
Jeremy Turner
There are already archives of photography and film, so you don't need to
focus on them.
Rudolf
It is not the point to generate a list, because you still don't know where
to look if that's all you have. We should look for ways to finance a
meta-search engine.
Central v. decentralized
Rick
When you try a centralized umbrella, it can drain energy away from the
people in the trenches at individual institutions.
Itsuo Sakane
From point of view of public, how do you keep for next generation, 50-100
years after, how will people enjoy this interactive art? As Jasia said,
photography is good, but maybe better is a video of public interacting with the
work. This might also be more important from an anthropological view.
I organized an institution of media art, I asked artist to make site-specific
works. They could make new image matching to the place it is shown. This living
relationship between art and public should be recorded and handed to the next
generation.
Genco
I'm not for databases, I think of them as fishtanks. But I think meta-tagging
would be very useful. We need to expand our view, especially since, as
Christiane Paul said, broader audiences are not interested in new media.
Machiko Kusahara, in her presentation, said artists are producing art to be
sold commercially. Japanese artists are trying to find ways to circulate
artworks in life.
Jeremy
Some museums / public might not care now, but in 30 years they might--even
in a fishtank.
Michael Naimark
If you had described Wikipedia 10 years ago, I would have said no way is
this thing going to work. We should consider a metadatabase that's totally
open. Ie, anyone in the spirit of a wiki is that anyone can go int and modify.
There are some groundrules--you need accountability rather than anonymity--but
it's organically self-regulating.
Yes to wikipedia model!
Wendy
Wikipedia model is good when you're starting out, but some of these
archives have elaborate systems set up to get at information. If you're going
to put 1000 entries into another system, it's like doing the work all over
again.
Can you get a search engine that works on more than one database?
Tools for sharing and promoting resources
Nina
Consider semantic web
Museum of Finland
Application that runs on semantic web
Has collections from three ethnographic museums in it
Includes contexts of users as well as data about the objects
Jeremy
We should prioritize not just ubiquitous database but a networking system
to pool resources, write reference letters for other institutions, with the
goal of building a funding base for future projects.
Dieter
For a class, his students compiled a list of
Databases
Platforms
Institutions and archives (in a building)
Distributors
Eg, EAI
Regional
Search engine for net art
Verybusy.org
General
Vector: 1M euros, but not much to show for it
Prometheus
Tool for teaching
Book - Web combinations
Students are working on comments. If you have
something to add, please email it to Dieter. He's also happy to make it public
immediately.
Wendy will link to Dieter's site. He plans to
edit it to an English version.
Alain
I agree that a list is not enough. We should try to make it possible for
people who produce resources and databases to describe their resources within a
structured way:
Geographical and historical limitations
Scope
Size
Specific solutions
RSS feed testbed
Christian Berndt
Interested in practical solutions. Rick suggested RSS feeds, so let's set
up a mailing list for the responsible persons on these projects, then share RSS
and experiment with it. I like the idea of collecting all the projects like
Dieter Daniels, but to add in a formal way a description of the projects and
their various goals.
Just in a simplistic form, RSS feeds could be a useful way to identify
resources for researchers to play with different ways to set up a
meta-framework for various projects.
Perhaps on a second stage, the MPEG-21 format could be a useful way to go
deeper, but with RSS we have a low-tech resource for comparing and locating
various research efforts.
Oliver Grau
I'm excited by the possibility of various models discussed here, especially
the simplicity of RSS model that Rick recommended. I would be very interested
in setting up an email list and other ways to move forward on this.
List of resources
Mina
The list that was developed by Dieter could be developed as a
questionnaire; each organization could answer it.
Alain
Yes, a good starting point--not just making a list, but describing in a
technical way their resources--the architecture and scope of the database. Who
is inputting, who is verifying, are they using or planning to use existing
standards. Then we'll be able to compare commensurable things.
Distributed Publication system
Wendy
I would also suggest that people who are already working with pre-existing
standards can work from the draft from those standards and add onto it.
Another suggestion: We are talking about two different things:
a meta-database separate from each archive; it will take more time and
money than what's available between now and the next refresh
a step in the right direction would be to create a meta-search engine. How
can you search Langlois for Flash and others for sound etc.
Jon
One model for searching on more than one database at a time is remote
scripting, which geeks call AJAX.
Google opens its database standards
Craigslist opens its database standards
This allows a third party to link them to create a Housing List by
location.
Caitlin Jones, Rick, Alain and I would like to propose an even more
distributed system. The idea is that individual artists and researchers
self-cite their work via XML on their own Web sites, and then a harvesting
robot harvests these data to produce a distributed database.
