Collaborating for Sustainable Access to Digital Art: A Project Overview

This paper addresses the preservation approach chosen for a selected group of born-digital artworks connected to the web, here categorized under the term internet art. The three first cases that are part of the project Infrastructuur Duurzame Toegankelijkheid Digitale Kunst (Collaborative Infrastructure for Sustainable Access to Digital Art) researched by LIMA (a platform for media art based in Amsterdam) focused on how to analyse internet artworks. This case study-based research was conducted in collaboration with 16 collecting institutions based in The Netherlands. The growing number of internet artworks in collections has pushed the development of preservation initiatives that consider these works’ fleeting nature, a consequence of their technical build and time-sensitive characteristics. The project aims to produce and share knowledge for these artworks’ preservation and overall sustainability while making it available for other similar works. This paper addresses the research steps while assessing its rationale and utility. It starts by describing the case study and assesses how the methodology serves conservation standards. The paper documents an overall evaluation of methods and results, pointing out the applicability and practical relevance of this initiative, here evaluated with positive conclusions. This paper fits the project’s mission concerning knowledge sharing and raising awareness for the preservation of internet artworks and is authored by a short-term PhD fellow at LIMA.