Past, Present and Future of New Media Conservation: Learning from a Historical Overview

Paula Fernández Valdés
Electronic Media Review, Volume Eight: 2023-2024

ABSTRACT

Media art is part of contemporary heritage and is present in many museum collections. Consequently, conservators must face the adjacent challenges of technological devices, mainly affected by obsolescence, and the continuous need for change and variability of the artworks, which requires new ways of thinking and different ethical approaches from traditional conservation. Multiple international projects have been developed since the 1990s to offer solutions to these issues from different perspectives. This article presents a comparative overview of a selection of the most relevant projects developed between 1996 and 2022 and pretends to offer an insight into the development of research over time. It comprises an analysis of the institutions’ diversity, their origin, the networks created between them, and the subjects of their investigations. The most significant advances are discussed through decade-by-decade narration, making connections among different projects. Heritage will change in the future, and before we venture into new research, we must assess what we have learned from previous experiences.

Introduction

Over the past three decades, media art has undergone a profound transformation, ushering in a new era of artistic creation, expression, and engagement. As the boundaries of creativity expand, so too arise the challenges of preserving and conserving these artworks. This comprehensive overview delves into the challenges and strategies of media art conservation as an interdisciplinary endeavor, considering several projects conducted in the past decades. 

The study was conducted as a part of a PhD research stay in LI-MA Platform for Media Art, an institution renowned for pioneering contributions to this field. With a commitment to artistic innovation and sustainable preservation, LI-MA stands as a beacon of knowledge and expertise in safeguarding the legacy of media art for future generations. In the past five decades, LI-MA has consistently pushed the boundaries of possibility, responding to the unique challenges posed by the fleeting nature of digital and electronic artworks, with a particular emphasis on collaboration, research, and knowledge dissemination. Developing sustainable strategies for preserving media art is at the core of LI-MA’s central values. As the world witnesses a proliferation of new art forms, ensuring the longevity of these transient creations has become increasingly urgent. 

In pursuit of its goal, we embarked on a journey to explore and understand established conservation practices on an international scale. By identifying projects that have left a significant mark on the field, this study aims to contribute to documenting past achievements and identifying uncharted territories within media art preservation. A total of 25 projects were analyzed, in which 109 institutions from 14 countries participated. Projects were preferred over symposiums or publications in an effort to examine the dynamics of collective effort and knowledge transfer throughout the span of the past three decades; by researching full projects, which usually last for more than a year and involve a wide range of institutions with different interests and backgrounds, this research was able to acquire a wider understanding of the issues and solutions proposed in relation to media art conservation. 

The following projects were considered during the research:

1. Bay Area Video Coalition Playback 1996 Conference (1996)
2. Conservation of Modern Art (1997)
3. Variable Media Initiative (1999)
4. Conservering van Videokunst (2000)
5. AktiveArchive (2000)
6. Archiving the Avant-Garde: Documenting and Preserving Variable Media Art (2002)
7. 404 Object Not Found: What Remains of Media Art? (2002)
8. Capturing Unstable Media (2003)
9. Inside Installations (2004)
10. Documentation and Conservation of Media Arts Heritage (2005)
11. Matters in Media Art (2005)
12. Materializing the Ephemeral (2007)
13. Forging the Future: New Tools for Variable Media Preservation (2008)
14. Obsolete Equipment: Preservation of Playback and Display Equipment for Audiovisual Art (2009)
15. PRACTICs of Contemporary Art: The Future (2009)
16. Digital Art Conservation (2010)
17. Conservation Media Art Collections Netherlands (2010)
18. PERICLES (2013)
19. Transformation Digital Art (2014)
20. UNFOLD: Mediation by Re-interpretation (2016)
21. Media Conservation Initiative (2016)
22. DaphNet Dynamic Preservation of Interactive Art (2017)
23. Documenting Digital Art (2019)
24. Networked Art Practice after Digital Preservation (2020)
25. NEW MEDIA MUSEUMS: Creating Framework for Preserving and Collecting Media Arts (2021)

In the pursuit of a comprehensive overview of media art conservation projects over the past three decades, it is essential to acknowledge the deliberate geographic focus that shaped the boundaries of this study. The selection of countries, predominantly from Western regions, was guided by practical considerations, particularly the challenges of accessing information beyond these domains due to language barriers and limited available resources.

