{"id":2000,"date":"2025-04-27T14:35:51","date_gmt":"2025-04-27T18:35:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/emg-review\/?page_id=2000"},"modified":"2026-06-13T16:10:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T20:10:14","slug":"a-journey-into-the-preservation-of-time-based-media-the-example-of-the-heritage-conservation-centre-in-singapore-part-i","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/emg-review\/a-journey-into-the-preservation-of-time-based-media-the-example-of-the-heritage-conservation-centre-in-singapore-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"A Journey into the Preservation of Time-Based Media: The Example of the Heritage Conservation Centre in Singapore (Part I)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Fabiola Rocco, Kezia Toh, Jo-Anne Wong, Mar Cruz, Alex Soo, and Christel Pesme
Electronic Media Review, Volume Eight: 2023-2024<\/em>
Full text PDF<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the past 20 years, the Singapore National Collection has seen an exponential increase in the number of time-based media (TBM) artworks. The collection counts more than 200 works, acquired primarily under the purview of National Gallery Singapore and Singapore Art Museum. Several strategies to cater for the needs of digital collection were developed over the years. Although these strategies did not provide immediate resolutions, they raised awareness of the gap between collection growth and institutional limitations at the  time. In 2023, a cross-departmental Time-Based Media Working Group (TBM WG) was established with the scope of designing a multiphase Time-Based Media Care and Preservation Plan (TBM Plan) to create a mature ecosystem focused on addressing the many outstanding needs of a growing media collection. With this article, we aim to share our experience and the pivots we made while embracing the challenges that time-based media preservation poses. It is hoped that by sharing our journey, we could offer a pathway to other institutions that are facing the pressing issue of caring for their collection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Heritage Conservation Centre (HCC) is the repository and conservation facility for Singapore\u2019s National Collection, comprising more than 250,000 artifacts and artworks. Housed in the western part of Singapore, the HCC is a purpose-built facility with a centralized storage space and conservation laboratories for the treatment of objects, paintings, paper, and textiles, a laboratory for scientific analysis, material testing, and research, as well as a photography studio for the visual documentation of artifacts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The HCC aims to set and maintain high professional standards of heritage conservation, to improve accessibility to the National Collection, and to disseminate and share with the public its knowledge of heritage care. In addition, it counts among its aspirations as being able to expand its leading role in the heritage sector beyond Singapore, into the region, to leverage its expertise in conservation and collections care and management. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The HCC comes under the ambit of the National Heritage Board (NHB), formed in 1993 as a statutory board under Singapore\u2019s Ministry of Community, Culture and Youth (MCCY). The NHB runs nine museums, heritage interpretative centers, and community heritage institutions, with a new museum set to open in 2028.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Singapore\u2019s museum scene grew significantly with strong government funding from the 1970s. This was partly an effort  to shed the city state\u2019s 1960s image as a \u201ccultural desert,\u201d a likely consequence of early reluctance to invest in art institutions and spaces to focus on pressing economic priorities, while a vibrant amateur arts scene prevailed (Hoe and Chong 2018, 242). Two visual arts museums\u2014the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) in 1996 and later the National Gallery Singapore (NGS) in 2015\u2014shall be referenced in this article due to the relevance of their contemporary collections to TBM preservation. SAM and NGS have contributed significantly to the island nation\u2019s move to strengthen its cultural capital and \u201csoft power.\u201d This was done to position Singapore as \u201cthe choice destination for arts professionals, whether local or foreign, to create or premiere an original work rooted in Singapore\u2019s own multicultural arts and heritage, as well as the diverse ethnic traditions of Asia, in particular, Southeast Asia\u201d (Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts, 2008, 21).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of the government\u2019s push, the NHB was positioned as custodian of Singapore\u2019s heritage, with the mission to preserve and celebrate the shared heritage of the city state\u2019s diverse communities, for education, nation building, and cultural understanding. As the largest player in the museum scene in Singapore, the NHB also sets policies relating to heritage sites and the National Collection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the collections of SAM and NGS fall under the National Collection and are held in public trust, both museums are corporatized and independent Companies Limited by Guarantee, so as to allow greater autonomy in the growth of visual arts in Singapore. Both institutions collect works  highlighting Singapore\u2019s art historical development, such as pioneering and practicing Singaporean visual artists, and art historical periods from the pre-colonial to the contemporary such as in the case of SAM, including experimental and emerging art practices. In this context, digital and analog forms of TBM are cared for by HCC in the National Collection, and acquired and presented primarily at SAM and NGS. As an expanding part of both museums\u2019 collecting strategies, TBM is a small but growing collection of about 210 works with digital media components, such as video, audio, and software-based art. Meanwhile, analog forms of TBM (about 1500 works), such