Rudolf Frieling
Digital Heritage

As is so often the case in times of radical change, ghosts appear on the horizon of a dismal future. In recent years we have become acquainted with the ghost of the totalitarian digital world. Uncertainty has spread between the poles of utopian euphoria and the despairing charge of an irreversible loss of substance. Pessimistic newspaper headlines herald "The Torture of the Bits," a problematic field between totalitarianism and "electronic self-deception,"1 as well as the erosion of the function of libraries as a result of digitalization (of books). Talk is of placing a bet on the future that does not take the resultant costs into consideration. With this we encounter the rhetorical figure of demagogy, which time and again makes use of metaphors of doom: Our data vanish in the depths of the computer and the Internet. This is contrasted by the complete affirmation of the new technologies: In 2000 in Rome, for instance, at a conference on our cultural heritage sponsored by IBM, representatives of museums discussed the prospect of placing maximum-quality reproductions of their entire inventories online – in order to potentially acquire new sources of income. In the years immediately following its advent, the Internet promised completely new opportunities for accessing historical collections, provided that these could be stored on servers.

The framework appears to be in place: In the meantime, the digitalization of large stores of collected and archived materials has come within reach and is financially feasible, and even the database culture has become a ubiquitous, manifest phenomenon. While the primacy of "being digital" (Nicholas Negroponte) has now become generally accepted, there remains a deep-seated uncertainty that was aggravated by the crash of the New Economy in 2000, attested to by the statements quoted above. In the transition from the exposed film, which can be 'scanned' by the naked eye, to the magnetic tape, which can only be read by machines, to the digital file, which is dependent on the appropriate software – the constant increase of the complexity of the configuration of hardware and software has led to an ever greater dependency on technologies and IT specialists. The direct and swift availability of data is being paid for with at least an imminent total loss of these data – in contrast to the partial loss of information kept on analog media.

As a distribution medium, the Internet has an enormous range and speed, in future certainly even for maximum-quality moving pictures. However, the hard disk as a storage location has proved to be a fragile construct. The material 'secured' on it is lost again too frequently and too quickly, above all in a network with other computers and potential external access.2 Thus the question is no longer whether we should store everything on hard disks and make it accessible online, but rather which information should be processed specifically for the Internet and how. Online distribution and reception do not automatically have to be established in the same medium. Or put another way: The Internet stands less for storage than it does for transport and discourse.3 However, it also stands for the ubiquitous availability of data envisaged by the pioneers of the digital.4

Yet there are also the attempts, doomed to failure from the start, if not to store the Internet in its entirety, then only the images contained on all of the Web sites. No one has up to this time been able to explain what sense it might make to create a mere image gallery of the Internet. This is also not surprising, as many of these kinds of projects are concerned more with exploring new hardware and software configurations and have less of a decided interest in the cultural heritage that the early Internet sites will one day represent to future generations. But this is also why this should be examined all the more critically, as we have up to this very day still not even been successful in finding valid solutions for the even older and more urgent questions relating to the preservation and restoration of the electronic images of video art. Therefore, what is to be "passed on" or what is later to be defined as heritage is a historical-cultural process that needs time. At the same time, as time passes, the urgency becomes even greater to make the material to be passed on available in the first place. Any number of questions invariably arise with regard to the processes of the evaluation, the selection, and the definition of the material, which like all decision-making processes are subject to criticism. However, it is an important first step to make these processes transparent and discuss them in a public forum. The reappraisal of the older media of film and photography that took place in the twentieth century can now also be observed with reference to the electronic medium. Video art is clearly experiencing an increase in value, not only economic value – refer to the contribution by Dieter Daniels in this catalogue – but cultural value as well. Collectors, curators, restorers, and archivists are therefore faced with the task of taking the status of electronic images in our society seriously.

In recent years, the debate on fundamental questions resulting from digitalization for our "cultural heritage" has led to a number of concrete projects, which were introduced and discussed in July 2005 within the scope of the two-day symposium "40yearsvideoart.de – Digital Heritage" at the Kunstsammlung NRW in Düsseldorf.5 As a first milestone of the project, questions were raised that specifically examine the status of the electronic image and its significance for the constitution of the "digital heritage." In all of the contributions it became evident how from both a theoretical as well as a practical point of view, the transfer from analog to digital appears to be a quantum leap which at the same time was accompanied from the very beginning and in all of its consequences by a degree of public criticism. At first glance, the subtitle of the symposium therefore seems to be a contradiction: How can the heritage be digital if the primary issue has to be the digitalization of our analog heritage? With what right or with what justification does the curator or archivist stake everything on digitalization if there is not yet even any sound knowledge available with respect to its long-term effects and to which formats will even prove to be (relatively) permanent? The first digital tape formats have long become history and are now obsolete. It is therefore not surprising if on the path into an uncertain digital future, the archives, provided they do not succumb to the pressure of the sheer mass of material that needs to be dealt with, hesitate taking on the role of harbinger. But what options do they have?