It is essential to recognize that the conclusions drawn from this study are not intended to represent the entire media art conservation field, which extends beyond the confines of the Western world. Non-Western omission introduces an inherent limitation in the generalizability of findings, underscoring the need for future research endeavors encompassing a broader and more diverse range of countries, cultures, and communities. It is our hope that this study serves as a starting point, encouraging further exploration and investigation into media art conservation practices within non-Western contexts. In embracing a more inclusive approach, future research can contribute to a more holistic understanding of the field, recognizing the unique challenges and innovative solutions that emerge from diverse cultural perspectives.

Analysis of the Projects

First, the research analyzed the networks of the participants in the projects, their backgrounds, and geographic scope, as well as the perspective of the studies, target group of the projects, and methodology, asking questions such as these: What are the problems that the projects encountered during their research? What were the solutions they proposed and the arguments that sustain those decisions?

A wide variety of institutions participated in the selected projects (figs. 1, 2), most of them from European countries, followed by the United States and Canada. Within Europe, institutions in the Netherlands, where LI-MA is located, were studied in detail; it was noted that they were especially active and sustained regular collaboration. It is worth noticing that there were not many projects that connect both continents.

Regarding the nature of the institutions, most participants in the selected projects were public museums and institutions, 70% of the total (33.6% museums and 36.4% other institutions). Nonprofits accounted for 11.2% of the participation, whereas private museums and institutions were responsible for around 3% of the research. Finally, it is worth mentioning the inclusion of universities in some of the projects: 15% of the total participants were public universities, whereas only 0.9% were private (fig. 3).

As per the individual participants involved, the background of the participants could not be adequately evaluated since most of the data was not available; however, it is presumable that the professionals involved were also diverse in responsibilities and experience. Artists’ participation has been continuous since the first projects, where the need for collaboration with creators was identified as vital for ensuring not only the artwork’s preservation but also for providing guidelines and limits for possible changes, versions, and iterations.

When looking at the target audience of the selected projects, it was clear that the effort was to provide solutions to multiple stakeholders in the preservation community, from curators to technicians to artists. Throughout the projects, there is a clear understanding that to provide adequate solutions, an interdisciplinary approach will also provide interdisciplinary and innovative solutions. 

Within the projects, most of the objectives were developed after certain general questions that remain relevant to this day: What is the role of the conservator in new media art collections? How do we apply ethical concepts such as authenticity or originality? How can we be more mindful of the relation between the artwork and the audience? How can we improve access to digital artworks?

As per the methodology employed, a lot of the projects were based on case studies. Since many museums were involved in the projects, their findings respond to the direct needs of the collections; some of the projects were used as a theoretical context to implement preservation strategies for the artworks. The 97 artists selected were diverse in gender, age, and nationality, and the typology of the cases encompassed every media conceivable, with creation dates ranging between the 1980s and the 2010s (figs. 4, 5).

The 1990s: Pioneering Projects The Start of the Journey

In the 1990s, three foundational projects were developed around media art conservation: the Bay Area Video Coalition Playback conference in 1996, the Conservation of Modern Art project between 1995 and 1997, and the Variable Media Initiative in 1999. Through these projects, the approach to media art conservation shifted from a traditional approach, focused on materiality, to a unique approach for media art, analyzing the artworks through their behavior. 

Celebrated in 1996, when video art was usual in museums and festivals, the Bay Area Video Coalition Playback was the first international conference—at least the first one whose records are still accessible—focusing on video art preservation. Celebrated in the United States, it brought together a diverse group of professionals, from conservators to scientists and engineers. For eight months before the event of the conference, eight working groups met to discuss the vital issues related to preserving our cultural history as told on videotape; the results from these sessions were presented at the conference. Despite having a traditional approach—the idea of originality and the tape as an object was very present—it was the first project explicitly focused on a new media art typology. Interesting ethical concerns arose during the conference, with questions such as “If the creator wants the videotapes to degenerate, is it ethical to store them in optimal conditions?” and “What are the ethics of restricting access for preservation reasons?” (Brooks et al. 1996). These questions were pioneering at the moment and are still part of habitual discussions among media art conservators.
In parallel, between 1995 and 1997, the Foundation for the Conservation of Modern Art (SBMK) and the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage (ICN) developed the Conservation of Modern Art project. Involving 13 institutions, the research was based on 10 pilot objects representing ethical and aesthetic problems or relating to materials’ characteristics. Conservators assessed the 10 objects’ present condition, focusing on their appearance, and noticing what features should be considered when preserving the artwork. Then, they asked important questions such as “How disturbing is it if certain parts are missing?” and “Can the work still be on display to the public?” to guide conservation decisions. The project results were shared through the symposium and homonym publication Modern Art Who Cares?—a fundamental publication for the preservation discipline.

