Tate Modern tour

Hello!

I have been updating an awful lot lately and that is probably because I'm stuck on one of my computer programming assignments and I don't have a lot else to do except sit here hoping that inspiration will strike, haha.

I forgot to mention that last week one of the DH students organized an outing to see the Tate museum's storage and conservation facilities! The Tate (including the Tate Modern) is the biggest art museum in London, and quite famous, I believe. They were nice enough that we didn't even have to ask a faculty member to contact them, they just took our word that we were students and told us to bring our school IDs. When we arrived to the warehouse, we had to go through a couple security checks and then they gave us a badge and told us to wait for a conservationist to come get us.

She was a time-based media conservationist, meaning that when the museum gets old cassette tapes, DVDs, records, phonographs, etc, she is in charge of making sure that they are stored and backed up appropriately. It was quite interesting, actually. She showed us her "work room" which was a giant Wal-mart sized storage area filled with wrapped up sculptures and things. On one side of the wall there were hundreds of shelves of videotapes, cds, etc. The method they use to preserve stuff is very elaborate. They have to talk with every artist to make sure that they are okay with something they may have created on an 8 track being converted and perhaps displayed using a different type of media. The first time they move the original onto a different format, they take detailed notes about what things might possibly be different from format to format and if any nuances of the original were lost, anything added, etc. They have to watch / listen to the art piece playing on both formats simultaneously several times to make sure that it is accurate enough. Then after that, whenever they are converting, say from a cassette to a CD, they will not use the original in order to keep it from getting older faster, but they still have to compare the new version and the slightly less new version against each other several times.

Whoof, sounds like a lot of work! After the original has been suitably copied, they put it in storage somewhere fireproof, bombproof, waterproof, and just slightly above freezing.

She took us to a room where other types of time-based media conservationists were working and had one of them talk about her latest project. An artist in Peru created a piece where a computer programmed ran some internet searches for the word "brutalismo," or "brutalism" in English and then printed out a sentence or two of the context of the results so that the papers would pile up underneath the sculpture. The museum was frustrated about how to preserve the piece, because not only do they need to find those specific printing devices (so that they have backups in case the other ones fail in thirty years, etc), but they have to make sure the computer program will continue to function in the future. So her job is to create a wrapper around the code that can be modified so that no matter what operating system and future environment the antiquated code is put into, they will not have to change the actual original artist's code, but rather the wrapping around it. I had never really thought about art pieces as taking so much work to preserve in an exact form before! What a thankless job, haha.

She told us that it is a nightmare when artists bring in a piece of art that uses a specific old television or projector and does not want their piece to be updated at all (for example, fitting a plasma screen inside the frame of the old television), because then the museum has to buy a certain number of backups, and they can't always find the right replacement bulbs and antennas, etc. One of the DH people from India thought it was funny that they are having so much trouble finding particular objects, because apparently they are a dime a dozen where he comes from. He thinks he might have a future job running old appliances back and forth between India and art museums in Europe, haha.

My favorite part of the tour was when we walked through a giant storage room for paintings. The ceiling was taller than most warehouse stores (like Lowe's, etc), and the room was filled with giant pull out walls that art pieces were hanging on. Hundreds and hundreds of them. It was very impressive.

Tomorrow we are going to the British Library to learn about their digitization process. We are very happy that these large organizations are showing us around, because we have not involved the UCL faculty at all in contacting them.

I went to the gym today, and I plan on going again Thursday and Friday. I figured out that my gym membership is only worth it if I go at least twice a week (it's basically $1 a day), so I am trying to make up for the past two weeks of library confinement. I think during the summer, if I still decide to have a gym membership I will ask for a personal trainer because they come with the membership so I might as well take advantage of it! Now I'm off to watch Sherlock Holmes, the new tv series, so I must be off! Unfortunately, the show is based on the original stories in title alone, but it is interesting enough that I will keep watching it, haha. Bye!