Mona Jimenez

Researcher in Residence (2003)

Artist Instrumentation Database

Mona Jimenez will research the cataloguing of instruments, electronic and digital machines, and other prototypes developed by or for artists and also put together a database for this purpose. She will examine the archives of Steina and Woody Vasulka with a focus on instrumentation by the two artists and in particular two instruments, the Rutt/Etra Scan Processor and the Sandin Image Processor. Her research aims to create methods for documenting and describing technological objects designed for contemporary art practices, a field still in its infancy.

Ms. Jimenez holds a bachelor of arts degree from the State University of New York at Brockport. Since the early nineties, her career has centred on preserving and restoring video, and she has taken part in many preservation projects. She headed up the Media Alliance from 1993 to 1996, a period during which she worked with the Bay Area Video Coalition (San Francisco, California) in organizing the conference Playback 96: Video Preservation Roundtable. She has also had a hand in setting up Independent Media Arts Preservation (IMAP) within the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA). Ms. Jimenez has acquired extensive experience in developing databases and served as a consultant for the Rhizome.org database. New York University has recently signed her on as a moving image preservation specialist and a research assistant professor. Among her latest achievements is the Web site Video History Project.