At the moment of the project, a moral taxonomy for contemporary art preservation had not been developed, and there were almost no precedents. One of the most important conclusions was the realization that no single decision is perfect; choosing a specific restoration procedure to preserve one value will often imply the loss of another. Every decision involves a compromise between conflicting values, and we should acknowledge that different people with diverse backgrounds would change the outcome. Therefore, the solutions reached are never valid for all similar situations; they are only presumably suitable until proven wrong (Hummelen, Sillé, and Zijlmans 2005, 196–200).

With this idea, the decision-making model was developed as a workflow for preserving a work of contemporary art. The model starts with data registration and condition reports of the object; then, different conservation options are weighed, considering the effects they would have on the authenticity, aesthetic integrity, historicity, and functionality of the artwork. This analysis is possible thanks to the initial documentation that relates the material to the conceptual aspects of the work. Decay and conservation operations can endanger the relationship between materiality and concept, so the analysis should be performed every time a change is noticed (Hummelen, Sillé, and Zijlmans 2005, 164–72). 

Although none of the case studies of the project contemplated time-based media objects, one of the seminars conducted during the symposium, “Electronic Media: Rethinking the Conservator’s Role,” explained the issues and challenges of electronic art. During this talk, the most urgent matter was coordinating and educating museum staff on the day-to-day maintenance of the equipment, particularly in determining what it is to “work properly” for each artwork (Hummelen, Sillé, and Zijlmans 2005, 305).

Another important idea from this project is the existence of a difference between more theatrical artworks—with an installation component that originates from instructions or written references—and material-based artworks. For the first group, performance is the most relevant aspect; therefore, reinstallations are possible, and some elements can be replaced or changed. For the second group, the original material identity must remain the most important source of interpretation, and interventions should remain as close as possible to the original appearance; this should be done respecting the documentation performed before (Hummelen, Sillé, and Zijlmans 2005, 208–9). 
This incipient perspective around the possibility of change for procedural artworks was extensively developed by the next project, the Variable Media Initiative, in 1999. The Variable Media Network proposes an unconventional preservation strategy based on identifying ways creative works might outlast their original medium. Through a diverse network of institutions based in the United States and Canada—such as Rhizome or the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology—the project aimed to develop the tools, methods and standards needed to rescue creative culture from obsolescence, to perform “a layered preservation strategy that admits fragments, traces, emulation, re-creation and reassemblage” (Depocas, Ippolito, and Jones 2003, 25).

In this case, the focus was on collaborating with artists to analyze their works and encourage creative strategies for preservation. Since the target group were artists, the project developed a questionnaire to stimulate responses that helped understand the artists’ intent. It was an instrument for determining how artists would like their work to be re-created in the future. The questionnaire results were entered into a multi-institutional database that enabled collecting institutions to share and compare information across artworks and genres, a logical step for the collaborative efforts of past projects. 
The most important thing about the questionnaire is that it captured information on the artwork’s behavior rather than materiality, differentiating between those installed, performed, reproduced, duplicated, interactive, encoded, or networked—behaviors defined during the project. Artists first describe the ideal state; after that, conservators ask questions on preservation strategies, inviting the artists to choose the best philosophies and negotiate the acceptable deviations from the ideal. Reflecting on these behaviors and the acceptable degree of change, the Variable Media Initiative established four basic strategies for conservation: storage, emulation, migration, and reinterpretation; these strategies are still used and have greatly influenced the practice of new media preservation.

The 2000s: Stability and International Collaboration

The projects in the 1990s—which focused on specificity of materials, interdisciplinarity, and behavioral approaches—set the bar for further development during the 2000s, a decade of prolific studies for new media art conservation. During this period, we can identify a series of projects with a practical approach, where the preservation measurements agreed upon between partners were simultaneously applied to the collections. There is a focus on caring for increasingly specific media art typologies with the idea of developing common methodologies, especially for documentation protocols, and a clear effort in democratising access to these protocols and models.

