Artifacts (1 of 2)

Photographer Robert Burley takes pictures of the end of analog for his book The Disappearance Of Darkness. Christine Frohnert explains how conservators must care for Art with a Plug. Curator Christiane Paul tells us how the Whitney Museum of American Art restored the digital artwork “the world’s first collaborative sentence” by Douglas Davis. And TOE’s Washington D.C. corespondent ‘Chris’ tells us the truth about Edward Snowden and Snapchat.

The world’s first collaborative sentence entered the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1995. When the staff decided to put the work back up for display last year, they were faced with a philosophical dilemma: use the old version with the dead links, or create an updated version, one users could interact with. Christiane Paul, Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts at the Whitney, tells us what the Museum did and why. You can find the sentence here

And wrapping up this installment: a chat with our D.C. correspondent “Chris” who tells us the TRUTH about Edward Snowden and Snapchat.

4 comments on Artifacts (1 of 2)

  1. Landscraper says:

    Great as always.

    I was reminded of this project that is attempting to preserve video games and their virtual worlds.

    https://lib.stanford.edu/pvw2

    Keep up the great work

  2. J Kilker says:

    I enjoyed this episode. Listeners might find my own (academic but accessible) article relevant. It’s “Digital dirt and the entropic artifact: Exploring damage in visual media” at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15551390802620910

    The abstract: “The transition from photochemical to digital imagery presents an exceptional opportunity to re-examine damage and the “entropic artifact” (one that reveals its interactions with time) as well as how technology mediates our visual experiences. This article compares entropic cues in photochemical and digital images and discusses their processes and outcomes. For example, photochemical media gradually decay, while digital media experience glitches that often lead to sudden image destruction. In photochemical media, damage provides intuitively understood cues about the passage of time, value of the artifact, and its handling. As digital media are adopted, decisions about content encoding, how damage is visually represented, and what contextual metadata is stored influence the inevitable process of damage in digital images”

    Regards,
    –JK

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