as vinyl records, are also in the National Collection, and were collected as objects rather than for the content they store. The current annual growth is between 25 and 35 new acquisitions in digital media formats, with an expected exponential year-on-year increment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Against this backdrop, HCC tried various ways to tackle the burgeoning collection over the years. An informal taskforce was formed in 2019 comprising collections managers and visual resource staff to explore long-term storage and preservation of the collection. The taskforce also consulted with museums acquiring TBM works, set out interim workflows for accessioning and receiving, and commenced a base collections survey that proved useful as a preliminary gauge of collection size, profile, and storage needs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At around the same time, HCC also started discussions with the National Archives of Singapore (NAS), responsible for the collection, preservation, and management of Singapore\u2019s public and private archival records. The NAS, like the NHB, is also a statutory board under the Singapore Government, parked under the Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI). Discussions centered around engaging the NAS to store preservation copies of TBM, although differences in file formats and the lack of a viable solution to consolidate digital files for secure transfer meant that the partnership was not feasible. In addition, there was a key difference between the nature of each institution\u2019s collection, as digital preservation in the case of NAS is not akin to the NHB\u2019s conservation of TBM artworks. However, through the conversations, the NHB team benefitted from NAS\u2019s expertise, such as understanding the resources needed to properly care for TBM and increased critical knowledge of the field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the knowledge gained and building of professional expertise, HCC started in 2022 to advocate and plan for resources to further strengthen its care of TBM in the National Collection. The generous support from like-minded colleagues working in the sector proved a major factor in boosting professional capability and support for TBM at HCC. Advice on topics from file formats during acquisition, disk imaging, and software acquisitions to lab equipment came from practitioners such as Shu-Wen Lin, the associate media conservator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), and M+\u2019s digital and media art conservator David Smith, Hong Kong. Thereafter, the HCC team also made visits to US-based institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met), and Smithsonian Institution museums, as well as M+ and the Hong Kong Film Archive, benefitting from their generous sharing of workflows and pre-acquisition and acquisition practices. It was also opportune that key decision makers\u2014such as the NHB\u2019s chief executive and head of the Organisational Design and Innovation department\u2014participated in the trips and were able to glean first-hand the challenges and resources needed to further the care of TBM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The continued advocacy set good ground for support by senior management to develop HCC\u2019s professional capability in the care and management of the TBM collection. With some resource prioritization, HCC was also able to develop specialized expertise and hence hired its first TBM and digital conservator and digitization manager in 2023. This was enabled by a timely injection of support in 2023 with Our SG Heritage Plan 2.0<\/em>, a five-year masterplan for the heritage and museum sector in Singapore, which ushered in a new focus on increasing acquisitions under the Design Collection, including works of contemporary design. The masterplan also shared a focus on building professional capability, such as for newer areas of collecting including TBM art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Time-Based Media Care and Preservation Plan<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In June 2023, the informal TBM taskforce evolved into a formalized cross-departmental working group comprising members from the HCC Conservation and the Collections Management departments. Composed of six active members, the group is championed by Kezia Toh, Assistant Director (Collections Management), and Fabiola Rocco, Contemporary Art Conservator, and mentored by Christel Pesme and Wan Gui Ng, the head of Conservation and head of Collections Management departments, respectively. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The newly established Time-Based Media Working Group (TBM WG) meets monthly and has created a strong network of external collaborators from different departments within the NHB, including the Organizational Design and Innovation (ODI) and the Information Technology (IT) teams, who are offering their professional support. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to an injection of fresh funding from Singapore\u2019s Cultural Matching Fund, which provides dollar-for-dollar matching grants by the government for private cash donations, the workgroup could start working on a Time-Based Media Care and Preservation Plan (hereafter referred to as the TBM Plan), that could further the care of the Singapore media collection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aim of the Project<\/strong><\/em>
By the time the TBM WG had regrouped, the urgency to establish tailored policies and workflows, as well as the cost of inaction if timely conservation procedures were postponed, was clear to the upper management. Works with TBM parts, once encountered only once or twice in a year, are now requested for exhibition or loan on a monthly basis, to a point that it has become impossible to ignore the increasing backlog. Thus, the NHB\u2019s senior management approved the plan for the holistic care of the media collection, which could address the many outstanding, and often unseen, requirements of a collection that by definition is changeable, ever-evolving, and in constant flux (Holling 2017, 7).

