Conservation and Documentation of Video Art

Laurenson, Pip. (1999) "The Conservation and Documentation of Video Art." In Modern Art: Who Cares? (Amsterdam: International Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art): 263-271.

From a symposium organized by INCCA on the unique preservation and conservation challenges posed by installaton art and other contemporary art forms. Some of the ideas posed include the ways video is represented by artists:

1) As part of a larger exhibit in which the video interacts with other physical items.
2) As imagery in which the viewer interacts with the screen either passively or actively.
3) As part of a larger work where individual screens and different programs are juxtaposed within an exhibit.

Boy, this really stretches the boundaries of what we think of as a museum piece. It has implications for later use of the "work." When the "work" is loaned to another museum, the Tate Gallery (in this case) preserves their rights by making an archival master tape and retaining the underlying documentation that goes into how a work is shown. (I'll stop with the double quotes now, you get the idea).

Same problems for video art, as some of the literature I've read: polyester magnetic tape, storage and handling problems, use of material with a encoded signal. Unlike many sound archives, the Tate Gallery is not committed towards preserving playback equipment; that probably means reformatting and/or digitization.

The conservation department of the Tate look at the condition of the art work, assess its physical condition, document the details of the exhibition, etc. One of the formats they use is an Optical VideoDisc, which is analog in nature. Tate makes a digital copy whenever a video art work enters the collection.

Their definition of "master tape" is the edit master, "the first tape that was made from the original footage after it has been edited into its final form." The artist or dealer usually keeps this. It is what art museums and galleries look at before accepting it into their collections, permanently or temporarily. They list the aspects of a tape they survey:

1) Whether it has color bars and tone as references at the beginning of the tape
2) Whether any drop out or tape damage has occurred.
3) Whether there are any faults or technical problems with the audio.
4) Whether the combined chrominance and luminance levels are below 110%
(significant for choice of display format)
5) Whether the artist feels the color levels are correct when viewing the video on
a "correctly-calibrated" monitor.

The archival master is not done by the Tate. It is outsourced to production houses, who use professional, non-compresed digital formats. The Tate works with these outside engineers to ensure that the unique nature of the art work is preserved. Some of the same principles of conservation relating to doing no harm should be followed. An artist herself can even guide this preservation process.

To insure that multiple parts of the exhibit can be re-created for future installations, all aspects of the exhibit should be well-documented. There might be specific types of monitors which an artist would want to use, as well as having interactivity with museum and gallery viewers. Appendix A of this case study includes the Tate Gallery's guidelines for the care of video art works, including management of the material, storage, the choice of archival formats, the choice of display formats, compression, the conservation record. Appendix B is a list of questions to be asked of artists about their exhibit.