NDSA:June 16, 2014 Standards and Practices Working Group Notes

New member introduction

Maureen McCormick Harlow (PBS)

Announcements & Project Updates

Kate Zwaard will rotate off as the Working Group's co-chair; Kate Murray will become the new co-chair in her place.
The Digital Preservation 2014 conference will include a Standards and Practices WG Dinner following the poster session on the first night, 22 July.
The Working Group is ready to launch its upcoming survey, "Ranking Stumbling Blocks for Video Preservation."
- It opens on 7July and closes 2 August
- We designed the survey to allow respondents to rank the issues they have in preserving video.
- The findings should help our Working Group identify and prioritize preservation issues, and lead to useful solution development for this class of media.
Update: "Checking Your Digital Content: What is Fixity and When Should I Be Checking It?"
- The report currently is with the Infrastructure WG
- They are incorporating comments received following the latest draft release for public comment; see:The Signal, 7 February 2014.
- The coordinating committee will review it once more prior to final release.

Today's discussion topic: Digital Art

Speakers:

Ben Fino-Radin (MoMA)
Kate Lewis (MoMA)
Isabel Meyer (Smithsonian Institution)
Crystal Sanchez (Smithsonian Institution)
Erica Titkemeyer (Smithsonian Institution)
Mickey Casad (Cornell University)
Dianne Dietrich (Cornell University)
Jill Sterrett (SFMOMA)
Martina Haidvogl (SFMOMA)
Mark Heller (SFMOMA)

Attending:

Kate Murray, LC
Amy Kirchhoff
Winston Atkins
Michelle Paolillo (Cornell)
Lauren Sorensen, LC
John Spencer (BMS Chace)
Midge Coates (Auburn)
Abbie Grotke (LC)
Andrea Goethals
Vika Zafrin
Carolyn Campbell
Annalise Welte (Frick Art Reference Library)
Karen Cariani
Maureen McCormick Harlow (PBS)
Emily Frieda Shaw (U. Iowa)
Adi Alter

Questions

1: For all speakers: What makes preserving digital-art more challenging than other types of media? How can other areas of the cultural heritage community learn from your experiences? (Submitted by Kate Murray)

Some works, e.g., web-based pieces, are always on, always visible, and so are always monitored. The constant visibility means that staff must actively engage with the works to keep them running in a manner that respects the artists' intention and the works' integrity. We can look at other works not just as files, but as files with relationships that link them; those relationships eventually will fail. The question becomes: How can we make the relationships portable over time? So many variables already affect the display and we do not know the impact of the future.

These materials are new, and the challenge comes from a deficit in our understanding of them as a material to curate. We do not have real archival practices yet. For example, what are the best practices for preserving the essential characteristics? A benefit, however, has been new areas of collaboration among departments that would not normally work together in this arena. IT departments have not typically been involved in museum practice. It is crucial to involve them, however, and engage in the conversations. Neither department will have the expertise of the other.

2: For all speakers: I have been seeing a lot of recent masters graduates seeking careers specializing in the preservation of either digital art (or somewhat related, video games). What advice would you give them? Is this a growth area to the extent that it makes sense now for them to try to specialize in this or would you recommend that they try to broaden their skills and knowledge so that they would qualify for more positions? (Submitted by Andrea Goethals)

All panelists agreed that the expertise is in short supply, that there is more work to do than there are people to do it, and some noted that responsibilities are distributed among people as add-ons. When an institution hires new staff with relevant expertise, curators throughout the institution are vying for that person's assistance.

Particular recommendations included a good foundation in IT: knowing how computers work, understanding UNIX and operating systems are seen as important, as is becoming good with a programming language to gain an understanding of how software works. That lesson will be generalizable and enable the person to discuss the issues with others, even though a work might use a different program.

Nevertheless, it is too soon to specialize in digital art, despite the demand pent up in many collections. The resources are not there to count on making this a career. Furthermore, these skills are becoming crucial for any information professional. And it is not necessary to go through a curriculum to make them part of your skill set.

