ArtHost
Promo video by Constant Dullaart.
Due to the obsolescence of software, hardware and network infrastructures, born-digital art is subject to constant technological change and rapid obsolescence. To avoid the loss of born-digital artworks for future generations, constant research and development efforts in preservation methodologies and technologies are needed. LIMA is among the global pioneers committed to the research, preservation and storage of digital art. With an international network, LIMA initiates and participates in collaborative research programs that address issues concerning born-digital art preservation.
ArtHost is a paid preservation service, initiated by LIMA and developed in cooperation with DullTech, that anyone can use to take care of net art pieces, including documentation, hosting, management of DNS, etc. By sending your documentation, source code, files and domain registrations we take care of the sustainable preservation of your artwork. ArtHost offers server- en browser hosting solutions to provide artists, producers and collections with sustainable ways to give access to their online artworks. Including upload, ingest, checking files, documentation service and maintenance. We will improve the ArtHost service on a continuous bases also by offering new remote browsers, an open source framework developed at Rhizome, to have the artworks render in the right environment.
ArtHost is ensuring that complex and online artworks can be stored and shown now and in the future.
About the project
The ArtHost project investigates how to deal with contemporary artworks that depend on dynamic digital technology, in particular web-based artworks (net art). Central to this research is the question of how these works can be stored, documented and kept permanently accessible for the longer term. With this research, LIMA wants to contribute to the development of guidelines for the preservation and management of complex digital art works and to develop a methodology and service for the sustainable storage of net art. In line with this, the aim is to make artists more aware of conservation issues and to involve them in the conservation of their work. The research is being conducted in collaboration with Constant Dullaart / DullTech, initiator of the project.
20 works of art are used as case studies, a large part of which were made by Constant Dullaart. In addition, a survey was conducted at fellow institutions and cooperation was sought within the NDE context.
You can read the end report here.
This project was made possible with the support of Creative Industries Fund NL