Panelists: Michael Mandiberg, interdisciplinary artist, Professor of Media Culture at the College of Staten Island/CUNY and Doctoral Faculty at the CUNY Graduate Center; Christine Frohnert, Conservator of Contemporary Art, Bek & Frohnert LLC; Adjunct Professor & TBM Art Conservation Program Coordinator, Conservation Center, IFA, NYU; Roopa Vasudevan, media artist, computer programmer and researcher & Jonathan Farbowitz, Associate Conservator of Time-Based Media at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
As technology increasingly becomes an extension of daily life, it has also become a central tool for artists working across various media. Even for those working outside of the digital realm, artists are relying on a multitude of digital platforms to communicate and store written and visual information. These new practices in both production and communication have posed new challenges and risks for future archives as well as the conservation of these works as essential components become obsolete.
In response to the growing need for both students as well as professional artists working in digital mediums to learn best practices and practical solutions, NYU will host a fall 2020 series, that will bring together faculty and expertise across disciplines of art and technology. The series aims to provide useful and accessible tools for a new generation of art conservators, as well as artists already grappling with these challenges in their work. Originally scheduled for spring 2020, the series has been reimagined as digital event to reach an even broader audience.
On Conservation and Archiving: Practical Strategies for Digital Media Artists is a series organized in collaboration with Eyebeam, a Brooklyn-based arts nonprofit that supports artists who meaningfully engage with technology and society. Future sessions will dive into: issues of the institutional archive, using Eyebeam’s extensive 20+ year archive as a case study; the “decentralized studio,” or how artists are working with online platforms as tools for collaboration; the specifics of preserving code and computational media, and more.