TechFocus IV: Caring for 3D-printed Art

  • Registration Closed

October 25, 27, & 29, 2021 at 11:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. EDT
Virtual symposium

3D printing, also known as rapid prototyping or additive manufacturing, is being utilized by architects, designers, artists, and consumers, and is becoming increasingly common and technically sophisticated. In short, it describes the process of creating a three-dimensional object via computer-aided design (CAD) programs and digital files, printing it using a range of materials from plastic to metal more conventionally, to all kinds of experimental materials like chocolate or shrimp shells. Originated as a technology to rapidly produce prototypes, 3D-printed artworks are now progressively entering collections. While long-term condition prognosis still awaits discovery, some printing materials are known to quickly yellow and degrade. At the same time, the inherent reproducibility of the technology challenges us to rethink appropriate preservation measures for cases where the boundaries of what constitutes the “original object” may not be as clearly defined.

The goal of this program is to address caretakers and creators alike and help them understand these objects’ technology, risks, and requirements. In this way, the virtual symposium will serve as a platform to develop guidelines within the community towards the long-term stewardship of both the printed object and accompanying digital files necessary if reprinting becomes a viable option.

Participants who register by September 1 will receive a complimentary 3D-print sample set in the mail (international participants must pay a $10 shipping fee here to receive the sample set).

A $75 student registration fee is available for current students. Please send a message with your student ID to learning@culturalheritage.org to register at the student rate.

The live virtual symposium will take place on Zoom and automated live captions will be available for those who choose to use them. The program will be recorded and registrants will have access to the recordings following the live sessions.


This program is being made possible by the generous support of the Foundation for Advancement in Conservation and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. FAIC relies on your contributions to support these and its many other programs. Learn more about donating to the foundation here.

The TechFocus workshop series is organized by the American Institute for Conservation’s Electronic Media Group to provide detailed technical education in the preservation of media art. Launched on the 10th anniversary of the groundbreaking TechArchaeology symposium that was held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2000, TechFocus offers in-depth instruction in a broad range of media. Each workshop, hosted by a different institution, is dedicated to one specific media-art technology. A systematic lecture program, delivered by international experts, introduces workshop participants to the technology behind these artworks, and offers real-world guidelines for their preservation. The TechFocus website offers videos of presentations made at past workshops.

Thank you to Martina Haidvogl, Emily Hamilton, and Alexandra Nichols for their work in planning this program.

Paola Antonelli

Senior Curator, Department of Architecture & Design

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

Paola Antonelli is Senior Curator at The Museum of Modern Art in the Department of Architecture & Design, as well as MoMA’s founding Director of Research & Development. Her most recent exhibition, Broken Nature, opened at MoMA in November 2020. She is also currently working on @design.emergency, an Instagram and book project  explores design’s role in building a better future>span class="gmaildefault"> for all, in collaboration with critic Alice Rawsthorn. 

Sarah Barack

Head of Conservation and Senior Objects Conservator

Head of Conservation and Senior Objects Conservator

Sarah Barack is the Head of Conservation and Senior Objects Conservator at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. She holds a Masters of Art and Certificate of Advanced Conservation from the Conservation Center, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University and a Masters of Business Administration from Columbia Business School. Recent research has ranged from plastics polishing protocols to technical study of 18th Century European porcelain. She served for four years as Treasurer for the American Institute of Conservation/Foundation for the Advancement in Conservation and is the co-founder and co-chair of the AIC K-12 Outreach Working Group.

Savannah Campbell

Video and Digital Media Preservation Specialist

Whitney Museum of American Art

Savannah Campbell is a Video and Digital Media Preservation Specialist at the WhitneyMuseum of American Art. She has previously been a Fellow in Magnetic MediaPreservation at The Standby Program and has worked on audiovisual preservationprojects for the Dance Heritage Coalition, CUNY TV, and Crawford MediaServices. Savannah holds an MA in Moving Image Archiving and Preservation fromNew York University.

Olivia Chow

Assistant Curator, Visual Art

M+

Olivia Chow isAssistant Curator, Visual Art, at M+, the new museum of visual culture in HongKong’s West Kowloon Cultural District. She participated in the curatorialprocess for the M+ exhibitions Shirley Tse: Stakeholders, Hong Kong inVenice (2019), Hong Kong’s presence at the 58th Venice Biennale, and ShirleyTse: Stakes and Holders (2020). Before joining M+, she held variouscuratorial positions at Para Site (Hong Kong) and at The Works Art and DesignFestival (Edmonton). At Para Site, she edited The Unappropriated Recipes,an unconventional cookbook that responds to Hong Kong through contributionsfrom artists, curators, and collaborators in the local and international artcommunity.

