Shu-Wen Lin, Joshua Churchill, and Mark Hellar
Electronic Media Review, Volume Eight: 2023-2024
PhotoFlicks and PhotoFictions was created by Lucas Samaras in 2005 and acquired by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2006. It showcased the artist’s interests in self-portraiture and image manipulation. The artist replicated his workstation at his studio for viewers to explore his photographic and audiovisual archives. The work comprises 4432 photographic files in iPhoto and 60 iMovie files on a Mac mini, presented with an Apple Cinema HD Display 23-inch monitor, an Apple mouse, a custom-printed mouse pad with instructions, portable speakers, an Ikea Hannes Desk, and three Design within Reach Bellini chairs. After learning the work was selected for the Sea Change exhibition in 2023, members from the Curatorial, Conservation, Registration, and Collections Technical teams collaborated to revisit past records and documentation. Together, we examined the viability of some past proposed solutions. We carefully laid out a roadmap to perform various levels of migration for both software and hardware components, and investigated potential implications and changes associated with each approach. Addressing the rapidly changing and proprietary nature of Apple systems and products, we aim to share our strategies and thinking process to adjust our practices to preserve, assess, migrate, and provide access to the work on our internal server and in our gallery spaces.
Introduction
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) has been acquiring media works since the 1970s, and in 1987, SFMOMA formed one of the earliest media arts curatorial departments in the United States. The cross-departmental collaborative group Team Media (note 1) began in 1994, but it was not until 2006 when the photography department welcomed their first media art accession. PhotoFlicks and PhotoFictions was created by Lucas Samaras in 2005, and it showcased the artist’s interests in self-portraiture and image manipulation (fig. 1). The artist replicated his workstation at his studio for viewers to explore his photographic and audiovisual archives. The work comprises 4432 photographic files in iPhoto, a photo management software tool developed by Apple Inc., and 60 iMovie files on a Mac Mini, presented with an Apple Cinema HD Display 23-inch monitor, an Apple mouse, a custom-printed mouse pad with instructions, portable speakers, an Ikea Hannes Desk, and three Design within Reach Bellini chairs. At the time of acquisition, interviews were conducted to explore strategies related to acquisition, display, loan, and long-term preservation.
Pre-Acquisition Research and Display Strategies
In March 2006, leading up to the accession of PhotoFlicks and PhotoFictions, a group of SFMOMA staff members, Theresa Andrews, Steve Dye, Donna Mauro, Maria Naula, Jill Sterrett, Daphne Tooke, and Terri Whitlock, shared a phone conversation with Chris Harnden of Pace Wildenstein Gallery who worked with Samaras in the role of Operations and IT positions to develop the work. Notes from that conversation state that the main question they were hoping to address was “What do we need to display, to loan, to acquire, and to preserve this piece?” A large part of that was how to define the limits of visitor interaction with the work. Harnden shared that Samaras acknowledged “manipulation as part of the work and has, in turn, succeeded in ‘letting go’” but that “the artist does not want the images significantly altered and or removed from the computer.” This brought up the question of how the gallery managed this aspect of manipulation of the work by visitors while it was on view.
When this work was first on view at Pace Wildenstein Gallery in 2005, it was displayed on 35 workstations set up identically for visitors to interact with, each with an Apple Mac Mini, an Apple Cinema HD Display, an Apple Keyboard, a single-button Apple Pro Mouse, a pair of small computer speakers, and a mousepad with suggested instructions printed on it. Harnden said that they “reset” each workstation once a week to bring it back to its default state by cloning them from a disc image on a hard drive. Knowing that the level of visitor interaction would be significantly higher at SFMOMA compared to a gallery like Pace Wildenstein, we inquired about restricting access to the system settings and other functions on the computer while still honoring the experience of freely browsing the iPhoto library and folder of video files.
Harnden said that would be acceptable and that the most important aspects were to replicate the appearance of the desktop and maintain the interactivity with the image and video files. Similarly, we were informed that Samaras was not bound to using a Mac Mini, that headphones could be used in place of speakers, and that the desk and chairs were not exact replicas of Samara’s workstation and thus were also open to variability. Harnden said that if we ever had questions on variability or replacement considerations in the future, we should contact the gallery, explaining that “Samaras believes that the files themselves are the most important aspect of the work. The computer and desk are more like a frame.”
Following this conversation and approval of the acquisition, SFMOMA received an Apple Mac Mini (model: M9687LL/B), a 23-inch Apple Cinema HD Display, an Apple Pro Mouse, an Apple Keyboard, a pair of small computer speakers, a custom-printed mouse pad with instructions, portable speakers, an Ikea Hannes Desk, and three Design within Reach Bellini chairs. Soon afterwards, PhotoFlicks and PhotoFictions was added to the checklist of an exhibition that was slated to open in 2006 at SFMOMA, Imposing Order.
