The art of protecting time-based media with Liz Brown
“The intricate nature of the work provides so many rich opportunities to connect the artworks in our care with audiences young and old, a pursuit so core to why we are here in museums.”
There are many elements Liz Brown, Director of Objects Conservation at SAM, loves about working in conservation. Each day presents new challenges—including the complexities of preserving artworks involving technology, media, and interactive elements. Among these artworks are Paranoid Mirror (1995), a mixed media video installation by Lynn Hershman Leeson and the subject of Brown’s upcoming talk “Inside and Outside Gallery Walls.”
On October 16, Brown continues the 2025 season of Up Close with Conservators, our member-exclusive lecture series, with an inside look into SAM’s collaborative strategies for preserving time-based media. Before she takes the stage, we talked with Brown about the complicated artwork—its background, preservation, and impact. Plus, Brown shares her favorite aspects of working in conservation (spoiler: there are a lot).
Could you provide a brief description of Paranoid Mirror and how visitors can interact with it?
Paranoid Mirror is an interactive video artwork where the visitor is both the observer and the performer. As the visitor approaches the gilt mirror on the wall, they see themselves reflected in a video that changes as they trigger hidden sensors. The installation then switches between clips, challenging them to question what they are seeing and “looking at.” At the same time, the viewer is captured by a video camera; the live footage is sometimes played back to the viewer in the mirror and simultaneously streamed to a surveillance monitor watched by other visitors. In her 1995 book, Lynn Hershman Leeson shares that the piece is “inspired by the paintings of Jan Van Eyck and in particular the Arnolfini Wedding (1434) … and engages ideas of reflection, tracking, surveillance and voyeurism and uses the viewer as a direct interface.”
This mixed media piece uses older technology, including laserdiscs. What are some of the contemporary tools you use for conserving the original components?
One of the first steps was to learn from Lynn Hershman Leeson which components of the original installation are important to preserve and what could be replaced. to understand the essential performances and aspects of the artwork. We learned, for example, that although video on the 1995 CAV laser disc could be migrated and the laser disc could be replaced, she believed that the current artifacts of age in the video should not be removed because the work’s place and time should not be erased. Once we had a better understanding of her approach, we employed a variety of tools, often drawn from related fields. For example, we use a write blocker developed in forensics to safely examine drives without inadvertently altering any of the information. We also made use of disc imaging tools from software preservation and migration apps from archivists. Additionally, tools such as current video editing software and applications to examine metadata and other aspects under the hood are incredibly helpful.
Preserving this work ensures it can reach future audiences. Why is this piece important in our current moment?
In our current world dominated by screens, selfies, online identities and avatars, and images and information manipulated and real, Paranoid Mirror’s reflections on illusion, identity, seeing and being seen, and youth and age resonate both forward and backward in time.
According to MoMA’s 2024 retrospective of the Hershman work, “One of the world’s most prolific media artists, over five decades Lynn Hershman Leeson has produced an innovative body of work that probes and plays with the complex relationship between humans, technology, and social structures. Her videos navigate the fluid space between perception and truth, constantly exposing our collective and individual biases.”
In preserving this work—though I struggle with word “preserve” in regard to new media artworks—we are not just attempting to maintain a particular piece of hardware or electronics. We also want to ensure the performances of the work continue with its questions and challenges, that the refrain “You are not real” echoes into the future.
What do you like most about working in conservation?
The nature of the work is so multifaceted that it’s difficult to choose one thing—can I choose several and a few more tomorrow? One of the truly magical and inspiring aspects of working with contemporary artworks is the opportunity to work with and hear directly from creators. To be able to learn from the artist how they work, select materials, and would like the work preserved (or not) is a great privilege. Additionally, I love the investigative nature of the work in conservation. Due to the breadth of materials and artworks in the collection, no one day is the same; each day presents new challenges and opportunities to learn, uncover, and discover. And the intricate nature of the work—which draws on so many fields such as chemistry, archeology, art history, imaging, and programming—provides so many rich opportunities to connect the artwork in our care with audiences young and old, a pursuit so core to why we are here in museums.