from The New York Times -
A Rebel Form Gains Favor. Fights Ensue.
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It is indeed an ironic twist that performance art - the art form which resists commercialism by being stubbornly rendered as not collectible - is now facing questions about its core value as some artists insists on reperformance, sometimes using the guise of preservation to deflect criticism.
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from The Guardian -
Dance would die without the internet
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"One reason that dance struggles to establish itself as a discipline is the relative paucity of its archive: more than any other art form, it is constantly being lost to history. To build a body of knowledge, you need to gather bodies of evidence, reference material, records. There is an obvious way forward – record more dance on video and put more of it on the internet. It won't just be of academic use; the greater availability and increased profile of dance material will surely benefit audiences and promoters too. This is good not just for individual works or choreographers or companies or colleges, but ultimately for dance itself."

Another example of why an open approach to preservation is necessary.
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from The Guardian -
Sound archive of the British Library goes online, free of charge
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In the words of the library's curator, Janet Topp Fargion:

"This project is really exciting. One of the difficulties, working as an archivist, is people's perception that things are given to libraries and then are never seen again – we want these recordings to be accessible."

Hear, hear...
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from The New York Times -
Linguist’s Preservation Kit Has New Digital Tools
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With the increasing ease and declining cost of using digital recoding technology, could we be overwhelmed by unanalysed and undifferentiated data, which are just as ineffective in advancing the efforts of intangible heritage preservation.
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from IIC News -
Sound and Image Collections Conservation website launched
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go to SOIMA's website

From the web-site:

"ICCROM’s SOIMA (Sound and Image Collections Conservation) programme responds to the urgent need for a coordinated international action for safeguarding the endangered audiovisual collections in its Member States. [...] Initiated in 2006, the programme has identified three priority areas of activity: Training, Awareness generation/dissemination, and Research."

Apart from such top-down (institutional) approaches in determining the methodologies used and contents being preserved, a bottom-up approach which engages the community and users at large would surely be more viable and sustainable in the long-term.
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from Slate -
Robert Altman Made a Movie About a Lunar Landing?
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Continuing the earlier thread of documenting unrealised works as an important (but overlooked) aspect of preservation. Being able to order a single copy of previously released movie, without having to play hostage to larger marketing issues and distribution, is now a reality - a boon for both scholars and archivists. All thanks to technology.

Go to the Warner Archive Collection.
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from SEED -
The Amazing Race
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Following from the earlier post, yet another attempt at raising awareness of the disappearance of languages and the urgent need to document, if not preserve, them - albeit appealing to a more populist base.

"[K. David] Harrison [who co-runs the Oregon-based Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages] says his goal is to 'assist small and underrepresented languages in crossing the digital divide.' Recording the languages and giving them a presence on the Internet helps maintain and grow the number of speakers, he says, and lends some 'prestige' to speaking a minority language."

UNESCO Interactive Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
go to website

Part awareness-raising and part documentary. Hopefully, such efforts could help to instigate a sense of urgency in the race to preserve the world's languages.



Link via Google Maps Mania.
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from The Washington post -
Babble On, Say Researchers In 'Linguists' Documentary
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Another good reason for keeping record of dying languages, other than just preservation or documentary:

" '[S]cience is playing catch-up in many respects to the people who have lived there for thousands of years and know about that ecosystem,' says Anderson. 'So since all of these ecosystems are under collapse now, it would behoove us to not just throw away this knowledge that people have accrued over the millennia.' "

from The New York Times -
Music From the Past — Bringing Back the Epigonion
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Isn't it an oxymoron to reproduce music nobody has heard before in the name of preservation - or is it just showing off some computing prowess? Makes one wonder why these people do not have a better use for such idle bytes - like modeling actual instruments and music in danger of dying right now? And with clever acronyms (ASTRA, DANTE) as substitute for serious work, maybe. No harm adding another - VENUS, or Very Enigmatic (but) Nonetheless Unimportant Study. Jeez...
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from The Los Angeles Times -
Conservators face issues in preserving video
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Another update on the issue of preserving time-based media art. Mention is also made of the earlier conference held at the Getty Conservation Institute.

Also see earlier recent post here.
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from Hanging Together -
Virtual Museum Collections, 19th Century Style
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An intriguing comparison of the similarities between 21st-century digital preservation strategies and 19th-century museum practices.
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from Slate -
How Do You Learn a Dead Language?
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An interesting take on the purist approach versus the practical approach to preservation of intangible heritage. Is it better to privilege "use" over "authenticity"? Or can heritage only be truly accessible only if it is transmitted in its original form?

Such searching questions also do have implications on the larger context of heritage preservation and conservation - why are we such sticklers for notions "authenticity" when it is the present audience that we are trying to dialogue with?
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from Wired -
Vinyl May Be Final Nail in CD's Coffin
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The return of the good old vinyl records could actually spell good news for the preservation of audio-based (intangible) heritage. This is because it is still possible to "read" from degraded or damaged vinyl discs and to reconstruct the sounds - see earlier post here. Whereas, the longevity of CDs and DVDs is still a matter of debate and contention - see earlier post here.
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from New York Times -
World’s Languages Dying Off Rapidly
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One inherent challenge that efforts in the preservation of intangible heritage has to contend with is the sheer impermanance and, hence, extreme susceptibility to loss of such heritage forms.
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from People's Daily Online -
China establishes initial database for intangible cultural heritage
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Another effort in the Herculean challenge of preserving cultural expressions. Documentation and database lists are but an initial aspect of the overall effort. The long-term goal is for such cultural expressions to find contemporary relevance. And this daunting task can be a bit less so if we see such cultural expressions as a kind of "commons" which must entail the responsible use and preservation by everyone.

This long-term goal of preservation might run counter to current notions of intellectual property, which hinges on legislative measures to facilitate commercial exploitation in the first instance (see related links on WIPO site on "Traditional Knowledge" and "Traditional Cultural Expressions"). The dilemma could arise, say in a hypothetical situation, when an original ethnic group could not continue its intangible cultural expressions, but another public institution or non-profit organisation wishes to, then would this mean that the effort would have to be cleared through an endless series of legislative measures and commercial licenses? This sounds like a death knell for intangible heritage preservation efforts.
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from San Francisco Chronicle -
Human knowledge eroded as endangered languages die
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With the disappearance of languages, not only is knowledge lost, but a vital indication of a vibrant human existence - diversity. And the up keeping of diversity cannot be achieved by decrees or institutionalising a set of protocols. It has to be a "grass-root" effort involving the community. See also previous post on the UNESCO project to put together a handbook on the documentation and preservation of languages.
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from Toronto Star
Pirouette preservation
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Preservation is an act which seeks to negate or slow the effects of time. However, when it comes to cultural expressions which embraces the dimension of time itself - as in a dance performance - then, preservation of such (intangible) art-forms becomes a challenge.

from ICOM News
International Journal of Intangible Heritage
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A new journal, published by the National Folk Museum of Korea, which focuses on issues relating to the preservation of intangible heritage. (Also see previous posts on the subject).

from UNESCO
Intangible Heritage Messenger
go to newsletter - Issue 1 (PDF version, 276 KB)
go to newsletter - Issue 2 (PDF version, 358 KB)

It is timely that UNESCO has launched its Intangible Heritage Messenger newsletter in February 2006, which covers various global effort in preserving intangible heritage. This will boost awareness of the issue which had been previously highlighted on this weblog (see various previous posts).

[Thanks to World Heritage Forum for the link.]