With that in mind, we assembled the work and gave it a thorough demo, and then began strategizing ways to restrict the level of manipulation of the computer via both hardware and software.
The first step was to remove any software that was unnecessary for the interactive experience and to create restrictions via the user settings within macOS (10.3.8) to try to avoid more severe manipulation of the workstation. We also found that the keyboard was not needed to browse and view the images and videos, so we removed that from the workstation to discourage additional manipulation. Since the work was being installed in a group exhibition with other works close by, we also opted to swap the small computer speakers for two pairs of headphones. We installed the Mac Mini on the small sliding keyboard shelf below the desktop surface, as opposed to sitting on the floor as it was installed at Pace Wildenstein, and secured it closed with a cover to avoid being tampered with or stolen by visitors. We also had mousepads created with new instructions to reflect our new installation setup (fig. 2).
With the modifications that we implemented, we expected to have to re-image the computer once a week to bring the work back to its default state. However, we quickly found out within the first day the work was on view that our visitors were more inquisitive than we expected, as someone had deleted the iPhoto library, which made the photos inaccessible. Given this experience, we realized we needed a different solution for “resetting” the work that could be implemented more quickly, so we decided to add the disc image of the computer to another identical Mac Mini that would serve as a backup and be swapped into the installation whenever it was considered necessary. The Mac Mini that was removed from installation would immediately be re-imaged so that it would be ready to swap back in the next time we needed to do so. For less intensive interventions by visitors, we would bring a wired keyboard to the gallery and use that in conjunction with the mouse to make any necessary adjustments. This was the strategy implemented for that exhibition’s run in 2006.
Exploring Migration Strategies in 2023
The work was selected for the SFMOMA exhibition Sea Change: Photographs from the Collection in 2023, which was 17 years after its first installation at SFMOMA. After collaboratively revisiting past interviews and records, we learned that speakers and furniture were selected and provided by the gallery. They were neither used at the artist studio, nor were they the same style or model used by the artist. With this key information, we were able to set up our scope of work to focus on the digital elements and the supporting software applications on the to-be-migrated original and new Mac mini. Acknowledging our Collections Technical team’s role to perform day-to-day maintenance and the potential demand of staff support in the gallery, one of our goals for the 2023 presentation was to make an informed decision with various stakeholders to reduce the level of maintenance work required of staff. We had cross-departmental discussions between Curatorial, Conservation, Registration, and Collections Technical teams to carefully evaluate different pathways, and aimed to find a balance between reducing maintenance requirements while maintaining the interactive aspects and the integrity of the work.
In early 2023, we spoke with Michael Gallant and Bill Scanga at Pace Gallery, both of whom had frequently provided software and technical assistance to the artist. In the meeting, Gallant confirmed that the specific software and hardware elements, including the display and mouse, were not essential to the work, and the artist constantly migrated the software applications used in his works. Our team also shared our experience in 2006, our expectations of new challenges, and our three proposed conservation plans and the potential roadblocks associated with them. The first proposed option was to use Quick Emulator (QEMU) to emulate iPhoto and OS 10.3 on a newer Mac Mini and macOS, knowing that we would need additional tech support to solve the audio issues since QEMU from the official source does not support sound for OS systems. The second option was to migrate the operating systems from OS 10.3.8 to OS 10.5 where Time Machine was first introduced so that we would be able to restore the iPhoto library with the Time Machine backups. Our third proposal was to fully migrate iPhoto 5.0 to the current Photos app 7.0 (iPhoto was replaced by the Photos app on Apple computers with the macOS 10.10.3 update in 2015) using a newer Mac Mini running on a current macOS where we could implement tools to set up the Mac mini ideally in kiosk mode.
Each proposed strategy included different potential challenges. After considering SFMOMA’s curatorial associate Emma Mickevicius’s and the artist representatives’ input, the artist’s intent, gallery maintenance requirements, and the technical limitations of the work, we decided to fully migrate the work to the Photos app and macOS 12.5 on a new Apple Mac Mini (model: MMFJ3LL/A). Throughout the process, we took a closer look at how we worked on unexpected roadblocks and measured the time, resources, and labor spent on different solutions. This project revealed the implications and the tedious efforts it took to care for complex work employing proprietary software.
