from wired news

How to Preserve Digital Art

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,53712,00.html

Digital technology is so ephemeral that an artwork created using a G4
Mac, Flash 4.0 software and C++ coding today may no longer be
viewable 10, 20 or even 200 years from now.

Film canisters are collecting dust after 75 years of nonuse, video
formats from the 1980s are becoming unreadable and Web projects
created just minutes ago are already becoming stale.

As the half-life of these media becomes shorter and shorter, variable
media art is in a race against technological obsolescence.

That's why it's critical that these artworks are documented and
preserved now, before they are lost indefinitely, observers say.

"With digital art, there's no room for things to fall between the
cracks," said Richard Rinehart, director of digital media for the
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. "If you don't do
something to preserve it within a span of five years, it's not going
to survive.

"Some works of digital art are already gone. Our time frame is not
decades, it's years, at most."


++
i know we've been through this discussion (sorta) in terms of selling
the stuff, but what about simply preserving it?
–
<twhid>
http://www.mteww.com
</twhid>