​Carolien Coon

SEAHA doctoral student

UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage

Carolien Coon is a SEAHA doctoral student at UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage investigating the stability of Additive Manufactured plastics. At UCL she obtained an MRes in Heritage Science (2015) and worked as Research Assistant on the Horizon 2020 project NANORESTART: Nanomaterials for the restoration of works of art. Previously, Coon obtained a Fine Art degree from Central University of Technology, Free State, South Africa (1999) and a BA (Hons) in Conservation at City and Guilds of London Art School (2009). As conservator she has worked for the National Trust, Plowden and Smith Ltd. and the Victoria and Albert Museum. 

​Margo Delidow

Assistant Conservator

Whitney Museum of American Art

Margo Delidow, Assistant Conservator for the Whitney Museum of American Art, completed a Masters of Arts and Certificate of Advanced Study in Conservation from The Art Conservation Program at Buffalo State, The State University of New York. She is a partner at Whryta Contemporary Art Conservation and a Professional Associate Member of AIC.

​Llisa Demetrios

Chief Curator

Eames Collection

Llisa Demetrios has been archiving the material from the Eames Office at 901 Washington in Los Angeles for over twenty-five years. Most recently, she facilitated the loans for "The World of Charles & Ray Eames" exhibition that started at the Barbican Centre in England in 2015 and continued to Sweden, Portugal, Belgium, Germany, Michigan, and the Oakland Museum of California in February 2019. Demetrios loves how a single object can tell a larger story of how her grandparents, Charles & Ray Eames, approached the problems of their day, like sustainability and conservation, which can help us face similar challenges today.

​Charlotte Eng

Conservator

Private Practice

Charlotte Eng has a PhD in materials science and engineering from Stony Brook University, NY. She was previously a Senior Conservation Scientist at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) where she used noninvasive and micro-invasive methods to examine diverse works of art from LACMA's collection. Projects she enjoyed working on included materials identification of contemporary jewelry, use of spectroradiometry for the evaluation of light sources to be used to illuminate artworks, and preservation issues of 3D printed objects.  Currently, she is a staff scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the Chemical and Isotopic Signatures Group of the Nuclear and Chemical Sciences Division.

​Alessandra Guarascio

Conservator, Installation Art

M+

Alessandra Guarascio is the Conservator, Installation Art, at M+ in Hong Kong. As part of the conservation team, she is responsible for the day-to-day care and documentation of the installation art collection. She obtained her master’s degree in Conservation of Contemporary Art in Milan, with a thesis on the documentation and rearrangement of a complex installation by John Bock. Prior to her current appointment, she collaborated with the Museo del Novecento, Hangar Bicocca, and the Museo del Design Italiano in Milan. In 2013 she moved to Singapore, where she spent six years working on all phases of conservation at the ArtScience Museum and National Gallery Singapore.

Martina Haidvogl (Moderator)

Lecturer in Conservation of Contemporary Art

Bern University of the Arts

Martina Haidvogl is a lecturer in Conservation ofContemporary Art at the Bern University of the Arts. Prior to this appointment,she was Associate Media Conservator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art(2011-2019), where she has piloted documentation and preservation initiativesfor SFMOMA’s Media Arts collection. Haidvogl has lectured and publishedinternationally on media conservation and its implementation within collectinginstitutions. Her research focuses on cross-disciplinary collaboration practicefostered through digital tools, serving the needs of the art of our time.

Emily Hamilton

Assistant Professor of Objects Conservation

SUNY Buffalo State College

Emily Hamilton is the Assistant Professor ofObjects Conservation at Buffalo State College. Previously, she was theAssociate Objects Conservator at SFMOMA, Assistant Objects Conservator at theSaint Louis Art Museum, and the Samuel H. Kress Sculpture and MediaConservation Research Fellow at MoMA. Hamilton earned a B.A. in Art Historyfrom Reed College and an M.A. in Art Conservation from SUNY Buffalo StateCollege.

Mark Hellar

Mark Hellar is a technology consultant for cultural institutions and the owner of Hellar Studios LLC. He specializes in innovative yet practical digital media and software-based solutions for multimedia artists and institutions that support their work, with an emphasis on developing systems for exhibition, documentation, and preservation. Hellar is currently working on new media conservation initiatives at SFMOMA, including the conservation and care of their software-based artworks. He is also the software developer for the studio of artist Lynn Hershman Leeson and faculty at the San Francisco Art Institute, teaching on the topics of virtual reality and augmented reality.

