Perla Innocenti (Glasgow University): Preserving digital art - Art Theory, Methods and Experimental Applications

Notes by Kristy Davis ... Discussed digital art as a process of components and as performance and how to prevent digital casualties. Digital preservation is an ongoing activity to ensure the reoccurring value of a digital art object and to ensure that future users are able to use the digital information in the face of constantly changing technology. It involves conservation, renewal, restoration, selection, destruction, enhancing, updating and emulation. Digital art is art that is produced and mediated by a computer. Previous initiatives in digital art preservation comprise: EAI (1971); IMAO (1999), INCOCA (1999), UMN (2000), Matters in Media Art (2003), Inside Installation Project (2004), and DOCAM (2005-2009). The research methodology used included onsite visit and in-depth interviews with artists, experimentation (EU/FP7 Planets/SHAMAN), and anticipated outcomes-foundations of a preservation assessment framework of digital art that included policies and notation systems. Preservation of digital artwork by conservators and curators is ad hoc and experimentation with the curation of digital art is essential and to preserve digital art one needs tools and a plan. Mentioned SHAMAN, which is a preservation framework project (www.shaman-ip.eu). The importance in art history the context, authenticity and surrogates of digital art are important in preserving ideas and the medium; with digital preservation, the digital lifecycle in the past and present, curation and evaluation, and in organization of the mission expectations, models, and legal and ethical constraints.

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