Here's a schematic diagram to suggest a distributed approach to making and
finding citations. The technology already exists--XML code generators and
harvesters--as demonstrated by the models linked in the diagram.
This system would:
* Scale with the number of users.
* Distribute the workload to those with the most incentive.
* Permit multiple metrics developed by third parties.
* Allows metrics to be emergent from the community rather than imposed in a
top-down fashion.
Alain
To do that, we would need to meet and compare databases and what would be
required to compare them.
Wendy
Decision of what needs to be included by curator appears in that purple
line between generator and repository.
Rick
OAI is too complicated; think more simply like RSS.
People who have experience of an artwork can report their account as long
as they put it in that format. Then you get the Wikipedia effect in which the
community provides lots of extra stuff.
How about a simple email list or community blog that we can all discuss
this stuff.
Dieter
Jon's presentation is a wonderful solution, but it doesn't necessarily
cover the most important things. This is fine for people who want to give, but
for people who are dead or feel they are already sufficiently promoted,
copyright and other systems will be an obstacle.
You must have a top-down strategy to deal with the biggest part of history
to complement the distributed model.
Rick
A distributed model doesn't preclude individual archives and institutions
from creating their own records that correspond to the "personal Web
pages" in the schema.
Wendy
Does this allow people to spider into copyrighted images from the Getty
etc.
Rudolf
This system only gives you lists, not the images.
Jon
This is a solution to the meta-search engine, not to the actual work in the
trenches of interviewing artists and convincing people to digitize their
images.
Sean
It doesn't make sense for someone like me to be part of this committee
based on technical problems. Maybe people like me can address issues of target
audience, canonical exclusion, etc. in a separate meeting.
Alain
Historians by definition need to work on the first level of documentation,
because what's online--unless it's born digital--is a mediated copy. So
historians are still going to need to fly to physical archives. The part shown
here is a way to find material. Some will be accessible in one click, others
will be costly and buried in people's archives.
You could apply the same system to people who only have a list of
resources; it would be best if people knew whether and where physical resources
resided.
We will not have everything--there will always be missing links--but with
this system we could see what is missing--this artist or era or geographical
region is missing.
Dieter
I withdraw my skepticism, since by adding the institutions to the personal
Web pages you are combining top-down and bottom-up. To be sure, some geeks
could "spam" the system with many.
Alain
This kind of open system lacks a way to add value to the system. But we can
imagine that some organization could establish a rating system. It doesn't have
to be in the system itself, it could be applied by a third party (such as a
museum or university) that has an interest in
Wendy
We haven't got to taxonomy--how do you name all the different data? There
are some people who look into the library, there is already work done on
thesaurus of new media, some people say I'm interested in interactivity, what
are the subgroups. When you bring in the other languages it gets even messier.
Chris
From a pragmatic view, it will be useful for the researchers to start with
name-based research--Manovich or someone else. You don't need it to be
classified as database or something else.
Rick
Maybe there's an opportunity here too: institutions like the Getty will
apply the AAT, but individuals will apply their own words and we'll be able to
see a folk vocabulary emerge that complements the AAT.
Genco
I use search engine in Web Biennial by asking participants to change their
source code ("<title>Web Biennial: my
project...</title>"), and this is a working solution.
France is now investing a huge amount of money just to cope with Anglophone
cultures, so putting content online is complicated by the language problem.
Dieter
In summer of next year, Oliver and I discussed having some in-between
meetings. There can be a virtual or physical meeting in May-June. Internal
workshop for a couple days rather than a public session; wouldn't just be about
REFRESH but would include that.
Rick
I'm willing to be on the committee and also put my email list toward this.
I'll turn it into an open list--a self-subscribing--promote it on rhizome and
nettime and solicit people to sign up.
Alain
One could be data structures, languages that people would like to input in
a somewhat standardized way--for example information on artworks.
The graphic that Jon showed is the result of a conversation we had that
started with the question, how could people who wanted to store or share data
for the variable media database? We took for granted that it would be a
consistent data structure. But this working group would have to determine a
more general structure. Ideally organization wouldn't have to change the
structure that they've been working from for so many years; instead we should
try to find a common vocabulary that people can agree on.
Volunteers for working group
Two components
Cultural context group (what do researchers need?)
Technical group (how could it work?)
Volunteers
Gunalan
Alain
Mina
Sylvia Borda
Marcus Cuzziol, ITAU
Christian Berndt
Wendy (?)
Rick
Annick
Genco
Jon
Sean
Ryszard