25
Audiovisual Archives for a “Light” Museum Notes on a sustainable development model Alessandro Califano ICOM Italy - Commissione Tematica Audio- Visivi e Nuove tecnologie Istituzione Musei del Comune di Bologna “preserving virtual memories” Bologna, 19 May 2011

Audiovisual archives in a sustainable museum

Embed Size (px)

DESCRIPTION

Budget cuts are no longer to be considered a merely temporary accident, so we have to face the fact that ours is now a post-affluent society, where vast primadonna-like museal programmes (and architectures) are going to be a thing of the past, and sustainability, as well as vernacular architectures, are the things we should take into focus. This also means downsizing infrastructures and tools. In documentation and communication - of single artefacts, collections, and museum programmes - we can consider the role of humbler (and less expensive) tools. Like social upheaval’ dissemination in the Maghreb and in the Middle East has effectively demonstrated, a smartphone can be a very powerful tool. If we think of the fact that museum professionals are very often already networked, we can easily imagine a new, “lighter” and less expensive process of collections’ documentation, based on already existing know-how. This presentation has been prepared for a meeting organized by ICOM and the City of Bologna Museums Authority, focused on the preservation of virtual memories (19 May 2011). Further details about the meeting can be found on twitter at #memorievirtuali. If not stated otherwise, all pictures are by the author.

Citation preview

Page 1: Audiovisual archives in a sustainable museum

Audiovisual Archives for a “Light” Museum

Notes on a sustainable development model

Alessandro CalifanoICOM Italy - Commissione Tematica Audio-

Visivi e Nuove tecnologie

Istituzione Musei del Comune di Bologna

“preserving virtual memories”

Bologna, 19 May 2011

Page 2: Audiovisual archives in a sustainable museum

Museums – How and Why

“The failure to ask ‘why’ museums do what they do discourages self-critical reflection, which is prerequisite to heightened awareness, organizational alignment and social relevance.

Instead, the focus is largely on the ‘how’, or the clichéd processes of collecting, preserving and earning revenue — the latter being the cause of much of the organizational drifting characteristic of many contemporary museums.”

[ Robert R. Janes, Museums in a Troubled World: Renewal, Irrelevance, or Collapse? p. 16 ]

Page 3: Audiovisual archives in a sustainable museum

A Difficult Context

• Commercialization of Cultural Heritage

• Budget Cuts

• A (post-)affluent Society

Page 4: Audiovisual archives in a sustainable museum

Commercialization

• Cultural Heritage as an income-generating asset: a error in logic

• Great events, blockbuster exhibitions, international loans…

• … and not enough consideration to value adding actions, and to preventive conservation (ICOM)

Page 5: Audiovisual archives in a sustainable museum

Budget Cuts – A Widespread Reality

• Italy – budget cuts to cultural heritage preservation and restoration:

335 million € in 2004102 million € in 2011

[ VII Federculture Report (12 May 2011) ]

• Canada – Museums Assistance Fund cut by 25% twice in the last few years (– 44 % in total)

[ John McAvity, MUSE, May/June 2011, p.6 ]

Page 6: Audiovisual archives in a sustainable museum

A (post-)Affluent Society

Generally speaking:• We live in a society with a (too) high consumption of not renewable resources, and a (too) high degree of refuse production

In museums:• We shifted from the monument as a museum to the museum as a monument

British Museum, Louvre, Uffizi vs. Calatrava (Milwaukee 2001), Gehry (Bilbao 1997), Libeskind (Berlino 2001)

Page 7: Audiovisual archives in a sustainable museum

Into the future - USA

• Art Museum (Extension), Milwaukee – a large bird taking off over Lake Michigan, a new dramatic landmark of great urban and emotional impact (photos: left by Philip Greenspun, right by rycam.net)

[Santiago Calatrava, 2001]

Page 8: Audiovisual archives in a sustainable museum

Industrial archaeology – Germany (1)

• Museum im Kulturspeicher, Würzburg – an old (1901?) silo, its outside mostly untouched, reused as a “heritage container”.