This is the case for the Netherlands-based project Conservering van videokunst (2000–2003), which focused on the artworks of the first generation of video artists. A methodology for video preservation was developed, implemented, and evaluated, resulting in the preservation of approximately 1700 analog tapes. As per documentation, a fundamental part of conservation, the project used the models published in Modern Art Who Cares? adding new items for registration and contractual documents for managing property rights. Following the ideas of variability from the Variable Media Initiative, the project considered that video art does not depend on the uniqueness of the physical manifestation, which can be migrated to safeguard the image (Rodrigo, Wijers, and Coelho 2003, 27). It is worth mentioning that the project had a noticeable international approach; all the information was translated into English and remains accessible through the website of the SBMK.

Another relevant project based on case studies  was the 404 Object Not Found (2002–2003) project and conference, also developed in Europe, that specialized in documenting and archiving media art, particularly installations, software-based art, and net art. The case studies were examples used to examine the troubles of presenting and preserving different types of media art and artworks “based on the dialectics of progression” (Vorkoeper 2003, 15). Its findings emphasized that such artworks necessitate ongoing dialogue; the priority is that the artwork continues to be carried on into the future. Ethically speaking, the conclusions of this project are of great relevance since it defends a positive perspective on change and the idea that authenticity includes more than the artwork’s material but also perception and interaction.

Between 2009 and 2011, the project Obsolete Equipment: Preservation of Playback and Display Equipment for Audiovisual Art continued the efforts of the previous two projects, focusing first on video installations and later on installations involving computers. The project tried to set a list of video laboratories in Europe on which conservators could rely to preserve obsolete equipment, creating a collaborative network.

Another exciting group of projects includes those that followed the steps of the Variable Media Initiative, in which the same organizations participated: Archiving the Avant-Garde (2002); Documentation and Conservation of the Media Arts Heritage (2005–2010), commonly known as DOCAM; and Forging the Future (2008–2009). 

In the early 2000s, the Archiving the Avant-Garde project saw a need for well-documented practices and tools that could be scalable and applicable to big institutions at an international level. Four committees were created focusing on the variable media questionnaires, core catalog records, standard vocabulary, and emulation of digital works, and a Guide to Good Practices in Documenting and Preserving Works of Variable Media Art was published. Unlike projects from the 1990s, however, further information about this initiative proved difficult to locate—a notable trend, as newer projects were sometimes less accessible than their older counterparts.

With a similar methodology, the DOCAM project developed five different topics around media art preservation: conservation, documentation, cataloging, history of technologies, and terminology, and produced tools for each one of these axes. One of the most interesting things about this project is the use of the term media art, which had not been defined or employed in previous projects. Ultimately, DOCAM conducted case studies on works that featured technological components and museums’ collections; the case studies were selected for their relevance since each of them suffered from a different issue that was considered representative of the whole group of new media artworks.

Finally, Forging the Future combines all the previous projects, focusing on developing software tools that allow setting in motion the theoretical results obtained previously. Forging the Future refined and distributed free and open-source products such as the Franklin Furnace Database (FFDB), designed for cataloging variable media artworks and events contained in small to midsize collections, as well as the Digital Asset Management Database (DAMD), which manages digital metadata, and a new version of the Variable Media Questionnaire (VMQ), which contained data and metadata necessary to migrate, re-create, and preserve cataloged variable media objects. It remains unknown to this research whether these tools were or are effectively used by the institutions involved in the projects.

Another popular topic within the projects in this decade was installation art. Installations are significantly different from traditional objects in many aspects; one of those is the artist’s endless choice of materials and media that often includes new media. Continuing with the work done in Conservation of Modern Art (1995–1997), European museums and institutions joined efforts in a large-scale collaborative project, the Inside Installations (2004–2007) project. The research focused on developing 33 case studies created between 1995 and 2005; as usual, theoretical discussions, seminars and workshops, and a valuable publication were organized. The project focused on displaying and managing installations, looking for good practices that enable the sharing of these types of artworks with the public.

