 My name is Olivia Chau, Assistant Curator of Visual Art at M-Plus. I'm here joined by my colleagues, Alessandra and Aga. First of all, we wanted to thank the organizers of Tech Focus for including us in this symposium. As some of you might know that M-Plus is a new museum for visual art, visual culture located in the West Kowloon Cultural District of Hong Kong. We're currently at the last leg of the preparations getting ready to open our doors to the world on November 12th, which is exactly in two weeks. We're happy to be elaborating further on Shirley Zae's presentation on her artistic practice with the focus on her latest and most expansive sculptural installation to date negotiation differences. In our presentation, we will share her artistic concepts and materials used in the work, discuss our previous exhibition display experiences, and the practical questions we've faced in the last two displays. Now that the work has entered the M-Plus collection, at the end of the presentation we will focus on the 3D printed components and put forward long-term conservation questions around the technology and the printed matter. Negotiated differences was first commissioned by M-Plus as part of her solo presentation for the Hong Kong's participation at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. It is a site responsive installation that focuses on negotiation through improvisation, agency, and understanding differences. The work itself is assembled through a process of negotiation with 800-plus physical components, negotiating with the exhibition space and its architectural structures, and a collaboration between four to six installers, which we call players. The players begin the negotiation or configuration with a set of artwork guidelines and installation principles which is written to invite playfulness, possibility, and open interpretation. For the Venice exhibition that you see here, the players involved Shirley Ze and her studio assistants. It starts with conducting a site visit of the exhibition venue, mapping out the elements that the group would like to accentuate. The group also requires a solid foundation of the materiality of the components that they're playing with. As the mentioned circumstances for each element will be different every time, the final formation of the installation cannot be predetermined and changes each time it's on display. Each iteration is unique, and this is another iteration of the work assembled in the response exhibition at the M-Plus Pavilion in Hong Kong last year. Due to the COVID-19 travel restrictions, the work was installed through extensive and flexible conversations carried out with video calls and shared photos shared between Shirley, who is located in Los Angeles, the guest curator Christina Lee in Amsterdam, and the M-Plus curatorial installation team in Hong Kong, which adds another layer of improvisation and negotiation. Here are just a few more examples of how Shirley visualized and communicated her ideas with us and how we exercise improvisation, negotiation, and agency in practice. So there are two types of components in this work, including 3D printed connectors and the wooden spindles, which were either hand turned, hand carved, or turned on the lathe. I'll talk very quickly about the spindles first. On the left, you can see a variety of stick wood used, some with a layer of finishing and some without. Shirley really wanted to demonstrate the differences in her choice of material and technologies. On the bottom right, you can see tree trunks and other heavier mass that can be used as stabilizing anchors. The organic forms are unique spindles, such as the tree branch that you see in there. The Lego form that's cube shaped is multidirectional and can be used as a spindle and connector. This is something that Shirley calls hybrid connector. How does the group decide where and what to start with? The principle is to have different kinds of spindles and connectors to meet, for example, abstract and representational, indoor and outdoor, domestic and sport, different lengths, different widths, different colors. At the same time, the process requires the coming together of sameness in order for them to connect such as same weight for balance, same lengths to bridge, same connectors to shape to mirror, and so forth, to create a stable formation. The wooden spindles are held in place by negotiation with one another, with the plastic connectors, and with the force of gravity. The process, again, as I've mentioned, is not predetermined but rather freestyle and a process of improvisation. Without a beginning or end, the whole installation is entirely connected. For each presentation, we want to use about 60% of the connectors and spindles and have the rest available later for spares, or perhaps it will retire for this round. As you can see in the earlier slides, one has to consider which connector to use and save for certain configuration that we want to make later on in the installation. So one has to think ahead and reserve certain connectors for specific angles to simply or simply have a printer onsite, which is what Shirley did for Venice, as you can see here. So here are the varieties of the 3D printed connectors. The regular scale, the pen scale for layering, and lightweight bridging. The little orange one that you see is a baby scale for layering and also the wall brackets on the bottom left. On the top left of the larger image, there's a regular three way connector at 90 