SUPPORTING DESCRIPTION AND ACCESS FOR NEW MEDIA ART DIANNE DIETRICH

CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

DECEMBER 16, 2015

THE GRANT Preservation and Access Framework for Digital Art Objects Test bed: 100 born-digital artworks created for CD-ROM, dating back to the early 1990s.

•  Media fragility •  Interrelated technical

dependencies •  Incomplete and/or

missing documentation

•  No established best practices for archival preservation

CHALLENGES

Nor

ie N

eum

ark,

Sho

ck in

the

Ear.

1998

.

OBSOLESCENCE “Macintosh System 7.0 and up”

“PowerPC processor-based Macintosh”

“Macintosh with 680x0 series processor”

“16 bit color and 13 inch monitor”

“QuickTime 2.1 or better”

“Internet connection and web browser with … Shockwave”

“Windows 95”

“IBM-compatible PC”

“MPC2, 486, or Pentium PC”

“Requires Internet Explorer 5.5, DirectX”

“SVGA video card”

“SoundBlaster compatible sound card”

“Flash player 8 or higher”

“I am worried about context and artistic intent – how do we retain authenticity in the long term?”

AUTHENTICITY

TOOLS Guymager The Sleuth Kit fiwalk sorter disktype hfsutils

IsoBuster Basilisk II SheepShaver QEMU VirtualBox

EMULATORS Basilisk II SheepShaver QEMU

Mac OS 7.6.1 OS 8 OS 8.1

Mac OS 8.5 OS 9

Windows 95 Windows 2000

•  Emulation offers “best feasible” access for research environment

•  Provides environment needed for interaction with original software

•  Necessitates documentation of deviations from original playback

ACCESS

Adr

iene

Jen

ik, M

auve

Des

ert.

1997

.

METADATA Descriptive – Catalog records Preservation – Imaging report, pre-fixity Technical – Disk image metadata, file ids Access – Classifications, emulation

INGEST C

OR

NE

LL

UN

IVE

RS

ITY

A

RC

HIV

AL

RE

PO

SIT

OR

Y

Archival Collection Artworks

Documentation

Compiled Emulators

Related

Deriv Disk

Disk Images

Disk Images

Derivat Disk Image

Related

Disk Images

Derivative Disk Image

Related

RMC

THANK YOU Grant PIs: Oya Rieger, Timothy Murray Cornell PAFDAO Team: Desiree Alexander, Madeleine Casad, Dianne Dietrich, Jason Kovari, Danielle Mericle, Liz Muller, Michelle Paolillo Consultants at AVPreserve: Alex Duryee, Chris Lacinak, Kara VanMalssen Advisory Board: Ben Fino-Radin, Jean Gagnon, Rebecca Guenther, Matthew Kirschenbaum, Jon Ippolito, Norie Neumark, Christiane Paul, Richard Rinehart, Simeon Warner

This work supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this presentation do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.