Scoring the Work: Documenting Practice and Performance in Variable Media Art

Abstract

This paper examines the issues inherent to documenting integral characteristics of variable media artworks. The author begins by revisiting Suzanne Briet's vision of documentation as a socially constructed practice central to the creation and dissemination of knowledge. This perspective lends insight into the nature of the document in the digital age and suggests a new cultural technique for working with variable media art as both document and documented. Janet Cardiff's 40 Part Motet (2001) provides case material for this discussion, and Richard Rinehart's proposal of the score as a documentary medium is suggested as a means of capturing the elements of practice and performance associated with variable media.

Collections of (An)archives: Towards a New Perspective on Institutional Collecting of Contemporary Art and the Object of Conservation

“…Adopting the perspective applied in the field of performance art studies (Giannachi 2016(Giannachi , 2018Gordon 2015;Macdonald 2009), this section offers a theoretical reflection on the ontological dimension of documentation. It considers the nature of documentation from the point of view of information sciences and introduces the notion of the art object as a document, and of documentation as a matrix or network of signs.…”

“…Through the juxtaposition, selection and comparison of documents, a process that for Briet is genuinely creative, the content of documentation becomes "inter-documentary" (Briet 2006). Briet referred to this shift away from a traditional static documentary model as "the dynamism of living documentation" (Briet 2006, p. 41;Macdonald 2009). The assumption that an art object is a document situated within networks of other primary, secondary and auxiliary documents may allow for a new understanding of documentation of contemporary artworks.…”

Blast Theory'sRider Spoke, its Documentation and the Making of its Replay Archive

“…As suggested by Corina MacDonald, performance works too, like other variable media artworks, will entail 'complex configurations of the digital and the analog, physical and ephemeral, that depend upon a variety of human and nonhuman agents'. 69 Thus performance docImage 11 The CloudPad concept design. Duncan Rowland.…”

On Embodiment, Performance Art and Contemporary Museum Design

“…It is undeniable that "performance becomes itself through disappearance" (Phelan, 1993), and any attempt at conjuring up a performance from its inert documentation alters its nature. On the other hand, if one agrees that the essence of performance art lies in the relationship between performers and public, and their interactions in a specific space and time, then one can entertain the possibility of designing an (arguably) more philologically correct strategy for documentation, research, and museum display (MacDonald, 2009). This new approach could also inform and foster the creation of new works.…”