PRESS RELEASE
Open Archives. Media Art Presentation and Digital Archives
October 29th – November 4th 2007
Intermedia Institute, Faculty of Electrical Engineering of Czech Technical University in Prague
(ČVUT), room H24/2, Technická 2, 16627, Prague 6 (http://www. iim.cz)
Opening hours: 12 – 7 PM
The Open Archives project is focused on exhibiting and archiving initiatives mapping, re-storing
and interpreting contemporary and modern art, experimental film and video, media art and
industrial heritage. It is addressed to art, humanities and technical schools’ students as well as to
the wide public. The project hopes to trigger discussion concerning technical and methodological
issues related to the archiving and distribution and aims to stimulate additional research in this
field in the Czech Republic. Recently, various DVD anthologies have been published rediscovering
various fields of culture and making so far unknown chapters from art history accessible to the
public, as well as online audiovisual archives that are useful for the research and presentation.
Furthermore, such archives can serve as a platform for students, teachers, curators, artists and
historians to cooperate in further endeavors.
Screening program, located in the new Lab of the Intermedia Institute, is enriched with daily
program of lectures, presentations and discussions of various Czech and international digital
archives. The IIM interdisciplinary institute follows the theoretical and practical research in the field
of emerging technologies, visual and sound art, history and theory of moving and still image and
digital culture. Public is welcome to attend the lectures of several internationally recognized artists
and theoreticians and presentations of institutions engaged in the collecting and archiving of analog
and digital materials. For example, Woody Vasulka, an eminent international video art pioneer, is
presenting his electronic arts archive project (vasulka.org) he has been developing with his wife
and collaborator Steina since the 1960s. Vasulka, together with media artist Thomas Thiel, present
the recent exhibition project MindFrames, created in collaboration with Zentrum fuer Kunst und
Media in Karlsruhe. Other initiatives and institutes planning to present are as follows: Czech –
Hyperkino (FAMU); VVP AVU; Research Centre for Industrial Heritage (CVUT), shared cooperative
platform Konvergence -, as well as international – WRO Centrum Sztuki Mediów from Wroclaw;
project Grauzone 8mm (Ludwig Boltzmann Institut Linz); projects 40yearsvideoart,
Art_clips.ch.at.de (ZKM, Karlsruhe), and international project Caspar (Cultural, Artistic and
Scientific knowledge for Preservation, Access and Retrieval).
PROGRAM:
LECTURES (always 5 – 7 PM)
29. 10. Opening session
6 – 8 PM Vasulka Archives presentation; MindFrames exhibition project presentation (ZKM), Lector:
Woody Vasulka http://www.vasulka.org
Konvergence platform, Lector: Michal Klodner, http://konvergence.info
30. 10. 5 PM
Hyperkino project, Lector: Natascha Drubek-Meyer, FAMU, http://hyperkino.net
VVP, AVU, Lectors: Eva Krátká, Pavlína Morganová, Terezie Nekvindová, http://wwp.avu.cz
Research Centre for Industrial Heritage, Lector: Petr Vorlík, http://wcpd.cvut.cz
31. 10. 5 PM
From Monument to Market: Video Art and Public Spaces, WRO Center, Lector: Krzysztof
Dobrowolski, http://www.wrocenter.pl
OASIS / AMA&NT projects and its follower GAMA; CASPAR project: multimedia archives
interconnecting and the questions of long-term storage of digital data. Lectors: Viliam Šimko,
Michal
Máša,
CIANT,
www.ciant.cz,
http://www.casparpreserves.eu,
http://www.oasisarchive.info/index.php/hauptseite
1. 11. 5 PM
Grauzone 8 mm. Materialen zum autonomen Künstlerfilm in der DDR, Ludwig Boltzmann Institut.
