Johannes Goebel: The Politics and Mechanics of Archiving - Moving Parts, the Cloud, Magnetic Fields, and Stone

Digital data, media, and machines cannot be left like a sculpture, a painting, or a book in a dark corner of some museum or library waiting to be discovered some day again. We like to believe that we have conquered eternity by digitizing everything. The opposite is true. A digital archive that is not constantly renewed will simply disappear, at the latest when the funding to just maintain existing data has dried up. Immediately. If you leave your family photos, your scientific data or your documentation of art works sitting on a shelf and believe you could retrieve them after say ten years, you will more likely than not be disappointed. — Johannes Goebel

Presented in conjunction with 9e2 Seattle, this talk looks into the politics of archiving and the fact that digital pictures, videos, music, and research data disappear by the second. It presents the (potentially) best available solution to store data without (most likely) turning paranoid or going broke.

Johannes Goebel has the founding director of the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute since 2002. He guided architects, acousticians, and engineers in the specification, design and construction of the 220,000 sq ft center and has been responsible for the artistic productions, residencies, research and presentations together with the curatorial, technical and production teams. Between 1990 and 2002, he was the founding director of the Institute for Music and Acoustics at the Center for Art and Media, ZKM Karlsruhe, Germany, with the same range of responsibilities from building and technology specifications to the artistic and research program. He started in the field of computer music in 1977 at CCRMA, Stanford University. Goebel has been involved with archiving digital works since the mid-1980s, among others he moved IDEAMA, the International Digital Electro-Acoustic Music Archive, from inception to completion.

CREDITS

This program is supported by the University of Washington’s School of Music and the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media. In-kind support is provided by the Microsoft Corporation. The talk is presented in conjunction with 9e2 Seattle.

ADMISSION

** SOLD OUT ** If you would like to be placed on the waitlist, please email kirsteng@henryart.org with your name and desired number of tickets.

PROGRAM PARTNERS

UW School of Music

UW DXARTS

9e2 Seattle

ACCESS

This event is public.

ACCESSIBILITY

Henry Art Gallery is accessible to all visitors. Please notify the staff of any special needs or concerns when planning to attend this event.