The main goal of the TBM Plan is to create a mature ecosystem where collection custodians are enabled to go beyond digital preservation and align HCC with the most relevant practices promoted by the leading institutions in the field that better serve the needs of the Singapore National Collection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Methodology<\/strong><\/em>
Large-scale endeavors, like the TBM Plan, need to be approached following a process perspective, focusing on short-term and long-term goals, but also the interconnected dependencies of each task. Performing an institutional and a collection assessment becomes vital to identify which combination of policies, workflows, and strategies is needed to most effectively meet the institutional requirements and shed light on the makeup of the collection to plan for future improvements (Kramer et al. 2023, 40). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As defined by other authors (Kramer et al. 2021, 238), an institutional assessment for TBM is an evaluation of the institution\u2019s collection management policies, staffing, and infrastructure relating to the acquisition, exhibition, and preservation of TBM. Institutional assessments focus on performing a gap analysis to identify the areas where the organization is underperforming compared to set targets. Two useful resources are available online to guide organizations which are taking their first steps toward digital preservation: the Levels of Digital Preservation developed by the National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) in 2013 and subsequently refined in 2019 (NDSA 2019), and the Rapid Assessment Model (RAM) by the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) (DPC 2024). Both models are technology and strategy agnostics, and aim to provide an easy-to-use benchmarking assessment of the institution\u2019s maturity level based on a tiered system focused on practical functional areas (i.e., NDSA) or a mix of practical actions and organizational capabilities (i.e., DPC RAM). In contrast to the institutional assessment, which investigates the whole organization, a collection assessment usually takes the form of an item-by-item survey and seeks to inform on both the makeup and the condition of the works, as well as document the intangible and tangible aspects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to the previous investigations carried out by ex-HCC colleagues, we already had a general overview of the major institutional weak points. Although policies and procedures, including acquisition, accessioning, documentation, and collection care, have been reviewed over the years, they have always been geared toward traditional artworks that easily fit the structure of cultural organizations (Dom\u00ednguez Rubio, 2014, 622). Conversely, unruly objects<\/em>, which are exemplarily represented by media art, disrupt the established boundaries and require open practices and classifications (ibid.). At the same time, the lack of specialized personnel in TBM conservation meant that limited resources had been allocated to build a TBM conservation lab, perform file redundancy and fixity checks, and establish a trusted digital repository.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When benchmarking against the aforementioned levels of digital preservation, it was evident that many areas needed to be considerably improved (fig. 1). However, when mapping out the trajectory of the TBM Plan, we realized that it was essential to tailor it to the resources, structure, priorities, and actual needs of HCC (Pendergrass et al. 2019, 181). While HCC uses proper dry cabinets to store the media carriers provided by the artist, no backup strategy was in place to create file redundancy. As a result, the media collection was still living on physical storage. Improving storage in terms of both geographic differentiation and file redundancy was immediately considered a priority, whereas the lack of a migration or emulation plan, although essential in TBM conservation, did not immediately jeopardize the integrity of the collection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fig. 1. Initial institutional assessment using the Level for Digital Preservation developed by the NDSA as a benchmark. The tasks performed at HCC before the introduction of the TBM Plan are identified in the black frames. Modified from Levels of Digital Preservation Version 2.0 Matrix (https:\/\/ndsa.org\/publications\/levels-of-digital-preservation\/<\/a>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Self-evaluation, prioritization, interconnected dependencies, and collaboration are at the core of the TBM Plan, which consists of four partially overlapping cycles:<\/p>\n\n\n\n