LIS 442: Curating and Preserving Media Art Collections

This course introduces students to the fundamental challenges associated with preserving, curating, exhibiting, and repurposing audiovisual media art - recorded sound, video, 3D, virtual reality, and other complex media. The technical challenges of preserving and curating specific media formats will be discussed and contextualized within key trends in 20th/21st century media art practice, including artist-made, amateur, and non-theatrical film and video, recorded sound, installation art, web/netart, new media, virtual reality, and code-based art works. In this research and project-based course, students will learn how media works are collected, organized, and preserved in libraries, archives, and museums, and the types of access that these types of institutions enable. Students will learn about the possibilities for curation of archival media art for contemporary exhibition spaces, including online multimedia showcases, microcinemas, streaming media, film festivals, outdoor installations, and galleries. Students will also learn about the ways in which archival media can be remixed and repurposed to produce new types of works, collections, and information resources. This course offers theory and skills applicable to archives and library science students, artists, and cultural historians in best practices and creative opportunities when working with digital and analog media collections in libraries, archives, and museums.