​Sriba Kwadjovie Quintana, J.D.

Intellectual Property Manager

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)

Sriba Kwadjovie Quintana, J.D., currently serves as the Intellectual Property Manager at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), where she manages copyright and assesses compliance with intellectual property laws and policies affecting the museum’s operation, exhibition programming, events and publications. She has presented on matters involving IP and the arts for the American Bar Association, Western Museums Association and at Stanford University. Kwadjovie Quintana is also a trained dancer and has performed with various modern/contemporary dance companies throughout the Bay Area.

Tobias Klein

Associate Professor, MFA Program Director

School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong

Tobias Klein (簡鳴謙, is a German Artist, Architect and Associate Professor at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. His works and writings articulatesa syncretism of contemporary CAD/CAM technologies with site and culturally specific design narratives, intuitive non-linear design processes, and historical cultural references, establishing the notion of Digital Craftsmanship as an operational synthesis between digital and physical materials and tools as poetic (Poïesis) and technical (Technê) expressions. In 2020, The University Museum and Art Gallery, Hong Kong, opened a retrospective exhibition of his works, accompanied by a publication with the same title, Metamorphosis or Confrontation.

Nic Lee

Research Assistant

MIT Media Lab

Nic Lee is a computational designer at the MIT Media Lab. His researchcombines design, digital fabrication, material development and energyevaluation in order to create end to end pipelines for sustainableconstruction. Through his work, he aims to bridge the gap between grown andbuilt environments. Lee graduated from the University of Virginia withbachelor’s degrees in biomedical engineering and neuroscience and received hisMDes from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. In 2020, he received his MASat the Mediated Matter Group and he is currently a PhD candidate at the MITMedia Lab.

​Daniel Luetolf

CL-Y GmbH Zurich

Daniel Luetolf lives and works in Zurich. In 2001 he obtained a degree in structural engineering in Zurich and 2010 a MSc ETH Zurich in architecture.  From 2010 to 2016, he was an art producer for Urs Fischer in New York and Zurich. In 2016, he founded his own company CL-Y GmbH for 3D art production which is realizing national and international projects in art and architecture. He has been researching and teaching at the ETH Zurich since 2016. Furthermore, he is a member of the art collective CKÖ and winner of the 2014 Swiss Art Award.

Alexandra Nichols (Moderator)

Time-Based Media Conservator

Tate

Alexandra Nichols is a Time-Based Media Conservator at Tate, focusing on exhibitions and displays. Prior to working at Tate, she was a Sherman Fairchild Foundation Fellow at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and a Samuel H. Kress Fellow at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York concentrating on the conservation of time-based media. Alexandra Nichols holds an M.S. in Art Conservation from the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation and a B.A. in Art History from the University of Maryland.

​Peter Oleksik

Associate Media Conservator

Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

Peter Oleksik is Associate Media Conservator at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) where he has been working since 2011 to conserve the museum's vast time-based media collection across curatorial departments. Outside of MoMA, Oleksik regularly writes and teaches various topics within time-based media conservation as well as works with artists, filmmakers and musicians to preserve and provide access to their media collections. Oleksik received his BA in Cinema Studies from the University of Southern California and his MA from New York University’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation (MIAP) program.

​Daniel Ostroff

Consultant

Eames Office

Daniel Ostroff has worked with the Eames Office since 2006, during which time he has written 300 blog posts on various aspects of the work of Charles and Ray Eames. Since 2001, he has also advised institutions and private companies, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Victoria and Albert Museum, Vitra Design Museum, Bonham’s Auctioneers, The Cummins Foundation, Herman Miller, Gillett and Caudana Appraisers, and J. F. Chen Ltd. Ostroff was the editor of An Eames Anthology: Articles, Film Scripts, Interviews, Letters, Notes and Speeches by Charles and Ray Eames (Yale University Press) and is active as a film and television producer.

​Megan Randall

Objects Conservator

Midwest Art Conservation Center (MACC)

Megan Randall is an Objects Conservator at the Midwest Art Conservation Center (MACC) in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Prior to MACC, Randall was an Associate Objects Conservator at the Museum of Modern Art. She earned her graduate degree at the Conservation Center, Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, and completed internships at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas and the American Museum of Natural History. Prior to entering the field of conservation she worked as a finisher at Modern Art Foundry in Astoria, Queens. She received a master’s degree from Christie's Education in 2008 and a bachelor’s degree from Carleton College.