The following will deal specifically with the reasons inherently linked with the special qualities of the genre of video art. The implications are obvious and apply for all collections and archives that work with audiovisual media. Until recently, however, most collections and archives did not even contain any audiovisual documents associated with the heritage of video art – exceptions prove the rule. The issue is therefore not the loss of data in the archive, but also the questions of how information enters the collection in the first place and which transformation processes it is subject to. In view of the continuously new and apparently better and better quality of the carrier formats for digital information, the widespread helplessness of the preservers, collectors, curators, and restorers has led to the predicament that the so urgently necessary migration of data has been delayed time and again. Yet even today, a final, lasting data format is not on the horizon – and it will not be even in future. For this reason, one of the radically new tasks for restorers as well is to test and promote concepts for securing the continuity of information in a relative, dynamic environment.

The departure, however, from the historically anchored concept of the analog is difficult. Within the context of art, and in particular within that of restoration, one has always come up against the preservative solution as a response to the aforementioned uncertainties: reverting to the reconstruction of an original configuration of production and presentation. Two options present themselves when hardware components fail: 1) Their repair (be it only in special, individual museum-related cases), or 2) their replacement with new technologies, which, however, have always had the 'disadvantage' of generating a different image (notwithstanding the difference in a sculptural sense due to other dimensions, stylish design, et cetera). Restorers have thematicized these issues time and again with respect to the video sculpture. But what exactly does one really regard as an 'original' presentation of single-channel works, that is videotapes, which have always been presented in varying forms – hardware varies from gallery to gallery, from the exhibition to television, as does the respective reception site. So do we go back to the very first form of public presentation, which was frequently not defined or even documented by the artist? And can suggestions be made for works on video that were first broadcast on television but no longer feasible today within this context? Those who begin to postulate original conditions of presentation cannot get away from a hypothetical, historicizing construction that can never do justice to the diverse and variable manifestations of the medium of video.

It has become clear how difficult it is to define these conditions in detail. Boris Groys' objection, however, seems more fundamental: In his contribution to this catalogue he contends that the more we deal with a historicizing practice of presenting media art, the more this technological perspective shifts our view to the images and their content. This objection, though, needs to be stated more precisely, as especially media art makes technology its subject, which cannot simply be separated from the transported content. In this respect, the key question here is not the technological practice, but rather the loss of a particular practice and aesthetics, which we possibly connote with our own past – refer, for instance, to the memories evoked by old Super-8 films of the family. According to Groys, precisely because of its nostalgic reminiscence, this view becomes the real meaning of reshowing old films.

Therefore, within the context of our digital heritage, this practice cannot be the issue. Rather the question with regard to what exactly the differences are, or will be, between a past and a present (or future) practice of re-presentation will have to be asked more often. The reconstruction of historic conditions of presentation as such is therefore definitely interesting, that is, provided it enables us to perceive differently. Reverting to analog hardware configurations, however, can only function as an exemplary citation; day-to-day museal and exhibition practice, which is committed to visualizing art, will not be able to exercise an influence on this. Video art in the museum – and thus the videotape as a part of our cultural heritage – will therefore have to be digital, as with time, all of the analog options will have become obsolete.

Besides the technological practices of sorting, indexing, and distributing information, the process of reviewing, reevaluating, and re-presenting is a fundamental aspect of any digital archive.6 Even the most recent digital past since the mid-1990s is also part of this historical as well as cultural process of reviewing, as is the process of the increasingly more rapid succession of digital carriers. And yet at the same time, 40yearsvideoart.de accentuates a significant void in the art- and media-historical reappraisal of the history of video art, this obscure terrain of copies, masters, submasters, copies of copies, new archive masters, et cetera. One could address this difficulty as 'the impossibility of description.' This impossibility has its roots in the subject, in the matter, in the medial, and even today, it brings about consequences that affect contractual relationships between artists and collectors. We do not have to repeat the media-theoretical debate that has always pointed out the loss of the original7 in order to be able to establish at a practical level that status, aesthetics, formatting, and presentation/reception are variables in a constellation that can only manifest itself time and again in another form. "Video is relative"8 – we have to operate under this condition.