[Brückner & Brückner, 2002]

Page 9: Audiovisual archives in a sustainable museum

Industrial archaeology – Germany (2)

• Museum im Kulturspeicher, Würzburg – the exhibition space is in self-supporting concrete boxes, the lobby keeps its old wooden structure

[Brückner & Brückner, 2002]

Page 10: Audiovisual archives in a sustainable museum

A provoking thought

We have been building expensive museums, and have to spend almost as much to try protecting artefacts from

light and variations in temperature…

• The glass-and-concrete art museum in Tashkent – an ineffective fight against summer heat

• The Savitsky Museum (Nukus) and the Archaeological Museum (Termez) – the effectiveness of a vernacular architecture approach

Page 11: Audiovisual archives in a sustainable museum

Afghanistan – the setting (1)

Bamiyan – power is guaranteed (but just to a few…) by generators and storage batteries

Page 12: Audiovisual archives in a sustainable museum

Afghanistan – the setting (2)

Panjsher – working to complete the first hydroelectric plant in the whole valley (2008)

Page 13: Audiovisual archives in a sustainable museum

Afghanistan – the setting (3)

The Salang Tunnel (3400 m) is the only connection letting tankers down to Kabul’s high plateau

Page 14: Audiovisual archives in a sustainable museum

Kabul, the National Museum of Afghanistan

With no heating, hygrometric control systems, or access to the internet, the museum (ice-cold in winter) is fresh in the summer.

Page 15: Audiovisual archives in a sustainable museum

Rethinking a Museum

Three are the main points to consider:

– To care for artefacts’ protection and documentation

– To limit expenses/energy consumption– To implement new services and augment

visibility

…and these points are not necessarily contradictory!

Page 16: Audiovisual archives in a sustainable museum

Energy Saving and Artefacts Protecting Measures

With the substitution of neon and incandescence lights with LEDs we can achieve up to over 90% of energy saving, while both heat and lux affecting the artefacts are very effectively kept under control.

Page 17: Audiovisual archives in a sustainable museum

New Technologies: Strength & Weakness

• ITC infrastructures for land lines are very scanty, but mobile and smart phones are widespread

• A majority of the under-30 aged museum professionals are on Facebook

• Similarly to what happens in the M.O., the Maghreb, in Egypt, or Iran, in Kabul, too, e-mails and social networks do “run” on mobile phones

Page 18: Audiovisual archives in a sustainable museum

Documentation and Communication (1)

We have to make best use of this generally available tool, adapting our internal documentation procedures, in order to set up a first, basic, rather inexpensive documentation campaign of museum artefacts and events.

Page 19: Audiovisual archives in a sustainable museum

Documentation and Communication (2)

Beyond the use of photographic documentation for single artefacts or contexts (left, Durga head from Ghazni; right, Indo-Greek sculpture in Tepe Naranj), smartphones can be used for many other purposes…

Page 20: Audiovisual archives in a sustainable museum

Documentation and Communication (3)

…for instance, preparing audiovisual documentation of an exhibition, or a restoration (here, the preparation of a 1:10 model of the Ghaznevid Lashkari Bazar arch at the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul).

Page 21: Audiovisual archives in a sustainable museum

Documentation and Communication (4)

Discussing about an early 20th century necklace from Afghanistan, kept at the Ethnographic department of the National Museum in Kabul, at a UNESCO workshop. The director of the museum in Khost, Habib Mohammad Mandozai talks to conservator and curator.

Kabul, National Museum of Afghanistan (15 May 2010).

Page 22: Audiovisual archives in a sustainable museum

Documentation and Communication (5)

• At the same time, much older technologies can easily be integrated with new ones – a potter’s wheel, for instance, to obtain series of images or videos of not too bulky artefacts.

• From sharing pictures on Facebook to the dissemination of images about a museum’s collections there is but a short way to go.

Page 23: Audiovisual archives in a sustainable museum

Documentation and Communication (6)

• Duplication (on-site / off-site) such a visual archive – carrying both pictures and videos – has very contained costs.

• Moreover, next to limiting the risk of losing data, or seeing them deteriorated by time, it will eventually make migration to different platforms and standards easier.

Page 24: Audiovisual archives in a sustainable museum

Documentation and Communication (7)

There will of course be some culturally specific issues:

• Women voices will be more likely on audio than on audiovisual documentation.

• Background voices commenting slide presentations or videos will be more frequent than in some other cultures.

• However, the inherent difficulties notwithstanding, and in a different cultural frame, there is no reason why we shouldn’t think a quick development of adequate and satisfactory documentation and communication strategies to be perfectly possible also in Afghanistan.

Page 25: Audiovisual archives in a sustainable museum

...Tashakor!Thank you.

“A nation stays alive when its culture stays alive” – Kabul, Nazional Museum of Afghanistan (2010)