See more antique video tech in our gallery: 鈥�Video dinosaurs: Monster machines of tape tech past鈥�
GERD STERN, 84 years old, with sneakers, rings, khaki pants and wild white hair, sports a bushy beard reminiscent of Allen Ginsberg in his pomp. Then again, the two beat poets had a long history: they first met in the late 1940s when they were residents at the same psychiatric hospital in New York City.
As part of a collective called USCO 鈥� the 鈥� Stern started combining beat poetry with multimedia installations in the early 1960s. A typical example might using slide projectors, .
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It was to revive memories of those times that early last year Stern found himself at New York鈥檚 John F. Kennedy airport, bound for Germany. In his hand was a metal suitcase filled with videotapes. The customs officials who searched his bag had no hope of seeing what was inside. Nor, for that matter, had he.
Every era of history leaves its mark in its own signature medium: the metal axes of the Bronze Age, the marble temples of ancient Greece, our silicon-encoded thicket of 1s and 0s. For the late 20th century, think magnetic tape. Whether recordings of people speaking near-extinct languages, video documentation of earthquakes in action, footage of Nobel laureates in their labs or defining moments in sport and culture, a goodly portion of recent human memory is encoded on thin strips of black ribbon (see diagram).
Trouble is, these memories are often shorter-lived than the people who made them. Magnetic tape begins to degrade chemically in anything from a few years to a few decades, depending on its precise composition (see 鈥�Fading magnetism鈥�). It has taken a while to realise the scale of the problem, not least because the cultural importance of video is often overlooked. 鈥淰ideo was long considered, at least in moving-image circles, as the bastard child of film; as inferior,鈥� says , a media conservator at the in New York.
In Europe alone, an estimated 50 million hours of magnetic tape are at risk, says Richard Wright, a former technology manager of the BBC archives and author of a . The Co-ordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations has recently estimated that worldwide some if it isn鈥檛 converted into a preservable digital format.
That presents us with a considerable technical hurdle. In many cases, not only are the tapes degrading, but we have also lost the technical know-how to play them at all. Although estimates suggest that there is more audio than video tape stored in archives around the world, video is the greater challenge as it comes in a dizzying array of formats and standards.
It is not just about Betamax, which famously lost out to VHS as the standard for consumer video cassettes in the 1980s (although its sister format, Betacam, was much favoured by professional broadcasters). Since the first magnetic video format was released in 1956, some 60 or so ways of laying down a visual image onto tape have been invented. They use widths of tape from quarter of an inch to 2 inches across, various reel and cassette dimensions, and unique playback equipment to read the visual information at the correct speed. 鈥淲e鈥檙e racing against the obsolescence of that playback equipment,鈥� says Oleksik.
鈥淚n many cases, not only are the tapes degrading, but we have also lost the technical know-how to play them at all鈥�
, owner of a Philadelphia-based digitisation company of the same name, is one person in pursuit of solutions. 鈥淭here are no technologies on the horizon so that when you can鈥檛 play format x, somebody in a lab will be able to figure out how to play it,鈥� he says. For him, that means being constantly on the lookout for machines and spare parts to play back older video formats. 鈥淪ometimes the ones that remain are sitting in somebody鈥檚 closet,鈥� he says. Searching for 2-inch quadruplex video machines, he once bought an entire tractor-trailer full of them from someone who had been stockpiling them in Burbank, California.
But the biggest arsenal of video machines is on the second floor of a restored munitions factory in Karlsruhe, Germany. Part of the Karlsruhe Centre for Art and Media (ZKM), the has been in operation since 2004. Its engineers have resurrected some 300 vintage video players capable of playing about 50 formats, using parts donated by studios or collectors as well as machines purchased on eBay. It has become a kind of Noah鈥檚 Ark for old video, says ZKM鈥檚 director, Peter Weibel.
The centre accepts digitisation requests from all over the world, in exchange for copies of artwork for their archive, or to be exhibited in their museum, or as part of a wider collaboration. But capacity is limited. The lab can only accept about 10 per cent of project requests, says Dorcas M眉ller, its manager. Collaborators have included MoMA and the in Paris. And an octogenarian beat poet.