Collectors, museums, and even artists have a vital interest in documenting and preserving works they own or they have produced as well as in placing them in a historical or contextual relationship. A first step in this direction would be to list and analyze what one actually has. But this is where the difficulties start. What, exactly, is on the shelf? Where does it come from, and what rights does the collector or the institution have to it (a justified question that in the prevailing exchange economy of early video art could often de facto not be indisputably clarified)? And does the content even match the label? How can I check the content if the required playback media are no longer available? And even if one should actually be able to view the work, what value does it have? Is it a work of art, or is it a documentation? Contracts, accompanying documentary material, even descriptions of content – in video art they are often lacking. And who even really knows how to document works on video? As if the practice by the mass media of multiplying had reduced the value of individual copies to such an extent that it provoked nothing short of a careless attitude among collectors and curators, even towards work produced by established artist. Postulated in more general terms: The practice of video art had just devoted itself to work on the disappearance of the object – and in defiance of Gerry Schum's early gallery initiatives, it succeeded in that practice until way into the 1980s.

It proves to be a time-consuming process to trace the individual production steps, copying processes, formats, and new variants in order to even be able to tell the story of a production. Often it is only selectively possible to untangle the knot of works recopied and thus 'improved' by the artists and to identify a hypothetical original. For this reason, the exact reconstruction and analysis, description, and documentation of the history of a work (or a practice) as the starting point for a cluster of restoration-related decisions is one focus of the 40yearsvideoart.de project. The following two examples shall illustrate the complexity associated with the decision-making (or of the inability to make one):

In all of this confusion, a distinct clue would seem to be a title and a date. At least we can say with certainty: In 1963, the year in which Nam June Paik had his first exhibition, "Exposition of Music – Electronic Television," which was later to become famous, in Wuppertal's Galerie Parnass, Wolf Vostell produced a 16mm film in which he recorded seven minutes of broadcasting time on the German television station ARD and "decollaged" it on television while it was being recorded. At the beginning of the 1970s, this film, entitled Sun in your head, became part of one of the first video editions to be brought out after the founding of the video collection by the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein. Judging by the literature and information provided by the artist, the film was copied 1:1 onto videotape. All of the collections possessing Sun in your head have a copy of this first video edition, which was later transferred onto U-matic and as such today serves as an 'archive master' stored in the Galerie Vostell in Berlin. In our efforts to pursue the first generation – the master – wherever possible, we borrowed the 16mm film reel from the Vostell Archive in Spain and had it digitalized. Yet our research revealed that the film and the video differ significantly. Even their lengths do not correspond. In addition, the producer at the time recalls a Sun in your head 1 and a Sun in your head 2. Which one, then, is the original? Yvonne Mohr and Tina Weidner's observations suggest that we are dealing with an original work from 1963 that was reedited and processed for video, without, however, changing the image material itself. In this respect, it is a further "decollage," which due to the video edition policy was re-edited to last exactly seven minutes.9

One of Klaus vom Bruch's first video productions, Das Schleyer-Band I/II (The Schleyer Tape I/II) from 1978, is not only an excellent contemporary document of a decisive political phase in the Federal Republic of Germany, at the same time it is also a documentation of the artistic practice of appropriating found footage from television. Here, the first signs are already evident of what was later to become the signature of vom Bruch's artistic work. The live recording on U-matic recorders led to the documentation of the content of a report that no television station has preserved in its own archive in the same way. But it also led to very specific interference, as documented by the artificial slowing-down of the Tagesschau recording. Thus the bar of illegible information that runs diagonally through the image is a key element of the work, as the technology available to the artist at the time left him no other possibility of creating a slow-motion effect. The hissing in the image becomes an integral part of the work – and hence interference that must not be touched.10

A look at electronic art shows us what is true in general for modern materials: The restoration process is a concerted action by specialists: Restorers, video technicians, mediaticians and art historians, and even software designers and developers contribute their expertise to the solution of often complex problems.11 This project lays open for the first time how little the work on the individual pixel, on the scan line, or on the video field frame has been systematically conducted and documented in the past. In the meantime, highly differentiated and locally restricted retouching, primarily to cater to the viewer's eye, can be performed between analog patina – visible in a heightened frequency of drop-outs and unembellished editing errors – and the polished new digital image. Not all flaws have to be removed in this way – in particular if it was a decision by the artist to sustain the flaw, as demonstrated by Jean-François Guiton's Holzstücke or Klaus vom Bruch's Das Schleyer-Band. In both cases, certain restrictions posed by early editing technology became an integral part of the aesthetics and the temporal structure of the material.12

The first and most important part of the work continues to consist in maintaining the tapes in a playable condition – and if possible in an optimum way. Even when compared, for instance, with the Sony Recording Media Restoration Center in France, the experience gained by Christoph Blase as head of the ZKM Laboratory for Antiquated Video Systems is important.13 One of the overriding problems has proved to be lack of a reference. If the original configuration of hardware and videotape no longer exists, then how can color, contrast, luminosity values, et cetera, even be established? Statements by the artists, provided they are even available, are often a first clue. However, a suggestion made by Johannes Gfeller promises to enable us to take an enormous step forward in future: He appeals for a catalogue of reference images which can be assigned to a particular technology and to a particular time.14 This would make it conceivable to be able to perform a 'relative' restoration that matches the aesthetics of a certain period.

