LIMA (Amsterdam, NL) is a media art platform, agency and digital repository which takes care of 1000 ends of media artworks for artists and collections. Since 2016, we have been exploring ever more alternative ways to examine documentation and re-interpret it as an experimental but emerging practice for the conservation of media artworks. Media art is experienced through ever evolving technical media, browsers, networks, documentation and storage media. Digital art or media art, live art and performances are different from other art genres; they are dependent upon the practices rather than the objects, and upon the performative role of the spectator. Since the 1990s, the ephemerality and immateriality of much of these media art works have demanded the configuration of a new set of techniques to ensure their future transmission. However, the questions have been centered on technical responses to rapid technological obsolescence, an everlasting continuum of deterioration of materials and requirements. Therefore, with the necessity to preserve long-term custody of media art, it is necessary to look beyond the object and the medium. It is necessary to critically investigate existing documentation and preservation methods and develop alternatives.
The artistic choice for a (digital and online) medium often implies specific ideas about the future and continuity of the artist’s work. Hence, the artist can provide insight into the creative process (sometimes as the only source) and deliver technical data needed for the work’s future accessibility. In the preservation research projects of LIMA, collaboration with multiple stakeholders and artists’ interviews are common practices. Sometimes it is even taken one step further when the artist is an active participant in preservation. Management and preservation starts with the production, which is often the source of the problem as well as of the solution: the artist, the formats, associated software and hardware, the quality, selection and organization of the files, and the additional information about them, are all actors in the process of the production and future life of a digital work of art.
I’ll share with the audience questions and outcomes of projects such as the Artwork Documentation Tool, or the Do-It-Yourself tool for documentation, as well as video documentation practice and reinterpretation, in order to capture the hybrid, contextual and living qualities of an ‘original’ piece, rather than proposing an ongoing process of changing technical platforms and operating systems.
In addition, LIMA is currently updating its digital repository and workflow. With an emphasis on net art and complex digital artworks, the new repository, collection information system, and associated workflows, are tailored to capturing the mutability inherent to the life cycle of digital artworks. These methodologies, requirements and architecture are being explored in the research project Art Host.
Gaby Wijers (Neth., 1959) is founder and director of LIMA, the international platform for sustainable access to media art. Previously she was a coordinator for the collection, preservation and related research at the Netherlands Media Art Institute (NIMk), Amsterdam and head of the collection of the Theater Instituut Nederland (TIN), Amsterdam. She participates in national and international networks such as Foundation for the Conservation of Contemporary Art (SBMK), GAMA, DINAMO, Cultural Coalition for Digital Heritage (CCDD), Dutch Digital Heritage Network (NDE), is guest lecturer at Amsterdam University and honorable research fellow at Exeter University.