The comforting clatter of super-8
When you buy a painting at an auction, you can wrap it up, take it home and hang it on the living room wall. Only an art theorist may begin to wonder, what and where the work of art is. But with so-called media art it's not that simple.
An artwork purchased by a museum can today be just a software license. The software itself can be stored on any kind of media: computer disk, CD, tape, paper... It makes no difference what computer is used to execute the program, and the screen can be any old monitor taken off the shelf. When it is needed, the work is resurrected, as it were, using the necessary technical equipment.
Video works are usually stored on videotapes, one of which is the "master" tape, the original that is duplicated to make copies for screening. The microscopic magnetic charges on the tape's surface grow weaker over time, however, and the works would gradually disappear if nothing were done about it. Kiasma has a video art archive, which makes digital archive copies of analog master tapes. The bits are stored on tapes and disks, and in the future - who knows where. Future generations will have a copy of the original work that is impervious to the ravages of time.
Video works are often screened using contemporary technology: VCRs are replaced by DVD players, and the quality of projected video images is getting better all the time. Sometimes the projector technology is part of the work itself. Bellini Academy's installation Scientific Expedition to the Steam Caves of Par-Iskmeny and Par-Kish (1978) would actually require an 8mm film projector. Unfortunately, such a projector does not quite withstand continuous use, so it has been replaced by a video projector. The nostalgic clatter of an old super 8 projector has been recorded on tape, however, and is now heard from the modern projector's loudspeaker.
Liisa Roberts' uses four 16mm cine-projectors in her Trap Door -- it is the projectors that actually create the mood of the piece. The projectors have been modified so that they project precisely the same number of frames per second in synchrony. Spools have been replaced by a loop device, which keeps the endless film running smoothly, allowing the work to run continually from dawn to dusk. Operating ten hours per day, six days a week, Trap Door comes under heavy wear. The films get scratched and become faded, and have to be replaced with new copies every few weeks. Projector lamps burn out. The projectors themselves gather dust and wear down, and must be serviced regularly.
But what about the next ten or a hundred years? How long can copies be made of the films? How long will suitable lamps be manufactured? There will come a day when the sturdy Eiki projectors have projected their last loop of film. Can new ones be purchased, or will future technology be used instead? These are questions media conservators must consider today.
NEW WORKS IN NIGHT TRAIN
The Night Train collection exhibition takes new artists on board on September 10. The third floor gallery will feature Liisa Roberts' Trap Door (1996) and Osmo Rauhala's Secret of the Forest (1991). Trap Door places the viewers in a doubly impossible situation. The performance itself is a trap door, which does not give out onto any reality within the work. The film installation Secret of the Forest takes the visitor into the midst of a forest in winter: it is snowing, the wind blows, deer are wandering in the forest, looking for things to eat. Through the animals, Rauhala investigates human ways of understanding nature and studies the mysteries of life. He alludes to a past condition, a deep intuitive contact between humans and nature, a unity with nature contemporary humans are rapidly losing.
Esa Niiniranta
AV master technician, Kiasma
