Transformation Digital Art 2022
International symposium on the preservation of software-based art
17 & 18 March 2022, online!

Transformation Digital Art is a LIMA symposium on ongoing research and practices in the field of media art archiving, documentation and preservation. Held online in March 2022, Transformation Digital Art was designed as an opportunity to share practices concerning both artist-led and institutional strategies geared towards conservation and future presentation of born-digital and software based art. 

(Screenshot, Transformation Digital Art 2022 Symposium Platform, Welcome by Gaby Wijers)

It's about time to develop sustainable networks for the care of media artworks, new and existing practices as well as responsibilities. 

This edition revolved around the theme of collaborative knowledge building and sharing. The more knowledge is gathered and presented online the more urgent it becomes to develop sustainable networks capable of preserving and nourishing it -  to discover new ways of working together, of sharing knowledge as well as responsibility. 

For this year’s edition we built an online platform through which the events of the two day symposium and context information were presented. Audiences and participants were invited to explore the contents of the platform as well as engage in conversation and share thoughts and ideas via an open chat as well as through designated etherpads for each workshop and symposium day.

The second Day of the online Transformation Digital Art 2022 Symposium platform remained open for visitors until August 1st, 2022, during which content was available to view.

(Screenshot Day 1, Transformation Digital Art 2022 Symposium Platform)

We believe it is crucial to use the symposium to explore discourses on collaborative approaches in sharing and caring for media art. At the same time, through collaborations with artists, museums, archival professionals, scholars and collections, we want to share our knowledge and practice on this complex topic. In bringing together professionals of various strands, our hope was to facilitate an encounter that will allow for a critical reflection on the politics, architectures, processes and networks - within and beyond the art institutions.

Online symposium

The two symposium days both started with dedicated intensive workshops followed by public sessions with artists talks, presentations and discussions. 

The discussions held during the Transformation Digital Symposium 2022 help us to understand collaborative stewardship forms as ways to address the (un)sustainability of caring for complex digital objects as well as their challenges in how much can be expected in terms of commitment, time and resources from each community. Transformation Digital Art panels raised questions of how initiatives can seek those answers, how they are being organized and what are their challenges, such as decision making and politics. Some focused on artist’s needs and suggestions, for example the talks by Cornelia Sollfrank and Bas van Koolwijk; others on the institutional level with preservation projects in the Netherlands, Central Europe and Taiwan. 

(Bas van Koolwijk, TST & audio-visual works (2000-) )

The panel on Day Two focused on decentralized tools of responsibility such as open source databases (WikiData) for media documentation, taking the spotlight to the general public and practices across multiple institutions. Moderator Sandra Fauconnier added that this might be the strongest quality of collaborative spaces: plurality is allowed to live next to each other. Indicated as a solution, digital literacy could then be a way for the common public not exclusively passively consume data, but actively learn how to construct them towards a world, some world, the world we decide to create and later, to remember. 

(Cornelia Sollfrank, Who cares ( – if public memory institutions don't?))

Day 1
Case Study geist.xyz (2016) by ZEITGUISED
Summary of Workshop, “Collecting Process: Exploring the Bond Between Production and Presentation Technologies” presented at the Transformation Digital Art Symposium 2022 by Olivia Brum


(Workshop Collecting Process: Case Study ZEITGUISED, geist.zyx (screenshot) 2016)

Day 2
Workshop Wikidata: How to insert media artworks and collections?
Summary Workshop Wikidata: How to insert media artworks and collections? by Joost Dofferhoff

(Mauricio van der Maesen de Sombreff, Media Art preservation infrastructure and network in the Netherlands)

In the sections on the right you will find the detailed programmes for Day 1 on Unpacking Collaboration and Day 2 on Distributed Knowledge. 

Reflections on the symposium

To fold and unfold data closet. A reflection on Day 1 of Transformation Digital Art 2022 Symposium by Patricia Black
Reflection on Day 2 of Transformation Digital Art 2022 Symposium by Angel Gurtsieva, Anastasia Katsman, Liska Brams


(Giselle Beiguelman, The Internet never forgets, but digital culture does not allow us to remember)

Links

Visit our YouTube channel to watch back on the published programmes of the Transformation Digital Art 2022 Symposium, including:
Welcome by Gaby Wijers
Walkthrough of the platform by Stefan Glowacki
Artist presentation by Bas van Koolwijk
Full stream of Day 2 held on March 18, 2022
Short Project Presentations

The online Transformation Digital Art 2022 Symposium platform remained open for visitors until August 1st, 2022 during which all the content from this year’s symposium was available to view. 

Stay up to date

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Design by Pier Taylor.
Transformation Digital Art Symposium 2022 is supported by AFK, Mondriaan Fonds, Mediakunst.net.