Variable and Unstable: Preserving and Documenting our Digital Art Heritage

Alain Depocas has been working at the Centre for Research and Documentation (CR+D) at the Daniel Langlois Foundation since September 1999, and was named Director of the CR+D in March 2003. From 2002 to 2004, he co-directed the Variable Media Network.

For more than forty years, a growing number of artistic activities have come to rest upon technologies that are now obsolete. As a result, it has become difficult to preserve this work. The institutions and individuals who must document and preserve these artistic practices are faced with a wide variety of new problems. These works deteriorate at the rate that their original components break down - and because the context of technological development often eludes specialists and historians, the problem is getting worse.

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