Tom Ensom and Patricia Falcão
Electronic Media Review, Volume Seven: 2021-2022
ABSTRACT
Since software-based artworks started entering the Tate collection in the early 2000s, they have required new modes of conservation through their contingencies on bespoke software programs, complex systems of interconnected components, and a rapidly changing technological landscape. It has become clear that rates of acquisition are accelerating, and the processes of acquisition and preservation, which were initially seen as individual research projects, had to become part of the day-to-day work of time-based media conservators at Tate. In 2017, the Time-Based Media Conservation team started the Software-Based Art Preservation Project, still ongoing, with two primary aims: (1) Define standardized workflows and processes for the preservation of our software-based artworks, including documentation, disk imaging, and emulation, and (2) systematically apply these to the existing software-based artworks in the collection while taking the opportunity to identify any works requiring treatment. The project has taken insights from a decade of collaborative research undertaken by Tate’s Time-Based Media Conservation and Collection Care Research teams as its starting point, supplemented by a growing body of related research from colleagues around the world. This article will describe our work to develop and standardize our internal best practices for the care of software-based art, discussing the approach taken and introducing procedures developed for future software-based artwork acquisitions. We will also reflect on lessons learned along the way, particularly around pragmatism and institutional resources, and some of the questions that we have yet to answer.
Introduction
Software-based artworks (SBAs) started entering the Tate collection in the early 2000s. They have posed new challenges to established conservation strategies and expertise, due to their contingencies on bespoke software programs, complex systems of interconnected components, and a rapidly changing technological landscape. As figure 1 shows, the rates of acquisition are accelerating, and the resources in time and knowledge required to properly document and future proof these works are not easily added to day-to-day practice, even in a team of 12 people, as is the case at Tate.
This evolution could already be predicted in 2003, when Tate acquired its first software-based artwork, Becoming by Michael Craig-Martin (b. 1941). Since then, there has been a real investment from the leadership at Tate to support the development of this specialization. This investment is reflected in a series of both internal and external research projects and collaborations (Falcão 2010; Reichert, Falcão, and Ensom 2016; Ensom 2019), which brought us to our current position. Figure 2 shows only some of those collaborations and references.
These developments at Tate and in the wider communities of time-based media conservation and digital preservation came together in the Software-Based Art Preservation Project (2017–ongoing) (Ensom, Falcão, and King 2021), which builds recent research developments into the pre-existing Tate practices. The project is also helping us understand how to adapt both our collection management and digital archival storage systems to accommodate the specific requirements of software-based artworks. The project was designed to be of small scale, allowing the allocation of more or less time depending on the budget available, and this has varied between 15 and 30 days a year for one person, plus occasional permanent staff time for different inputs as needed. The project allowed us to profit from the PhD research of Tom Ensom (2019) and bring together existing practices at Tate and the recent developments in the field. The project’s two main aims are as follows:
- Define standardized workflows and processes for the preservation of our software-based artworks, including documentation, disk imaging, and emulation.
- Systematically apply these to the existing software-based artworks in the collection while taking the opportunity to identify any works requiring treatment.
During the project, we evolved from our initial approach, where each work is seen as a case study, and started to implement consistent processes of acquisition and preservation that are part of the day-to-day work of time-based media conservators at Tate. In the next section is a brief description of the practical steps of the project.
What We Did/Outcomes
Initial Survey of Artworks and Documentation
The first step of the project was to carry out an initial survey of all historically acquired software-based artworks and their documentation. The aim of this process was to identify gaps in this documentation and start to address them. To capture information in a structured form, we developed a report structure (Time-Based Media Conservation, Tate 2020c) based on prior research at Tate (Falcão 2010; Ensom 2019). This template would then act as a single place to gather authoritative information about that artwork. Detailed technical information was derived from detailed analysis of the artwork software and hardware, including descriptions of computers and their components, and the hardware, software, and external dependencies of software programs.
We designed the template to accommodate variants of an artwork, a term we use to describe specific sets of hardware and software that have been used to realize an artwork. For example, the 2005 work Subtitled Public by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (b. 1967) has two variants: one that runs on Windows XP (via Bootcamp) on Mac Mini computers with Firewire cameras, and a second that runs on Windows 10 on NUC computers with USB cameras.
