Home SEMINARS 2008 Seminar "Medium vs. Message: Another Way of Understanding the Preservation of Media Art" Paulina Mickiewicz

"Medium vs. Message: Another Way of Understanding the Preservation of Media Art" Paulina Mickiewicz

Discussions on how to preserve art are complex. This complexity lies in the fact that what we seek to preserve in art is not simply the art object in itself – the material entity that constitutes the artwork (a painting or a sculpture, for instance) – but we also seek to preserve the integrity of the artwork. In other words, those immaterial aspects that constitute an artwork that we cannot physically touch or feel but that could be understood as the various meanings, messages, or aesthetic experiences that an artwork conveys. Whether they contain video installations or computer based components, media artworks are increasingly affected by the rapidly changing technological environment in which we live. How then should we be approaching the preservation of media art? This paper will explore this question namely on the basis of certain theories on media put forth by Marshall McLuhan. Looking at the problem of the preservation of media art from a communications perspective could contribute to a better understanding of how we should approach and consider media artworks if we want to be successful in their preservation.

 

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Paulina Mickiewicz, Communication Studies, McGill University