Virginia San Fratello

Partner

Rael San Fratello and Emerging Objects

Virginia San Fratello draws, builds, 3D prints, teaches,and writes about architecture and interior design as a cultural endeavor deeplyinfluenced by craft traditions and contemporary technologies. She is a foundingpartner in the Oakland, CA based make-tank Emerging Objects and the co-authorof PrintingArchitecture: Innovative Recipes for 3D Printing (PrincetonArchitectural Press 2018), a book that reexamines the building process from thebottom up and offers illuminating case studies for 3D printing with materialslike chardonnay grape skins, salt and sawdust. Her work has been publishedwidely, including in the New YorkTimes, and is recognized by several institutions including: LACMA, TheNational Building Museum and included in the permanent collection of The Museumof Modern Art in New York, The Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, The SanFrancisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Design Museum in London.

​Sarah Scaturro

Eric and Jane Nord Chief Conservator

Cleveland Museum of Art

Sarah Scaturro is the Eric and Jane Nord Chief Conservator at the Cleveland Museum of Art. From 2012 - 2020 she was the Head Conservator of the Costume Institute, Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she developed a materials-and values-based approach to the conservation of fashion that foregrounds fashion as a time-based phenomenon. Previously, Scaturro was the Textile Conservator and Assistant Curator of Fashion at the Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. She graduated with an MA from the Fashion Institute of Technology in Fashion & Textile Studies and is a PhD candidate at Bard Graduate Center, researching the history of costume conservation.

​Jill Sterrett

Independent Arts and Cultural Advisor

Jill Sterrett is an arts and cultural advisor. She was Interim Director and Deputy Director at the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago (2018-2020) and Director of Collections and Art Conservator at the San Francisco Museum of Art (1990-2018). She is engaged in ways to revitalize museums for our times and plays an active role in Voices in Contemporary Art, an international consortium of conservators, curators, collectors, educators, and students who recognize the need for new forms of collaboration. She has lived and practiced on four continents and believes this business of objects has always been about people. 

Shirley Tse

Artist

Shirley Tse works in the mediums of sculpture,installation, photography, and text. She deconstructs the world of syntheticobjects that carry paradoxical meanings, while constructing models in whichdifferences might come together. Tse’s work has been exhibited extensively inthe US and internationally in the last 20 years. She represented Hong Kong atthe 58th Venice Biennale. Her work is featured in numerous publications including‘Akademie X: Lessons in Art + Life’ (2015), ‘Sculpture Today’ (2007), andothers. Tse received the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowshipin 2009. She has been on the faculty at California Institute of the Arts(CalArts) since 2001.

Jessica Walthew

Objects Conservator

Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum

Jessica Walthew is an objects conservator at Cooper Hewitt, working with both the Product Design & Decorative arts and Digital collections. Her research interests include the history and theory of conservation, and technical research, especially with imaging technologies. Her current work focuses on plastics (both their conservation and cultural history). She served as co-curator of Natural Plastics (2019) at Cooper Hewitt and is currently researching the use of bioplastics in design.

Aga Wielocha

Conservator, Preventive

M+

Aga Wielocha is a collection care professional and a researcher specialized in contemporary art. Currently, she holds a position of Conservator, Preventive at M+ in Hong Kong. She holds a PhD from the University of Amsterdam. Her doctoral research carried out within the program ‘New Approaches in the Conservation of Contemporary Art’ (NACCA), situated at the crossroads of art history and theory, conservation, museology, and heritage studies, is focused on the lives and futures of contemporary art in institutional collections, particularly on works which are variable and unfold over time. Prior to her doctoral studies, she served as a conservator at the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw.

Key:

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Sessions
Symposium Day 1
10/25/2021 at 11:00 AM (EDT)  |  Recorded On: 10/25/2021
10/25/2021 at 11:00 AM (EDT)  |  Recorded On: 10/25/2021
Symposium Day 2
10/27/2021 at 11:00 AM (EDT)  |  Recorded On: 10/28/2021
10/27/2021 at 11:00 AM (EDT)  |  Recorded On: 10/28/2021
Symposium Day 3
10/29/2021 at 11:00 AM (EDT)  |  Recorded On: 11/02/2021
10/29/2021 at 11:00 AM (EDT)  |  Recorded On: 11/02/2021
Handouts
Collaborative Notes
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Sample Kit
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STLs
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Handout for "Readymade of the Digital Epoch"
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Open to download resource. Handout to accompany "Readymade of the Digital Epoch: The (im)possible futures of Shirley Tse’s Negotiated Differences" by Olivia Chow, Alessandra Guarascio, Dr. Aga Weilocha
Reference List
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Participant List
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TechFocus Series
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