Extending The Museum System (TMS) Metadata
The information gathering process ultimately led to updating the metadata fields used in Tate’s internal collection management system, The Museum System (TMS). This did not have any software-based art specific fields, so we set out to define some. Fields were developed to describe three different kinds of entity:
- Computer hardware: Fields describing the type and component specification of computers (including microcontrollers).
- Software environments: Fields describing components of a software environment stored on a hard drive or in a disk image.
- Software programs: Fields describing the properties of a specific software program.
Controlled lists (i.e., the user selects from a list of predetermined options) of terms were defined for fields where we knew content would change relatively infrequently, like operating system versions and filesystem types. Free-text fields (i.e., the user can type anything) were used where we knew content was likely to be different for each entry, like the model identifier of a hardware component. A document describing the fields developed has been published on the Tate website (Time-Based Media Conservation, Tate 2019), so these might provide a useful starting point for others approaching similar development projects.
Disk Imaging
The next major step in the project was to create disk images of all computers associated with software-based artworks. A disk image is a file that contains all the data captured from a physical storage device like a hard disk drive or CD-ROM. Disk imaging has become an important tool for those caring for time-based media artworks, as it allows us to capture the entire software environment contained on a computer’s internal storage media and store it as a file. This file can then be used in place of this device, such as with an emulator, or used to clone to new storage media and thus recover from hardware failure.
Safely creating a disk image requires the use of specialized tools and equipment, so we began sourcing important elements of this during the project. This included two new workstations: a Linux workstation running BitCurator (n.d.), which is a distribution of the Linux Ubuntu OS containing prepackaged imaging tools, and a Windows workstation running Windows 10. We also gathered a set of write-blockers, including one integrated into the Linux workstation and a set of portable devices covering different kinds of drive connector (IDE/PATA, SATA, M2, USB 3.0). We also sourced a set of reliable optical drives for imaging optical discs, as there is significant variance in the quality of these drives. Drives were selected using accuracy information from user statistics reported on the dBpoweramp (an audio conversion and ripping tool) Forum (dBpoweramp Forum Users 2019). Finally, we sourced anti-static equipment to avoid damage to delicate electronic components from electrostatic discharge during handling. This included an anti-static mat, an anti-static wristband, and anti-static gloves.
We could then begin systematically disk imaging storage media from computers in the collection. This involved opening these computers, removing the drives, and attaching them to a host computer (fig. 3). We developed workflows for drive and optical media imaging at Tate to guide this process. Imaging has been applied in the field of digital preservation for some time, and our workflows built on insights from published resources (Colloton n.d.; Dappert, Jackson, and Kimura 2011; Duryee 2014; Knijff 2015, 2016; Prael 2016; MoMA 2017; Colloton et al. 2019; Conserving Computer-Based Art Initiative 2019). Our workflow is based around our most used tool, Guymager, which is fast and has an easy-to-use graphical interface. We captured our images in raw format, as this is an interoperable and nonproprietary format. In comparison to other proprietary formats available, such as EWF, this form does not support compression or embedded metadata. However, these proprietary formats are less widely supported by software and operating systems. We also used the tools dvdisaster and ddrescue for recovering data from damaged media. Finally, a set of tools was used for analysis of storage media, which helped identify and document the internal structures of a drive or image (fig. 4).
The workflows and tools discussed here are detailed in Tate’s Disk Imaging Guide (Ensom 2021). An imaging report document (Time-Based Media Conservation, Tate 2020a) was also developed, containing structured fields for recording details of process and quality control during the imaging process, including source drive model, target image format, tools used, and a record of quality control checks such as checksums verification and image mounting.
Emulation
The next phase of the project was emulation of the original computer hardware. Emulation involves the use of a tool called an emulator to simulate computer hardware in software. It is useful for preserving software, because it allows one computer system to behave as if it were another older computer system, and so execute software designed for that older system.
It was possible to use disk images created in the imaging phase as the basis for emulation, by treating them as virtual storage devices and booting from them using an emulator. This made emulation relatively quick and easy, and served to demonstrate that the artwork can be run independently of the original physical hardware. All artworks were emulated using this approach, using a workflow derived from an earlier collaboration with Klaus Rechert at Tate (Rechert, Falcão, and Ensom 2016). We used two primary emulators: the free and open-source VirtualBox (Oracle Corporation 2007) and QEMU (QEMU Project Developers 2010) (fig. 5).