Restored memories
Stern was a pioneer of video art. When Sony came out with the first portable video recorder in 1967, the Portapak, he was at the front of the queue. 鈥淚 bought one the very first day they were available,鈥� he says. As well as using video to make and record art, he also began recording interviews with cultural icons of the age, among them Huey Newton, a founder of the Black Panther Party in the US, and the Canadian media philosopher Marshall McLuhan, originator of such expressions as 鈥渢he global village鈥� and 鈥渢he medium is the message鈥�. Stern and McLuhan had become friends when they toured together in the late 1960s: McLuhan would give a talk about his seminal book Understanding Media, then Stern and his USCO collaborators would perform their psychedelic multimedia piece.
鈥淚t never occurred to me that one day I wouldn鈥檛 be able to play the tapes,鈥� says Stern. But what had been trendy quickly became obsolete. Machines capable of playing his Portapak鈥檚 陆-inch open-reel magnetic tape have not been manufactured for decades. 鈥淚t鈥檚 down to institutes like the one in Karlsruhe to play tapes like that,鈥� says Wright.
And so to Karlsruhe Stern flew, suitcase in hand. His tapes were holding 40-year-old footage hostage, and he wanted it released.
When he showed up on the other side of the Atlantic, M眉ller couldn鈥檛 just slip them into one of the lab鈥檚 machines for immediate digitisation. Thanks to their age, the tapes were sticky and flaking in parts, no longer capable of ceding the sound and images encoded within. First they needed some rejuvenating sauna therapy.
This is It alleviates a common syndrome known as 鈥渟ticky shed鈥�, which occurs when the polyurethane binder that holds magnetic particles on the tape begins to break down and leach out 鈥� when stored in humid conditions, for example. Even if the recording remains playable, the tapes can easily get stuck or ripped in machines. The sauna treatment dries out any problematic moisture lurking in the tape and restabilises the polyurethane. Generally, it involves keeping the tapes at around 50 掳C for a few hours, although if the tapes are particularly delicate, they might be held at a lower temperature for weeks.
Video: See a Marshall McLuhan talk restored from a vintage video
So far, M眉ller has baked eight of Stern鈥檚 42 tapes to make them playable, including footage of McLuhan in which he makes some of his eerily futuristic predictions that, a little updated, seem more appropriate for 2013 than 1973. 鈥淕uttenberg turned everybody into a reader,鈥� he says to the camera, 鈥渂ut Xerox turned everybody into a publisher鈥�.
For Stern, the journey to Karlsruhe became a very personal trip down memory lane. 鈥淢cLuhan has been such a pervasive persona and inspiration in my life,鈥� he says. 鈥淭he ZKM made something lost in 1973 come to life. It鈥檚 really powerful for me.鈥�
But Stern鈥檚 cache is just a tiny segment of a tangled legacy of taped heritage 鈥� a few hours in many millions across the globe. A lot more needs to be done to prevent a major part of our collective memory being wiped. Some cultural institutions such as MoMA and the Tate Galleries and British Library in London do now have digitisation plans, but many do not. At current, sluggish rates, Wright estimates that a decade from now. 鈥淭his is crunch time,鈥� he says. 鈥淩ight now.鈥�
Fading magnetism
The structural base of most magnetic tape is a thick layer of polyester, although in older audio tape it can be acetate, paper or polyvinyl chloride. Whatever the base, information is encoded in a thin coating of magnetic particles embedded in a polyurethane-based binder.
In the earliest tapes, these particles were made of iron oxide. Other magnetic particles have since come on the scene. Barium ferrite is less rust-prone and has a smaller particle size, allowing information to be encoded more densely. Chromium dioxide is ideal when a recording has a lot of high-frequency sound.
The range of frequency and volume that a tape can record, and the ease of recording and re-recording, are determined by the size of the particles, their range in size, and their orientation on the tape. Various lubricants make the tape flow smoothly through the player, plasticisers make it supple, and antifungal agents and antioxidants extend its life. There are also other ingredients whose identities are proprietary, says Eric Breitung, a conservation scientist at the US Library of Congress in Washington DC.
That鈥檚 a huge problem for conservators. 鈥淭here are at least 46 million magnetic tapes in the US, and ,鈥� says Breitung. Most manufacturers won鈥檛 disclose their recipes, sometimes even decades after the tapes have become obsolete, and when they begin to degrade it is often a challenge for researchers to figure out why. Breitung is developing a method based on infrared spectroscopy to identify the tapes most at risk, in the first instance for audio tape held by the Library of Congress.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淲ipeout鈥�
