ERPANET Workshop on the Preservation of Born Digital Art
Glasgow, Scotland
8th October 2004


ERPANET is pleased to announce a workshop on the preservation of born digital art. 
This one-day event, co-sponsored by the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA), will be 
held in Glasgow, Scotland, on the 8th of October 2004.

Digital technologies are a ubiquitous presence in contemporary art practice, from 
production through to presentation and preservation. Born digital artworks employ 
those technologies as their very own medium, exploring their inherent properties, 
conventions, contents, contexts, and potentials for interaction and participation. 
They may take the form of an installation or digital environment; a website or web 
intervention; custom software; or an attachment to an email. New media galleries and 
organizations have engaged in commissioning, facilitating, presenting, and, vitally, 
archiving digital artworks and projects. Indeed, several have formed on-line databases 
or assembled physical collections, which have in turn prompted international debate 
and research into issues of documentation, longer-term preservation and access. The 
challenges of the medium are many: hardware, software, operating systems, and browsers 
are threatened by obsolescence and supercession. There are also t!
 he difficulties of documenting such works, of reasserting their interactivity, and of 
recreating a specific context or environment. The Internet itself is an unstable 
medium, subject to constant change and its own potential vulnerabilities. More 
recently, some museum and private collections have begun to acquire born digital 
artworks, and, thus, face the task of developing plans or strategies for their 
long-term care. For the majority of those collections, acquisitions remain highly 
selective: what they can commit to is dictated by the long-term functionality, 
resource and maintenance implications that such artworks, particularly those with a 
�network-dependency� or interactive element, can bear. The question of what is 
possible � across a range of collecting contexts - is only just being determined. 

Benefits from Attendance
One of the major aims for this workshop is to provide an international forum to 
exchange information about born digital art collecting and archiving practices across 
different institutional and national contexts. This workshop is aimed at all people 
involved in the creation and management of born digital art. 

The aims of this seminar are:

� To identify some of the challenges that the �permanent retention� of born digital 
artworks, particular those that are �network-dependent� pose. 
� To identify key platforms, operations, users, contexts of presentation and 
experiences with born digital art
� To consider selected current collecting policies for born digital artworks
� To review selected current accessioning and documentation procedures for born 
digital art
� To consider selected current storage and long-term access/care procedures for born 
digital art
� To identify precedents for standards in collecting/accessioning/storage/long-term 
care policies and procedures across the �permanent retention contexts�


Seminar Format
During this workshop, presentations will explore the preservation of born digital art 
from the perspective of both the artist and the collecting organisation. A panel 
discussion will examine issues arising from the presentations, such as developing 
specific collecting policies, addressing technical issues, managing born digital 
resources, and enabling long-term access to born digital art. During this session, 
workshop participants will have the opportunity to share their own experiences. 

Speakers include

Prof. Dr. Hans Dieter Huber (Professor for Contemporary Art History, Aesthetics and 
Art Theory State Academy of Visual Arts Stuttgart)
Dr. habil. Oliver Grau (Database of Virtual Art, Humboldt University, Berlin)
Prof. Peter Cornwall (Institute for Visual Media, Zentrum f�r Kunst and 
Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe)
Susan Collins (Artist, senior lecturer, Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, London)
Sandra Fauconnier (Archivist, V2, Rotterdam)
Nikolett Eross (c3, Budapest)
Simon Faithfull (Artist, lecturer, Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, London)
Peter Ride (CARTE, University of Westminster, London)


Venue
The venue is for this workshop is the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA). This 
stunning building is located in the heart of Glasgow�s city centre at 350 Sauchiehall 
Street. ERPANET is extremely grateful to the CCA for its generous support in the 
delivery of this event. For more information, please see http://www.cca-glasgow.com.

Registration
To Register on-line, go to www.erpanet.org. The registration fee is 65 GBP and 
includes lunch. 

For more information contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED]

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