Digital casualties: challenges for digital art preservation

Born-digital art is fundamentally art produced and mediated by a computer. It is an art form within the more general ‘media art’ category (Altshuler, 2005; Paul, 2008a, 2008b; Depocas et al., 2003; Grau, 2007; Graham and Cook, 2010; Lieser, 2010) and includes software art, computer-mediated installations, internet art and other heterogeneous art types.

The boundaries of digital art are particularly fluid, as it merges art, science and technology to a great extent. The technological landscape in which digital art is created and used challenges its long-term accessibility, the potentiality of its integrity, and the likelihood that it will retain authenticity over time. Digital objects – including digital art works – are fragile and susceptible to technological change. We must act to keep digital art alive, but there are practical problems associated with its preservation, documentation, access, function, context and meaning. Preservation risks for digital art are real: they are technological but also social, organizational and cultural.

Digital and media art works have challenged ‘traditional museological approaches to documentation and preservation because of their ephemeral, documentary, technical, and multi-part nature’ (Rinehart, 2007b, 181). The technological environment in which digital art lives is constantly changing, which makes it very difficult to preserve this kind of art work. All art is subject to change. This can occur at art object level and at context level. In most circumstances change is very slow, but in digital art this isn't the case anymore because it is happening so quickly, owing to the pace of technological development.

Surely the increased pace of technological development has more implications than just things happening faster. Digital art, in particular, questions many of the most fundamental assumptions of the art world: what is a work of art in the digital age? What should be retained for the future? Which aspects of a given work can be changed and which must remain fixed for the work to retain the artist's intent? How do museums collect and preserve? Is a digital work as fragile as its weakest components? What is ownership? What is the context of digital art? What is a viewer? It is not feasible for the arts community to preserve over the centuries working original equipment and software.