Besser--NYU 4/11/02 1 Preserving New Media: Issues in Saving the Orphan/Ephemeral/Experimental Films...

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

http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~howard

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

Highlights from my background

_ Avant-garde_ Film Study--Berkeley & Paris_ ‘Pataphysics & thesis

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-

Published books & Booklets

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

Conceiving, Spearheading, and Funding Big Groundbreaking

Projects_ Berkeley Image DB (1985) [art images

instead of film]_ Museum Educational Site Licensing

Project--MESL (1994-98)-_ Mellon-funded MESL evaluation (1996-

99), $250K-

MESL Participants

MESL checkboxes

MESL browse1

MESL browse2

MESL tombstone

MESL/Mellon-Visual Resources

Other Art/Film Preservation Projects-

Getty’s Time & Bits (1998)

Studio Archivists (2000, 2001)

AMIA article (1992)

Other large funded projects

_ NEH/DLF Making of America II (1998-99) $270K

_ Web-based Instructional Support (1997-99) $270K

_ UCLA/Pacific Bell Initiative for 21st Century Literacies (2000-2002) $1M

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

My Impressions of MIAP Program-

_ Caveats_ Strengths_ Cautions_ Ideas

Critical Pieces currently in MIAP program

_ History/Contextualization_ Important underlying concepts (Collecting)_ GEH_ Working professionals teaching at GEH

Cautions-

_ High Level Concerns-_ Small program size-_ Guard against the students identifying too

closely with the GEH approach-_ Extend principles beyond film-

Cautions:

High-level Concerns

_ Treading the line btwn Academic & Professional

_ Need to be inclusive & collaborative to pull this off well

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

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

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

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-

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, …)

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)

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

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

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

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

Other Digital Preservation Activities-

LC Natl Dig Info Infrastructure & Preservation InterPARES Emulation Projects E-Journal Archiving ERPANET

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

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

Emulation Projects

_ CAMiLEON (Michigan/Leeds)_ NEDLIB

E-Journal Archiving

_ Issues– License, don’t own; may not be even able to obtain right to make archival

– 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

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

NEA 2001 grant to BAVCfor $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.”

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

My research into Digital Preservation

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

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

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

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

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-

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

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

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.

The Easy Part of the Problem: Physical storage devices &

hardware players

Analog - EIAJ 30

Analog - U-Matic

Analog - VHS & Betacam

8mm video

Digital -128M Optical

Digital - Optical R/W

Digital - DAT

Digital - Syquest

Digital - Zip 100

Digital - Writeable CD-ROM (650M)

Edison

Early Wax

The Hard Part of the Problem:File Formats

_ even with text like Wordstar & Word

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

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

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)?

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

Conceptual Approaches to Digital Preservation

_ Refreshing always necessary due to volatility of physical strata– Impact on evidential value

_ Migration -- advantages & disadvantages_ Emulation -- advantages & disadvantages

Groups Working onthe Big Problem

http://sunsite.Berkeley.EDU/Longevity/

CPA Task Force Getty “Time & Bits” Conference & Follow-ups- Emulation experiments in US and Europe

NEDLIB, CURL, Michigan

Internet Archive Long Now

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

What Really is the Work?-

LeWitt: Wall Drawing 340

Installing LeWitt

LeWitt Install Directions

ECI - Imagespace (early 80s)

ECI - Hole in Space (both)

ECI - 84-locations

ECI - 84-Community Memory

ECI - 84-kids

ECI - 84-MOCA

ECI - 84-Annotating Video

ECI - Avatars & Humans

ECI - Avatar Stage

Video Technology to Make the Head Spin (NYT 3/2/00)

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

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

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”

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

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

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)-

Standards for encodingartists intentions

(group efforts)

_ Guggenheim’s Variable Media project_ Artists Interviews Project, Netherlands Institute

for Cultural Heritage 1998-1999, Modern Art: Who Cares (http://www.icn.nl/english/6.4.2.html)

_ TechArcheology: A Symposium on Installation Preservation (SFMOMA)

_ IMAP

Authors Intentions: Kendall Example

Standards for encodingartists 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

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-

Tensions around Standards

Follow Standards (No Owl, Hypercard, DHTML, Flash, …)

_ innovative, new functionsinnovative, new functions

Structural Metadata Standards for Encoding Multimedia-

_ SMIL_ MPEG 4

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

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 4/11/02 100

Saving Ancillary Materials

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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 4/11/02 102

Howard Besser

http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Longevity/ http://www.longnow.com/10klibrary/TimeBitsDisc/ http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~howard/Metadata/UC-May00/ http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Imaging/Databases/ http://is.gseis.ucla.edu/impact/s99/ http://www.ecafe.com/ http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~howard http://www.archive.org/

Preserving New Media:Issues in Saving the Orphan/Ephemeral/Experimental

Films of the Future

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Augst/Luddy

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Not just saving the Work,but also saving Conservation

info about the Work

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 106

Condition ReportUK National Trust

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Annotated ImageMississippi State, Heather Gray

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Polarizws ImageMississippi State, Heather Gray

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X-RayInvestigating the Renaissance--Portrait of a Man, Fogg Museum

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UnderdrawingInvestigating the Renaissance--Last Judgment, Fogg Museum

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Cross-sectionInvestigating the Renaissance--Last Judgment, Fogg Museum

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Recent Digital Preservation Activities

Howard Besser

http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~howard

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 113

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 4/11/02 114

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-

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OCLC/RLGDigital Repository Attributes

_ Administrative responsibility_ Organizational viability_ Financial sustainability_ Technological suitability_ System security_ Procedural accountability

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 116

OCLC/RLGSelected 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

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Preservation Metadata

OCLC/RLG Working Group on Preservation Metadata, Preservation Metadata for Digital Objects: A Review of the State of the Art, January 31 2001

OCLC/RLG Working Group on Preservation Metadata, A Recommendation for Content Information, October 2001

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Persistent Naming

URNs Handles PURLs Re-directs

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More Technical Issues

_ Complexity of formats (storage & compression)_ Synchronicity between media/streams_ Persistent Ids-_ Website mgmt-

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 120

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 4/11/02 121

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 4/11/02 122

Website ManagementMore 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

Besser--NYU 4/11/02 1 Preserving New Media: Issues in Saving the Orphan/Ephemeral/Experimental Films...

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