Blogs

Mark Applebaum, Associate Professor of Composition and Theory in the Department of Music, composed The Metaphysics of Notation specifically for installation at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford. The complete work includes a full hand-drawn score (72’ in length, in twelve 6’ panels), two corresponding mobiles, and the print now hanging in the Music Library, which reproduces the entire drawn score.

On Tuesday, November 16th 2010, something very out of the ordinary found its way into the schedule of Stanford’s Digital Production Group. Under the umbrella of Stanford University Library and Academic Information Services (SULAIR), Digital Production Group (DPG) is responsible for many types of digitization projects within Stanford’s Library community – ranging from the digitization of medieval manuscripts to historic panoramas of past graduating classes. It would seem as though it would be challenging to throw a curve ball in this ever-changing routines of such an adaptable team. However, a recent inquiry from Glynn Edwards, Principal Manuscript Processing Librarian with Stanford’s Special Collections, introduced a new element into the DPG’s already challenging workflow, and started a discussion about how best to accomplish her request. Edwards asked DPG if it would be possible to digitally capture several large-scale painted “cartoons” that were made by artist Mark Adams, as part of the planning process for the artist’s elaborately colorful and bold tapestries. The cartoons offer a wonderful glimpse of his artistic process, even showing a couple places where he cut things out and taped them back on as he re-thought his designs. Adams was born in Fort Plain, New York, in 1925, and is best known for both his tapestries and his stained-glass work. He studied at Syracuse University (1943-1945), Hans Hoffman School of Fine Arts, New York (1945-1947), Columbia University (1947) and the École National d'Art Decoratif, France (1955). Adam’s work can be seen though out San Francisco, in such places as Temple Emanu-El, Grace Episcopal Cathedral on Nob Hill, the de Young Museum, and the San Francisco International Airport. The items to be digitized were full-scale mock-ups of the tapestries, which Adams would later produce, some of which currently hang in San Francisco International Airport (SFO).

DLSS has a new lab! In late September, under the roof of the Stanford Media Preservation Lab located at SULAIR's site on Page Mill Road, we installed equipment to support the digitization of video collections held at Stanford Libraries. Two digitization workstations, a host of analog video tape players and supporting system components, and tools for cleaning and repairing aging videotapes and other recording media are installed and in production.