The project also developed a new perspective called risk assessment, which consisted of examining the risk of an entire collection or ensemble and establishing priorities related to preventive conservation. When applied to an installation, it betters the conservation organization and facilitates stakeholders’ involvement in shared decision making. Along with the risk assessment, complex artworks need a “statement of significance,” a clear summary of an object’s values, meaning, and importance, which can be done in collaboration with the artist.As per documentation, Inside Installations developed a new and appealing model known as the Inside Installations Documentation Model (2IDM), which provided a formal structure for the documentation of installations and consisted of four modules: identification and description, material and technique, location and exhibition history, and condition and conservation. The user can choose from a predesigned structure or create their own as a novelty. Within the documentation, oral history was the other main focus of the project and was recognized as an essential component; this led to fruitful discussions around the mediated nature of interpretation and the differences between versions of interviews.

In 2009, the same institutions from Inside Installations gathered again in PRACTICs of Contemporary Art: The Future to assess and implement the knowledge gained through European projects of the past decade. Intending to share these developments from an educational perspective, the project was full of public activities, such as the international symposium Contemporary Art: Who Cares? (2010). During this project, a new model for documentation was proposed, the Structure for the Care of Modern and Contemporary Art (SCMCA), a broad structure that includes curatorial and conservation stages. 

Finally, with a similar educational spirit, it is worth mentioning the Matters in Media Art project. This project that started in 2005 and went through its last actualization in 2015 was developed between the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Tate with funding from the New Art Trust, a nonprofit directed by the media art collectors Pam and Dick Kramlich. The research focused on media artworks, particularly in their installation and preservation, aiming to create accessible, practical information and general guidelines written in nontechnical language for smaller museums and institutions and even individual collectors.

The project was developed through workshops in the participating institutions to train the staff in new media art preservation and gather their experience and opinions. In parallel, the documentation developed in these meetings was published on a website, offering public access to anyone interested in the discipline. This website is a precious resource that gathers information about the loan process—this is, in fact, the first general guideline for media artworks loans to be set in a clear and organized workflow—and acquisition. Information about the assessment of digital files, storage, and documentation has been added to the website; this makes Matters in Media Art one of the few projects with a website that is working and actualized up to date.

The 2010s: A Shift to Digital Objects

In the past 10 years, the focus has shifted to digital-born objects, with most projects being developed in Europe. The first one, a pioneer project in the history of new media preservation, was Digital Art Conservation (2010–2012), directed by the ZKM Centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe in collaboration with other European institutions. This project focused on artworks created with computer programming and digital technologies, with 10 case studies presented afterward in the exhibition Digital Art Works: The Challenges of Conservation.

First, the project outlined the field of digital art conservation from a perspective of art history and theory, with an emphasis on philosophical and ethical questions, then the current status of research and practice was mapped; finally, the results were discussed with artists. The issues regarding digital-born art are very similar to those identified during the 1990s for new media art in general, namely the need for new theoretical perspectives and the issue of obsolescence, this time related to the rapid technological developments of digital software. 

The project also highlighted the interdisciplinary task of digital art preservation and the fact that many people working in the field operate outside documentary circles; this means that a great deal of information is only transmitted orally or is poorly archived. Copyright was another of the main focuses of the research, stating that the law can bring satisfactory compromise whenever interests between artists and curators differ. However, better laws should be passed, tailoring them to conservation practice.

It is interesting to notice that despite decades passing, some of the beliefs of older projects are still in use. The Digital Art Conservation project perpetuates a more traditional perspective around originality, similarly to the BACV 1996 Playback project. In their opinion, “the authenticity of the digital artwork should not be hastily sacrificed to the pleasure of technical innovation” (Serexhe, Höllerer, and Marchini, 2013, 14); nevertheless, they apply a behavioral approach but advocate maintaining the original matter—or in this case, the source code and software environment—of the artwork. It is worth mentioning that the project showed a clear interest in accessibility, publishing the book Preservation of Digital Art: Theory and Practice in the three procedural languages of the European Union: German, French, and English. 

This past decade has also witnessed a series of interlinked projects directed by the SBMK and the Netherlands Media Art Institute—currently known as LI-MA Platform for Media Art—owing to the increase of media artworks in public institutions in the Netherlands. 

The first project, Conservation Media Art Collection Netherlands (2010–2012), followed the steps of older projects and digitized and preserved 3500 video artworks. Regarding born-digital artworks, the focus was on the increasing importance of legal issues and copyright in the case of online video art; this is one of the first times public access has been discussed in a research project. An online tool was developed for museums or collection holdings institutions to make copyright-protected video accessible to the public. Based on interviews with collection holders, a shortlist of the most common conservation needs and forms of online display was compiled. Through an interactive questionnaire, the collection owner is offered instructions on the copyright that applies to their work and how to manage its distribution  (Arnoldus, van Loon, and Zeinstra, 2012, 67). This is a precious tool, especially for small institutions that cannot sustain a legal team, and it is still accessible through the SBMK website.

