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A short story for you. In the mid-1990s we had a video art history conference here in Syracuse. I was amazed to meet a new generation of contemporary art history scholars, many doing their phd theses on the preservation of media art. There was a panel that was particularly gloomy, stressing that our electronic heritage was being lost as video tapes deteriorated and video formats were disappearing through rapid obsolescence. An elderly man in the audience with a white beard and wearing bib overhauls waved his hand wanting to interact with the experts on the panel. He expressed his bewilderment with the whole conversation as he had been one of the original pioneers of the video Portapak revolution. (1968-1972) He said he didn't know what the crisis was all about because when he worked with video the whole point was "we just recorded over everything. We would shoot video of something, watch it, share it with an immediate audience and then rewind the tape and shoot something else, over and over and over again. We always recycled the tapes until they were full of dropout and started falling apart and then we would buy a new reel of tape and start over again. Video was always about process, not product."

Thanks for your writing, Jane.

All best, Tom.