On May 21st, 2023 I set out to ride all 334 miles of the Great Allegheny Passage and C&O towpath as fast as I could. I finished in 22 hours and 34 minutes setting a new fastest known time for a solo unsupported rider. This post breaks down how I planned, and what happened on race day.

Together the Great Allegheny Passage and C&O towpath (sometimes referred to collectively as the GAPCO) form easily the longest continuous gravel and dirt multi-use trail on the east coast of the US, stretching from Pittsburgh, PA to Washington D.C. There is nothing quite...

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What Every Conservator Needs to Know

Art conservators all over the world increasingly find themselves having to up-skill and re-train to provide basic preventive conservation for digital media. The requirements for Time-Based Media Art are even more significant, and concerns about safe storage for these artworks have created an even clearer sense of urgency in trying to define and establish best practices. Framed in the context of Time-Based Media Art, this article aims to serve as a guide for conservators interested in beginning to assess how to move forward with establishing storage for valuable digital assets, whether works of art...

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Should Technical Determinism Influence Art Criticism?

In the interest of full disclosure: Cory Arcangel, the artist discussed in this post is a client of Small Data Industries, a private practice conservation studio founded by the author.

In a recently posted video, Patrick LeMieux(Assistant Professor of Cinema and Digital Media at UC Davis) describes his own material exploration and investigation of Cory Arcangel’s seminal artwork, Super Mario Clouds (2002). LeMieux’s research is spectacular in many ways. It presents exactly the kind of research that I wish I was seeing more of (there are a few examples I can think of) in...

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This weekend I was in Colorado with some friends, and it occurred to me that we were staying very close to the Continental Divide. I couldn’t resist renting a mountain bike and setting out to go find it. New friend Jono came with.

After reaching the end of the local singletrack network, we took a forrest road – Corona Pass – all the way up.

In all, 39 miles and 3,574 ft of climbing.

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Last week I was in D.C. to visit a client, and to lead a workshop at the Smithsonian Institution. Having recently discovered and ridden a section of the Chesapeake and Ohio towpath and Great Allegheny Passage, I couldn’t resist the urge to bring my bike with me and set out on a weekend bikepacking adventure.

The plan was to ride the 320 mile trail in just over two days, self supported. This goal was pretty ambitious – that’s a lot of miles on tarmac, let alone dirt and gravel trails. That was part of the adventure – would I be...

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In my four years at the Museum of Modern Art, I have worked among a truly world-class team. We have designed, built, and operated what has become a leading department of time-based media art conservation. Not only have we grown a wealth of expertise, but we have built new tools and open source software to meet the unique needs of stewarding a collection that includes a wide spectrum of materials and technologies with unique preservation risks.

During the last four years, however, I have had countless conversations with artists, gallerists, collectors, and small institutions who see MoMA’s expertise and resources,...

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There are two fundamental tenets I keep in mind while on my bike:

1. Any ride worth riding will include a non-trivial amount of suckiness
2. Plan carefully, but also be prepared to change plans on the spot

Last weekend’s out and back ride to the Delaware Water Gap was a perfect meditation on these tenets. The ride laid before us intense trials and tribulations both mental and physical, and some seriously amazing bike riding.

Friday morning I commuted to work on my AWOL with gear and supplies for the weekend. After work I met up with new riding buddy Matt, on the west side.  We proceeded to the evening’s destination: Beaver Pond in Harriman State Park.

Just a quick little jaunt to get out of the city, and into the woods. The ride up went smoothly. Just as we started climbing the summit...

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I tend to get a lot of questions about my weekend bike adventures. Cyclists and non-cyclists alike ask about my routes, what I eat on the ride, what I pack, how long the ride takes, if I bike in the rain, etc. I’m going to start doing a better job of documenting all of this, starting with this post about a little trip I took up to the Catskills.

First: the bike. I’ve been riding a Specialized Tarmac for two years for both recreational and competitive road riding. This summer though I’ve become increasingly obsessed with adventure cycling and bikepacking....

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This week I find myself in Brussels for a symposium at iMAL Center for Digital Cultures and Technology called “Preservation and Access to Born-digital Culture”. I am here mostly to talk about the work that we have been doing at the Museum of Modern Art — but today I have the pleasure of also sharing information about some of the private work I have been doing with artists to develop digital preservation strategies in their studios.

Artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer recently wrote a great manifesto about the conservation of time-based media artworks. He mentions how the great majority of artists feel...

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In the final days of  the XFR STN exhibition at the New Museum, we encountered what was hands-down the most challenging born-digital recovery to have occured during the run of the exhibition. On August 30th, artist Phil Sanders arrived at the New Museum with an amalgam floppy disks, and two external hard disk drives. XFR STN technician Kristin MacDonough went into production mode with recovering the floppy disks. In just a few hours Kristin was able to recover 146 of Phil’s floppy disks. Prolific!

While Kristin tended to the sea of floppy disks, I investigated the hard drive situation. The...

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