Hardware Considerations
We had planned to install the new Mac Mini as we had previously, hidden within a locked and covered shelf of the desk that was on view, with only the display, mouse, and mousepad visible on the physical desktop. When considering whether to use the original 23-inch Apple Cinema HD Display with wider silver bezel and the original clear-covered single-click USB Apple Pro Mouse or a current 27-inch Apple Studio Display and current Apple mouse to use with the new Mac Mini, Mickevicius expressed her interest in maintaining the aesthetic of the older hardware (fig. 3). There were no compatibility issues with the older Apple Pro Mouse and the new Mac Mini; however, getting the older Apple Cinema HD Display to work consistently with the new Mac Mini required some troubleshooting. The 23-inch Apple Cinema HD Display has a tethered breakout cable connected to the back of it that includes a DVI-D, FireWire 400, USB 2.0, and DC power connections, whereas the new Mac Mini has HDMI and Thunderbolt 4 inputs. During our tests with standard HDMI to DVI-D adapters, we quickly discovered that the image on the display would occasionally drop out and eventually disappear. Only a restart of the computer would remedy the problem. We experienced the same problem when using a standard DVI-D to Thunderbolt/USB-C adapter. Some research into the matter revealed that these older Apple Cinema Displays required a DVI to USB-C adapter that did not transmit HDCP (or High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) signals from the computer to the monitor, as these older monitors were not HDCP compliant. We eventually found and purchased such an adapter, which remedied the problem.
Migrating the iPhoto Library
Approved by the Pace Gallery and Mickevicius, we started exploring different methods to export digital content out of iPhoto and Mac OS 10.3.8 to Photos in macOS Ventura. The main obstacle of the migration was caused by the fact that iPhoto 5.0 and Photos 7.0 have drastically different interfaces and display mechanisms. That said, the iPhoto library could not simply be imported to the latest Apple Photos app. After experimenting with different tools and options, QEMU was employed to emulate Mac OS 10.3.8 systems. It allowed us to exercise the work in its native environment and observe unresolved and emerging challenges ranging from technological obsolescence to system requirements. We also came across 17 slideshows in iPhoto that were not listed in artwork medium descriptions.
As shown in QEMU, PhotoFlicks and PhotoFictions contains 178 albums, 4432 photos, and 16 slideshows in iPhoto 5 (fig. 4). Outside of iPhoto app, there are 60 videos saved in a separate folder called iMovie on the desktop. After experimenting with different methods to export the photo assets out of iPhoto, we carefully assessed the changes of information and visual presentation between iPhoto and Photos. We noticed how different import and export methods would bring unexpected changes that may contradict the original description of the work. We mostly relied on the User Guide (Apple, n.d. a), the Apple Support Community (Apple, n.d. b), and other online forums to learn from the user community and test different methods throughout the process. In this section, we will only discuss three major challenges that required intensive labor and attention during the migration process. We will also touch on the subject of visual presentation and how we consistently revisited Samaras’s comments on “(it is important) to protect the file being changed in photo editor . . . (he does not feel) bound to the idea that the work is only viewed on Mac mini. Updates and alternatives are possible as long as the content is preserved” (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2006).
First, we soon realized that an overdue full inventory of the photographic and audiovisual materials associated with PhotoFlicks and PhotoFictions would be essential to kick off the project. Since the consumer has no access to the backend databases and none of the built-in export methods can help carry over some critical information from iPhoto to Photos, such as album, an inventory will be needed to manually create albums with the accurate photographs. Additionally, the total photo count shown in the Photos app needs to remain the same as listed in the medium descriptions. However, 55 additional images were found in Trash in iPhoto. These were not counted in the total image count in the iPhoto library or in the medium line. After importing them in Photos, the total number in the library would change if they were not moved to the trash can. However, Photos would automatically purge everything in Trash after 30 days, and the visitors would need to enter a passcode to view the content inside the trash can. After trying several methods, these 55 photographs were tagged with keywords and hidden for a Smart Album in Photos. In this way, 55 photographs would not be automatically deleted, and the total image count would remain the same (fig. 5). This solution shows the little to no control consumers had over Photos settings, and we had to work with provided functions and limitations in the proprietary software to achieve a compromised yet acceptable result.
