The symposium's first day was dedicated to documentation as a critical strategy for digital art conservation, including an exploration of documenting VR and AI.

Here you will find the BIOS of all the participants of this year's Transformation Digital Art symposium.

Here you will find the descriptions of all the DAY 1 workshops and presentations.

Timetable | Day 1

9:00 Registration, coffee at LAB111 / LI-MA, Amsterdam 

10:00 Welcome and introduction by Gaby Wijers (Director, LI-MA), moderation day one by Annet Dekker (Curator, Researcher, University of Amsterdam)

10:15 - 11:00 Performance Permanence. Lecture by Jan Robert Leegte (Artist) on his artistic practice, the use of new technologies and how he documents his works. He will also address how others collect and sustain his artworks , and shed light on this perspective over the years and into the future.

11:00 - 11:30 Beyond Matter. Cultural Heritage on the Verge of Virtual Reality, online report by Lívia Nolasco-Rózsá (Scientific Associate, Curator, ZKM). She is coordinator of an international, collaborative, practice-based research project that reflects on the virtual condition with a specific emphasis on its spatial aspects in art production, curating, and mediation. Livia will guide us through the project’s questions, approach and results.

11:30 - 12:15 The Carolan Guitar: between instrument and archive. In this keynote by Steve Benford (Professor, University of Nottingham), a unique musical instrument will be presented which captures and recounts its life story as it passes through the hands of many players. In addition, Steve Benford will reflect on how digitally augmented instruments can become social memory objects. 

12:30 - 14:00 LUNCH

14:00 - 15:30 Parallel workshops and presentations: 

1. Online documentation workshop. Matt Adams (Artist, Blast Theory) will present his work Cat Royale, an upcoming work exploring the impact of AI on animals. Cats will live inside a utopia created by the artists. The cats' every need will be catered for, with spaces for playing and socializing and relaxing and private spaces. The work’s documentation strategies will be discussed with the moderators Steve Benford (Professor, University of Nottingham) and Gabriella Giannachi (Professor in Performance and New Media, University of Exeter) and audience, followed by an active audience documentation challenge. This session is supported by Joost Dofferhoff (Registrar & Assistant documentation & preservation, LI-MA).
    
2. Offline documentation workshop taking place at LI-MA, highlighting documentation strategies of Operation Earnest Voice by Jonas Lund (Artist). The artist will present this artwork, and possible documentation strategies will be discussed, followed by a DIY session where the audience is invited to document this digital artwork actively Sam Mercer (Artist, Curator, Programmer, The Photographers’ Gallery). The session will be moderated by Annet Dekker (Curator, Researcher, University of Amsterdam) and supported by Olivia Brum (Junior Conservator, LI-MA). Operation Earnest Voice uses social media to disrupt, influence and manipulate public opinion and discourse. The performance takes place  online and offline, with a group of performers set up in troll farm fashion and given control over numerous social media accounts. 

1. Presentations on Documentation, moderated by Gaby Wijers: 
   Debra Solomon's The Living 1997-1998: a reconstruction. This early net art and performance-based work no longer exists. Is it possible to reactivate the site through media archaeology and based on documentation? Haitian Ma (Researcher, LI-MA) a.o. will share questions and scenarios for the future life of this artwork. 
   
   Artists Mapping Interactivity by Marije Baalman (Artist, iii). Baalman recently published Composing Interactions - An Artist’s Guide to Building Expressive, Interactive Systems. She applies her extensive experience as an artist and engineer to guide us through the creation process of interactive digital artworks. This lecture will explore mapping, visual language and case study documentation.
   
   From Thousands of Documents to One Wiki by Morgane Stricot & Matthieu Vlaminck (Media and Digital Art Conservators, ZKM\). In 2019, ZKM’s wiki was resurrected to document the software-based art collection. Improved and adapted to their specific needs, the wiki led to a profound restructuring of documentation and management strategies for software-based artworks. The possibilities offered by this editing tool are beyond expectation, especially for version control and collaborative documentation. 

16:00 -17:30 Where Do We Go from Here The Documenting Digital Art Project research started before the pandemic. This means new and essential questions have since arisen: How does the current crisis influence the work of artists, scholars, and caretakers of digital art? Where to go from here? We will discuss these questions on the basis of three recent publications. In After Institution, Karen Archey is looking beyond what cultural institutions were, reflecting on what they are and what they might become. In Conservation of Time-Based Media Art, edited by Deena Engels and Joanna Philips, Martina Haidvogl is evaluating time based media registration systems and workflow implementation. In  Documentation as Art: Expanded Digital Practices, Gabriella Giannachi and Annet Dekker are exploring and stretching the value, need and boundaries of digital art documentation. In Where Do We Go from Here?, Karen Archey, Annet Dekker, Gabriella Giannachi and Martina Haidvogl will examine the ambitions and impulses that drive their research, focusing on the new challenges, risks and opportunities. The session is moderated by Melanie Buehler.

This day of the symposium is part of the collaborative research project Documenting Digital Art and is supported by AFK and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)