The next phase of development for the TRANSFER Data Trust is underway, with support from the Knight Art + Tech Expansion Fund, Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web, and Filecoin Foundation. So far this summer we have been in conversation with leading thinkers around governance and trust planning, and have started to build out the TRANSFER Care Team.

This group of conservators, archivists and researchers will help us establish our decentralized archives by pairing with the founding artists for deep conservation and care work. The resulting research and updated archival Artist Information Packages will be made available to collectors to support the longevity and value of the work.

Here is a preview of the artworks we’re focused on for the first round of restorations that will commence from August through December:

Compiled by Lorna Mills, Ways of Something (2014-2015) is a contemporary remake of John Berger’s BBC documentary, “ Ways of Seeing ” (1972). The project consists of one-minute videos by over 113 network-based artists who commonly work with 3D rendering, gifs, film remix, webcam performances, and websites to describe the cacophonous conditions of artmaking after the internet. The 4-part video series is available from TRANSFER in an edition of 30, the first edition is in the permanent collection of The Whitney Museum of American Art. This foundational work will serve as a rich case study in distributed artmaking and video remix from our Care Team.

Our Care Team will also be working to document and restore numerous large-format GIF installations from Mills that TRANSFER has supported for the past decade, including Petting Zoo: Epic Biblical (2020), the sold out edition of her 4-channel installation Yellowwhirlaway (2017), and her 3-channel stunner wnrwnrchkndnr (2017) currently on view at the Peréz Art Museum Miami.

 A Subject Self Defined (2015-2016) is a series from Carla Gannis that addresses issues of branded identity, age and body estimation, catastrophe culture, and online agency via static, dynamic and interactive “selfie” imagery. The series includes 4K video vignettes, Augmented Reality prints and an AR Artist Book. Our Care Team is restoring the video and AR components of this work in a crucial historical moment, resurfacing this series that was created during the rise of Trump and social media enabled fascism in the USA.

 The Garden of Emoji Delights (2014-2021) has been exhibited globally, and is represented in many prominent media art collections including The Spalter Digital Art Collection and The Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation Collection. Our Care Team is diving deep into conservation work on this expansive series, which includes the sold out 4K video edition, the monumental print, the lightbox, and an accompanying series of animated GIFs, prints and 3D printed works.

Menkman’s groundbreaking solo exhibition Behind White Shadows (2017) featured the Virtual Reality artwork titled DCT: SYPHONING (2017) a contemporary translation of the 1884 Edwin Abbott Abbott novel “Flatland”. The VR experience is a journey through algorithms at work in digital image compression, revealing what is obscured in our technology mediated world. This ambitious exhibition included a large-scale sculptural installation that pioneered a subversive approach to VR installation in the gallery. Our Care Team is working to restore this installation, and bring the VR to a current version of hardware devices.

 Xilitla (2013) was the first video game installation exhibited by TRANSFER, and an early example of the genre of algorithmic interactive virtual worlds.  Inside this algorithmic piece, a Janushead is used to navigate Menkman's digital dreamscape. Taking advantage of the tensions between gameplay and audiovisual art, this aesthetic experiment opens up a new, eerie poetic and fantasmatic universe. The first edition of the piece is part of the The Stedelijk Museum Breda Collection, formerly the Museum of the Image (MOTI). Our Care Team is working with the studio to migrate this prescient early work to UNREAL Engine, to deploy the work on contemporary operating systems and open up access to this historic piece that is facing obsolescence.

Migration work continues on Infilteriterations (2019-ongoing) the breakout series of interactive AR installations from Huntrezz Janos. Recently acquired by The Carl & Marilyn Thoma Foundation Collection, Huntrezz's Augmented Reality Face Filters span the public space of the web and the white cube, emphasizing the value of open access in experimental media art. While the collector owns the rights to display these filters in interactive public installations, the artworks are available for anyone to view online at any time. These filters, originally created on Meta’s Spark AR platform, are being migrated into an open, web-based format to preserve the longevity and accessibility of the works, in partnership with NYU Tandon School of Engineering’s Integrated Design and Media Program, Tandon at The Yard.

Navigating the virtual world of Eclipsatrix Exuvia (2021), commissioned by the Athens Biennale for AB7: ECLIPSE, one encounters monuments from ancient Greece, revived with colorful embellishments and fantastical forms. Wandering through this virtual landscape, installations of the artist’s poetry emerge in the landscape. Upon entering an enormous amphitheater (modeled after the Odeon of Herodes) the larger-than-life figure of Eclipsatrix Exuvia appears, animated by the artist’s body through motion capture technology.

The ambitious commission spans an interactive virtual world with live motion capture performance, and a massive 3D printed sculpture bust produced as a hand-painted life-size wearable that renders real a relic from the mythological game world. Our Care Team is working to ensure the longevity of the 3D printed artifact, as well as the interactive virtual world.

 Precarious Inhabitants (2017) is a series of works addressing issues of symbiosis and transformation between human, AI machines, animals and other organic and synthetic bodies. For her first solo exhibition with TRANSFER, Papamargariti created a large-format adaptation of her single-channel moving image work Always a Body, Always A Thing commissioned and exhibited in Greece by curator Nadja Argyropoulou. Our Care Team is restoring and re-staging the installation, which consists of a 3-channel video installation with an immersive audio soundscape, and a 4-channel screen-based floor sculpture.

 Liminal Beings (2019) is a 3-channel immersive moving image installation from Papamargariti that explores the concept of automaton, and the way that different anthropomorphic forms and functions are embedded within. Automata, since ancient times, have been standing on the verge of two states, developing machinic and human characteristics simultaneously. Papamargariti delves into issues and themes related to simultaneity, the merging and dissolving of our surroundings with the virtual, and the constant diffusion of AI images that define and fragment our identity and everyday experience. The work has been exhibited extensively by TRANSFER including showings at Ars Electronica, NADA Art Fair, Christie’s Art + Tech Summit, and is currently on view at The Peréz Art Museum Miami. Our Care Team is working with the studio on a video conservation effort to ensure the longevity of this work and the artist’s extensive catalog of experimental moving images.

These works are backed in perpetuity by the TRANSFER Data Trust, ensuring their access and value across generations, and making them a sound investment for collectors and institutions. Our supporters are early participants in the decentralized archive, and have access to our extensive network of experts to ensure the longevity and value of their works. Inquire with [email protected] for more information on acquisition and participation.

TRANSFER Data Trust is made possible by fiscal sponsorship from Gray Area. We thank our sponsors for their generous support of our vision of a more equitable model for artist-owned decentralized open culture infrastructure.

 Arts Equity Group provides PR and Strategy for TRANSFER Data Trust. Reach out to Danielle Amodeo for inquiries and press release mailings: [email protected]