For more than a decade, TDA has created a space for dialogue between the communities that create, present, collect, preserve and critically reflect on digital art. By connecting these perspectives, the symposium strengthens the networks and knowledge needed to ensure that digital art can remain accessible, meaningful and sustainable over time.

If we do not continue and safeguard this work, the richness of media art and the possibility of experiencing these works in the future will be rapidly and irretrievably lost.

EMBODIED: Knowledge, Experience, and Data

Digital art is continually shaped by changing technologies, infrastructures and practices. Preserving it therefore involves more than maintaining files, hardware or software. It also means understanding the knowledge, experiences and relationships that make artworks meaningful and possible in the first place.

The theme for TDA 2027 is Embodiment. Embodied knowledge counters the idea that digital art is purely abstract or disembodied, reminding us that our physical bodies anchor how we interact with pixels, code, and immersive environments. In contrast to tangible heritage, where cultural identities are manifested through physical objects, intangible heritage is defined through tacit reliances and embodied practices. What does this mean in and for digital art, and what can we learn from thinking about digital art in these terms?

What does it mean to preserve digital art when an artwork is also experienced through movement, space, interaction and the body? What kinds of knowledge are embedded in these experiences, and how can they be documented and passed on?

Furthermore, the programme asks how sensorimotor engagement, interaction and audience-artwork exchange can be documented and preserved, and how re-interpretation, re-use and re-mediation might serve as strategies for conservation when the original technology no longer exists.

The theme connects digital art to broader discussions around intangible cultural heritage, where knowledge is not only contained in objects but also in practices, skills and embodied experience.

A National and International Gathering

As a national knowledge and network centre for digital and media art, LI-MA connects developments in the Netherlands with international artistic and institutional research and practices. TDA is an important part of this role: a recurring meeting point where national and international artists, institutions, researchers, consortia and projects can exchange knowledge, question established approaches and develop new forms of collaboration.

The 2027 programme continues LI-MA’s practice of building shared networks of care and knowledge rather than working alone. It brings the worlds of artistic production and presentation into dialogue with collection, preservation and research, creating opportunities to share knowledge, needs and responsibilities across the field.

Tickets

A limited batch of early bird tickets is available now, granting access to both days of the symposium, including lunch.

Inge Hinterwaldner / COSE, Second Order Visitor’s Guide to London (2024). Image courtesy of Inge Hinterwaldner.