[DW-World]

Digital artworks have been part of museum collections for years, and it’s a trend likely to expand. But when old software or hardware faces compatibility issues or breaks, what can museums do?

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The death of immortal art

One solution is to rewrite the source code, but hiring programmers that can still tackle old code is often expensive.

Faced with ever-changing hardware, operating systems and data storage formats, should artists focus on creating digital works that will potentially last longer?

It’s a suggestion that Bernd Lintermann absolutely rejects. Lintermann is the head of the Institute for Visual Media at ZKM and also an artist who writes his own programs to create complex virtual worlds using 3D images and sounds.

“I am creating it doing the best with the resources that are there. Thinking about the future limits me, limits me to what might be, what my thinking of the future is,” Lintermann said.

That amounts to a very different vision than many artists have, who hope that their works may achieve some kind of immortality.

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For now, guests can marvel at the digital art conservation exhibition at the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe through February 12, 2012. It will then move on to the cities of Bourgogne and Strasbourg in France.

See the full story here: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,6652176,00.html