"Time
is a condition for the existence of our 'I'. It is like
a kind of culture medium that is destroyed when it is no
longer needed, once the links are severed between the individual
personality and the conditions of existence. And the moment
of death is also th death of individual time."
-Andrey Tarkovsky, "Imprinted Time," Sculpting
In Time.
(more quotes about time and ephemeral
media)
Time
is the necessity by which and through which we define our
actions and our very existence. Art created through this
medium (i.e. time-based art) is defined by its actions over
a finite duration and thus, a reflection of life itself.
And in retrospect, it becomes a document of personal memory
and experience. But as it is, by its definition, only occuring
over a finite period of time, how is it (if at all) documented
and preserved as more than a memory in the mind of the artist/creator
and the viewer?
The
time defined by Tarkovsky is in reference to man's memory
in his sense as a moral being. In other words, a medium
through which he is able to reflect upon himself, his actions,
his history within society and his search for truth. And
while the medium of time as it relates to performance art
is indeed a powerful metaphor and/or conveyance of personal
memory, it also becomes a quantifiable source of data, a
duration marked by the beginning and end (or birth and death
if you will) of a creative endeavour. As Tarkovsky observes,
"when scholars and critics study time as it appears
in literature, music or painting, they speak of the methods
of recording it. ...They will study the forms used in art
to fix time." (Tarkovsky, p58)
Here
we are concerned with strategies for "fixing time"
in order to preserve works of finite duration - performance
art, installation, time-based media, or however it may be
defined by future artists and scholars. The chosen strategy
is in the form of digital media, based upon the collection
and organization of "metadata", or data about
data.
The initial step is to define the task. In this case, it
is the accurate documentation and preservation (emphasis
on this term) of time-based artwork. In other words, how
do we, as artists/researchers/archivists, re/present an
experience or memory in a more accessible visual and data-based
format?
Initial Considerations:
+ How do we honestly and effectively convey the message
of the performance?
+ How will the original medium (film, installation, video,
voice, live music) transfer to a recorded medium (video/audio
recording, digital archive, streaming media)?
+ What are the specific techniques for performance documentation,
reconstruction and preservation within a digital environment?
+ Are there existing models for such documentation techniques?
+ Develop metadata standards in order to maintain consistency.
more on Metadata