The aim of this project is twofold: 1) to digitize and archive a collection of fragile videotapes that are essential for teaching the history and theory of digital art, and 2) web-archive important yet ephemeral websites by artists that are integral to understanding contemporary internet art. The videotapes include works by pioneers in the field, and already showing serious color and signal deterioration. The video players that are used to play them are now obsolete. Similarly, the websites represent seminal work in the field, and yet are frequently lost due to the temporal nature of the internet. Because this is a relatively recent field in the history of art, there are no significant collections of the material for teaching purposes. The insecurity of access to these materials presents serious obstacles to teaching courses on the history of digital media art taught in many departments at Cornell. Consequently this collection would be of interest to scholars and students in many disciplines including art, architecture, comparative literature, technology of science studies, romance studies, Asian- American studies, government, and music.
History and Theory of Digital Art in Video Website
History and Theory of Digital Art in Video – Videos (Cornell only)