In both iPhoto and Photos, date information is always on display, and “sort by date” is a viewing option. Date discrepancy existing in the file metadata was identified early in the assessment process as one of the potential hurdles. Even though all 4432 digital photographs and 60 videos are components to PhotoFlicks and PhotoFictions and they are not individual artworks, the timestamp of each file needed to remain accurate. In other words, we saw the timestamp on display in these two applications as the equivalent of the year information on the wall label. We would not change the artwork creation year after performing a treatment, so we would not want our conservation actions to alter the timestamp on display in the digital realm. A screenshot of “EAST VIEW 1.jpg” (fig. 6) is included here to further elaborate our observation. “May 16th, 2004” is listed as the file creation and modification dates under file info for “EAST VIEW 1.jpg.” Circled in red on the left, the timestamp of “EAST VIEW 1.jpg” on display in Photos is “September 21 2002,” which is the same as in iPhotos. Adobe’s photo management software Adobe Bridge and open-source command line application ExifTool were employed to retrieve file metadata, and both tools provided additional date information. “Date Created” in Bridge or “Date/Time Original” in ExifTool is the date that iPhoto and Photos used for display. Since there is a lack of documentation for iPhoto and Photos, no manual from Apple provided information related to the default use of the display date.
In addition to migrating from iPhoto to Photos, we also discovered that two of Apple’s formats used for some still images and videos are obsolete. Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC), a video codec designed by Apple for HDV workflows, and PCT, the Macintosh Picture Image file format for the discontinued Macintosh QuickDraw, are no longer supported in macOS Ventura. After researching both obsolete formats, Adobe Photoshop and ffmpeg were used for migration. Since Photos can accommodate video files, we decided to consolidate still images and audiovisual materials inside one platform—Photos, instead of replicating the same setup with a separate folder of videos on the desktop. We tested several ffmpeg recipes for the videos with AIC codec and migrated the exhibition copies to H265 to be imported in Photos. As mentioned earlier, all photo and video assets are shown with a specific timestamp in Photos as the time of the work, and the year of 2023 would be on display for the new transcoded videos and migrated still images. After speaking to Mickevicius, we agreed that having the year 2023 on display in the Photos interface would create confusion about the artwork creation year (2005) and decided to match the timestamps of the newly migrated files to the original creation dates by using “adjust date and time” function in Photos.
Finally, the default view in the Photos app is sorted by date—either a single date or a range of dates would be shown while browning the library. On the contrary, the default view is sorted by the file name in iPhoto. Unlike iPhoto, Photos offers “sorted by title” as a viewing arrangement option, but Photos does not use the file name as the default title as in iPhoto (léonie 2019, 2022). Therefore, to view the photographs by their file names in alphabetical order, the file name needs to be entered in the title field in Photos. The “sorted by title” with file name became critical when replicating the slideshows. Similar to albums, the slideshow was not designed to be portable (Mann1, 2006), and the only option to export a slideshow would be turning them into videos. After speaking to the curator, we decided to maintain the slideshow format in Photos to retain a similar visual layout so that visitors could browse the selected images in the slideshow and start playing the slideshow from a specific image. We identified that matching the sequence of each slideshow in Photos would fall into the framework as preserving the content. All slideshow sequences were created by using the default file name view option; therefore, we went in to manually add the file name in the title field. Given the focus of this article, we will not cover unresolved challenges with the Photos slideshow.
Emulation as a Conservation Strategy
QEMU is a powerful and versatile open-source emulator and virtualizer that allows users to run software designed for one hardware platform on another. It emulates a wide range of processors, enabling systems like Windows, Linux, and macOS to be run on different architectures, such as ARM, PowerPC, and x86. QEMU can operate in two primary modes: full-system emulation, where it replicates an entire hardware environment, including the CPU and peripherals, and user-mode emulation, which translates individual system calls for running specific applications. It is widely used for software development, testing, and preservation, providing a crucial tool for maintaining access to legacy systems and applications on modern hardware.
Emulation using QEMU to run OS X 10.3 for PowerPC on Intel hardware is a critical strategy for preserving software artworks, especially those created during the early 2000s when Apple’s PowerPC architecture was dominant. These digital works, often tightly coupled with the specific hardware and software configurations of their time, risk becoming inaccessible as technology evolves. By leveraging QEMU, curators and digital preservationists can re-create the original environment in which these artworks were intended to be experienced. QEMU facilitates this by emulating the PowerPC architecture on modern Intel-based systems, allowing OS X 10.3 to run as if it were on its native hardware. This emulation was able to preserve the visual integrity of the software artwork, which is vital for appreciating the piece in its historical and artistic context. Despite the performance overhead, this approach ensures that the software artwork remains accessible and relevant, safeguarding it against the obsolescence of its original platform.
The emulated results did not run at native speed, but the emulation was critical for retrieving the original data. QEMU’s networking support was essential in transferring the data off the emulated environment, ensuring that we could successfully preserve and access the information despite the slower performance.
This was critical in migrating the work because it allowed us to access and extract the original data from a legacy system, ensuring the preservation and continued availability of the work in a modern context. Without QEMU’s emulation and networking capabilities, the data could have been lost or remained trapped in an obsolete environment, hindering efforts to migrate and preserve the software artwork.