Four years later, the Transformation Digital Art project (2014–2016) focused on implementing the recommendations established in the previous project, working with case studies from the participant museums’ collections. In this case, the research focused on the accessibility of offline digital works in the long term. With this in mind, the project developed a workflow using the Open Archival Information System (OAIS), an international model for interoperability and sustainable digital storage. Finally, the documentation model considers all the aspects of the artwork: content, appearance, structure, behavior, and context.

Consecutively, LI-MA developed the UNFOLD project (2016–2022), a reinterpretation program focusing on translations of new media artworks to the present as emerging practices for preserving media artworks. This very interesting project reinterprets media artworks from the perspective of other artists rather than conservators; artists participate in the theoretical discussions and are seen as stakeholders, not only creators. This reinterpretation does not aim at reproducing artwork from the past in the present. Instead, it works toward creating a new artwork that will coexist with the previous one in an attempt to activate collections and archives. For the project, “Through the act of reinterpreting, new publics could use the art institutions and the museum as a platform of debate and discussion. Here, the capacity of reinterpretation to rethink, rearticulate and recontextualize artistic thought would allow for the exploration of the past from the present that equally questions our contemporaneity and devises other possible futures” (Wijers, Garcia Diaz, and Sancto, 2017, 22).

The last project of this group was Documenting Digital Art (2019-2022), a revision of documentation techniques for digital art that aims to develop a framework for museums to capture audience engagement. During this project, museum visitors were encouraged to document artworks through workshops and social media to understand the value of documentation for the museum; unauthorized documentation was also considered from a preservation perspective. 

The last institutional project of the decade was the PERICLES (2013–2017), a technical project developed by Tate and other European institutions in the scientific field, specifically in space science. The project reflects conservation professionals’ concern for managing metadata generated from digital content, to which the concept of a fixed and stable final version to archive becomes less appropriate. Since minor deviations in the form or description of a new media object can significantly impact its presentation, metadata must be generated and managed correctly. The project was very complex, intending to automate the processes of extracting information from digital objects; the findings were shared online.

At the time of this writing, some projects were still in the process of active development. Regrettably, the scarcity of available information pertaining to these initiatives precluded their inclusion within the ambit of this study, although they have been included in the list presented at the beginning of this article for documentation purposes. These projects seem to delve into emerging areas in the field of media art conservation, like interactive or networked art. We are hopeful that their findings will eventually be shared with the wider media art preservation community, adding to the ongoing history of research in this field.

Conclusions

Since most of the projects shared similar objectives, methodologies, and target audiences, after the research, it was possible to draw some conclusions that fall into three main categories: strategies, documentation, and collaboration and accessibility. 

In relation to strategies, it is clear that the institutions tried to develop new criteria for media artworks and to agree on shared practices. Most of the ideas from the pioneering projects are still in use, although institutions face increasingly technical issues as time goes by. Unlike traditional art, where the deterioration is usually gradual, technology-based artworks can fail suddenly and are vulnerable to the risk of obsolescence. In this regard, two different theoretical approaches have been identified, shifting from a more traditional approach that values originality to a more evolutionary approach when more and more attention is paid to reinterpreting the artwork.

Obsolescence-caused loss can be recovered with repairs or the substitution of the technology; therefore, traditional concepts of authenticity and originality of the material are not always suitable. For those projects with an evolutionary approach, there is a possibility for the recovery of the lost value by replacing functional parts, which will not always affect originality. Yet, there are recent projects that maintain a more conservative and historical approach and advocate that the original version of the work is relevant as a reference to judge future migration or emulation; according to that, the authenticity of the artwork should not be hastily sacrificed to the existing or apparent pressure of technical innovation. However, even the more traditional-minded projects admit that the legitimate desire to preserve authenticity should not lead to the work’s disintegration because of technical failure; there is a need for balance. Foreseeably, since safeguarding the original devices and aesthetics has proven to be harder and harder as time goes by—due to the obsolescence and discontinuity of commercial devices—more projects will prioritize change and variability in the future. 

