A time-based “self-documenting” surveillance work by the US artist Julia Scher that “gobbles up” previous iterations of itself is due to go on show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art when the institution’s newly expanded building reopens in May. The artist is working, with the support of curators and conservators, on a third iteration of the media work Predictive Engineering, which uses surveillance cameras and microphones to monitor visitors’ movements. This live footage, along with taped vignettes, is then shown on display screens.
The piece was first installed in 1993 in the War Memorial Veterans Building, the museum’s first home. It was updated by Scher and reinstalled in the institution’s Mario Botta–designed building in 1998. The work has been off display for some time—a situation that many media curators can identify with.
“I actually haven’t seen it,” said the museum’s media arts curator Rudolf Frieling at the Media in Transition conference (co-organised by the Getty) at Tate Modern, London, in November. “I have both the pleasure and the challenge of being responsible for a collection, some of which I have not actually seen.”
