News

The DPC’s Executive Board has responsibility for work and wellbeing of the Coalition, its programmes, staff and finances. It is the corporate decision making body, constituted within our Articles of Association.  It is formed of twelve members: the Chair and vice Chair elected from the membership; the Executive Director and Finance Director who are appointed ex officio; and eight Non-Executive Directors drawn from the full membership.

Owing to the recent retirement of Stuart Lewis from the Executive Board a position has become available. Expressions of interest are welcomed from suitably qualified candidates.  This is an unpaid role with a time commitment of around  four meetings per year and ongoing email (approximately one per week).  Directors are normally drawn from full members of the DPC in good standing, and with the time and interest to commit to the role.  We encourage diversity by limiting participation on the Executive Board to not more than one place per member institution.  

Due to the concern over the safety of the RIMPA Community, we regret to inform you that we have decided to postpone the RIMPA Live convention until 8th-11th March 2022.

Over the last month we have been evaluating whether we will switch to a fully virtual or maintain the hybrid conference this year and have been in continued discussions with several parties to gather all the relevant information to make an informed decision. Ultimately, after analysing relevant data regarding COVID-19 in and around Canberra, the decision to postpone the convention until March 2022 was made at the RIMPA Board of Directors meeting today (August 27). RIMPA’s top priority is ensuring the health and well-being of our members, staff, sponsors, and guests. We are also mindful that RIMPA Live attendees will also return home to family, friends, and co-workers from all over the country, so any impacts from the virus could have broader implications.  

Artists are increasingly engaging with immersive media such as 360 video, real-time 3D and virtual reality (VR). Immersive media technologies present considerable challenges to our ability to stabilise and preserve: they consist of complex systems of interlinked components (many of which are proprietary and closed-source) and are dependent on the continued support of a rapidly moving, innovation focused industry. Tate’s Preserving Immersive Media project began in 2018 as a response to the immediate risks posed by this pattern of accelerated obsolescence. 

We are pleased to announce the publication of our first report from this research project, titled “Preserving Virtual Reality Artworks”. This is available to download on our project page: https://www.tate.org.uk/about-us/projects/preserving-immersive-media.

The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) has made the next three Technology Watch Guidance Notes in the new ‘Data Type’ series available on general release today. The topics covered in the set are: audio file formats, moving images and raster images.

Authored by staff at Artefactual Systems in collaboration with the DPC and developed in conjunction with the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, each of the Guidance Notes in the Data Type series is designed to provide a primer on the current state of community knowledge about types of data commonly encountered by those seeking to preserve digital holdings.

With the support of the international preservation communities, preparation for the iPres2021 (http://ipres2021.ac.cn/)conference in Beijing are well underway. After the submission of international contributions and peer-review procedures, experts and authors from the United States, Germany, Britain, France, Denmark, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Italy, Austria, Indonesia, China and other countries will give about 70 professional reports during the conference including workshop & tutorials and panels and etc.