Overall, the success rate of emulation was high, particularly for Windows and Linux PCs, all of which could be booted, although in some cases only after modification to the disk image or emulator settings. Virtualization was an essential tool in this process, as most artworks were produced in the past 20 years and would have run poorly under full system emulation. As Windows and Linux still support the x86 architecture, virtualization would be usable for works involving older operating systems like Windows XP and Windows 7. Mac OS X computers were more challenging to emulate, as it was necessary to fool the operating system into thinking it was running on genuine Apple hardware that matches the original machine’s specification. There were two examples of Mac OS X computers tested, and only one of them was ultimately bootable. Windows XP was another source of problems, as this OS is also sensitive to hardware changes. In a few cases, the storage driver was patched with a new one to get it to boot in an emulator. There were also issues with Windows XP requiring activation due to the hardware changes, which requires a license key and is dependent on the activation server being online. This server was still active when we undertook this work, but this is unlikely to be the case in the long term. Artworks relying on physical hardware peripherals were expected to be a problem when using emulation, as emulation aims to move away from physical hardware to virtual hardware. Fortunately, all the artworks with such peripherals had software variants which supported USB devices, which are compatible with VirtualBox via passthrough and so could be attached and accessed through the emulator. QEMU also supports USB passthrough, but this was not tested during this project.
We developed a second report template (Time-Based Media Conservation, Tate 2020b) to record details of the emulation process, including the source disk image, emulator version used, and a description of the steps required to get the emulation running (particularly if modifications were necessary). Where possible to access original hardware, this document was also used to record whether any differences were noted between the emulated version and the original hardware.
Building a Software Library
The process of learning about these artworks during the project was an opportunity to ensure that we had all components archived that we might need to support future conservation work. Missing were many off-the-shelf software components which formed dependencies for accessing or running other artist-supplied software. Many of these are sufficiently generic and could in theory find use across multiple artworks (e.g., operating systems like Windows XP and development software like Flash). For these components, we sourced installation media and created disk images for backup and easy access.
Installation media was then recorded in the collection management system, TMS. At Tate, we use a TMS-based system of registration and tracking of equipment, designed to support tracking of the pool of hardware that is available for reuse when viewing and installing artworks. For example, stockpiles of various models of projector and CRT monitor are available from the pool and can be reused for different displays and artworks. We adapted this approach for software through the addition of some new TMS fields to the set available for describing equipment, and now software equipment items are also tracked at Tate. We are still trying to track down some legacy software, which is now only available on the second-hand market.
Identifying Treatments
The project was also an opportunity to examine the status of the software-based artworks in the collection and identify priorities for future treatment. Several works will require intervention in the near future. One artwork was observed to have failing capacitors on the motherboard, which will eventually prevent it from functioning and damage other component circuits. This is a consequence of the era when it was produced and the so-called capacitor plague that affected many motherboards sold during the 2000s (fig. 6).
In other cases, artworks would simply benefit from conservator time with the artworks to better understand and document them, ideally in collaboration with specialists. Where we did find additional work required or other missing documentation or components, this was noted in the artworks documentation record.
A Workflow for Software-Based Art Acquisitions
A workflow for new software-based art acquisitions would provide concrete steps and guidance to ensure a baseline of documentation is created for each work. A draft workflow was developed as a consequence of the research project, with the aim of providing a detailed guide for a new staff working on software-based artworks or just as a reminder of the things to think about for each new acquisition. This workflow builds on existing workflows for digital video acquisitions developed in the team over the past few years, and adapts them with software-specific requirements, including disk imaging, condition checking and documentation, and guidance on applying the new TMS metadata fields. This workflow is managed on Tate’s internal instance of MediaWiki, which documents the Time-Based Media Conservation team’s procedures and workflows. It will continue to be tested and developed over the coming years, as an ever-increasing variety of software-based artworks enter the collection.
Next Steps
There is some ongoing work in a few different areas that we will continue to develop in the next year.
Integration with the Digital Preservation System
We will be developing our new digital preservation system at Tate and identifying the requisites specific to software-based artwork components. There will be the need to test any adaptations to the Archivematica workflows to deal with very large disk images, and issues arising from the variety of files and software that will have to be ingested. Also very important, particularly in terms of reducing the need for resources, is the possibility of automating metadata capture in Tate’s Collection Management System. This is currently being explored for video, audio, and still image files, but it is a much bigger challenge for software where applications of automated metadata extraction are less well understood.