degrees. The bottom is a three way Y shaped with 49, 45 degrees and 130 degrees, etc. Some of the connectors with metal filaments like the teal color one was purposely aged by the artist with salt and vinegar to create that patina effect. The next slides are examples of unique connectors. This one is called Earthquake because of the printing mishap. So for Shirley, she embraces and sees this as different possibilities to create new narratives as she explained in her presentation. Shirley calls this part that circled in green the grandmother. You can see different orientation of it in Venice on the left and Hong Kong on the right. The name came as it is the prototype when Shirley was experimenting with the concept of differences and these new technologies. The success of this prototype is what inspired and what we know now as negotiation differences, which is this entire body of work. In the next couple of slides, we will demonstrate how we responded to different changes in condition that occurred during the installation period. In Venice, midway through the duration of the exhibition, a heavier spindle that circled that we circled an image, a heavier spindle came loose from the connector and fell off, which caused a ripple effect of imbalance and further collapsed on those around that area. So in this scenario, the artist sees this as an opportunity for reconfiguration and to restabilize the entire structure. And in order to do so, the team removed the spindles and the cracked connectors and assembled a new formation. And for the artist Shirley sees this as an expression for policies and structures are when they're in place, but perhaps probably perhaps don't work when in practice over time. And this exercise informs the next negotiation. And this is where I will hand off to Alessandra. Thank you, Olivia. I started by explaining a specific terminology provided by the artist before going to the changes according to the work during the exhibition period in Hong Kong, and how conservation was involved since then. The concept of original fixed or ideal does not apply to negotiated differences. The artist didn't want to subscribe to conventional idea of what is standard. So words like changes and disconnected are used instead of damaged and collapsed, as well as negotiation instead of fixing for Shirley damages are changes caused by viewers actions only deliberate or accidental. For the purpose of monitoring condition inside the M plus pavilion, a zone mapping was developed with a certain rationale. We divided installation in six zones, as you can see in the legend on the left side. The borders are drawn generally where there are natural stopping points. If one side collapses, the damage is unlikely to extend beyond to the next zone. This may be where clusters in the ground are relatively safe and or are supported by wall mounts in the case of pillars. For example, the connection between the cube and body cluster, which is on a light blue color and the left pillar cluster in orange color as the following criteria. It's on the ground. It's a relatively simple connection only goes to waste. If the cube and body cluster collapses, the pillar cluster will most likely be safe and reverse. If a change is required in zone E, any installation or recreation will likely be contained in a specific zone and no change will be necessary in this surrounding area. Depending on the balance achieved during install cracks were quite likely expected to happen on connectors in a duration of three months. They're usually caused by weight imbalance between the components or misalignment of connection. This is considered by the artist as the organic nature of the work. Also, the artist provided them plus with responses to possible minor to major changes in the work to be followed during the exhibition duration. Regarding changes in connectors, she highlighted that replacement of connectors from reserve is the most preferred method if suitable connectors are available. Trade, meaning the exchange in connectors from other areas where any possible in the service of sustainability is preferred as a second option before considering a new production. But a new connector shall be indeed the last choice according to the artist's responses. During our weekly inspections on gallery, we noted that several changes occurred to the connectors, mostly which were not representing issues for the stability of the work. Besides minor cracking, two connectors that are part of the barricade cluster showed major cracks, put in the entire section at structural risk. For the rationale explained previously, it was possible to intervene in strict collaboration code with the artist. The affected connectors are respectively a cross-shaped connector printed in copper-filled PLA and a four-way-shaped connector printed in pinewood-filled PLA. Firstly, we checked the connectors that were not used for this configuration, followed by trade, as per artist's instructions. We could not find a suitable replacement and we wanted to keep the barricade formation as is, so we had to look into the last option, which is the reproduction. This reproduction in Hong Kong wasn't easy and the team faced quite a few challenges. After receiving the files from the artist, we started our research and realized that no trading company would support such small production, nor provide us with the materials for printing. We searched the filaments needed and we reached out to freelancer designers who helped us printing