Dr. Hans Dieter HUBER

Professor
State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart (DE)

BIO

Artist, filmmaker, scientist. Studied painting, graphics, art history, philosophy and psychology. 1997 to 1999 professor HGB Leipzig; since 1999 Professor of Contemporary Art History, Aesthetics and Art Theory at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart. 2006-2011 Head of the International Master Program “Conservation of New Media and Digital Information” at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart.2007 Senior Fellow at the International Research Center for Cultural Studies in Vienna. 2006-2009 Professor at the Post Graduate Program “Image, Body, Medium” at HfG Karlsruhe. Since 2013 Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the International Institute for Subjective Experience and Research (ISER) at the MSH Medical School Hamburg. Since 2016 Deputy Chairman of the Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart. Since June 2017 Member of the Board of Trustees of the Adolf Hölzel Foundation, Stuttgart.

 

ABSTRACT

The What, the Why and the How of Media Preservation

On the one hand, there are general cultural and theoretical considerations, on the other hand, specific problems that need to be solved. There is still a big gap between the two areas. The general considerations concern questions of how we should deal with our digital cultural heritage. What should be preserved for posterity? Why should the things selected be preserved? What strategies, practices or models have evolved over the last decade in media preservation? Special questions arise with concrete problems. They are always media- and case-specific. Basically, a distinction must be made between the digitization of analog media such as photographs, films, audio tapes or videos and the preservation of digitally born media. The translation of analogue media into digital objects is in a more comfortable situation, as there is still the analog “original”, which can be played back under good conditions. More complicated is the case with digital born media. Their preservation and conservation requires more complex approaches.