Digital #MediaArt(s) Numérique(s)

When the Whitney Museum of American Art decided to resurrect an early interactive Internet piece, the programming code no longer worked. But would updated software change the artwork?

Paintings fade; sculptures chip. Art restorers have long known how to repair those material flaws, so the experience of looking at a Vermeer or a Rodin remains basically unchanged over time. But when creativity is computerized, the art isn’t so easy to fix.

For instance, when a Web-based work becomes technologically obsolete, does updated software simply restore it? Or is the piece fundamentally changed?

That was the conundrum facing the Whitney Museum of American Art, which in 1995 became one of the first institutions to acquire an Internet-made artwork. ...

LIMA preserves, distributes and researches media art. The videos, installations and websites from its collection can be rented for presentation worldwide. You will find our collection in the catalogue. We are located in Amsterdam.

Experts from the Netherlands Media Art Institute (NIMk, discontinued as of 1 January, 2013) are dedicated to providing continued, long-term access to works of media art, old and new. That is why they established the LIMA (Living Media Art) Foundation. In the years to come LIMA will profile itself as the international service platform for media art. With active, online distribution of its own collection, setting up a shared service structure for the storage and conservation of media art, and a lab devoted to the permanent preservation of such works for makers, producers and museums all over the world, LIMA is striving toward lasting access to media art.

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