Complex conversions— acquiring and archiving Tony Cokes’ <i>Pop Manifestos</i>

In 2004 the Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art acquired four audiovisual artworks depicting kinetic typography by artist Tony Cokes from his Pop Manifestos series: 2@, 3#, 5% and 6^. Conversion of the original NTSC digital videos for duplication to PAL analogue videos was undertaken for ease of playback and archiving purposes. These conversions altered the active images of the artworks and resulted in unacceptable changes in the visual condition of the videos. Over a period of 16 months the gallery, the distributor, the artist, and the artist’s technical specialist attempted to diagnose and overcome the video conversion problems. It was determined that a combination of attenuating compression scenarios, NTSC-to-PAL signal conversion and digital-to-analogue conversion were all contributing factors that affected visual changes in videos.