Thursday, February 5, 2009

Initial Impressions of the First On-Site Visit

  • The collection is located in a storage room at the Blanton along with other pieces of art and any soon to be exhibited collections. This space was a little on the warm side. The space only accessible through the use of an access card locked door. A staff member was stationed outside the door at all times for extra security.
  • ALL copies (originals and exhibit copies) of each digital art work were kept in the same metal cabinet space.
  • What was being kept in the cabinet were the only copies. There are no digital files located on any computer or server space.
  • The DVDs and tapes are arranged in a plastic tray that is labeled with each artists name.
  • There is little to no metadata associated with each piece. Much of the metadata present is what was given to the Blanton by the artists. Metadata included: run time, b&w or color, name of work, artist name
  • One portion of the collection resides within a wooden box that the artist made for his art work.
  • Some of the artists are very particular about what happens with their works.
  • Some files were stored on a external drive that is meant to hook up to a projector.
  • My contact had a number of questions about the collection including:
  1. the use of gold DVDs
  2. how to preserve the information on the external drive
  3. metadata issues
  4. how to physically label each DVD
  5. how to store the DVDs
Currently the collection appears to be in good physical condition. The main issues lie with making sure the digital files make it through technological changes in hardware, software, and file formats. Hopefully I will be able to take a look at the actual digital files during my next visit.

1 comment:

  1. hi cassandra, pay attention to labeling issues both in original materials and copies (I am not sure if stating original materials is correct, but we know what we mean). Why did you mention warm side? What about the video materials? will you assess those as well?

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