3: For All speakers: I am aware of a tension with regards to the playback/viewing of digital art: is emulation of hardware "good enough" or should we strive to also preserve original hardware? What are the challenges of each strategy, and how can we address these challenges? (Submitted by Michelle Paolillo)

There is no one approach to apply to every work. Some works, e.g., a piece drawing from content from the Internet, may not rely on the setting that the hardware provides; emulation may be adequate here. Console-based settings, such as a Nintendo might provide, may require a different approach. Establishing the right approach may involve extensive discussions with the artist to determine whether any aspects of a work can change.

Hardware remains a significant challenge. We cannot assume that the original creating technology will be available in the future and smaller institutions may not find preserving hardware viable. Furthermore, hardware processors are increasingly fast, changing the original presentation, so documenting the original hardware specifications is a critical part of documenting the artist's original intent.

Although the challenges of hardware make emulation an important strategy, it is never good enough; at least, not out of the box. Qualitative analysis of the emulated work, side by side with the original, is critically important. That analysis demands that we understand the work's critical properties. As an example, arcade and video game emulations handle game execution well, but not the display. In general, accurate emulation of CRT monitors does not exist for flat panel monitors. And we must remain aware that eventually, we will need to migrate the emulators, too.

4: For all speakers: Is preserving the bits enough? Do we need more than the usual documentation of how/why something was created? (Submitted by Winston Atkins via Kate Murray; this question actually kicked off the initial discussion)

The bits are never enough. We must understand its varied characteristics, such as:

How did the artist install the work?
What is core to the installation?
What is core to the artist?
Which equipment can be exchanged?
What do we need to look out for?

A single emulation may not be sufficient; providing different renderings through different emulations may give a better sense of what the work may have been like.

In terms of the OAIS model, documenting the representation information's "meaningful concepts" means documenting "as the artist intended" and extends to our need for the artist's documentation. Given the complexity of these works, it also means that the diverse perspectives provided by different branches of the collecting institution (e.g., the IT staff) are a necessary part of developing a holistic approach to curatorial documentation and making the work renderable.

Incorporating all the perspectives necessary to preserve the works requires attention. Each work's uniqueness makes a firm decision tree impossible. Exhibition meetings often generate questions, for instance. Newly acquired works' latent complexity makes an acquisitions meeting between the curator, conservator, and artist important. Such a meeting develops an institutional understanding of questions about what the work is, and what is the expression that the institution hopes to collect.

It is important to acquire source code, not just the video file. The source code "may be as close as we can get to the archival master." Interviewing the developer responsible for the coding may provide important documentation. If the artists do their own coding, understanding their decisions may be interesting.

5: Closely linked to the question above, what metadata schema are you using to capture technical and intellectual description of preserved assets? What types work best for what "portions" of documentation? (Submitted by Michelle Paolillo)

When assessing the available metadata standards or schema, you should consider the degree to which each of them can leverage your curatorial responsibilities for your collections. Indexing metadata elements allows an institution to work usefully; for instance, by creating a database that allows curators to identify works using particular codecs, and systematically address issues common to all. It is inefficient to create such a database as a separate entity. Nevertheless, we must also remember that computer code is a language and metadata alone cannot adequately document a piece. Unified Modeling Language could provide a useful generalization of how a program works, but the process for creating these visualizations is not automated.

Following up on the discussion topics, Josh Sternfeld (NEH) briefly described an open forum session at the Digital Preservation 2014 conference in which he will participate. The forum will address fostering an active R& D community around digital heritage, including digital art. He anticipates the discussion will begin uncovering the elements necessary to that work, bringing out the technical elements, the educational core, and the communication needed.

[Note: See Josh Sternfeld's piece in The Signal, 3 July 2014, and in Digital Preservation Q&A for additional information.]

Wrap-Up

Digital Preservation 2014 meeting will pre-empt the July conference call
The next conference call will be 18 August at 1 o'clock. A possible topic will be consideration of an Optical Discs Deep Dive.
Be on the lookout this autumn for a possible workshop on email preservation.