Medien. Kunst. Forschung. Linz. Lector: Britt Schlehahn, http://media.lbg.ac.at
2. 11. 5 PM
40 yearsvideoart.de: Digital Heritage
Art_clips.ch.at.de
Lector: Thomas Thiel, ZKM, www.zkm.de
MindFrames exhibition project
Lectors: Woody Vasulka, Thomas Thiel
SCREENINGS
Of experimental film and video, documentaries and interviews by “Buffalo circle”
Every day 12 – 5 PM, projections on 2 screens + in CAVE, always at 3 PM commentary to individual
artists
29. 10. – Woody Vasulka
30. 10. – Steina
31. 10. – Paul Sharits
1. 11. – Hollis Frampton
2. 11. – James Blue
3. 11. – Tony Conrad
4. 11. – Peter Weibel
CAVE – projection of the work by Steina and Woody Vasulka on three screens
PRESENTED PROJECTS:
MindFrames
Woody Bohuslav Vasulka has been a long advocate of collecting and digitizing art works and media
projects with an allied circle of artists and creators. He has also advocated the free distribution of
these materials through digital archives which would become the platform for cooperation among
an international team of researchers. He initiated the exhibition MindFrames in ZKM centre in
Karlsruhe, with co-curator Peter Weibel, led by artist and programmer Thomas Thiel. At the end of
2006, the exhibition presented a unique exhibition model that enables new ways of studying,
presenting and archiving media art. It presented the work of artists and theoreticians who worked
at the Department of Media Study at the State University of New York in Buffalo (founded by
Gerald O’Grady in 1973). The “Buffalo group” concentrated on researching the variable concept of
art and medium, and contributed to the key shift from film art towards a more general
understanding and the usage of visual code. Artistic creations were thus interconnected with
teamwork and scientific and/or philosophical research. The artists involved in this project, dealing
primarily with the problem of perception and the specificity of the electromagnetic medium, were
actively involved in community projects and were looking for alternative forms of education. The
material (120 hours of film and video) was distributed from the databases on the central server.
The MindFrames exhibition is the result of long-term archiving efforts of The Vasulkas.
Lectors: Woody Vasulka, Thomas Thiel, ZKM
Konvergence
Konvergence is a shared platform for extensive internet projects, interuniversity and outside
university communication and cooperation. It consists in the implementation of free software into
complex system for content management. The operator of the technology is Film and TV School of
the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU). The system contains block functionality, single
projects consist of components which are in joint developed within the framework of the whole
platform. It contains the users’ profiles with blogs, personal information territory, annotation
system for text and video, functions for cooperation, project management, and various searching
tools. The platform hosts the following projects: konvergence.info (portal offering tools for
cooperation in interdisciplinary environment of new media art and intermedia, communication
infrastructure and cultural archive); Hyperkino; FAMU films online; Archive of student films (in
progress); Mindframes / Open Archives (in progress).
Lektor: Michal Klodner, FAMU
Hyperkino
HYPERKINO is based on the fruitful intertwining of textual criticism and innovative hypermedia
technologies. We have connected the traditional principles of annotation with digital technologies
and their mark up languages (like html), applying hypermedia principles of commentary to the
linear medium of film. HYPERKINO annotations of a film are comparable to footnotes and the
commentary in historical-critical editions of texts, with the only difference being that they are
comprised of various media forms (text, sound, pictures). It presents the methods for academic
(critical) film editions on DVD.
Lector: Natascha Drubek-Meyer
VVP AVU
VVP AVU is a center for basic scientific research, the processing of source documentation, critical
evaluation and reinterpretation of Czech art history after 1945. With its specific orientation of
research with an emphasis on interdisciplinary crossover, VVP AVU is an import center for the
study of visual culture of the second half of the 20th century in all its complexity.
The aim of VVP AVU is not only to contribute to developing knowledge of local development of fine
art history, but also to place it in a wider, international context.
VVP AVU is the first research center of its kind in the Czech Republic established within the
framework of an art college. It significantly complements the existing range of scientific research
activities offered by the Institute for Art History of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic
and the Art History Institute of the Philosophical Faculty of Charles University as well as state
gallery and museum institutions.
Lectors: Eva Krátká, Pavlína Morganová, Terezie Nekvindová
Research Centre for Industrial Heritage
The Research Centre for Industrial Heritage of the Czech Republic functions as a coordinating
platform for cooperation between the Czech Technical University in Prague and other institutions
that are working in the fields of history, architecture, urban affairs, technological development,
technical criteria in civil engineering, and the economic and ecological aspects of research,
conservation, and seeking new uses for technical monuments and industrial buildings and sites.
A long-term project of the Research Centre for Industrial Heritage (VCPD) at ČVUT and the
Institute of the History of Art and Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture at ČVUT in Prague has
been to develop a register of industrial heritage buildings and sites. It is also used for the purpose
of recording, storing and working with data drawn from publications, specialized studies, “building
passports”, and other databases.