Regarding preservation strategies, the four basic strategies set by the Variable Media Initiative in 1998 still work and are the basis of media art preservation practice. Among them, emulation and reinterpretation were the most commonly studied, which shows that media art conservators understand the need for change regarding the artwork’s presentation and preservation. The investigation also showed that research questions become more specific and technical as time passes and new technological issues appear. Older projects focus on digitization or storage, whereas newer projects think about metadata, reinterpretation, and online content; preservation research should be up to date with the newest technologies to work with artists creating at this very moment.

It is also worth mentioning that some contemporary issues such as sustainability or social justice were not the subject of research in any of the projects; there is still work to be done in regard to these topics in the media art preservation field.
The second main topic in discussion, documentation, was addressed in almost every project. As the publication Modern Art Who Cares? brilliantly stated:

For making the right decisions regarding conservation, restoration, exhibiting, work, transport and storage, careful art documentation is essential. The quality of documentation determines the quality of the decision, which in turn determines the quality of the preservation of the work for years to come. (Hummelen, Sillé, and Zijlmans 2005, 175)

In this regard, the efforts were directed toward developing documentation models for the different stages of acquisition, loan, and preservation; this included the standardization of vocabulary, a shared quest since Playback 1996. Documentation strategies are more and more specific as time goes by and include new stakeholders such as the public in an attempt to capture context and immaterial values. 

There is also an increase in the mentions of shared data and accessibility of data in the more recent projects; to achieve this, some tools were developed, although most of them have become obsolete or are no longer available. It is also worth mentioning that tools such as Wikimedia or Wikidata, which are currently being used in some institutions, were not mentioned in any of the researched projects, leaving a space for new publications in regard to the use and implementation of these new technologies. In general, it appears that the issue of shared information and databases is still a work in progress, and there is no consensus on which specific tools should be used internationally due to the high diversity of collections’ needs, characteristics, and resources.

Copyright was also a highly researched topic from a preservation perspective. The projects developed documents and guidelines for the acquisition, distribution, and display of media artworks that are of significant value to small institutions that do not have the resources to sustain a legal team and artists who want to be able to sell their media artworks to collectors. 

In addition, it should be mentioned that all projects were developed under the idea of accessibilityandcollaboration with different stakeholders, with particular attention to the relation between conservators and artists, the artwork and the audience, and among conservators themselves.

It is clear from the data collected that preservation research regarding media art is a highly collaborative field; the diversity of institutions involved through the years is noticeable, and individual participants within the institutions were from diverse backgrounds. It was also common to maintain research structures and partners from one project to another, which suggests that established collaboration networks exist.

It was also noticed that, although the projects studied go back 30 years, the need for education is ever present. According to the projects’ reports, media art preservation is still an underdeveloped practice within the general field of art conservation, and college programs are insufficient in most geographic areas. Despite stating this need, almost none of the projects focused on developing educational programs for new professionals, although several workshops were conducted for those already working in museums. Except for the Digital Art Conservation project, which intended to establish a program for two educational institutions, universities were not present in all projects; more collaboration is needed to develop bachelor’s and master’s programs that educate media art conservators.

Finally, we identified within most of the projects a strong advocacy for universal accessibility to information, especially since the 2010s. Most of the projects used websites to spread their results, and some of them published relevant books. However, much of the information is now lost due to the obsolescence of the websites—some of them can still be recovered through the Internet Archive, but others are no longer accessible. During this investigation, it was also noticeable how the projects from the 1990s were thoroughly documented and offered to the public, whereas some of the newer projects had less available information. In the future, new objects will enter our collective heritage and present new challenges; keeping up with research has proven to be fundamental to ensure the survival of these artworks, and results should be published whenever possible.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This article originated as an unpublished paper in 2022 during a research stay in LI-MA, Platform for Media Art, Amsterdam, under the supervision of LI-MA’s director, Gaby Wijers. The research stay was possible thanks to the predoctoral grant FPI-UPV Programa de Ayudas de Investigación y Desarrollo (PAID-01-19) from the Universitat Politècnica de València.

NOTE

1. All graphics displayed in this article were made during the research with the data extracted from the project documentation; therefore, there may be other information that was not accessed or data that could not be included.

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AUTHOR

Paula Fernández Valdés
Becaria Predoctoral FPI-UPV
Departamento Escultura / Instituto Restauración Patrimonio
Universitat Politècnica València
paulafvaldes@gmail.com