Resetting to a Baseline State
Utilizing AppleScript in conjunction with OS X’s launchd scheduling system to reset the Photos app database to its original state nightly proved to be an effective strategy for maintaining the stability and usability of this computer-based artwork installed in a high-traffic public gallery. We collaborated with our IT team to implement policies with Jamf, a software system used in the museum to manage different access levels in devices. It helped us limit access to a range of applications and system settings and allowed us to disable USB ports, Internet connections over Wi-Fi, and Airdrop. It reduced staff time to constantly reset the systems. In this artwork, viewers were encouraged to explore a Photos app library as part of the interactive experience. Over time, prolonged usage by museum visitors naturally led to performance degradation or unexpected behaviors within the app. By automating a daily reset, the system was able to consistently start fresh each morning, ensuring optimal performance and preserving the integrity of the artwork. This approach reduced the need for constant manual intervention, offering both a seamless experience for the audience and dependable operation of the installation.
Conclusions
As is true with most of our collection care projects, the collaboration between numerous individuals across departments, from members of our Curatorial, Conservation, Collections Technical, and IT teams, was critical to the success of this project, as each participant brought their unique ideas, perspectives, and solutions to the various challenges we encountered. Emulation is an invaluable mechanism for media art preservation because it allows legacy software and digital works to be run on modern systems so that we can migrate the data. This ensures that digital art, which often depends on obsolete technologies, remains accessible and authentic over time. However, when offering interactive experiences to a public audience, it is important to incorporate controls—both in terms of usability and access—to maintain the integrity of the artwork and ensure a seamless, engaging interaction for all users.
Despite preparing as much as we could before diving into the migration process, we were still surprised at the depth of challenges that sometimes led us down a rabbit hole. We conducted smaller-scale tests for the three treatment proposals to help build realistic expectations of the outcomes. We also acknowledged that without regular migrations, we were working with a 17-year gap between current and outdated formats and technologies. We thought of utilizing the latest iPhoto release (iPhoto 9.6 in 2015) and the earliest version of Photos so that they could bridge the transactions from one software application to the other earlier adoption, which might share more similarities with its predecessor. However, after doing a few tests, we agreed that it would become a much bigger project and would require a lot more time and resources than we originally allocated.
As a result of the conservation work, we have the disk image of the 2005 Mac mini, all the digital photographs and videos files separated from the macOS 10.3.8 systems along with a list of inventories, a QEMU emulation package, and a migrated Photos library on our Digital Art Storage. The outcome offers potential pathways to our future colleagues to revisit our approach in 2023 and has better equipped the museum with the tools and knowledge to care for the work. By sharing our thinking process and discussions with the stakeholders, it is our hope to shed light on efforts devoted to balancing the tackling of media conservation backlogs in a timely manner and the ideal upkeep of obsolete technologies.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to acknowledge and thank our collaborators Emma Mickevicius (Center for Creative Photography), Michelle Kloehn, Sara Weed, Sean Horchy, and Steve Dye (SFMOMA), Michael Gallant, and Bill Scanga (Pace Gallery) for their invaluable contributions to this project.
NOTE
- Collection Technical is SFMOMA’s team that supports the installation, maintenance, and documentation of time-based media and electronic art works in the museum’s collection and works that have been loaned to SFMOMA for exhibition. Team Media is a monthly meeting where SFMOMA staff members—curators, conservators, technicians, intellectual property managers, registrars, and members of the web and digital team—come together to discuss various topics in media art.
REFERENCES
Apple a. “Photos User Guide for macOS Sequoia.” n.d. Accessed 2023. https://support.apple.com/guide/photos/welcome/mac.
Apple b. “Apple Support Community.” n.d. Accessed 2023. https://discussions.apple.com/welcome.
Christopher Mann1. “How to move iPhoto slideshow to other computer?.” Older Software, Apple Support Community, May 1, 2006. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/465501?sortBy=rank.
léonie. “Script: Batch Changing the Titles to the Filename w/Extension 2018.” Photos, Apple Support Community, November 4, 2019. https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250000346.
léonie. “How to view the titles or filenames below the thumbnails in Photos 5.0 on Catalina.” Photos, Apple Support Community, Nov 22, 2022. https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250002031.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. “SFMOMA Accession Summary.” April 10, 2006.
AUTHORS
SHU-WEN LIN
Associate Media Conservator
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco, CA
JOSHUA CHURCHILL
Collections Technical Assistant Manager
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco, CA
jchurchill@sfmoma.org
MARK HELLAR
Time-Based Media Conservation Consultant
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco, CA