Title
Archeology of multimedia
Abstract
The rapid evolution of technology and the processing aspects of some contemporary art forms make maintenance and re-fruition of a number of past masterpieces a difficult task. This is especially true of multimedia installations, with multiple audio and video sources coordinated through some control device, which also accounts for user interaction issues. So, it is not inappropriate to speak of "archeology of multimedia" in the case of the remise-en-oeuvre of an installation. This paper describes a complete example of archeology of multimedia. In particular, the art exhibit is the reprise of the first truly multimedia show of the electronic era: Le Corbusier's Poême électronique, displayed at the World Exhibition in Brussels in 1958. The show, conceived for the Philips Pavilion and consisting of a black&white video, color light ambiances, music moving over sound routes, visual special effects, has never been reprised after the end of the exhibition. The Poême électronique has been entirely reconstructed after a philological investigation through image archives, project sketches and technical documentation from Philips and then delivered in two virtual reality settings. Moreover, two aspects of the project are worth being abstracted from the design and realization of this specific reconstruction and contribute to the design, pre-visualization and fruition of novel contemporary artworks: a language for the description of the control score and an architecture design for the integration of several media sources. The language and the architecture, with a sketch of a friendly interface, are illustrated at the end of the paper.
Year
DOI
Venue
2006
10.1145/1180639.1180706
ACM Multimedia
Keywords
Field
DocType
digital media preservation and reconstruction,project sketch,novel contemporary artwork,multimedia installation,poême électronique,contemporary art form,control score,multimedia authoring,art exhibit,philips pavilion,control device,architecture design,video source,virtual reality,digital media
Virtual reality,Computer science,Pavilion,Artificial intelligence,Sketch,Computer vision,Architecture,Technological evolution,Technical documentation,Exhibition,Contemporary art,Multimedia,Archaeology
Conference
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
1-59593-447-2
2
0.44
References 
Authors
4
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Vincenzo Lombardo135853.15
Andrea Valle2277.01
Fabrizio Nunnari38814.54
Francesco Giordana420.77
Andrea Arghinenti531.16