Evolving Workflows
We will be exploring whether the software-based acquisition workflow, or parts of it, can be applied to artworks with computer control systems but which would not typically be considered software-based art. This includes artworks which use microcontrollers and programmable logic controllers, which can be programmed to control motors, lights, or the playback of audiovisual media. We know that the software-based art produced by artists will continue to surprise us with new technologies and ways of using technology. This will require flexibility and adaptability in our approach, and the continued evolution of our best practice guidelines as the collection grows.
Balancing Depth of Documentation and Time Available
Software-based artworks are best supported by in-depth documentation, but a balance must be found between this and the time available to complete it. The complexity and variety of information captured also points us to question the formats in which that documentation is created. Word documents and reports are still the default, but there is a clear case to test other formats, such as version control systems or wikis. Some preliminary work has been done in this area (Barok et al. 2019), but tools and their capabilities change and improve regularly. Automated documentation of technical processes, such as those involved in disk imaging and emulation, would lessen the documentation burden currently placed on the conservator.
Updating Workstations and Tools
Workstations need constant updates, and newly acquired artworks with unfamiliar technologies may need different tools. There is a need for regular updating of workstations so that artworks using new production technologies (new technologies for Tate, sometimes these can in fact be old technologies) can be assessed and preserved. This also points to the need to preserve these production and preservation environments. The growing tendency for software to be supplied using a subscription model and requiring online access may make this challenging or even impossible.
Addressing Training Needs
Finally, training needs within the Time-Based Media Conservation team at Tate need to be considered. The acquisition of software-based artworks is typically managed by a few members of the team who have prior experience of the medium. If acquisitions of software-based art continue to increase, this may need to extend to the wider team. While formalized workflows and templates provide a useful framework to help guide those new to the medium, the technical and conceptual variety of software-based art means that not all aspects of the process can be transmitted in this way. We may need to consider other ways of transmitting the tacit knowledge held by specialized members of the team to the wider team, through both collaboration within the team and with specialists outside the organization.
Open Questions
A few aspects of the work so far raise questions for which we do not have answers, and this highlights the need for continued investment in the area. Some of the more interesting questions are discussed next.
Software Sustainability Practices
The area of software sustainability, and particularly the work being done around assessing sustainability of research software by the Software Sustainability Institute (n.d.), has many parallels with the needs and aims of software-based artworks. Comparing that context to that of software-based art, and analyzing their recommendations and requirements, could bring advantages to both sides. They could be used for artworks but also be applied to preservation environments, artists’ practices, and tools.
Sustainability of Emulation and Disk Images
Our workflow is partly based on the assumption that emulation is a sustainable approach for preservation, but this is an ongoing concern. The sustainability of disk images is an important aspect to investigate, if we want to understand what might help ensure their interoperability with future emulators. This issue was initially addressed in earlier research with the University of Freiburg (Rechert et al. 2016), but as the technologies we receive change, we must continue to ask if there are other steps that we should be taking now to make these disk images as cross-platform as possible? An additional sustainability issue is the longevity of emulators, which are also subject to obsolescence if not maintained. This raises concerns over whether we could lose access to specific emulated computer platforms in the future and highlights a need to support maintenance of these tools.
Source Code Analysis and Documentation
When is source code analysis necessary? When must it be done as part of the acquisition process? Source code analysis and documentation has proved to be an important tool when understanding and preserving software-based artworks (Engel and Wharton 2014; Engel et al. 2018). However, it often requires very specialized knowledge that may not be readily available. In some cases, doing that analysis at acquisition may be necessary, such as if a treatment is taking place at that stage, or maybe the software is particularly vulnerable (e.g., the expertise on a particular language may be very limited). In other cases, it may be sufficient to know that the materials are available for analysis at a later date. How can we evaluate this need early in the acquisition process to allow for better planning of resources over time?
Sharing Preservation and Artwork Environments
Often, artworks created by the same artist over a certain period rely on very similar software environments to run. For example, hyper-realistic 3D simulations from John Gerrard (b. 1974) from circa 2015 were created using the same tools and rely on very similar operating systems and libraries to run. Similarly, specific tools or tool ecosystems have been popular among communities of artists, such as Flash, Director, or, more recently, Adobe Suite, Maya, and Unity. Keeping those tools or tool ecosystems accessible will be very useful for preservation in the future, and a relatively small number of ecosystems might support a large number of artworks.