A further problem lies in the question of to what extent flaws or restoration-related decisions disruptively influence reception. Not every drop-out is even noticed; not every faint, low-contrast image is found to be irritating – in fact, they are frequently experienced as historical and authentic (refer to Groys' line of argumentation in his contribution). Without being able to plunge into additional technical details here, I would like to again take up the problem from the other end of the digitalized image: The presentation of old black-and-white tapes on DVD, during which color interference and artifacts are also exposed, is clearly unacceptable – this was recently the case during the showing of Bruce Nauman's old tapes in the Flick Collection at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin in 2004. As a rule, the issue of whether a tape should be played in a decompressed or a compressed form cannot be decided with the eye; however, the level of compression is definitely a balancing act between flawless performance of the playback unit and the eye of the beholder. In the end, digital does not automatically mean better image quality. It is precisely the apparently simple image processes of video art, with their high level of interference intensity, as well as the highly complex and extremely accelerated editing sequences by Nam June Paik and others, which confront the software with enormous problems. This is why video art can also be used to fathom out the boundaries of what is feasible in the realm of our digital heritage.

In the end, however, the huge advantage of the digital medium – loss-free copying – is obvious: Not all collections have to perform the same restoration work. New archive masters also benefit those who possess neither the know-how nor the financial means to devote themselves to this complex procedure.15 However, after all the restoration has been completed, the questions remains regarding future, long-term storage, and redistribution. On what format should we play out the contents? Does it even have to be a single format, or can multiple parallel back-ups constitute a solution? Those familiar with collection practice know that no one can or will become involved in the work and the costs associated with multiple archive back-up. For the time being, the practiced and sensible distinction between archive format and distribution format remains the standard. Avoiding data loss during transfer means relying on non-compressed forms of digital storage, both now and in future. Whether all stored digital information will actually be required at a later date is still a matter of speculation. From an archival as well as a restorative point of view, it is in itself already a loss to store more or less highly compressed files. With its MPEG-2 coding, the DVD can therefore be ruled out as an archive medium.16

From film to video – this is not just the line of technological development, it also represents a confrontation: Within the context of film, filmmakers as well as archivists have much more extensive experience in dealing with the threat to their medium posed by physical-chemical processes of decomposition, but also by changing market conditions. We all recall the complaints made in the face of the changing consumer behavior of moviegoers in the era of almighty television. Today, complaints of the same tenor can be heard with the advent of home cinema with its DVD recorders and plasma screens. Why spend money in an expensive movie theater when films can be enjoyed in the comfort of one's home only three months after their release? A medial form of expression, be it art or commerce, has to adapt to altered technological conditions. This includes systems becoming obsolete or continuing to exist under different circumstances. The field of technologies has always been a dynamic one. In the meantime, however, we have learned to no longer rely solely on the hypothetically best possible archive medium, but rather to develop a strategy with many complementary options. But the aim of current research will be as far as possible to store uncompressed data in order to be ideally prepared for a future change of format.

What has changed significantly over the last five years: We are no longer discussing the pros and cons of a digital world in principle, rather we are examining the conditions of the digital in concrete terms. We are moving within a field of research projects, one of which, however, has up to now been lacking: the extreme precision and accuracy of, and the high regard for the electronic image which art is now demanding of us all the more decisively following an anti-attitude that lasted decades.17 Video art is confronting historians and aestheticians alike with two central aspects of twentieth-century art: variability and performativity. Yet to postulate concrete instructions for archivists and restorers within the framework of an open construct of this kind requires a disclosure of decision-making mechanisms and an archive policy that is offensive, that questions itself, and that thinks in terms of alternatives. In the end, those who insist on a historical configuration of presentation and archiving will be left standing there with only very few flawlessly reconstructed analog works of art. A large share of our cultural heritage will have been lost.