the pieces. Unfortunately, it turned out that there were certain incompabilities due to different formats and different ratios. According to the artist guidelines, the connector would appear smaller than the actual one, even enlarging the ratio. In agreement with Shirley, we took dimensions from existing connectors, redrawed them, and increased density. We printed two cross-shaped connectors, one copper-filled PLA for substitution on the cracked unstable one, and one additional brass-filled PLA. We also printed two four-way-shaped connectors in pinewood-filled PLA, again one for substitution and one spare. The newly printed connectors were then successfully installed on gallery. At the end, we performed a detailed documentation of all the components in their current state. Once the acquisition process was initiated, conservation team became more involved. After receiving a technical documentation from the artist, we analyzed and discussed the content collectively to better understand the artist's view regarding uniqueness and reproducibility, and most importantly to establish different ways for the care of the installation components. Thanks to the close collaboration with the artist, we were able to identify issues and ask for further explanations. The conservation approach for this work is subject to the type of components and it's not fixed. The spindles, connectors, and ground-mother cluster have different levels of care. We mentioned the principle for substitution of connectors, and we can now look at the installation prototype, the ground-mother. This cluster is installed close to the ground and has multiple supporting points, making structural issues very unlikely to happen, but it's subject to other types of risk. It's the unique installation component to preserve, which spindles and connectors were glued permanently to each other. As for the spindles, the artist initially considered them as unique and not reproducible, but shifted their opinion during the course of our conversations. She accepted interventions were as possible and not too extensive, but also realized that certain spindles may completely lose the function going beyond repair. She accepts that these pieces could be remained and substituted and substituted non-functional ones. Overall, different strategies are being explored by conservation for the long-term preservation, knowing that at least 60% of the work should be used to create the room-size installation. For example, we considered the production of a spare set for the most fragile connectors, but we're still negotiating a solution for it. The principle that is guiding this negotiation is the idea of a digital ready-made, despite the universal essence of the technology. What needs to be conserved in the artist's mind is the concept rather than the object over to Aga. Thank you, Alessandra. So one of the questions that popped up around the time of the acquisition of negotiated differences was what we actually should collect and how to categorize the elements of the work that we're collecting. In our collection, we have limited amounts of categories under which parts of our collectibles can fall. Basically, we have two. First, a unique, irreplaceable component of the work, which we call part of an object, and the second, an accessory, which is something that is regarded as complementary to the object, but it is not the object itself. We also can categorize certain elements of the work or pieces of information, for example, digital files, as documentation. As negotiated differences was originally a commission, it was the first artwork with three different elements for which we could observe the creative process almost from the very beginning. Because of that, we wanted to use it as a case study from which we can learn how to shape future acquisitions of this type of work. However, it turned to be more complicated than we initially thought it would be. And in this part of the presentation, I would elaborate on the process of deciding which digital files should enter our collection and how to categorize those files as part of the object, accessory or documentation. So, here we can see a chart representing the standard process of 3D printing and we already are very familiar with it. And as we know, the outcome from the standard 3D printing process are usually two types of files. So, CAD design, in our case, in STL format, and files containing information about how to print the design on a specific printer, in our case G-code files. As it was mentioned before, STL file can be generated by any CAD program, and it describes only the surface geometry of a three-dimensional object without any representation of color or texture. G-code files describe how a 3D printer should print a job. It stores instruction in plain text, which is each line representing a different command, such as how fast the printer should print, the temperature it should be set at, and where the printing part should move to. Often, G-code files store information about the material used for printing and the printer used in the process. In the case of negotiated differences, we have actually two types of STL files. So, the original designs that are conceptualized by the artist's ready-made or found objects. They come from Makersbot Thingiverse platform, the largest online 3D printing community, where all designs are encouraged to be licensed under a creative common license. The designs from Thingiverse have been modified by the artist and