View of "XFR STN." Courtesy New Museum.
The New Museum’s digital archiving exhibition “XFR STN” (pronounced “transfer station”) has a two-pronged goal: to digitize material from the museum’s own archive and to assist artists who have been hoarding work stored on floppy disks, cassettes and other obsolete formats. Interested parties can make appointments for three-hour sessions with technologists trained in transfers of both analog and born-digital material. Most of the “rescued” works will be uploaded to archive.org, an online library capable of permanently storing digital material. The lab, which also functions as a gallery and screening room, is stocked with an array of AV equipment, from Betamax players to the newest Apple laptop. Even non-egg heads will find observing the digital archivists at work and learning about the transfer process to be surprisingly entertaining.