Machine Vision

Our memories can be precious, but they can also be flawed, changed over time to reflect what we want them to be. Nostalgia and reality can be confused. However, machines do not have these problems, or do they?

This paper sets out a few examples of preserved vintage media artworks which have been re-created or re-imagined and re-exhibited, most of which the author has first-hand experience of. Issues of authenticity, perceptions by the artist and curators and the effects of modern technology on the work will be discussed. Notions of conservation and enforced compromises will also be addressed due to the problems of technological obsolescence and also the degradation of the original work itself. At the time, the practitioners never really considered the issues of long-term preservation of their work and, less so, the equipment that was used to exhibit the work.

Artists often want to make changes to media artworks, ones which they couldn’t have achieved at the time due to limited technology and also improvements that they have identified later which they would like to make. When does this make the work a new work or merely an ‘upgrade’ and how do we take a snapshot of its current state?

The machine may have a memory and it leaves many traces of this. But, it is us who manipulate and control it. Therefore, the many decisions we make can alter the course of an artwork in the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ direction.