One of our goals in building the macOS app AV Spex was to “flag” aspects of a video that need a closer look, so archivists can prioritize which parts of a video receive further investigation. Using the qct-parse features in AV Spex, we can identify specific frames that might have artifacts or errors. Unfortunately, sometimes that’s still too many frames! To truly prioritize manual review of video,…
AV Spex is a macOS application I wrote in Python. It’s designed for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) to process digital video files created from analog sources. The app allows digitization technicians and archivists at NMAAHC to automate multiple preservation actions from a variety of video and digital preservation software. It also collects the…
INPT (INgest and Processing Toolkit) is a bash scripted command line tool for automating the processing workflow for time-based media at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (HMSG). Prior to developing INPT, we were running these tools manually, one at a time. Some of the steps in the workflow are quick, like running MediaInfo on a video file, but others, like using FFmpeg to create a…
For the past five years I’ve had the opportunity to learn coding on the job. I never really planned for that. I never had any intention of becoming a “software developer,” but here I am developing software. Still, I’ve only had a little formal training, it’s all been very trial and error. The feeling of “I have no idea what I’m doing” has kind of typified the journey. This is the first of my…
In the summer of 2021, my friend and colleague Caroline Gil & I taught a two-day workshop on disk imaging for the media archiving team at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). The workshop focused on the process of disk imaging physical media: the hardware and software involved, quality assurance procedures for disk images, and, of course, use cases for disk images…
We got our first set of dpx files at the Hirshhorn back in December. I was really excited about developing a workflow for processing the files, especially in light of the development of Media Area’s new RAWcooked tool. Sure it was a lot of data, but I was ready. How bad could it be? And so began a two month process full of frustration and disappointment.
Worlds collide! Media preservation AND booze! Two of my favorite things. I was really happy to get to merge my hobby of making cocktails with my love for the Mid-Atlantic Regional Moving Image Archive, a.k.a. MARMIA. MARMIA is a super cool org that preserves the cultural, social and political history of the region we call home through moving image material. Check out their website to learn more:…
There are many applications to choose from when deciding to create a disk image. As a part of developing the disk imaging workflow at the Hirshhorn, five common disk imaging applications were tested. These applications were chosen based partly on the media conservation team’s familiarity with these tools, as well as their prevalence in the field of digital preservation. In order to assess the…
The Denver Art Museum (DAM) has an encyclopedic collection of over 70,000 artworks, spanning centuries and the entire globe, over 400 of which fall into the fairly broad category of “electronic media” (video and software-based installations, CD-ROMs, websites, video tapes, and more). Due to the exhibition and acquisition of electronic media art and time-based media art often out pacing the…
I recently completed my residency at Louisiana Public Broadcasting, as part of my role as a National Digital Stewardship Resident (NDSR) in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) cohort. I'm excited to be moving on to a position in the conservation department at the Denver Art Museum, but I want to pause and indulge in some navel gazing regarding the whirlwind of a year I have had…
My grandfather, James Colloton, Sr. (1926-2014), or "Papa" to my cousins and me, recorded home movies of my dad and his siblings with his 8mm film camera. Christmas mornings, family vacations, sledding in the front yard, and water skiing every summer, all moments mechanically frozen in time and stowed away in a film canister.
I recently completed my MA degree thesis project on the conceptual artist Buky Schwartz. Schwartz is perhaps best known for the video installations and single-channel video art that he created during the 1970s and 1980s. His estate's collection of photographs, video tapes, and other forms of documentation embody the artist's legacy as well as the key to preserving his artwork.
Paul Ryan was a pioneer of his field and can be considered one of the first video artists. The collection of Paul Ryan is now housed in an apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where Ryan lived and worked for much of his career. The following Collection Assessment describes the significance, organization, and condition of the Ryan's analog video collection.
In the course of an 8 week period, the Denver Art Museum (DAM) was able to implement a complex digital preservation strategy quickly and efficiently. Artworks from the museum’s design collection were disk imaged, ingested into the museum’s digital repository, and described in the museum’s collection management system.
“TechFocus iii: Caring for Software-based Art,” a symposium organized by the American Institute for Conservation’s Electronic Media Group, sought to address the difficult task of preserving works created in a constantly evolving medium. Hosted by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the symposium brought together leaders in the field of software-preservation from a variety of cultural institutions to…
I had the good fortune to attend the New (+Old) Media: Restoration, Preservation, Archiving and Access Meeting and Symposium this summer, from June 25-27. Richard Lowenberg of the 1st-Mile Institute ( http://www.1st-mile.org/) organized the meeting as part of the 2015 CURRENTS: Santa Fe International New Media Festival ( http://currentsnewmedia.org/).
Almost a year ago, Brian Haack and I (my collaborator on the Sound Design for the German Expressionist Exhibit at LACMA) began work on the "sonic accompaniment" for the iPad App The Plunge of Icarus. And it's finally finished! Please check it out in the iTunes Store.
I created a sequence of prints from a mitsubishi video printer for the 2013 Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) Staff Art Show.
At the Gate is a short video I created for the 2013 Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) Staff Film Festival.
A recent collection of video static I've collected, and manipulated. This video originally comes from VHS footage, U-matic footage, and a malfunctioning LCD monitor. Those clips are edited, then altered using video filters and effect.