The interdisciplinary focus of the long-term projects of the VCPD requires the involvement of a
wide range of professionals from other fields and the participation of other cooperating parties,
such as amateur enthusiasts, industrial heritage advocates, and especially students. For these
collaborating researchers, who often have little or no previous practical experience with research
on construction history, the register is a fundamental and essential methodological guideline.
Lector: Petr Vorlík
WRO Centrum Sztuki Mediów – From Monument to Market: Video Art and Public Spaces (ed.
Violetta Krajewska and Piotr Krajewski, 2005)
The collection of the video work by Polish artists on DVD is supplemented with a series of articles
inspired by this collection and written specially for this publication by international group of
curators and critics.
Centrum Sztuki WRO is independent organization in Poland specializing in contemporary art, media
and technology. The WRO Art Center features regular presentations of contemporary art
intertwined with the development of communications tools and process. Since 1989 organizes
International Media Art Biennale.
Lector: Krzysztof Dobrowolski
GAMA /Gateway to Archives of Media Art/
This project continues the OASIS projects, originally a joint venture between CIANT and the
“Bremen" project. The aim is to establish a central platform that enables multilingual user-oriented
access to a significant number of media art archives and their digitalized contents. The consortium
comprises of a majority of the most important digital content holders for media art in Europe. The
content provided constitutes approx. 55% of all media artworks presented online by European
cultural archives and distributors. This amount will ensure a significant increase in use, re-use and
cross-border visibility of the digital content when aggregated and accessible through one common
interface. The gateway will quickly develop to be the European central online interface and search
portal for any person interested in media art.
CASPAR
Information in digital format is the lifeblood of modern civilization, though at the same time it is
extremely fragile. Every year we lose an enormous amount of valuable information created and
stored throughout the world. Since this information can include official records, museum archives,
irreplaceable scientific data or even collections of family photos, it is quite clear that its
preservation and protection concerns all of us. This is an integrated project sponsored by European
Union, the aim of which is to resolve the problem of storing digital information in such a way that
will be understandable and usable for future computer systems, anticipating a time when the
storage of digital knowledge will be quite different from the present.
Lectors: Viliam Šimko, Michal Máša
Grauzone 8mm. Materialen zum autonomen Künstlerfilm in der DDR
Ludwig Boltzmann Institut. Medien. Kunst. Forschung. Linec
DVD Grauzone 8 mm documents the development of video, experimental film and TV in the 1980s
in DDR.
The mission of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Media.Art.Research is to give scholarly attention to
works of media art and media theory through their archiving and publication. Bringing together
science, art, technology and cultural mediation in a single facility enables the achievement of a new
level of quality that speaks to the ways in which we deal with our media-shaped society.
Lector: Britt Schlehahn
40yearsvideoart.de: Digital Heritage
The initiative of the German Federal Cultural Foundation focuses on saving, maintaining, and
mediating the cultural heritage of Video Art, which has become one of the most influential art
forms of the twentieth century. For the first time, such a complex, mediating and exhibiting project
is carried out by five museums in the Federal Republic of Germany: ZKM Center for Art and Media
Karlsruhe and the K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen Düsseldorf, the institutions
responsible for the overall project, work together with three partners – Kunsthalle Bremen,
Lenbachhaus Munich, and the Museum der bildenen Künste Leipzig. The video anthology presents
59 artists and 12 DVD, counting in total 28 hours.
Art_clips.ch.at.de
90 short videos from Switzerland, Austria and Germany. The DVD Edition produced by ZKM
Karlsruhe maps the development of short videos in Switzerland, Austria and Germany from 2000 to
2006 (curator Gerhard Johann Lischka; project directors: Thomas Thiel and Antonia Marten).
Lector: Thomas Thiel, ZKM
Realization team:
Curator: Lenka Dolanová and Woody Vasulka, cooperation: Michal Klodner, Miloš Vojtěchovský,
Roman Berka, Kryštof Pešek
The project was realized by Intermedia Institute, with the support of Film and TV School of the
Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, AMU Principality, Faculty of Electrical Engineering of Czech
Technical University in Prague, Czech Science Foundation (GACR)
Cooperating institutions: Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe,
Ludwig Boltzmann Institut Linz, WRO Center, CIANT , The International Documentary Film Festival
Jihlava
Intermedia Institute
Address: Faculty of Electrical Engineering of Czech Technical University in Prague
(ČVUT), room H24/2, Technická 2, 16627, Prague 6, Czech Republic
Tel.: +420 608571881
http://www.iim.cz