"Save the archives" was the dramatic appeal made in October 2004 in Le Monde by Emmanuel Hoog, president of the International Federation of Television Archives (IFTA) in Paris. The subheading maintained: Audiovisual media – the ignored legacy. What a paradox: In our general understanding it is precisely the archives that are meant to save us from natural memory loss. In the face of irrevocable entropic processes, this is why data back-up is particularly important in an electronic, computerized society. In the perception by the general public, the fire in the Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar receives much more attention than the many "ignored" moving images of our history. The horror scenario of a warehouse fire, which recently destroyed a major part of the heritage of the Young British Artists of the Saatchi Collection in London, caused an outcry in the press. It is (still) difficult to imagine that the same emotional reaction could be triggered off by a serious hard-disk crash that irrevocably destroys a collection of historically valuable digital information. From this perspective, "digital heritage" appears to be a further paradox, as it is precisely digitalization that opens the door to data loss and data manipulation alike. But the rescue of the audiovisual archives will only then be possible when the transfer – "migration" in the language of archives – from analog to digital has been completed and the concrete conditions of migration have been documented. 40yearsvideoart.de tells exactly this story. And as is the case for any story of migration, this one, too, is not free of constraints, changes of format, or of hopes and promises, not all of which will be fulfilled. There is one thing, however, we can rule out: a return to our analog origins.

1. "Tortur der Bits," Süddeutsche Zeitung, June 17, 2005, and Uwe Jochum, "Elektronischer Selbstbetrug," Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 15, 2005.
   
2. Cf. the history of obsolete formats and media on Bruce Sterling's Web site www.deadmedia.org.
   
3. See, for instance, the portal "Media Art Net" at http://www.mediaartnet.org published by Rudolf Frieling and Dieter Daniels on behalf of the Goethe Institute, the ZKM Karlsruhe, and the German Ministry of Research and Education (BMBF). Or refer to the network of activists working on a global participative encyclopedia, Wikipedia.
   
4. Cf. Vannevar Bush's utopian Memex in his article "As We May Think," The Atlantic Monthly, July 1945, cf. http://www.mediaartnet.org.
   
5. See the presentations and materials online at: http://www.40jahrevideokunst.de/symposium. A first version of the following considerations was presented in an introductory talk at the symposium.
   
6. In this sense, a portal such as "Media Art Net" is both an index of a future digital archive of media art as well as a context generator.
   
7. Cf. the contribution "Der Originalbegriff im Zeitalter virtueller Welten" by Wolfgang Ernst as well as the subsequent documentation of the discussion in the symposium reader Video im Museum, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, 2000.
   
8. Jean-François Guiton in a conversation with the author in Karlsruhe in June 2005.
   
9. Also refer to the work description in this catalogue.
   
10. In contrast, for instance, to physical damage to the original tape caused by defective playback equipment (which was the case, for example, with the original tape of Ulrike Rosenbach's Glauben Sie nicht, dass ich eine Amazone bin). A further example can be found in Jean-François Guiton's Holzstücke (Wood Pieces). During editing, a faulty line gradation was produced in piece no. IV that rhythmically matched the cut so well that it was maintained for artistic reasons. The artist decided against restoring this error.
    
11. Cf. the contributions by Tina Weidner and Yvonne Mohr and by Heather Weaver to the symposium at: http://www.40yearsvideoart.de/symposium.
    
12. In Guiton's case, a faulty interlace ran synchronous to the editing rhythm; with vom Bruch, the forced slow-motion of the recorded television images was visible on the wide tapes, hissing one is otherwise familiar with during fast-forwarding.
    
13. For details, refer to the project's Web site for his presentation at the symposium.
    
14. Cf. Johannes Gfeller's contribution to the symposium on the project's Web site.
    
15. I would like to thank my colleagues for their exemplary cooperation, in particular those at the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein and the Kunstmuseum Bonn.
    
16. Productions originally recorded in a compressed mode can accordingly only be copied 1:1. The compression is already part of the original information structure and thus does not represent data loss.
    After extensive research, in coordination with our Laboratory for Antiquated Video Systems, the ZKM Karlsruhe's Institute for Image Media has in the meantime worked out a solution for its own collections, which stores non-compressed data on digital LTO tapes for archiving purposes. In doing so, they rejected the solution favored in the past of storage on RAID systems on hard disks.
    
17. On this horizon we encounter the names of EU projects such as Prestospace, FIRST, INCCA, TAPE, BRAVA, and OASIS. In addition there is Nestor, supported by BMBF; Media Matters, an initiative by the Tate Collection and the MoMA New York and San Francisco in association with the New Art Trust; the Variable Media Initiative by the Langlois Foundation Montreal and the Guggenheim Museum New York; the Creative Archive of BBC London; or the Aktive Archive at the HKB Bern – the list could go on and on.