The Emulation-as-a-Service Infrastructure (EaaSI) project (Software Preservation Network, n.d. [a]) has demonstrated the possibility and value of sharing software environments for access, so it is a small leap to propose the same for our software environments of interest. There are, of course, many different issues to take into consideration, many of them already mapped by the EaaSI project and the Software Preservation Network more widely, including legal and ethical issues in sharing software (Albert 2018), and the use of Wikidata to make information about those systems openly available and machine readable (Thornton 2018).
Conclusions
This project was an important step in moving from research to best practices for the long-term care of software-based art. In the process, we have found that there are many aspects of an acquisition process for software-based art which can be supported by workflows and procedures. Having these in place at Tate will help ensure that acquisition steps are applied consistently to software-based artworks entering the collection in the future and that the team will have access to guidance and tools to support their work with this medium. However, this is far from a solved problem, and the variation in the technical and conceptual considerations involved in caring for software-based art, along with the time and resource demands it places on conservation staff, will require continued research, development, and collaboration.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank Tate’s Conservation Management team, and particularly Louise Lawson, for the continued support for the project; the Time-Based Media Conservation team at Tate for their contributions to the project, and particularly Chris King for his assistance with the practical work; and Jacob Webber, our collections database manager for his help with updates to metadata on The Museum System.
Patricia would like to thank the UK Art and Humanities Research Council for funding her travel and accommodation costs in the context of her doctoral research.
APPENDIX
Projects and texts referenced in Figure 2:
Engel, Deena, Tom Ensom, Patricia Falcão, and Joanna Phillips. 2022. ‘Caring for Software- and Computer-Based Art’. In Conservation of Time-Based Media Art, by Deena Engel and Joanna Phillips, 1st ed., 453–511. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003034865-26.
Ensom, Tom. 2019. “Technical Narratives: Analysis, Description and Representation in the Conservation of Software-Based Art.” PhD thesis. King’s College London. https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/technical-narratives(e01bff94-08bd-4b83-aeef-4e7d6d5b0dfc).html.
Ensom, Tom, Patricia Falcão, and Chris King. 2021. “Software-Based Art Preservation Project.” Tate. https://www.tate.org.uk/about-us/projects/software-based-art-preservation.
Falcão, Patricia. 2010. ‘Developing a Risk Assessment Tool for the Conservation of Software- Based Artworks’. Bern University of the Arts. https://www.academia.edu/6660777/Developing_a_Risk_Assessment_Tool_for_the_conservation_of_software_based_artworks_MA_Thesis.
Falcão, Patricia, and Annet Dekker. n.d. ‘Interdisciplinary Discussions about the Conservation of Software- Based Art Community of Practice on Software-Based Art’. https://www.academia.edu/43135511/Interdisciplinary_Discussions_about_the_Conservation_of_Software_Based_Art_Community_of_Practice_on_Software_Based_Art.
Guggenheim New York. n.d. “The Conserving Computer-Based Art Initiative.” The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation. https://www.guggenheim.org/conservation/the-conserving-computer-based-art-initiative.
MoMA. n.d. “Media Conservation.” Media Conservation Initiative. https://www.mediaconservation.io.
Rechert, Klaus, Patricia Falcão, and Tom Ensom. 2016. “Introduction to an Emulation-Based Preservation Strategy for Software-Based Artworks.” https://www.tate.org.uk/about-us/projects/pericles/emulation-based-preservation-strategy-for-software-based-artworks.
Roeck, Claudia. 2024. ‘Sustaining Software-Based Art Conservation Strategies and Institutional Requirements’. PhD Thesis, Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam.
https://hdl.handle.net/11245.1/daccbe73-fc09-45d2-8798-c733f009af41
Software Preservation Network. n.d. (c). “Software Preservation Network (SPN).” https://www.softwarepreservationnetwork.org/.
Tate. n.d. “Preserving Immersive Media.” Tate. https://www.tate.org.uk/about-us/projects/preserving-immersive-media.
Tate. 2018. ‘Reshaping the Collectible: When Artworks Live in the Museum’. Tate. 2018. https://www.tate.org.uk/research/reshaping-the-collectible.
TechFocus. 2015. “TechFocus III: Caring for Software-Based Art.” https://resources.culturalheritage.org/techfocus/techfocus-iii-caring-for-computer-based-art-software-tw-2/.
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AUTHORS
Tom Ensom
Time-Based Media Conservator
Tate, London
tom.ensom@tate.org.uk
Patricia Falcão
Time-Based Media Conservator
Tate, London
patricia.falcao@tate.org.uk