adapted to the needs of the work, and that resulted in the second set of STL files. And then we have the G-code files in two different flavors that has been used for the printing process. So, let's have a closer look at those three categories of files. This original design shirt of Thingiverse is a design for a simple curtain rod bracket. What you usually download from Thingiverse is a package. Different type of card files, including STL files, images of the design, the printout, how it can be used, and text files, including the terms of the license, and a short description of remarks from the creator of the design. And that is how this bracket has been used in Strelat's piece. We can see that the final outcome is not so different than the original design. This is another design, and she already showed in her presentation a rod connector with multiple sockets. And on the right-hand side, we can see how this design has been modified by Strelat for the purpose of the piece. Actually, Strelat used this rod connector with multiple sockets to produce many different types of connectors used in negotiated differences. This is a screenshot from Strelat's account on Thingiverse. The original design were not a part of the acquisition, but Strelat shared with us links to the platform and we downloaded the files ourselves. The 196 modified designs in STL format were provided by the artist as a part of the acquisition. And this search cataloged as the part of the object. Following our request, Strelat also kindly shared with us the gcode files. She did that without being super sure why we actually need them, and at that point we have to say we were not sure if we need them either. As you can see in the process of figuring out what we actually need to keep this work long-term, we were collecting everything just in case. As the gcode files were provided after the acquisition was completed, as for today, they are not considered as a part of the object nor the accessory. We are still in conversation with our registration team on how to actually catalog them. Connectors from negotiated differences were printed with two types of FDM desktop printers, and because Strelat changed the printer during the process of creating the work, we have two sets and two flavors of gcode files generated for the purpose of two different printers. This is how the first type looks like after opening in Visual Studio Code. And yeah, here we can see the type of filament used for the printing and the printer type specified in one of the lines of the code. And this is how the second one, the one generated for Ultimaker 3 looks like. So let's go back to the first question, which files we need to keep and how to categorize them for the purposes of our collection. Of course, we can keep all of them just in case, but what information we lose if we do not collect those files, if any? The first guess was that the most important are surely designs, as we can use them in the future for reprinting connectors. However, as Alexandra's story proved, we can actually reproduce each of the connectors without source files. Those are simple shapes, and if we'll have the original printout, we can create those 3D shapes again in the future in any software and print them out again. Decode files are the most prone to obsolescence, as they are created for a particular model of printer and a particular material. So unless we correct the printer and the material together with the work, we probably would not be able to use them again. However, decode files carry information that can be potentially useful for future care of the first original set of connectors, such as the type of printer, material used, printing temperature settings, etc. So what about the original designs from Thingiverse platform? They are not a part of the works per se, as they have been modified by Shirley and were not used in the printing process. However, in this slide, you can see a screenshot from our collections management system that shows that Shirley clearly specified that all the originals designed from the Thingiverse platform need to be credited as specified by the rules of the Creative Common License. She also mentioned several times that she's particularly interested in 3D printing community culture, the way it operates and the notion of copy left, and this is an inherent part of the story of this particular piece. For that reason, we found important to collect those files as well and keep them as a reference in the archive of our collection. I guess if we risk this common comparison between the traditional material objects and the digital ones, we can think of those files as samples of artist materials or documents of the creative process rather than elements of the work itself. However, the boundary between those two categories is blurry and can be easily moved. To conclude, there are many ways 3D printing as a technique and 3D printing elements can be used in art making, and there are many ways to collect artworks with 3D print elements. What we have definitely learned from our adventure with negotiated differences is that the categories of unique and reproducible part of the work or documentation are not to be taken for granted, nor easy to attribute. They often actually need to be negotiated and that can be done through collaborative research conducted by curators and conservators in close collaboration with the artist. Thank you so much for listening to us and I will call my colleagues for the Q&A session.