1. 500 Year Documentation
Francis T. Marchese and Maninder Pal Kaur Shergill Department of Computer Science, Pace University, New York, NY 10038
Contact
csis.pace.edu/~marchese
An artwork must be conserved to ensure its future display.
Software engineering will support future instantiation of digital art.
Overall Goals:
Transform existing digital artwork into an appropriate set of software engineering representations so it can be formally maintained and instantiated in future technology.
This Project’s Objectives:
To define the exact technological state of a digital artwork and its technological milieu when acquired by a museum.
This baselines the artwork.
To track and assess an artwork’s increasing divergence from state-of-the-art technology at some future time.
Helps determine degree of technological updating required for a future installation.
Supports risk assessment for determining effort (e.g. costs) required for installation.
To create a means for comparing the technological underpinnings among artworks within a digital art genre and throughout digital art history.
Will allow conservator to assess the technological heterogeneity within the museum’s collection.
Will provide information for creating strategic maintenance plans for the entire digital art.
Work to Date:
Fulfill Objective 1 by designing a checklist/questionnaire for requirements gathering and analysis.
Checklists, templates, and patterns are integral to software engineering practice.
Integrating these into digital art conservation practice should facilitate the creation of a strategic maintenance strategy for digital artwork.
Current Checklist
Future Work:
Complete objectives #2 and #3 by expanding the checklist into a database system to categorize a set of artworks with respect to their technological evolution.
Answer
Change and Diversity.
Diversity of programming languages
C/C++, Java, JavaScript, C#, Flash, HTML, XML, Python, Processing, Perl, and Max/MSP, etc.
Diversity of development libraries
mobile apps, sound composition, virtual worlds, and computer games, etc.
Software substrates in continuous flux
operating systems and network protocols evolving.
database formats changing.
globally accessible resources either disappearing or becoming redistributed.
Hardware - guaranteed obsolescence
Stockpile computer technology - replace when it fails.
Archive computer programs to durable media.
Refresh to new storage medium when either it decays or becomes obsolete.
Rely on Emulation.
Attempt to Document artwork.
An artwork will be redefined based on its underlying conceptual model and associated attributes – not by its physical instantiation (Pip Laurenson, Digital Conservator, Tate Modern, 2006).
Museums cannot afford to stockpile computer parts.
Emulation cannot be assumed to work in the future.
Digital art becomes a collection of properties, including:
the artist's instructions.
approved installations used to act as models.
the context in which the art was made.
the degree to which the artist specifications reflect his or her practice at the time the art was created.
SE - systematic methodology for creating and maintaining documentation
Documentation :
Intrinsic part of any system
Supports communication & preservation of system and institutional memory
Works with all stakeholders
Supplies comprehensive information about a computer system’s:
capabilities, architecture, design details, features, and limitations
Requirements
What the artwork is supposed to do – its conceptual foundation.
Architecture/Design
What are the essential parts of the system and how do they fit together. (Usually expressed as diagrams.)
Technical
Source code, algorithms, comments within source code.
End User
Manuals (e.g. static documents, hypermedia, training videos, etc.) for end-user, administrators, and support staff.
Supplementary Materials
Anything else (e.g. legal documents, design histories, interviews, scholarly books, installation plans, drawings, models, documentary videos, websites, etc.).
Which of the following artworks will be viewable 500 years in the future?
What challenges do contemporary digital art conservators face?
Software Engineering (SE)
Best Conservation Strategy: Comprehensive Documentation
Madonna and Child with SS. Nicholas, Peter, Mark, and Benedict, (1488), Giovanni Bellini, S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice.
Tempera on panel.
SE & Documentation
What constitutes current interactive digital art conservation practice?
I Want You to Want Me (2008), Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar, MoMA.
Interactive, distributed client-server architecture (C++, Java, PHP, OpenGL, SQL). Servers run UNIX and client runs Windows XP.
What will constitute future conservation practice?
Kinds of Documentation
Algorithms Used
Application Software Requirements
Authorship
General Requirements
Hardware Requirements
Installation Requirements
Interview Questions
Media Requirements (Audio / Video)
Networking and Communication Requirements
Preservation Strategies
Quality Assurance Procedures
References
Rights and Permissions
Security Requirements
Supporting Documentation
System Constraints
System Software Requirements
Web Requirements
Long March: Restart (2008), Feng Mengbo, MoMA.
Large-scale interactive video-game installation. Proprietary game engine.
Answer
Giovanni Bellini’s Madonna and Child.
Artwork well executed technically (of highest quality).
Digital Art: Technical quality indeterminate.
Used best practices to create artwork.
Digital Art: Best practices not well defined.
Conservation of paintings well understood.
Digital Art: Conservation methods still developing.
Documentation becomes the foundation for future conservation practice.
A digital artwork typically contains Requirements, End User, and Supplementary documentation